 This debate continues, albeit in different registers and with equivocal notions of ‘natural law’. For about half of the twentieth century (in philosophy, law, and international relations), natural law referred to a revived Scholasticism or Neo-Thomism. This was joined after mid-century by the ‘secular’ natural law of John Finnis (1940– ) and Robert P. George (1955– ), later by the naturalism (or neo-Aristotelianism) of Amartya Sen (1933– ) and Martha Nussbaum (1947– ), and most recently by a new kind of Protestant natural law with roots in sixteenth-century Reformed theology (Grabhill 2006, VanDrunen 2010, Witte Jr. 2008). All these approaches involve essentialist claims of sorts, even if empirically supported, and together with a Kantian metaphysics of the person that is variously present in versions of John Rawls (1921–2002) and Jürgen Habermas (1929– ) they provide ontological, procedural, or constructivist foundations for discourse about human rights and dignity, and support for international organizations and mechanisms that police them. Accordingly, the supposed ‘right to punish’ is in full force again, as are duties to assist, to rescue, and the like – understandably so. However, despite attempts to enlist Pufendorf in such causes by finding the prehistory of pivotal notions like rights, dignity, and equality in his texts (Saastamoinen 2010, Fiorillo 2013a, Müller 2011), his natural law is actually more akin to contrarian approaches like the neo-Hobbesianism of Carl Schmitt (1888–1985), the agonism of Chantal Mouffe (1943–) and James Tully (1946–), the realism of Raymond Geuss (1946– ), and even the pragmatic naturalism of Philip Kitcher (1947– ). These perspectives are not necessarily opposed to the practical aims of the views they oppose and criticize, it may be useful to note (also about Pufendorf), but merely insist upon fewer suppositions, less presumption, and more modest goals. 