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This Article, in honor of John Finnis, evaluates the persuasiveness of one central element of natural law theory – its claim to an objective moral truth discoverable by reason. Although I stand outside the tradition, my interest in natural law theory goes back to my college days. John Finnis, especially in his work Natural Law and Natural Rights, has much enriched my understanding of moral, political, and legal philosophy. Prior to that book, natural lawyers and analytic jurists had little to say to each other; by and large, the members of each group had scant respect for the scholarly endeavors of the other. Finnis made a major contribution to bridging the gap. He drew carefully from the work of his colleagues at Oxford: H.L.A. Hart, Ronald Dworkin, and Joseph Raz. His challenges to their positions appreciated what they were trying to say, rather than settling for the misleading and superficial sallies that too often mark the critical enterprise. But Finnis did not back off from developing a full-bodied, traditionally rooted, comprehensive natural law theory. In this respect, his endeavor differed sharply from some other modem challenges to legal positivism. Lon Fuller's claims about an internal morality of law, or procedural natural law, and Ronald Dworkin's "naturalism" went only a slight distance toward the major tenets of natural law as conceived over the centuries. In his book, Finnis defended those tenets, drawing heavily from Aristotle and Aquinas, while relating their basic insights to modem understanding. From the publication in 1980 of Natural Law and Natural Rights, Finnis has been deservedly recognized as the leading proponent of natural law theory within the Anglo-American legal academy. Many legal scholars continue to reject that approach out of hand; but insofar as natural law commands the attention of scholars Who are not themselves natural lawyers, it is largely thanks to Finnis. That is a major contribution to jurisprudential and moral thought.

AbstractThe present article is devoted to developing a libertarian understanding of whether natural rights may or may not underpin human rights and, if so, how. Libertarianism is first defined in terms of the nonaggression principle (NAP), in answer to the question "What is the proper use of force?" This provides a basis for the libertarian positions on property rights, taxation, and many other issues, including human rights. Various philosophical rationales for the NAP are explored, including utilitarianism, religion, and natural rights. The basis of human rights is then examined. Every ethical tradition supports the nonaggression principle, which makes it an ideal candidate for the fundamental basis of human rights. Unfortunately, other traditions expand upon human rights by adding "positive" rights that ultimately violate the NAP. The conclusion takes up the application of libertarian principles to three issues, which could be viewed as human rights questions: discrimination, abortion, and the "trolley problem." The last one involves taking one life to save many others.

This article applauds the recent rise of scholarly attention to studying the relation of religion to natural rights in general and Calvinism in particular. Against the strong belief in some quarters that appeals to nature, including the idea of rights, do not play a significant role in Calvin's thought, the article concurs with recent (and some not so recent) work to the contrary, arguing that such appeals do occupy an important, if ambiguous, place for Calvin. However, the article resists explaining the variations in his thought as the result of changing interpretations over time. Rather, it is contended that these matters were a source of tension throughout Calvin's career. He struggled not so much with the question of the natural knowledge of rights, but of the ability to choose to act on that knowledge. In conclusion, the article hints that Calvin's ambivalence on this issue sowed the seeds for significant divergence among his descendants. Adapted from the source document.

Lays out an account of the origins and development of liberal political and economic theoryIncludes case studies that cover thinkers and ideas from the English Civil War through to liberalism's first encounters with socialism Provides comparative analysis of distinct intellectual traditions including English natural rights theory, the Scottish Enlightenment, Victorian-era utilitarianism and classical political economyIntegrates history of economic thinking into broader milieu of modern political, moral and natural philosophyExamines secondary literature and research from a range of disciplinary areas including political theory, modern intellectual history, economic thought and modern British history and philosophyThis book re-examines the philosophical roots of classical liberal political economy, as well as addressing the relationship between the empire and liberalism. It proposes an interpretive model based upon the interconnection between distinct theories of natural rights and the harmony of interests. It takes a fresh look at classical liberalism by exploring economic arguments in thinkers like Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Paine, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, who are not typically viewed as economic thinkers, and by highlighting the importance of Bernard Mandeville and Adam Smith in the development of interest-based liberalism. It also re-examines lesser-known economic tracts by thinkers such as John Locke, David Hume and John Stuart Mill in light of their more well-known political writings. With classical liberal assumptions still prominent in contemporary debates about economic justice, it is vital for every democratic citizen to understand the complex origins and development of the ideas that did so much to shape our world today

"The problem inherent in the surface of things, and only in the surface of things, is the heart of things." So wrote Leo Strauss in his Thoughts on Machiavelli. The sentence may seem to be a passing remark, and yet it states his main hermeneutical principle. On the one hand it articulates the abiding hypothesis that what is first for us, the very looks of things, is somehow first in itself. On the other hand it guides his commentaries on great books, ancient as well as modern. What if we let this principle guide our commentaries on Strauss's own books? Then the heart of Natural Right and History, for example, is arguably the disproportion between what first appears to be his teaching about natural right and what first appears to be his skepticism about the knowability of natural right.

Many historians have highlighted the religious and social meaning of the right to freedom of conscience as well as the political role it played throughout the history of the religious wars of the late medieval period and their troubled and long appeasement in the peace settlements of Augsburg and Westphalia. The object of such right consisted, as we know, in the individual freedom to practice religion and in the corresponding negative duty of princes not to interfere with it. However, some historians also claim that this was no simple right: its relevance resided in its internal constitution as a 'cluster of rights', that is, a set of rights that depended on each other and operated together so as to make 'freedom of conscience' possible from both a de iure and a de facto point of view. Among them was the ius emigrandi, the right of members of religious groups to leave the realm, lest they be discriminated on the basis of their religious belief. This right hence correlated with the overall right of religious freedom of which it was an integral and essential part. 'Letting people go' hence played a stabilising role both in terms of civil peace but also among the sovereign states that were now the new makers of international order. This hidden aspect of the history of individual rights is of direct import to contemporary discussions on rights and their nature as well as to one of the most crucial aspects of current rights theories, that is, the issue of correlativity. The nature of the ius emigrandi thus sheds light on the potential set of relations that obtain with state duties but also with other rights, suggesting that its emergence as the first individual right in modern international law was not without geopolitical significance. It is in that context that I claim that the right of emigration started to be portrayed as a natural right by late medieval thinkers - following premodern reflections on a natural right to free movement but also on a natural right to life in early modern political and legal thought. This is was because the codification of emigration as a 'legal right' constituted an unprecedented challenge to political allegiance, and hence confronted what had also started to be characterised, under the theory of the divine right of kings, as the natural right to rule. What was at stake therefore was a conflict of natural rights. We must therefore revisit the philosophical grounds upon which certain rights were deemed as natural over others.