Moral System
Section 2 - VI.
The principle of the will of a superior
157. Pufendorf and others who posited the principle of justice in the will of a superior were also wide of the mark. As Leibniz noted, this view does not determine whether such a will is blind and arbitrary, or guided by wisdom. Pufendorf, who confined the end of natural right to the present life, was aware that if we admitted the principle of right solely in the decree of a superior, there would be no duty if there were no superior. Thus, in nations which lacked a common head, natural law would be destroyed. As a remedy and antidote for this erroneous doctrine, he had to introduce the divinity surreptitiously. Leibniz justifiably was not satisfied:
We cannot, as Grotius carefully noted, pass over in silence the fact that some natural obligation must be present, granted even that God did not exist or were set aside as if he did not exist. We must bear in mind that God praises himself because he is just. There is a certain kind of justice, or rather a supreme justice in God, although he has no superior, and through the spontaneity of his surpassing nature excels in everything that he does, so that no one can reproach him.(101)
Notes
(101) Monita quaedam ad Samuelis Pufendorfii principia, §4.