Jean Barbeyrac

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Jean Barbeyrac

Jean Barbeyrac (born March 15, 1674 in Béziers , France ; † March 3, 1744 in Groningen , Netherlands ) was a French-Swiss lawyer, legal historian and an important representative of natural law and the French- speaking natural law school ( École romande du droit naturel ). He became known through the translations of the natural law writings of Samuel von Pufendorf .

Life

Discours sur l'utilité des lettres et des sciences, par rapport au bien de l'Etat , 1715

Jean Barbeyrac was born on March 15, 1674 in Béziers in the lower Languedoc and was the nephew of Charles Barbeyrac, a famous doctor from Montpellier. He came from a Calvinist Huguenot family and therefore fled with his family to Protestant Lausanne in Switzerland after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685. There he began to study law, where he attended the lectures of the philosopher and mathematician Jean-Pierre de Crousaz . This was followed by study stays in Geneva at the Académie de Genève and at the Brandenburg University of Frankfurt . Finally he got a call as professor of history and civil law at the Académie de Lausanne and later, after he had followed a call as professor of constitutional law at the University of Groningen , settled in Groningen in the Netherlands, where he lived on March 3, 1744 died.

Barbeyrac became famous primarily because of the introduction and the comments on his French translation of the treatise by the German natural law philosopher Samuel von Pufendorf , "De Jure Naturae et Gentium" (1706). In basic principles he followed the views of John Locke and Pufendorf with his views . However, he also developed his own theories on moral obligation, which he related to the commandment or will of God. His theories on the legal and moral quality of action were perfected by Christian Thomasius and Immanuel Kant . He reduced the principles of international law to those of natural law and thus contradicted many of the positions of the Dutch philosopher Hugo Grotius . He rejected the notion that sovereignty was equal to property in all respects and viewed marriage as a mere matter of civil contract.

Barbeyrac also translated the work “De Jure Belli et Pacis” by Hugo Grotius, “De Legibus Naturae” by the English philosopher Richard Cumberland and Pufendorf's smaller treatise “De Officio Hominis et Civis” . His own works were a treatise “De la morale des peres” , a representation of historical contracts that were contained in the “Supplement au grand corps diplomatique” and the unusual treatise “Traite du jeu” (1709), in which he defended the morality of gambling .

From 1713 he was a foreign member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences .

Fonts

  • Recueil de discours sur diverses matieres importantes , 1731

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Members of the previous academies. Johann Barbeyrac. Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities , accessed on February 18, 2015 .

Web links

Commons : Jean Barbeyrac  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Barbeyrac, Jean
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Franco-Swiss lawyer, legal historian and representative of natural law
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1674
PLACE OF BIRTH Beziers , France
DATE OF DEATH March 3, 1744
Place of death Groningen , the Netherlands