ABSTRACT
Baron de Montesquieu would be the Grotius of positive law: whereas the sceptics relegated positive laws to the realm of 'la fantaisie' and the philosophers of natural law placed them in the realm of 'l'arbitraire'. In order to demolish the argument from universal consent Pufendorf appeals to 'la diversite' in a remarkable passage where he seems to outdo even the most radical sceptics in his enumeration of unedifying laws and customs. It would be easy to portray Pufendorf as a philosopher who deals in lofty abstractions, a forerunner of Pangloss, who is so besotted with metaphysics that he has lost touch with the real world. For the sceptics the term 'diversity' was a kind of shorthand for equating positive laws with caprice, or at least with mere convention; Pufendorf believes that a certain kind of diversity is not incompatible with immutable principles of justice.
