The light of conscience: Jean Barbeyrac on moral, civil and religious authority

摘要

Jean Barbeyrac (1674-1744) is best known for his annotated French translations of theudnatural law treatises of Hugo Grotius, Samuel Pufendorf and Richard Cumberland andudhas generally been understood through the prism of his interpretations of these.udHowever, not only was he in fact an independent natural law thinker, who drewudeclectically from a vast array of authors, synthesising their ideas to construct his ownuddistinct theory; he also wrote extensively on morals and politics in other genres, worksudthat have received very little attention and never been seen in their coherence with hisudnatural law ideas. This thesis considers Barbeyrac as a thinker in his own right, drawingudtogether all of his major and many of his minor works and situating them within audnumber of the wider contexts Barbeyrac inhabited: namely, as a Huguenot refugié, audmember of the Republic of Letters and a professional academician.ududBarbeyrac’s central concern was the relationship between moral, civil and religiousudauthority, and the core of his solution was a comprehensive concept of conscience thatudunified and naturalised man’s moral and religious duties and served as the source ofudauthoritative moral judgement. The first three chapters of the dissertation focus on theudstructure of his natural law theory, arguing that the attempt to establish conscience as audcomprehensive faculty of moral judgement caused intractable philosophical tensions,udreflected in his innovative but inchoate theory of permissive natural law. The final twoudchapters extend this analysis beyond Barbeyrac’s natural law, arguing that despite hisudefforts to balance the potentially competing demands that arise when the authority ofudconscience comes into conflict with other sources of moral authority, namelyudecclesiastical and civil, Barbeyrac had to insist that, ultimately, individuals must upholdudthe first and principal duty of natural law to follow the light of conscience.