.................................................................................................................... 7 Sociability Benjamin Straumann 7.1 Introduction The idea of sociability plays an important role in Hugo Grotius’ system of natural law. As we shall see, Grotius adopted an account of moral know- ledge and motivation for justice that he found in Cicero, an account that allowed him to connect arguments about self-interest with sociability and ideas concerning natural law. While ultimately Stoic in origin, this Romanised account Grotius used offered some advantages over the Greek Stoic view connected to the doctrine of oikeiosis. Unlike the Greek Stoic view, Grotius’ Ciceronian account was not teleological or eudaemonist, but made room for a legalised, rule-based doctrine of natural law. The second section of this chapter shows that, for Grotius, sociability is intended as a counter to Epicurean views of moral motivation, but it does not by itself provide the grounds of validity of natural law, nor does it alone ground the obligatory force of natural law. Rather, it represents an appeal to a basis in human nature for cooperation in the state of nature. This simply allows for the weak claim that human beings could possibly be motivated to cooperate and adhere to the rules of natural law, not that they necessarily are so motivated. But, more importantly, Grotius appreciated that sociability creates its own problems, which he thought could be solved by reason alone. The third section explains that the basis of sociability in human nature is, for Grotius, not merely instinctual, but also rational; sociability is ultimately based on a respect for the rights to ‘first things’ such as private property, a respect that itself is motivated by right reason. But, this view of sociability makes Grotius shift from an original concern with our motiv- ation for justice to a concern with how we can know what is just. By way of conclusion, it is argued that the notion of sociability was to have an important future in the works of later thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), Samuel Pufendorf (1632–94), Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl Shaftesbury (1671–1713), Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733), Francis Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108182751.012 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. UZH Hauptbibliothek / Zentralbibliothek Zürich, on 06 Sep 2021 at 08:06:35, subject to the