Natural Rights on the Threshold of the Scottish Enlightenment

8. On Duty to Others, or Sociability

73 u chapter 8 u On Duty to Others, or Sociability1 On not harming others [In expounding our duty not to harm others, Pufendorf raised the question of exercising due care and diligence in our activities, the obligation to make restitution , and the exemption from the duty not to harm others in various particular activities such as fighting. Carmichael briefly summarizes and comments on these points.] We are always bound to employ the most scrupulous diligence that the nature of the business admits, to avoid causing harm or loss to others. The different degrees of diligence which are required in different contracts concern the custody or care due to someone else’s property by virtue of these contracts. Their effect is not only that the object not be harmed by us, but that it not be harmed in any way so far as we can prevent it by use of the requisite diligence. Moreover, using the most scrupulous diligence that the nature of the business allows in order not to do harm to another does not always exempt us from the obligation of making good his loss. For sociability forbids us ever to undertake any business which threatens loss to another , unless we are prompted by a serious necessity, and even then we are obligated to compensate for the loss which may occur by that means, unless the necessity is communal, as may easily be understood from what the author himself has taught at the end of the previous paragraph. The reason 1. From the notes to bk. I, ch. 6, “On the Duty of Every Man to Every Man, and First of Not Harming Others”; ch. 7, “On Acknowledging the Natural Equality of Men”; and ch. 8, “On the Common Duties of Humanity.” 74 natural rights therefore why a soldier is not liable, when brandishing his weapons in the heat of battle, for the harm which he does to the person who happens to be standing next to him, is not only that the nature of the business does not allow him to be more careful, but that both common and individual necessity require that it be done. We allow that the obligation for making good a loss inflicted by necessity does not arise from delict, which is assumed not to be present, but from quasi contract; or if not from quasi contract , as is sometimes the case, then from a true contract, for example by the inclusion of an express provision on the subject. [I.6.9.i] Natural equality The natural equality of men includes: (1) that each man is equally a man, and consequently is subject to a moral obligation from which no human being can exempt him; and has certain rights belonging to him, which are valid against all men; (2) that with whatever gifts of mind or body a man may by nature be endowed above other men, he may not for that reason claim by his own right any power over others or a greater share of things available in common, since nature permits the acquisition both of ownership and of power to all by the same means and on the same conditions. It is not worth discussing whether what Aristotle so labors to teach in the first book of the Politics2 on the nature of master and slave, is altogether in agreement with this natural liberty. The philosopher’s teaching is thoroughly ambiguous on the subject, and has given rise to the just suspicion that he was flattering the vanity of his fellow countrymen, who imagined that nature had given them the right to rule barbarians. And this suspicion has not been completely dispelled by the celebrated Daniel Heinsius in a prolix dissertation (Rutgers’s Various Readings, IV.3),3 in that he seems, by the opinion he holds, following Aristotle, to attribute no other natural liberty to men as a whole than what belongs to birds and fish which have not yet been captured by anyone; as if men’s natural liberty did not 2. Aristotle, Politics I.3–7. Carmichael’s major discussion (and denunciation) of slavery is in chapter 16, “On Masters and Servants.” 3. Rutgersius, Variarum Lectionum Libri. Daniel Heinsius, a Dutch classical scholar, published an edition of Aristotle’s Politics in 1618. on duty to others, sociability 75 include the right (which does not exist among birds and fish) not to be hauled...