ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Ianziti's example by discussing what it would mean to provide a non-anachronistic account of the natural law of Christian Thomasius. The obstacles blocking the path to a contextual historical account of Thomasius's natural law are the result of his modern reception, which began in postwar Germany. Thomasius argues that this metaphysics was responsible for forming a particular kind of intellectual comportment or persona. Voluntarism was not, however, a formal principle through which Thomasius sought to provide a philosophical foundation or justification for natural law doctrine. Like the Leonardo Bruni whom we encounter in Gary Ianziti's wonderful study, Christian Thomasius must be understood as a humanist who recovered and transformed prior learning, thence putting it to use within the confines of his office as a servant of a territorial state. This was the religious and political order of Brandenburg-Prussia in which a deconfessionalised jurisprudence was required as an instrument for governing a fractious multi-confessional society.
