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While the idea that human beings are somehow equal by nature has a long history, it became a topic of more intense philosophical reflection in the seventeenth century, when Thomas Hobbes, Samuel Pufendorf, and John Locke used this notion to articulate their doctrines of the state of nature and the contractual origins of human power relations. These three theorists were not the most egalitarian political writers of the seventeenth century, but they presented their rival views on the character, foundation, and consequences of natural human equality in greater detail than any of their contemporaries. Today, this philosophical discourse on natural equality is best known from the works of Hobbes and Locke. However, no one in the seventeenth century had more to say about natural equality than Pufendorf, whose massive main work on natural law, De jure naturae et gentium (1672), included a long chapter on the topic. This was the most extensive theoretical discussion of natural equality in seventeenth-century political theory. It was also widely read, as Pufendorf's main work, together with its abridged version De officio hominis et civis (1673), was translated into several European languages and reprinted numerous times in the eighteenth century. 1 Author's note: I would like to thank Petter Korkman, Sami-Juhani Savonius-Wroth, Mikko Tolonen, and the two anonymous reviewers for their perceptive comments on earlier versions of this paper. 1 The standard editions of these two works are De jure naturae et gentium.

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