Anti-Climacus

LINK: Kenneth Anderson asks about the influence of Grotius, Gentili or Vitoria on Abraham Lincoln. I am inclined to doubt there is any direct influence. The library copy of Bibliographie des ecrits imprimes de Hugo Grotius, which I think lists every edition of any of Grotius' works up through 1949, seems to suggest that De jure belli ac pacis is not printed in the U.S. until a 1900 edition out of Boston. This suggests to me that he's not being widely read in the U.S. I also have no recollection of Grotius being mentioned in English common law writers, though the omission is a surprising one, given how thoroughly he dominates European intellectual life for several hundred years after his death. If he knew them at all, it would most likely be tangentially through perhaps Locke. Vitoria, I think, is not translated into English until the 20th century, and Gentili undergoes a rehabilitation in that period, as well: one of the difficulties in studying early modern/late medieval international legal theory is that our understanding is based on the canon established by the Classics of International Law series, which raises up some otherwise obscure figures. Vattel seems a more likely source for contemporary-to-Lincoln law of nations doctrine.

One other thing to note: Lincoln may well be drawing from Grotius et al's development of neutrality, along with the idea that both sides may believe themselves justified, that "ignorance and fallibility" may distort our decisions. However, one can also draw this idea from Hobbes: if moral language is frequently (perhaps always) a means to disguise partial motives, then ignorance and fallibility should be a feature of all our political judgments (and those judgments should always be partial to ourselves, whether or not that can be justified). In that case, Lincoln could be synthesizing a Hobbesian political understanding within a Christian framework.