yczarka@pop.vjf.cnrs.fr

When one considers the issues of subjectivity and of the subject in the 17^th century, one usually emphasizes the Cartesian turn. In this way, one concentrates on the ego as the subject. As a result, the notion of self-referential subjectivity that this choice implies is taken to be the key to the entire development of modern philosophy. However, this emphasis on a Cartesian turn regarding the subject has led to overlooking an alternative line of development in the history of the subject and of subjectivity. Consequently, the underlying principle of many controversies on these issues has been masked, and they remain unintelligible.

This overlooked alternative is the problematic of the subject in the modern theory of natural law in the 17^th century. The specificity of the natural law current at the time lies in the fact that it comprises thinkers who were either a-Cartesians or anti-Cartesians. The former include, among others, thinkers such as Grotius, who developed the bulk of their doctrine before Descartes. The latter, writing at Descartes’s time or later, opposed him – which is the case notably with Hobbes and Leibniz. There is therefore an alternative way of conceiving subjectivity as constitutive of the subject of the law, which not only does not depend upon Cartesian metaphysics, but even elaborates itself against it.

It will be shown how the distinction between these two ways of subjectivity is a necessary condition for understanding some of the major controversies of the century.