Auf dem Wege zu einer säkularen Moralwissenschaft: Von Hugo Grotius’ $\textit{De Jure Belli ac Pacis}$ zu Thomas Hobbes’ $\textit{Leviathan}$

In different respects, Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes represent a new beginning in political and legal philosophy. Although Grotius' connection with the previous tradition of Christian natural law is obvious, Hobbes' relation to natural law is controversial. Both of them, however, confront the concept of natural law as developed in the scholastic discussion. The ensuing debate between voluntarism and rationalism finally paves the way for a new philosophy of law and morals. This new philosophy can extricate itself from the theological presumptions of Christian natural law without running into contradiction with it, or even dissolving its conceptual framework. Through its strict division between evaluation and obligation, Grotius' De iure belli pacis opens the door for a secular moral science, which Hobbes in Leviathan places on a new methodological foundation and also expands upon through a secular theory of obligation.