Contracts of Beneficence: Grotius on Regulating Generosity
Speaker(s):
Daniel Lee (F.R.Hist.S.) is Professor of Political Science and, by courtesy, of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a political theorist with interests in the history of political thought and jurisprudence. His research concerns the legal science of Roman law in modern political thought and its influence on modern doctrines of sovereignty, rights, and international law, especially in relation to Jean Bodin and Hugo Grotius.
Dan’s books include Popular Sovereignty in Early Modern Constitutional Thought (Oxford, 2016), The Right of Sovereignty (Oxford, 2021), and Divisions of Law (Oxford, 2026). He was also the co-editor (with Cornel Zwierlein) of Sovereignty: European and Global Histories, 1400-1800 (Brill, 2025). He is currently working on two new projects: Sacrosanct (under contract with Harvard University Press) and The Science of Right, a new history of modern natural law and legal science, c.1600-1900.
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Justice was classically defined as the duty of giving unto each his due. What counted as ‘due’ [debitum], however, has been a source of a venerable disagreement in the history of ideas. Cicero once suggested that we not only owe each other what is ‘strictly due’ [stricté debitum] – epitomized by debt obligations – but also ‘beneficences’ – acts of generosity and liberality. While these were not strictly due, neither were beneficences optional nor supererogatory. Natural law required dutiful beneficence from all of us - but only just enough beneficence.
