11

Pufendorf in the first book of his work begins by defining what are the moral entities, to which he confers the ontological status of modes. The latter are distinguished from natural modes by the fact that they have been superadded to natural beings by an intellectual act of imposition, of a divine or human nature, and are therefore fundamentally conventional in nature. It is by such an act of will that a natural entity receives a normative dimension (endowment of rights and duties among others) of which it is intrinsically devoid. And it is also by such an act that it ceases to exist without the natural entity that carried it until then being affected by its disappearance. Pufendorf divides the moral entities into four categories: states (status) (principal, such as state of nature, or accessory, being married), analogues of substances (including persons), modes in one sense The moral qualities (power, right, obligation) on the one hand, and moral quantities (price, esteem) on the other. It is in sections 12 and 13 of this first chapter that Pufendorf put forward multiple definitions of moral persons. They are distinguished among the moral entities by the fact that, although they are not substances, they are conceived as analogous to substances, that is, as capable of action and passion. The legal persons are simple (magistrates, officers, etc.) or composed (Church, Senate, Republic, etc.), public or private, superior and inferior. It is clear that Pufendorf stands out from all those who would oppose an individual natural person and a fictitious collective person, because it is reducible to the natural individuals who compose them. Simple persons, even apart from any bond of representation, are also produced by an imposition and so institutional in nature. These legal persons largely define what might be called “statutes” today. We note that Pufendorf seems to consider that conventionality in the attribution of statutes (in the contemporary sense of the word) is not absolute, since he points out that the entity which is to be granted the statute must possess certain natural qualities (hence Caligula’s folly in making his horse a head of family) so that the attribution is possible.