“After issuing a large Latin Pufendorfian treatise on natural law in 1688, [Christian Thomasius] published in 1692 a little German Introduction to Ethics, subtitled On the Art of Loving Reasonably and Virtuously, and followed it with a book about applying the art…. His final Latin treatise … embodied yet further and more fundamental changes of view” (Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy, p. 160).

That subtitle caught my attention, because it sounds like Duns Scotus on love. Thomasius’s view of love is actually closer to Cumberland, though.

“The two books on love show Thomasius working in terms of a long tradition of moral and therapeutic thought centered on love — love not as Christian agape or caritas but as a purely human phenomenon not requiring to be explained by divine grace. Cumberland treated love similarly, and constructed his doctrine of natural law so as to show that morality centers on it. He also sought to avoid voluntarism; and the two aims coincided beautifully. The logic of displacing voluntarism led him to the law of love, the requirement that we maximize natural good; and if that is the moral law, we have a plain way of showing that God’s commands are not arbitrary but are justifiable in terms we understand. Thomasius began as a thorough disciple of Pufendorf; and when he finally rejected voluntarism, he moved at least as close to utilitarianism as Cumberland did” (ibid).

Rather than implicitly invoking fire and brimstone in the manner of the Protestant voluntarists, Thomasius emphasizes seeking the good. Actions are to be judged not in terms of obedience, but in terms of their consequences.

“Thomasius took the Grotian problematic for granted even when he rejected Pufendorf. His objections to modern natural law theory are of special interest precisely because they come from an erstwhile adherent” (ibid). “As head of the new university of Halle, Thomasius occupied a commanding position in the intellectual life of Germany. His defection from Pufendorf was a highly significant response to the dominant work on natural law” (p. 161).

“Early in his chapter on the passions Thomasius gives us a central indication of his reason for abandoning Pufendorf. Proper religious feeling, he tells us, is definable as reasonable hope and fear of God, and is also called childlike fear. Unreasonable fear of God is superstition. It is a servile fear. After this it is no surprise to read later that ‘the concept and representation of God as a father grounds a childlike fear, but that of God as absolute monarch a servile fear’. Only fools imagine God as a despot: [quote from Thomasius:] ‘if a wise man should imagine God as a human ruler, he would rather imagine him as father than as ruler. For it is more suitable to God’s perfection to seek for the best for men than to pursue his own utility through laws written in men’s hearts in a despotic manner’ ” (ibid).

I think it better not to speak in terms of fear at all, but the main point here is the rejection of servile fear as a motivation. Thomasius clearly recognizes the terrible consequences of regarding God as an absolute monarch.

“Here the rejection of voluntarism is tied directly to God’s pursuit of the greatest good. Thomasius adds that if we think of God as ‘a despotic lawgiver who obligates men outwardly through punishment’, then we must also think that no actions are honorable or shameful independent of God’s will” (ibid).

Aristotle might remind us that the greatest goods are those sought for their own sake. Acting for the sake of a reward is a sub-ethical motivation. Avoidance of punishment is even lower. Something is deeply and profoundly wrong with the idea that God would want us to be sub-ethically motivated.

“A wise God is a teacher rather than a lawgiver, he says, and we can only learn when we have a peaceful mind, not one disturbed by fears. God, moreover, teaches by reason” (ibid).

“If God does not punish, then his directives are not law in the same sense as human laws are. Divine and human law are not really members of a common species…. Thomasius retains the natural law distinction between what a teacher does in counseling and what a superior does in issuing a command. But he no longer says that what a commanding superior does is to obligate. A superior rules. And he almost says that God’s directives are to be taken as counseling. God is a father, and ‘a father’s directions are more Counsels than Rules’. God directs us to our good, and we can understand what that is” (p. 162).

Obeying a command does not make us moral. What matters for ethics are the intentions and consequences of an action.

“Counsel binds by showing the person counseled an ‘intrinsic’ force coming from what is necessarily connected with the act in question. Rule binds by an external or outer force connected only by human choice to the act. A wise man, Thomasius says, ‘considers the inner duty the superior kind’, and is usually governed by counsel. Fools are usually governed by rule’ ” (pp. 162-163).

Only intrinsic motivation is ethical.

“Justice, for Thomasius, is concerned with preventing people from damaging one another so seriously that society will not be able to continue. Its rules concern only publicly observable behavior toward other people. Justice matters because there are wicked people who tend to disturb the peace and who must be controlled. The honorable, by contrast, concerns only one’s inner life. Honorable people control their passions and desires and do nothing shameful. Decorum or propriety, like justice, is a matter of one’s relations to others. It concerns the ways in which one might help others or improve one’s inner condition so that one does not wish to harm them. If the honorable person is the most estimable, and the unjust is the worst, the person of propriety is of a middling sort. In the wise person all three kinds of goodness must be combined” (p. 163).

“The principle of honor is ‘Whatever you will that others should do, do yourself’; the principle of propriety is ‘Whatever you will that others should do to you, do to them’; and the principle of justice is ‘Whatever you do not want to have done to you, do not do to others’ ” (pp. 163-164).

“The rules of justice are appropriately backed by threats of punishment. The rules of the other two domains cannot be. The honorable is a wholly inner matter, hence beyond the reach of force; and Thomasius is quite explicit about propriety. ‘Certainly the rules of propriety regard men in their relations to other men. Nevertheless no one can be forced to propriety, and if one is forced, then it is no longer propriety’…. We must perform such duties in the right spirit, a spirit of love or direct concern. Obligation, however, exists only where we can be compelled, and we cannot be compelled to feel love, gratitude, or pity” (p. 164).

“Moreover since the duties of honor and propriety are more fully inner duties than those of justice, and are given more weight by the wise man, they are in an important sense higher or ‘more perfect’…. In this domain we are ruled neither by God nor by the magistrate. Inner obligation does not have other people as its source. Hence we can say that here we ‘can be obligated to ourselves and that we can make laws for ourselves (for example, through a vow). These obligations are higher and more important than merely external obligations open to enforcement by sanctions. The latter constitute the domain in which humans make laws properly so called. The former come very close indeed to constituting a domain we are now inclined to recognize as that of morality. In it we are self-governed” (p. 165).