Christian Wolff, «persona moralis» and «homo moralis»: a reinterpretation

Abstract

An influential scholarly opinion argues since the 1950's that Christian Wolff coined the modern concept of general legal capacity and legal personhood with the term "persona moralis" in his Law of Nature (1740-1748), and was a precursor of the modern right to legal personhood. The present article challenges that opinion by conducting a corpus analysis of all the occurrences of the word “persona” used in Wolff's eight-volume treatise. The article argues that both Wolff's “persona” and “persona moralis” are to be read in the light of the Prussian Allgemeines Landrecht (ALR), which intended to protect a society of estates.