Jean Barbeyrac (March 15,1674 – March 3, 1744) was a
FrenchFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
juristA jurist or jurisconsult is a professional who studies, develops, applies, or otherwise deals with the law. The term is widely used in American English, but in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth countries it has only historical and specialist usage...
.
Born at
BéziersBéziers is a town in Languedoc in the southwest of France. It is a commune and a sub-prefecture of the Hérault department. Béziers hosts the famous Feria de Béziers, centred around bullfighting, every August...
in Lower Languedoc, the nephew of Charles Barbeyrac, a distinguished
physicianA physician — also known as medical practitioner, doctor of medicine, medical doctor, or simply doctor — practices the ancient profession of medicine, which is concerned with maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease or injury...
of
MontpellierMontpellier is a city in southern France. It is the capital of the Languedoc-Roussillon region, as well as the Hérault department.-Population:...
. He moved with his family into
SwitzerlandSwitzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 states named cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities...
after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. After spending some time at
GenevaGeneva, is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie...
and Frankfurt am Main, he became professor of belles-lettres in the French school of Berlin. Then, in 1711, he was called to the professorship of
historyHistory is the study of the human past, with special attention to the written record. Scholars who write about history are called historians. It is a field of research which uses a narrative to examine and analyse the sequence of events, and it often attempts to investigate objectively the patterns...
and
civil lawCivil law is a legal system inspired by Roman law, the primary feature of which is that laws are written into a collection, codified, and not determined, as in common law, by judges. The principle of civil law is to provide all citizens with an accessible and written collection of the laws which...
at
LausanneLausanne is a city in Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, situated on the shores of Lake Geneva , and facing Évian-les-Bains and with the Jura mountains to its north-west. Lausanne is located some northeast of Geneva. It is the capital of the canton of Vaud and of the district of...
, and finally settled as professor of public law at
Groningen||-| |-| |-| |-| |-| |-| |-| |-| |}Groningen is the capital city of the province of Groningen in the Netherlands. With a population of 185,000, it is by far the largest city in the north of the Netherlands....
.
Jean Barbeyrac (March 15,1674 – March 3, 1744) was a
FrenchFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
juristA jurist or jurisconsult is a professional who studies, develops, applies, or otherwise deals with the law. The term is widely used in American English, but in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth countries it has only historical and specialist usage...
.
Life
Born at
BéziersBéziers is a town in Languedoc in the southwest of France. It is a commune and a sub-prefecture of the Hérault department. Béziers hosts the famous Feria de Béziers, centred around bullfighting, every August...
in Lower Languedoc, the nephew of Charles Barbeyrac, a distinguished
physicianA physician — also known as medical practitioner, doctor of medicine, medical doctor, or simply doctor — practices the ancient profession of medicine, which is concerned with maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease or injury...
of
MontpellierMontpellier is a city in southern France. It is the capital of the Languedoc-Roussillon region, as well as the Hérault department.-Population:...
. He moved with his family into
SwitzerlandSwitzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 states named cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities...
after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. After spending some time at
GenevaGeneva, is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie...
and Frankfurt am Main, he became professor of belles-lettres in the French school of Berlin. Then, in 1711, he was called to the professorship of
historyHistory is the study of the human past, with special attention to the written record. Scholars who write about history are called historians. It is a field of research which uses a narrative to examine and analyse the sequence of events, and it often attempts to investigate objectively the patterns...
and
civil lawCivil law is a legal system inspired by Roman law, the primary feature of which is that laws are written into a collection, codified, and not determined, as in common law, by judges. The principle of civil law is to provide all citizens with an accessible and written collection of the laws which...
at
LausanneLausanne is a city in Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, situated on the shores of Lake Geneva , and facing Évian-les-Bains and with the Jura mountains to its north-west. Lausanne is located some northeast of Geneva. It is the capital of the canton of Vaud and of the district of...
, and finally settled as professor of public law at
Groningen||-| |-| |-| |-| |-| |-| |-| |-| |}Groningen is the capital city of the province of Groningen in the Netherlands. With a population of 185,000, it is by far the largest city in the north of the Netherlands....
. He was an advocate of the "dignitas et utilitas juris ac historiarum et utriusque amica conjunctio".
Works
His fame rests chiefly on the preface and notes to his translation of Samuel Pufendorf's treatise
De Jure Naturae et Gentium. In fundamental principles he follows almost entirely
John LockeJohn Locke was an English physician and philosopher regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered the first of the British empiricists, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work had a great impact upon the development of epistemology and political...
and Pufendorf; but he works out with great skill the theory of moral obligation, referring it to the command or will of God. He indicates the distinction, developed more fully by
ThomasiusChristian Thomasius , was a German jurist and philosopher.-Biography:He was born at Leipzig and was educated by his father, Jakob Thomasius , at that time head master of Thomasschule zu Leipzig...
and
KantImmanuel Kant was an 18th-century German philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg...
, between the legal and the moral qualities of action. The principles of international law he reduces to those of the law of nature, and in so doing opposes many of the positions taken up by Grotius. He rejects the notion that sovereignty in any way resembles property, and makes even marriage a matter of civil contract. Barbeyrac also translated
GrotiusHugo Grotius worked as a jurist in the Dutch Republic. With Francisco de Vitoria and Alberico Gentili he laid the foundations for international law, based on natural law...
's
De Jure Belli et Pacis,
CumberlandRichard Cumberland was an English philosopher, and bishop of Peterborough from 1691. In 1672, he published his major work, De legibus naturae , propounding utilitarianism and opposing the egoistic ethics of Thomas Hobbes.Cumberland was a member of the latitudinarian movement, along with his friend...
's
De Legibus Naturae, and Pufendorf's smaller treatise
De Officio Hominis et Civis.
Among his own productions are a treatise,
De la morale des pères, a history of ancient treaties contained in the
Supplément au grand corps diplomatique, and the curious
Traité du jeu (1709), in which he defends the morality of games of chance.