‎"WOLFF, CHRISTIAN.‎
‎Grundsatze des Natur- und Volckerrechts, worin alle Verbindlichkeiten und alle Rechte aus der Natur des Menschen (...).‎

‎Halle im Magdeburgischen, Rengerische Buchhandlung, 1754. 8vo. In contemporary full vellum. Boards with a stains and scratches, but overall a very nice and clean copy. (32), 920, (50) pp. ‎

Reference : 60939

‎Rare first German translation of Wolff’s important thesis on the law of nature and law of nations. It was first published in Latin as ""Institutiones Juris Naturae et Gentium"" (1750) and the present is the first venacular-edition. ""The key concepts of Wolff’s natural law and the law of nations that derived from it were human perfection and happiness. Drawing heavily on scholastic predecessors, Wolff claimed that the principles of natural law (i.e. the duties and rights of men) could be derived from the correct definition of human nature, namely, that man ultimately seeks the realization of his natural abilities and attainment of happiness. As Jerome Schneewind has argued, ‘in his metaphysics he [Wolff] refers back to his logic to explain the order of his argument, in the ethics back to the metaphysics for his principles, and so on through the series of expositions, as he reminds us each time he expounds the later stages. The whole constitutes a modern protestant scholastic system. Wolff’s law of nations was part of this system."" (Nokkala, The Development of the Law of Nations). ""Christian Wolff (1679–1754) was a philosopher, mathematician, and scientist of the German Enlightenment. He is widely and rightly regarded as the most important and influential German philosopher between Leibniz and Kant. His scholarly output was prolific, numbering more than 50 (most multi-volume) titles, in addition to dozens of shorter essays and prefaces and nearly 500 book reviews. Through his series of textbooks, published first in German and then in Latin, Wolff made signal contributions to nearly every area of philosophical investigation of his time, including but not limited to logic, metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics. Wolff is perhaps best known in his role as (co-)founder of the “Leibnizian-Wolffian philosophy”, and while Wolff himself rejected the term, the philosophical system it designates quickly gained broad, if not universal, acceptance within German universities in the first half of the eighteenth century.""(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)‎