Grotius on Natural Law and Supererogation (forthcoming)

This article provides a new interpretation of Grotius’s conception of natural law. I argue that all extant interpretations misconstrue, in varying ways, the extent of Grotius’s law of nature and its relation to justice and individual rights. I draw attention to an innovative feature of Grotius’s natural law theory: his doctrine of supererogation. Grotius, I contend, created logical space for supererogation by making natural obligation rather than natural morality determinative of natural law. Whether an action falls under natural law depends not on its intrinsic moral value or disvalue, but on whether its performance or non-performance is naturally obligatory (i.e. without human or divine command). Acting in accordance with virtues other than justice is intrinsically morally good but not usually morally required. However, circumstances may fall out such that otherwise supererogatory actions cannot be omitted without committing a moral wrong: natural law is then rendering their performance mandatory.status: accepte