 Given that his work ranged across so many different fields—ethics, political theory, politics, religion—it is impossible to make a blanket statement that Grotius was or was not an original thinker. Instead, the only responsible approach is to deal with his alleged contributions on a case-by-case basis. Because it would be tedious to go through all the cases here, let us just take the two which are likely to be of greatest interest to philosophers: ethics and political theory.