ABSTRACT
Hell is the destination of the strict jurist. For Nikolaus Hieronymus Gundling, at first a follower but later a philosophical critic of Christian Thomasius in those crucial early 1700s, it was entirely possible ‘to be just and yet not virtuous (honestus)’. Justum was subordinated to honestum and the result was stark: he ‘who lives merely as a strict jurist will go to hell’ (in Rüping 1968:106). Could there be a more direct reconnection of law to religion? Such opinions as Gundling’s had been the certainties of confessional religion; they have become the truths of philosophical morality. Gundling will serve as icon for those waging continuing critical war on the early modern attempt to separate moral salvation from civil law and government. His heirs are with us. If Koselleck is right, with ever more students trained by critical intellectuals, those zealously ‘Virtuous’ heirs of Gundling, there will be a persisting religious revenge on existing institutions.
