Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio: Saggio teoretico di diritto naturale appoggiato sul fatto. Naturrechtslehre. Eine theoretische Abhandlung über das natürliche Recht auf objektiver Grundlage.

The main work of Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio SJ (1793–1862), ›Saggio teoretico di diritto naturale appoggiato sul fatto‹ (Theoretical Essay on Natural Law Based on Fact), is the blueprint for modern Catholic social teaching initiated by Pope Leo XIII. The fundamental considerations and principles set out in this work, published in 1855 in its fourth edition—the last to be supplemented and revised by Taparelli—are also relevant to current theological and ethical positions in the Catholic Church. In German-speaking countries, however, there is only one translation of his first edition, published successively between 1840 and 1843; it dates back to 1845. The desire for a modern translation of the fourth edition has now been fulfilled with a bilingual edition, with each of the seven treatises of the Saggio teoretico published in a separate volume. The third volume contains the ›Third Treatise: Human Action in the Formation of a Society‹, in which Taparelli distinguishes between the different ways in which a society can come into being: above all, he discusses natural, voluntary, and prescribed societies, the subsidiary structure required for most communities, and the correct way of dealing with de facto governments.