Whether a right is natural or legal, it is a kind of property. This chapter examines the thought of five contemporary Christian thinkers, who hold that the modern concept of a right is tied—certainly historically but perhaps also logically—to Hobbesian social contract theory or Ockhamist nominalism, and therefore to radical individualism and moral subjectivism: Alasdair MacIntyre, Joan Lockwood O’Donovan, Oliver O’Donovan, John Milbank, and Ernest Fortin. It concludes that these critics variously misinterpret Ockham and overestimate the influence of Hobbes. Nevertheless, they are correct to discern that modern rights-talk does tend to shut out other kinds of moral discourse—that ‘rights’ do tend to displace ‘right’. As a consequence, it obscures the contingency of rights upon other moral considerations and so upon justice, all things considered in the circumstances.
Processioand The Place of Ontic Being: John Milbank and James K.A. Smith On Participation