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The legal philosophy of Grotius is complex, complicated, and (above all) eclectic: It fuses strands which might (independently) constitute a jurisprudentia. Since Grotius was an “Arminian” Calvinist who was horrified by the hyper-Calvinist notion that God simply makes justice by an “absolute decree,” he was an antivoluntarist in both law and theology; and that is why he Platonizingly says that “even if we were to say [etiamsi daremus] that there is no God,” there would still be uncreated natural justice (which is as natural as the truth of A = A or 2 + 2 = 4) (Grotius 1964, Prolegomena, pars 11; see Grotius 1925).

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© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

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Riley, P. (2009). The Legal Philosophy of Hugo Grotius. In: Pattaro, E., Canale, D., Grossi, P., Hofmann, H., Riley, P. (eds) A Treatise of Legal Philosophy and General Jurisprudence. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2964-5_10

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