Cognates vs. Agnates
I'm finishing up my slides for the Nottingham lecture I'll be giving this week. There is one detail I hadn't really appreciated, but perhaps I should. This is in a passage that everybody who reads Grotius will cover: Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacis I, 1, §3 (Editio Princeps: Paris, 1625). Peace Palace, The Hague. The passage is about the different legal meanings of the word, jus , which functions as both 'law' and 'legal right.' In his discussion, Grotius cites D.1.1.3: 'Nature has established a certain kinship [ cognationem ] amongst us, and so it follows, that it would be wrong for one man to lie in ambush of another.' I never paid much attention to Grotius's choice of words for 'kinship' or 'blood-affinity' here. It is introduced here to explain his vision of societas humani genesis - humanity as a whole. All of humanity is a kind of family. Not an agnatic family, that the strict rules of Roman law define accordin...
