 This forces a choice upon Pufendorf’s contractual egalitarianism, which is tempered here by his material assumptions about the “preeminence” of the husband’s sex, and about women’s allegedly unreasonable demand for additional responsibilities. These are not absolute pronouncements, however, but conclusions of the “ruling prudence” that is the “pleasant sister of natural law”; that is, they rest upon an empirical, pragmatic assessment of spouses’ respective abilities and burdens (DJN VI.1.11,18). It is important to recall in this context the difference between modern and medieval natural law, and that Pufendorf does not conceive human nature in essentialist terms but rather generalizes (rightly or wrongly) from experience. That is, apart from his personal presuppositions, his is an empirical and not a metaphysical argument, and this makes it both circumstantial and corrigible. To dismiss it out of hand ironically risks reaffirming the very approach that he rejected (in general), and to overlook the flexibility and liberatory potential of his conception of natural law (Drakopolou 2013).