 In sum, Pufendorf’s analysis of punishment as a whole reflects the positive and (re)constructive attitude of the law of nature, in both pre- and post-civil conditions, particularly its injunctions to forgive, to accept apologies and reparations, and basically so to act as always to further and facilitate sociality (“inasmuch as [we] can”), rather than to frustrate or make it impossible among human beings as we actually find them (DJN V.13.1; II.3.15, Pufendorf 1994a, p. 152). As such, it appears far removed from more absolutist or categorical views of justice, such as the well-known statement (of Kant in The Metaphysics of Morals [Die Metaphysik der Sitten, 1797]) that a civil society must, before dissolving itself, execute every convicted murderer remaining in its prisons – a contrast that reveals well the gulf separating Pufendorf’s natural law theory from essentialist or Platonizing views (such as Leibniz’s) that challenged, and the Critical philosophy that eventually replaced it (Hunter 2001, 2003a).