176 Reason and Its Rivals (ca. 1550– 1815)Th oroughly in the naturalist spirit, Pufendorf insisted strongly on the
absolute in de pen dence of states from one another. Th is arose directly, he
explained, out of the basic principle of “the natural equality of men.” No
sovereign had any right to lay down rules for any another sovereign. Th e
result, in his opinion, is that each state can undertake what ever “acts... it
has judged to be expedient to its own end.” We should be careful not to
read too much into this contention and, in par tic u lar, to appreciate that
Pufendorf was emphasizing the mutual in de pen dence of states from one
another. He did not contend that states were bound by no laws at all, but
merely that natural law was the sole source of any such constraint, and not
obligations owed to other states. Pufendorf should therefore be understood
to be expounding what would now be called a duty of nonintervention on
the part of states, rather than a doctrinaire theory of absolute state sover-
eignty in the manner of the nineteenth- century positivists.
Th e writing of Pufendorf aptly illustrates the marginal signifi cance at-
tached by the naturalists to treaties. He compared them to contracts in civil
law. Just as contracts are private obligations between citizens without being
part of the general law of the state itself, so are individual treaties merely
private arrangements between states, and hence not component parts of a
general law of nations. Some treaties, he conceded, replicated provisions of
natural law and, on that basis, could perhaps be said to be something more
than mere private arrangements. But he had an especially low opinion of
treaties of this sort, on the ground that they risked detracting from natural
law. “[C]ivilized men,” he grumbled, “should almost be ashamed to be a
party to a pact the articles of which say no more than they may not clearly
and directly violate the law of nature, as if without such a pact a man would
not be suffi ciently mindful of his duty.”
Even less value was accorded by Pufendorf to customary practices of
states as a possible source of law. He held, for example, that the various prac-
tices devised by states to mitigate the harshness of war do not actually have
the force of law. Th e true position, he contended, is that any act that is per-
mitted in warfare by natural law is, ipso facto, lawful, even if a general prac-
tice has grown up of refraining from certain practices. Th e commission of
the act is therefore not a breach of a binding obligation— although, he con-
ceded, it might give rise to an accusation of barbarism. “[A]ny one can free
himself from... obligations [that] rest only upon a tacit agreement,” he