Self-Interest as a Source of the Common Good in Post-Hobbesian Natural Law

Abstract

Thomas Hobbes’s radical tendency to view natural law as a means of individual self-preservation sparked critical responses among natural law theorists in England and continental Europe. This chapter compares how two of Hobbes’s immediate successors and critics – Richard Cumberland and Samuel Pufendorf – dealt with the potential conflict between self-interest and the requirements of natural law. The chapter shows how both intended to reply to Hobbes in their own distinctive ways by attempting to show that the ultimate aim of natural law, imposed by God, obligated people to promote the common good of humankind as a whole rather than mainly function as the means for individual and social utility. They did not, however, consider self-interest to be merely destructive for social cooperation and natural law. Both argued in their distinct ways that self-interest is the most effective motivation for people to consider the advantage of others and it leads them to promote the common good. This chapter also points out notable differences between Cumberland’s and Pufendorf’s treatment of the relation between the private good and the common good.

1 Introduction

Seventeenth-century natural law should not be seen as a unified theory but rather as a series of attempts to employ a shared vocabulary in order to justify what were often quite dissimilar theories of morality and politics. Early modern Scholastic and Neo-Stoic natural law theories were largely based on the idea that the precepts of natural law could be rationally derived by reflecting on the rational and social elements of human nature. In this picture, the purpose of natural law was to complete or perfect human nature. Thomas Hobbes radically challenged these assumptions by rejecting the teleological account of human nature and upholding a hedonistic and subjectivist account of good and evil.¹ Hobbes argued that natural law could not promulgate a moral vision of the good life that all people naturally share. Despite his acknowledgement of the huge variations in human desire, Hobbes maintained that all properly functioning humans rationally strive towards self-preservation. It was therefore possible to construct binding moral obligations only with a reference to the value of self-preservation.

In De cive (1642), Hobbes defines natural law as “the Dictate of right reason about what should be done or not done for the longest possible preservation of life and limb”.² Natural law enjoins people to seek peaceful relations with others when it is safe to do so and to prohibit several vices, such as cruelty and ingratitude. Since in a state of nature there are no sanctions that could assure compliance with law, natural laws are merely “theorems of reason” that oblige human beings only in “the internal court”.³ The upshot is that natural law instructs people to institute the sovereign state as a necessary means to realise the good that is common to all and peace, and it instructs to hold fast to the state’s authority once it is established. Natural law had to be made obligatory by the civil sovereign, directly by adding civil sanctions and indirectly by providing the conditions of peace and security that make practising natural law morally required.

Hobbes’s reduction of the precepts of natural law to the necessary conditions for individual self-preservation and social utility could not be ignored in England and continental Europe.⁴ For many of his contemporaries, it appeared that Hobbes denounced the long-standing tradition of natural jurisprudence by arguing that the purpose of natural law was merely the realisation of the self-interest of the agent rather than to offer binding moral instructions for the promotion of the common good. This chapter explores how Hobbes’s two immediate critics, Richard Cumberland in his De legibus naturae (1672)⁵ and Samuel Pufendorf in his De jure naturae et gentium (1672/1684)⁶ and its abridged textbook version De officio hominis et civis (1673),⁷ dealt with the question of a potential conflict raised by Hobbes between the common good and self-interest. Like Hobbes, both of them were writing in an idiom of Protestant natural jurisprudence that dominated European political thought in the seventeenth century and had a lasting impact into the eighteenth-century.

While Cumberland’s De legibus has often been seen as a full-blown attempt to refute Hobbes’s view on natural law, Pufendorf’s relationship to Hobbes is more complex and open to diverse interpretations. Pufendorf explicitly shared many aspects of Hobbes’s civil science and self-regarding anthropology. Most evidently, he embraced Hobbes’s intention to employ the language of natural law as a socially useful means to achieve peace and political stability in large-scale societies. After the polemical controversy that erupted after the publication of De jure in 1672, Pufendorf attempted to distance his natural law theory from that of Hobbes by adding 40 references to Cumberland’s De legibus into the second edition of De jure (1684). Like Cumberland, Pufendorf employed the competing labels of “Epicurean” and “Stoic” when attempting to write the alternative model of natural law to that of Hobbes, arguing that De jure was largely consistent with Cumberland’s Stoicism since both works shared an intention to refute Hobbes’s Epicureanism.⁸

Scholars have viewed Pufendorf’s engagement with Cumberland through different lenses. Fiammetta Palladini has argued that Pufendorf’s references to Cumberland in the second edition of De jure were meant to cover his deep-seated intellectual debt of Hobbes. They flowed from “a sort of retrospective self-delusion” that led him “to convince himself that Cumberland’s system and his own were perfectly equivalent”⁹ and “contaminate the original physiognomy of Pufendorf’s thought”.¹⁰ On the contrary, Jon Parkin has argued that Pufendorf’s De jure was “remarkably similar to Cumberland’s treatise”. In particular, Pufendorf found that Cumberland’s anti-Hobbesian critique was a useful way of strengthening his own position that individuals are not obligated to natural law merely through their self-interest. Cumberland and Pufendorf both attempted “to understand the process by which the individual comes to identify their own good with that of the social unit”.¹¹

In this chapter, I maintain that it is important to acknowledge not only notable similarities but also fundamental differences between Pufendorf’s and Cumberland’s natural jurisprudence. The second section shows that Cumberland and Pufendorf agree that pursuing the common good as prescribed by natural law takes priority over self-interest as an end since natural law imposes moral duties that are common to the welfare of humankind as a whole. Section three argues that the most significant difference between Cumberland and Pufendorf is predicated on their treatment of (human) nature. While Cumberland’s theory of human nature is perfective, Pufendorf rejects the teleological account of human nature. Cumberland is committed to this idea because our nature contains objectively perfectible faculties. Since the private good is inherently a part of the common good, a conflict between the common good and the private good is not possible. In a marked contrast, Pufendorf rejects the idea that the purpose of moral good is to perfect human nature, arguing that the requirements of morality could conflict with the private good of individuals. Section four focuses on Cumberland’s and Pufendorf’s descriptive explanations of how people actually come to promote the common good. Both authors reasoned that self-interest as a source of motivation for action is not merely detrimental to morality and social cooperation. It is self-interest that motivates people to take into account the advantage of others and that leads them to promote the common good.

2 Self-Preservation and Moral Obligation

Unlike Hobbes and many others, Cumberland and Pufendorf do not provide a full list of natural laws. Instead, they uphold that all duties of natural law stem from a single moral principle. Cumberland’s natural law theory is built around the concept of the common good (bonum commune), and Pufendorf structures his natural law theory around the principle of sociality (socialitas) that is necessary for the wellbeing (salus) of humankind. Hobbes’s works appeared to explain the obligation to natural law through the rational calculation of self-interest since true reasoning about what furthers one’s own self-preservation and welfare establishes the dictates of natural law. While Cumberland and Pufendorf approved the Hobbesian premise that subjects of natural law are predominantly self-interested by nature, both claimed that people are not obliged to follow natural law predominantly with a reference to the value of self-preservation.

Today, Cumberland has often been interpreted as taking the first steps towards utilitarianism because of his idea that the aim of natural law is to ensure the maximisation of happiness.¹² It should be noted, however, that Cumberland’s central effort was to offer a moral theory that could strengthen the link between divine obligation and natural law in order to validate the content of natural law and its obligatory force. Cumberland employs the scientific evidence of his time in order to show that the empirical analysis of human nature and moral behaviour could demonstrate the content of natural law.¹³ It was thus possible to learn the content of the eternal principles of natural law and God’s intentions through experience. De legibus offers several different formulations about the central principle of natural law. The fundamental idea is that since individuals are naturally bound by the common good, they ought to act benevolently to achieve the happiness of all. Natural law “points out possible action of a rational agent, which will chiefly promote the Common good, and by which only the entire happiness of particular persons can be obtained”.¹⁴

Even though Cumberland believes that humans are by nature self-regarding creatures and that each individual “necessarily seeks his own greatest happiness”, he maintains that an individual happiness should not “be the entire and adequate end of anyone”. Rather, an individual well-being necessarily relies on “the benevolence of God and of other men”. Therefore, “it is impossible, that he who considers the nature of rational beings, should desire that they should assist us, expect their own self-preservation were at the same time taken care of; and, therefore, he cannot propose to himself his own happiness, separately from that of others, as his adequate end”.¹⁵ The important point to be extracted from the above passage is that we cannot expect others to assist our preservation without being willing to help them in turn.

What is more, Cumberland argues that the proper understanding of self-preservation suggests that an objective moral science is possible. Self-preservation is an essential incentive to acquire ethical knowledge from nature since without the desire for self-preservation, people could not know the content of natural law or act in conformity with it.¹⁶ Individuals cannot conceptualise the right of self-preservation without forming the concept of the common good. The right of self-preservation is inconceivable before it is known “that this will contribute to the common good”.¹⁷ The common good refers to the good that is common to all rational creatures, including God, not to the good of an individual to the exclusion of others. Cumberland thus believes that self-interested human beings come under obligation to promote the common good by perceiving that benevolent actions have naturally good consequences for their own happiness and by recognizing that their private good is a part of the common good that human beings share with God.¹⁸

Unlike Cumberland, Pufendorf does not endorse the premise that God and humans are parts of the same moral community. The obligatory content of natural law cannot be thus derived from the common good that is somehow shared between God and human beings. Like Cumberland, however, he underlines that demonstrative knowledge about morality must be acquired empirically.¹⁹ In Pufendorf’s view, the content of natural law norms can be demonstrated by reflecting “man’s nature, condition, and inclinations” as well as considering “other things external to man, especially those capable of benefiting and harming him in some way”.²⁰ While a man “is very well suited for the promotion of mutual advantages”, he is also “often malicious, insolent, easily annoyed, and both ready and able to inflict harm”. People are thus in need of a moral law that ought to guide their actions. The most fundamental natural law principle enjoins that an individual “must, in as much as he can, cultivate and maintain peaceable sociality (socialitas)”.²¹ The moral imperative to cultivate sociability provides grounding for all other moral and political duties, which “may be said to be no more than subsumptions under this general law”.²²

Although God is absolutely free to impose whatever moral rules he wishes, Pufendorf believed that God is not an arbitrary despot but wished for the well-being of humankind. Right reason can demonstrate that natural law is useful, that is, it promotes the self-preservation and wellbeing of humankind.²³ Moreover, the norms of natural law are not merely advantageous to humankind but for individual utility as well. Referring to book one of Cicero’s De officiis, Pufendorf draws a distinction between short-term utility, which centres “upon the advantages that are for the most part immediate and fleeting and little concerned with the future”, and long-term utility, “which not only examines what lies before its very feet, but also weighs the future consequences”. Actions in conformity with natural law are “not only reputable (honestae), that is, they tend to maintain and increase a man’s honour, esteem and dignity, but they are also useful (utiles), that is, they procure some advantage reward for a man and contribute to his happiness”.²⁴ The content of natural law is rationally derivable and binding on us qua the precept of prudence, independent of an obligation to so follow these precepts. Pufendorf, however, makes it clear that natural laws are not principles of practical reason that merely appeal to people’s self-interest. Even without the sense of natural law, reason would enable people to act “more expeditiously and adroitly than a beast”. However, without reference to a law, it would be impossible for a human being to find moral value in one’s actions “as for a man born blind to judge between the colours”.²⁵

Hobbes’s denial of man’s natural sociability set the terms for Pufendorf’s natural law theory. The cultivation of sociability is a moral norm that ought to guide the actions of self-loving and naturally antisociable beings. For Pufendorf, however, reasoning about what furthers one’s own self-preservation and welfare does not in itself establish the content of natural law.²⁶ Pufendorf understood the desire for self-preservation as an important starting point for reflection on the content of natural law, but he denied that there are immediate normative connections between the facts of human nature and the content of natural law.²⁷ If man’s moral relationship to God’s commands is removed, “it appears that a man is obliged only through sensitive instinct, and since this does not have the force of law, whatever is opposed to it should not be accounted as a sin”.²⁸

For Pufendorf, the cultivation and maintenance of sociability is a divinely imposed moral imperative that benefits the wellbeing (salus) of humankind as a whole, not merely the self-preservation of individual beings. The duty to take care of oneself belongs to the duties towards oneself that derive from one’s obligation to cultivate peaceable sociability. This includes the duty to take care of one’s body and stay alive in order to fulfil the duties of sociability that are imposed by natural law. The crucial point here is that people ought to take into account their own well-being insofar that their well-being impacts the conditions of sociability. People are obligated to care for themselves since “the social relation, for which the man was created, cannot be exercised and preserved to good advantage unless every man improves and preserves himself to the best of his ability”. If an individual harms himself, “he works an injury, not, indeed, on himself but on God, his Creator, and on the human race”.²⁹

I have so far argued that both Cumberland and Pufendorf endorse the premise that it is not conceivable to formulate binding obligations of natural law merely with reference to the value of self-preservation. The common good is not reducible to what is subjectively good for individuals. Both intended to show that divinely imposed natural law obliges us to act from the perspective of the common good already in a state of nature. Hobbes’s theory appeared to undercut the idea that there could be effective moral obligations prior to civil laws. In De Cive 3.33, Hobbes had claimed that natural laws can be seen as divine law insofar as these precepts are buttressed in scripture.³⁰ Without the civil sovereign, however, who has the right to command others, natural laws are not laws, properly speaking, since they were not backed up with effective sanctions against those who do not act in conformity with natural law. To validate that the obligation to promote the common good was, properly speaking, a law independently from the decrees of the civil sovereign, Cumberland argued that it was important to identify the sanctions annexed to the law.

In Cumberland’s view, the sanctions and rewards in a temporary world are clues ordered by God that point out that the common good forms an encompassing model for practical reasoning among human beings. Cumberland’s purpose was not to downplay the significance of the punishments and rewards in the afterlife. Rather, he sought to demonstrate that the natural world provides sanctions and rewards that are compatible with the voluntaristic understanding of natural law.³¹ According to Cumberland, a law “is a practical proposition concerning the preservation of the common good, guarded by the sanctions of rewards and punishments”.³² He does not claim that rewards and punishments as a natural consequence of good or evil actions are causes of moral obligation per se. Rather, they should be seen as “a necessary disposition in the subject, without which the laws and penalties for the law would be of no force to induce men to the performance of their duty”.³³

While Cumberland believed that it was possible to demonstrate this-worldly rewards and punishments that God had ordained for the compliance of natural law, Pufendorf excluded the demonstration of divinely imposed rewards and punishments in the afterlife and in this life from the discipline of natural law. The main reason for his exclusion of divine punishments in the afterlife is that the immortality of the soul cannot be securely demonstrated through reason alone. As a result, he was forced to defend himself against the accusations of the merger between Hobbism and atheism.³⁴ Moreover, Pufendorf admits that, while it is highly probable that God punishes wicked individuals in the temporal life in some way, it is not impossible to demonstrate through reason alone what kind of rewards and punishments await those who resist the commands of natural law. On the one hand, the penitence of conscience and the loss of security “that is the lot of wicked men, do not always seem to equal the greatness of their offences”.³⁵ On the other hand, God’s retaliation “tends to proceed at a slow pace”, which gives malicious individuals a chance to explain the consequences of their actions by other causes.³⁶

Pufendorf’s refusal to rely on demonstrative divine punishments and rewards has led some commentators to argue that Pufendorf fails to move beyond Hobbes’s theory of obligation that requires the command of a civil superior.³⁷ It should be noted, however, that Pufendorf states that “an obligation is properly introduced into a man’s mind by a superior, that is by someone who has not only the strength (potestas) to threaten some evil against those who resist him, but also legitimate reasons allowing him to demand that our freedom be restricted at his discretion”. As a result, moral obligation contains a dual motivation: (1) the reference for a superior’s legitimate reasons for imposing obligation and (2) the fear of sanctions.³⁸ The crucial point here is that the fear of God’s strength to punish in accordance with legitimate reasons for reverence will give rise to an obligation to obey natural law. While Pufendorf argues that in the discipline of natural law we cannot securely identify the actual content of God’s punishment through reason alone, he does not claim anywhere that God does not have potestas (power) to punish wrongdoers and that we should not rationally fear God’s freedom and capacity to inflict punishments.³⁹ On the contrary, there is ample textual evidence that indicates that the natural theological belief of God’s potential ability to punish wrongdoers in some way and the fear of punishment are indispensable for Pufendorf’s theory of natural law.⁴⁰

3 Natural Good and Moral Good

The previous section demonstrated that the question of a divinely imposed moral obligation to promote the common good lies at the heart of Cumberland’s and Pufendorf’s theories of natural law. Nevertheless, the major difference between the two authors is that Cumberland’s theory of moral obligation is more naturalistic than Pufendorf’s strict voluntarism. The reason for this is a significant difference between their accounts of normativity and teleology in human nature. Cumberland’s theory of human nature is perfective. Citing 2.2 of Aristotle’s Politics, he maintains that the natural good preserves, enlarges and perfects nature.⁴¹ In contrast, Pufendorf is not concerned with the perfection of human nature and rejects a teleological account of it. By highlighting the moral gulf between God and human beings, Pufendorf focuses on the anthropology of postlapsarian humans and sets aside the question of human nature in its perfective form. Whilst both defend the idea that the objective conception of natural goodness is not dependent on subjective desires, they hold conflicting views about how the natural good relates to moral good.⁴²

Because of Pufendorf’s rejection of the teleological and perfective account of human nature, his understanding of human nature differs markedly from Cumberland’s ethical naturalism. Cumberland has a tendency to argue, against Hobbes, that humans are naturally sociable animals, just like other animals, and that they can therefore naturally form social communities.⁴³ In contrast, Pufendorf largely follows Hobbes by highlighting the disparity between human and animal nature.⁴⁴ Pufendorf argues that human beings are naturally antisocial animals.⁴⁵ For instance, this difference is manifest in their treatment of the desire for glory. Hobbes had claimed, in chapter 17 of Leviathan, that unlike bees and ants, people are “in competition for honour and dignity”, which is a root cause of social discord among men.⁴⁶ Against Hobbes, Cumberland argues that in a natural state, the promotion of the common good deserves true honour, which in turn motivates people to maintain peace.⁴⁷ For Hobbes, in the case of animals, there was no distinction between the private good and the common good since among ants and bees, “the Common good differeth not from the Private; being by nature inclined to their private, they procure thereby the common benefit. But man, whose Joy, consisteth in comparing himselfe with other men, can relish nothing but what is eminent”.⁴⁸ Cumberland points out that this claim exemplifies that Hobbes himself acknowledged, conceptually, the existence of the common good outside civil society. Moreover, Cumberland insists, against Hobbes, that people can satisfy their natural wants and needs without comparing themselves to others.⁴⁹ In turn, Hobbes’s emphasis on the desire for glory had an enormous influence on how Pufendorf dealt with the conflict between the private good and the common good in civil societies. This led him to argue that unlike in the case of other animals that do not compare themselves with others, among humans “there is a struggle for honour and dignity”, which is a central cause of “envy, rivalry and hatred”.⁵⁰

The major difference here is that Cumberland’s moral philosophy is grounded on the idea that since people are naturally social animals, the promotion of the common good is part of humankind’s natural end. Pufendorf, in turn, understands sociability as a moral imperative for restraining antisocial tendencies that obstruct the promotion of the common good. For Cumberland, through the rational examination of the natural world and of human nature, people can recognize that the pursuit of the common good results in the fulfilment and perfection of humans. Cumberland thus believes that the proper understanding of the nature of good could be used to defend the traditional idea that the content of natural law is embedded in the intrinsic features of human nature. Against Hobbes, Cumberland argues that natural laws are objectively grounded in the nature of things rather than on changing and uncertain opinions about pleasure and happiness.⁵¹ Moral good is incomprehensible without natural goodness, which can be deduced “from the very nature of things, and is altogether unchangeable, whilst nature remains unchanged”.⁵² The natural good is an objective category, not a matter of subjective opinion since its content can be determined with reference to its natural effects.⁵³ There is no genuine conflict between the common good and private good, and if there seems to be a conflict, the criterion of “the nature of things” is always available for making objective judgements about disagreements.

Pufendorf introduces the notion of “the nature of things” only in the 1684 edition of De jure. He refers approvingly to 1.10 of Cumberland’s De legibus as a sound criticism of “Hobbes’s errors on the nature of good”. Pufendorf denies that good can be considered in an absolute way as some previous philosophers have done. Not every existing entity can be considered as good. Rather, we should “consider something good only insofar as it has a bearing on others and is understood to be good for or on behalf of someone”. In this statement, Pufendorf rejects the metaphysical idea that goodness and being are equated. Furthermore, he refutes the Stoic notion of summum bonum, that is, the idea of the greatest good in life at which all human action is directed as an end in itself. At the same time, against Hobbes, Pufendorf insists that natural goodness is an objective category that does not rely on variable and often mistaken individual desires and opinions.⁵⁴

Pufendorf presents his definition of the natural good in the context of his theory of the will. In this textual context, the differentiation of the concept of the natural good from self-interested pleasure-seeking is targeted against Hobbes. In contrast to Hobbes’s treatment of desires in De homine 1.1.2, Pufendorf disengages volition from desire.⁵⁵ For Pufendorf, individuals “love and seek anything whatever insofar as they understand it to have a relation to their advantage, preservation and perfection”. Nevertheless, he stresses that this natural inclination of the will does not mean that we should abandon the objective idea of a natural good. Natural goodness cannot be conceptualised only as a relative for those individuals who strive for it separately from the good of others because the “sociality and conjunction of men” are advantageous for everyone. The general notion of the good does not depend on either the opinion of each person in the state of natural freedom or on the opinion of the supreme sovereign in the civil state.⁵⁶ The central idea here is that because the objective notion of the natural good is always embedded in social relationships, it is impossible to define natural goodness merely through subjective desires.

Cumberland’s and Pufendorf’s different conceptions of human nature have implications to their treatment of the common good. Cumberland maintains that since human nature contains intrinsic moral ends, what is naturally good for individuals is inherently a part of the common good. The purpose of a civil society is to perfect human moral nature. Civil society is happy when each of its members have perfected their minds and bodies.⁵⁷ On the contrary, Pufendorf follows Hobbes by rejecting the longstanding idea of human nature as teleological. He employs the concept of natural good in a decidedly non-moral sense, arguing that morality is conceptually independent from nature.⁵⁸ Pufendorf thus maintains that to provide social and political stability, actions in accordance with natural law may not bring any natural good for individuals. This is most evident in civil societies where an individual “must take into account the good of a society, which often seems to be in conflict with the good of individuals”.⁵⁹ Context-dependent and historically changing requirements of sociability largely determine the actual content of the common good in civil societies rather than intrinsic features of human nature.

4 Self-Interest as a Motivational Source of the Common Good

Despite Pufendorf’s and Cumblerland’s significantly differing views on how moral norms can be derived from human nature, both broadly reaffirm the Hobbesian premise that humans predominantly act from self-interest. What is more, they could agree that self-interest and the common good are, in a sense, diametrically opposed but complementary. There are grounds for saying that, for both authors, reason is not an effective motivational force without the direction of self-interested desires. When offering psychological explanations of how people motivate themselves to promote the common good, Cumberland and Pufendorf both acknowledge the fundamental role of self-interest in human actions and portray other-regarding actions as a function of self-interest.

Cumberland’s theory of human motivation is multivalent. On the one hand, he argues that people are fundamentally self-interested creatures who are “determined by some sort of natural necessity” to chase the good and avoid evil.⁶⁰ Care for one’s own happiness is presumed to be stronger in humans than benevolent affections.⁶¹ Cumberland is critical towards Hobbes’s idea that people seek society because of the fear of death and Epicurus’s description of pleasure as the absence of mental and physical pain. Actions that are said to be motivated by the fear of death and pain should instead be understood to proceed from “the love of life and riches”. Nevertheless, Cumberland maintains that self-love is not a morally corrupt motivation as such but is directed towards a positive good that nature requires.⁶² Cumberland thus argues that although the desires for self-preservation and self-perfection are not causes of moral obligations, they have “some place among the motives to good actions”.⁶³ On the other hand, one can find passages in which Cumberland suggests that benevolent affections are not uncommon among humans. For instance, humans (such as other animals) naturally nourish and care for their offspring without taking into consideration their own individual self-preservation. The exercise of parenthood is instinctual.⁶⁴ Benevolent actions constitute the central part of our happiness since our good is directly dependent on the good of others. Yet, people do not act benevolently merely on the basis of rational reflection, but also affectively.⁶⁵

In general, Cumberland acknowledges that self-interest is the most fundamental motivational disposition in human nature. Furthermore, in his theory there is a causal or natural connection between self-interest and benevolence. The private good of individuals and the common good necessarily coincide. He argues that all rational creatures necessarily drive towards the common good through the recognition that other people serve their self-preservation in an analogous manner as they do. The obligation to cultivate the common good does not mean that one should neglect the care of individual advantage. Instead, the care of the common good motivates individuals “to preserve and perfect all their own powers and perfections, because they are the only means by which he can attain that End”.⁶⁶ People cannot be motivated to endorse their own happiness separately from the common good. The common good takes a priority over self-interest because individuals’ own interest will be best served by serving the common good.

In a manner that resonates with the Stoic notion of oikeiōsis, Cumberland argues that the natural impulse for self-preservation is the basis for appropriate acts to care for others. Self-interest will naturally extend to the interest of others. The extension happens naturally in the sense in which nature means the ideal. Accordingly, “we are determin’d by some sort of natural necessity, to pursue Good foreseen, especially the Greatest; and to avoid Evils”. People are motivated to promote the common good when they recognize that their happiness “naturally depends upon the pursuit of the common good of all rational agents”.⁶⁷ Cumberland intends to demonstrate that people naturally progress from self-love to benevolence, that is, being predominantly concerned about their own happiness to the desire to promote the wellbeing of all rational beings.⁶⁸ According to Cumberland’s Stoic providentialism, God has providentially ordered the world for the benefit of the whole and made sure that the promotion of the common good is compatible with individual utility.⁶⁹ An enlightened self-interest leads us to promote the good of others since individuals cannot achieve their own happiness without others. The only realistic way to get benefits from others is to obtain their good-will by practising other-regarding actions. Since it is impossible to coerce others to cooperate, “the only method we have left is to obtain this end, is to procure their good will by making a tender to them of our service, and by faithful performance”.⁷⁰

Pufendorf has very little to say about other-regarding or benevolent inclinations for the simple reason that he thought that people are predominantly motivated by their self-interest and often by the desire to insult and hurt others. Yet, it should be noted that he acknowledges the existence of non-self-interested motivations.⁷¹ For instance, it is conceivable that people are motivated by pity or kindness.⁷² Pufendorf also notes that when an individual notices that an injury is done to others, this “should always solicit their sympathy or aid, and the infliction of injury an injury their disapproval”, even though they are impartial in the matter.⁷³ Moreover, people may have other-regarding affections within families.⁷⁴ While Pufendorf does not reject the possibility of altruism, there is no textual evidence to support the idea that other-regarding inclinations could provide an effective motivational underpinning for the promotion of sociability. While there are some individuals who may act altruistically, not everyone is willing to help others “out of humanity or charity alone, without a well-founded hope of receiving an equivalent in return”.⁷⁵ In this sense, Pufendorf’s theory of human nature is close to that of Hobbes, who did not deny that people might have some local benevolent affections but maintained that other-regarding affections do not play a foundational role in moral philosophy.

When reflecting on man’s natural inclinations, Pufendorf argues that postlapsarian human beings are hardwired to love themselves. He explains:

It must be also noted here, however, that in setting forth man’s condition we have given priority to self-love not because one should always prefer oneself to everyone else or assess everything in terms of one’s own interest, proposing this to oneself (insofar as it has been separated from others’ advantage) as one’s highest goal; but because man, being naturally aware of his own existence before that of others, naturally loves himself before he cares for them. Besides, the task of caring for myself belongs more properly to me than anyone else. For even if we set our sights upon the common good (bonum commune), since I too am part of humankind whose preservation should be of some concern, the distinct and special care of myself can surely rest on no one else as much as it does on me.⁷⁶

In this passage, Pufendorf first intends to clarify that he has prioritised self-love (amor sui) over other-regarding inclinations since it is a basic human necessity and not a matter of individual choice. Nevertheless, this does not mean that people should separate their own interest from that of others. The reason for this is that people’s duty and correlative right to take care of themselves is a part of the foundational obligation of the wellbeing and preservation of humankind as a whole. Second, Pufendorf maintains that self-care is a moral responsibility that individuals cannot delegate to others. Third, he argues that even if people aim to promote the common good, they are required to take care of themselves since it is a part of the larger duty of the self-preservation of humankind.

Pufendorf accepts Hobbes’s idea that prior to the establishment of the state, people lived in a natural liberty that entailed a right to do whatever they thought was necessary for their self-preservation. Nevertheless, he simultaneously underlines that Hobbes himself did not mean that the right of self-preservation is unrestricted, arguing that each normal adult “can at least understand that he has no need for an unlimited right to everything, merely in order to preserve himself”.⁷⁷ Pufendorf posits himself as a careful commentator of Hobbes and attempts to salvage aspects of Hobbes’s theory that had been unfairly disputed by his many critics. According to Pufendorf’s interpretation, the reason why neo-Aristotelians, such as Hermann Conring, had presented Hobbes’s theory in an ominous light was their one-sided analysis of 1.2 of De cive.⁷⁸ Pufendorf claims that Hobbes’s critics had erroneously accused Hobbes of arguing that because self-interest and glory are the basis of human motivation, every kind of society is contrary to nature. Instead, Pufendorf notes approvingly that “Hobbes’s rather clever deduction of natural laws solely from the care of one’s own welfare” does “clearly establish that it is conducive to men’s welfare that they lead their life according to those dictates of reason”.⁷⁹

However, as we have seen in the first section, Pufendorf insists that natural law cannot be deduced from individual self-interest and that an individual’s duty and right of self-preservation is always restricted by natural law. Moreover, unlike Hobbes, he thinks that one is morally obligated to help others even if one cannot be expected to be reciprocated with charitable deeds in turn. The idea that people do not have an unrestricted licence to act based on their self-preservation was obviously Cumberland’s central argument as well.⁸⁰ Echoing Cumberland, Pufendorf stresses that people cannot secure their well-being unless they observe the laws of sociability. Self-interest and the desire for self-preservation do not exclude sociable actions. Rather, the care of one’s own safety enjoins that people act in conformity with the laws of sociability. However, unlike Cumberland, Pufendorf’s aim here is not to refute but to reformulate Hobbes’s account of the state of nature. Pufendorf thought that it is understandable why Hobbes’s theory was criticised, but he sought to prove that most of it is based on misreading. Pufendorf thus portrays himself as someone who has bothered to carefully read what Hobbes had written in De cive and appropriately understood what he meant.⁸¹

In order to make the contentious Hobbesian self-regarding psychology more satisfactory for his contemporaries, Pufendorf underlines, echoing Cumberland, that “one who has his own self-preservation and welfare at heart cannot renounce the care of others”.⁸² Since humans naturally expect that others pay back their good deeds and “when this does not happen they put aside the spirit of beneficence, surely no sane person can set his own self-preservation as a goal for himself in such a way as to divest himself of all regard for others”. It is the case that the “more rationally a person loves himself the more he will see that others love him”.⁸³ Self-love and care of others are by no means diametrically opposed but complementary. Self-love “is by no means repugnant to the social nature of men, provided the harmony of society is not disturbed through that love”.⁸⁴

The idea that rational self-interest will lead people to co-operation and the promotion of the common good forms an important similarity between Cumberland’s and Pufendorf’s theories of natural law.⁸⁵ Both authors employed this argument when providing further evidence that the state of nature was not a state of war. At the same time, Pufendorf is much more sceptical than Cumberland that an average moral agent could be capable of leading their actions by rational self-interest and could prioritise their long term-term benefits over short term utility. Pufendorf paints a much more pessimistic picture about the possibilities of moral development through the exercise of rational self-love, arguing that the multitude have a very limited capacity for impulse control and that they motivate their actions “by the rash impulse of their passions in whatever direction their lust or the appearance of false utility drives them”.⁸⁶ The force of rational self-interest is not the key source of motivation for the promotion of the common good.⁸⁷

For Pufendorf, however, self-interest is susceptible to moulding through the processes of habituation and socialisation since people can appreciate the utility of natural law in their everyday life.⁸⁸ Because people's capacity to act on the basis of rational self-love is very limited, it is necessary to socialise self-interested individuals into sociable and other-regarding practices that lead them towards peaceful forms of social interaction. The sovereign is obligated to make sure that citizens adopt the norms of sociability through habituation.⁸⁹ Accordingly, the most beneficial outcome of civil societies is that “men become accustomed in them to live a decent civil life”.⁹⁰ Self-interest can be harnessed for the common good in civil societies.

5 Conclusion

This chapter has shown that Cumberland and Pufendorf worked with and against Hobbes’s controversial views of human nature and natural law. Most notably, both accepted Hobbes’s premise that people are primarily self-interested creatures. They attempted to demonstrate that the empirical analysis of human nature and the rest of the natural world could prove that the natural law obligated people to act from the perspective of the common good rather than function as the means for narrow self-interest. For Cumberland, the search for the common good is a non-competitive moral end that is shared by all rational beings. In turn, Pufendorf upholds that the common good does not rely on the intrinsic purposes of nature but on instrumental precepts that enable humans to secure sociality and political stability in a large-scale society. While Pufendorf maintains that the obligation to act from a perspective of the common good is often naturally good for individuals, the duty to cultivate sociability takes priority over the consideration of one’s individual utility.

Cumberland and Pufendorf agree that self-interested desires are not contrary to natural law but serve as the main motor for the promotion of the common good. When explaining how people are motivated to promote the common good, both argue that the only effective reasons for people to motivate their actions are those that appeal to self-interest. The promotion of the common good is the most effective way of promoting one’s own good since only by endorsing the good of others may self-interested individuals realise that they can more effectively serve their own good. The central difference is that whereas Cumberland thinks that self-interest necessarily and naturally leads to mutual benevolence, Pufendorf maintains that only if self-interest is properly guided by social norms and habituated by political governance will it benefit the common good. Rather than offering an account of individual moral development, he offers a social explanation of the development of sociability by acknowledging that social practices habituate self-interested individuals to obey moral norms and promote the common good.

Francis Hutcheson criticised Cumberland and Pufendorf for their attempts to derive the principle of natural law from a single principle (the common good or sociability) and to explain the sense of obligation to natural law as a result of the rational pursuit of one’s self-interest.⁹¹ Hutcheson argued that “Pufendorf and most recent authors teach the doctrine of human nature which had been that of Epicureans, that self-love (philautia) alone, or the desire of each man for his own pleasure or advantage, is the spring of all actions ... even those that seem most kindly”.⁹² In Hutcheson’s view, self-love should work together with natural benevolence to promote sociability. Subsequent Scottish philosophers, such as David Hume and Adam Smith, began to explicate moral psychological processes that give rise to sociable behaviour without returning to Hutcheson’s idea that people naturally feel pleasure when behaving sociably. In this sense, Cumberland’s and Pufendorf’s treatments of self-interest as a source of other-regarding actions – though on different philosophical foundations – points forward to the eighteenth-century explanations of the socio-psychological mechanisms that lead to the promotion of the common good.