Page 328 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURY NATURAL LAW
contractors and therefore the just value is that which they be contented to give'.219 Hobbes' reasoning resounds in the writings of legal scholars who argue against the remedy for lesion beyond moiety. Barth von Harmading contends that a just price in the sense of an objectively right one for the thing sold is not required in sales.220 We observed earlier that Heinrich von Cocceji even goes that far as to argue that fairness in exchange is not required in contracts at all.221 In addition, he turns upside down the argument that the remedy for lesion beyond moiety was meant to curb gross instances of breaches of contractual fairness. According to Cocceji, the fact that Roman law had decreed a remedy for laesio enormis only proves that lesser prejudices were allowed by nature, not that
these were forbidden, as early modern Castilian scholars had always contended.222
Another 'hobbist', Thomasius, in his rather polemic dissertation De aequitate cerebrina (On chimerical equity223), similarly refutes that contractual fairness in the scholastic Aristotelian sense should be observed.224 On the contrary, it was an invention derived from the principle that man's eternal salvation should be safeguarded, a principle completely unknown to Roman law and out of line with Hobbes' right to self-preservation as well. Thomasius wonders how Grotius and Pufendorf could have led themselves be so misguided into taking it as a starting point for their theories.225 Not man's afterlife226 is constitutive of legal norms, but man's free will. The latter should be taken as the starting
point for every discussion about what is allowed in sales and what is not. Thomasius believes it a ground rule that when men have given their free consent, for example, to
219 Hobbes, Leviathan, 1.15, p. 75; Loo, Vernietiging, p. 37.
220 Barth von Harmading, Disputatio: '\[XLI\] Ad substantiam emptionis et venditionis non requirimus ut
pretium justum sit, utpote in quo contrahentibus sese invice circumvenire naturaliter permissum est'; Cocceji, 'Non autem requiritur justum pretium. Cum enim res quibus utimur certum ac definitum precium a natura non habeant, sed varient quam maxime rerum precia pro vario affectu, indigentia, copia, locis, temporibus etc. facile constat, natura omne precium aequale esse, quod utriusque partis consensu definitur: Atque hoc est quod Jcti Romani ajunt: in precio emtionis et venditionis naturaliter licere contrahentibus se circumscribere. Nimirum vel minus vel majus pretium exhibendo: ita enim rem explicant: ut concessum sit, quod pluris est minoris emere, quod minoris est pluris vendere, atque ita se invicem circumscribere'.
221 See 6.2.1.5.
222 Cocceji, Introductio, diss. 7, sec. 3, § 58, no. 14. p. 111: 'Verum non est in contractibus aequalitatem
spectari... Iure naturae quamlibet inaequalitatem corrigi debere: iure gentium vero id de majori, non
leviore statutum esse.'; Loo, Vernietiging, p. 37, note 44.
223 Cf. Ahnert, 'The Case of Christian Thomasius', p. 154.
224 Thomasius, Dissertatio de aequitate cerebrina, c. 2, § 35, p. 64: 'Decipit ulterius Jctos nostros quod in
contractibus onerosis qualis potissimum emtio est, requiratur aequalitas praeprimis ex doctrina Aristotelica secundum proportionem arithmeticam ut videlicet praecise tantum quis accipiat, quantum alienet...'
225 Thomasius, Dissertatio de aequitate cerebrina, c. 1, § 10, p. 9: 'Legislatoria aequitas cerebrina est quando legislator legem condit quae prima fronte ratione aequa niti videtur, quam tamen si accuratius examines, facile deprehendere poteris, sub ea lege latere iniquitatem, quae damnum magis afferat reipublicae, quam ut ad promovendam eius quietem prosit. \[c. 17, p. 18\] Sic regula illa juris canonici principiis iuris romani plane opposita quod juramenta quae salva salute aeterna servari possunt, sint servanda, etsi alias promissiones plane diversis et similes profluunt, ita imposuit etiam perspicacissimis, Grotio et Pufendorffio, ut eius falsitatem non observarent. \[c. 2, § 5, p. 35\] Nec agnosco dolum ex re ipsa, quem hic communiter in ore habere solent iuris interpretes, putantes, si venditor pretium minus dimidio acceperit, non quidem dolum personae subesse, sed tamen dolum ex re ipsa oriri'.
226 Grotius replaced the afterlive by man's appetitus societatis. 322