 This ambivalence and return to theology aside, Thomasius’s moral position is a distinctive one. The theory of rational love is based on the fundamental equality of human beings as well as on their ability to think and choose independently (of authority). Ultimately, Thomasius’s ethics is a social ethics. The theory is other-directed, and given the absence of laws and principles, constitutes a contrast to the formalist universalist ethics Kant would develop by the end of the next century. At the same time, the lack of any way of making this theory applicable in a context governed not by similar but instead by conflicting interests, makes something like a formalist ethics an inevitability. By the end of the Introduction to Moral Theory, even Thomasius recognizes that “rational love” will function only in relatively harmonious contexts. In other contexts, however, particularly those characterized by unequal power positions, justice may well be required, a distinction in duties which Thomasius influentially characterizes in terms of “internal” and “external” obligation (cf. Barnard 1988; Schneewind 1998: 165–166).