Beyond Strict Justice: Hugo Grotius on Punishment and Natural Right(s)

2014 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 559-588 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Seth Geddert
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Right

AbstractHugo Grotius is often seen as reducing justice to the systematic protection of individual rights. However, this reading struggles to account for the surprisingly robust place he accords to punishment. An offender cannot plausibly claim punishment as a right, and the right to punish gives little direction about how best to carry out punishment. These difficulties point toward Grotius's little-noticed bifurcation of justice into “expletive” and “attributive” categories. While expletive (or “strict”) justice provides a grounding for the right to punish, its subsequent exercise must be governed by attributive justice. This higher justice considers persons and situations; requires imagination and prudential judgment; looks to the future; aims for the common good; acknowledges the importance of virtue; and never claims perfect solutions. Thus, Grotius's supposedly modern understanding of natural rights is best understood within an account of his specifically political thought—one that acknowledges an overarching framework of classical natural Right.

Property Rights for the Common Good

2019 ◽  
pp. 231-249
Author(s):  
Rowan Cruft
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Free Markets ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Right

Where Chapter 12 established that property belonging to those with reasonable wealth cannot be ‘natural’ rights grounded for the right-holder’s sake, Chapter 13 argues that such property is, rather, groundable on the common good, as outlined by classical liberals like Hayek, Hume, and Smith. Surprisingly, this approach gives us reason to stop seeing most property as an individual right, but rather as duties-owed-to-the-community, duties that individuals control. This is because property—unlike many other rights that are not ‘for the right-holder’s sake’—does not wear on its face its ground in the common good. Owners’ rights are not like those of a teacher, say: rights clearly protecting an other-serving role. Conceiving property as a right therefore carries a major risk that it will be seen as ‘natural’, grounded by the right-holder’s own good. To avoid this, the chapter argues that we should start conceiving free markets as involving ‘controllership’, in which duties-not-to-trespass are owed to the community rather than to particular owners.

Development within the limits of order, 1820–70

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Toye
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Nineteenth Century France ◽  
The Common ◽  
State List ◽  
The French Revolution

After the upheavals of the French Revolution, Enlightenment thinkers were blamed for loosening the bonds of society. In nineteenth-century France, Saint-Simon advocated a social compromise whereby scientists and artists planned the path of progress while the propertied classes retained political power albeit acting as trustees for the interests of the poor. Comte called for a scientific sociology to inform the design of political institutions. In Britain, Bentham rejected the doctrine of natural rights in favour of the principle of utility, while J. S. Mill flirted with Comte’s positivism briefly. Marx made little impact and socialism came in the guise of Fabianism and middle-class trusteeship for the poor. In Germany, Hegel interpreted the French Revolution as a phase in a moral struggle for freedom and called for freedom to be reconciled with the idea of the common good embodied in the state. List envisaged the common good as protectionist trade policy.

Theology as Work: The Mandatum and the Rights of Labor

Horizons ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 128-134
Author(s):  
Patrick T. McCormick
Keyword(s):  
Academic Freedom ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Catholic Social Teaching ◽  
Social Teaching ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church ◽  
Safe Working

ABSTRACTMany oppose the mandatum as a threat to the academic freedom of Catholic scholars and the autonomy and credibility of Catholic universities. But the imposition of this juridical bond on working theologians is also in tension with Catholic Social Teaching on the rights and dignity of labor. Work is the labor necessary to earn our daily bread. But it is also the vocation by which we realize ourselves as persons and the profession through which we contribute to the common good. Thus, along with the right to a just wage and safe working conditions, Catholic Social Teaching defends workers' rights to a full partnership in the enterprise, and calls upon the church to be a model of participation and cooperation. The imposition of the mandatum fails to live up to this standard and threatens the jobs and vocations of theologians while undermining this profession's contribution to the church.

Maṣlaḥa as Sovereignty: Fadlallah and Khomeini Compared

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-112
Author(s):  
Nachman Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Islamic History ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Islamic Political Thought ◽  
Popular Movement ◽  
The Common ◽  
Definition Of

This article examines how Fadlallah and Khomeini’s respective quests for sovereignty are reflected in their political thought, particularly vis-a-vis their notions of maṣlaḥa, which I define as the “common good.” I argue that if, to an extent, Islamic political thought seeks to maximise maṣlaḥa, then this can also constitute a claim to sovereignty, the definition of which remains multidimensional and contentious. By closely examining Fadlallah and Khomeini’s writings and pronouncements on governance, popular movement, and state, I attempt to reveal how discussions regarding Islamic governance demonstrate a broader claim to authority in Islamic history.

Saeculum–Ecclesia–Caliphate: An Eternal Golden Braid

2019 ◽  
pp. 94-107
Author(s):  
Paul J. Griffiths
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The United States ◽  
Catholic Theology ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Church ◽  
Catholic Perspective ◽  
Secular State

The secular state, the church, and the caliphate are associations that each hold universal aspirations, at least implicitly. While the universal aspirations of the church and caliphate may be obvious enough, every state seeks dominion over the whole world. (“Secular” describes states that limit their vision to this world, as opposed to the transcendence to which both the church and caliphate appeal.) As an essay in Catholic speculative theology, Griffiths asks two questions: Whether Catholic theology supports or discourages the variety of political orders, and whether these orders could be ranked in terms of goodness from a Catholic perspective? In response to these questions, Griffiths appeals to two aspects of St. Augustine’s political thought: Political rivalries serve the common good; and the principal indicator of the degree to which a state serves the common good is its explicit service to the god of Abraham. The United States (a secular state) is compared with ISIS (an attempted caliphate).

Reconciling Liberalism and Communitarianism

1999 ◽  
pp. 142-168
Author(s):  
Beth J. Singer
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Community Rights ◽  
The Common ◽  
Individual And Community Rights

This chapter explores the debate between liberalism and communitarianism. It shows that placing a high value on individuals and their rights does not entail sacrificing the common good or the good of the community. To begin with, both personal identity and individual rights are inseparably linked to membership in communities. Individuality and community are mutually constitutive, and the generation of social norms by persons in community with one another is the precondition and the source of all the rights that are actually operative in society. Furthermore, being reciprocal—consisting in mutually recognized entitlements and obligations to respect them—rights are not adversarial. They do not divide people from one another, nor do they set them against governments or states. At least in principle, then, individual and community rights are compatible.

Aristotle

2020 ◽  
pp. 34-50
Author(s):  
Terence Irwin
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Virtuous Person ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Rational Part ◽  
Human Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Right

Aristotle agrees with Plato that virtue requires the cooperation of the rational and the non-rational parts of the soul, and that the virtuous person is always better off than the non-virtuous, even though virtue alone is not sufficient for happiness. To strengthen Plato’s argument for this claim, he offers a more detailed account of the nature of happiness, and of the relation between virtue and happiness. Since happiness is the supreme human good, it should be identified with rational activity in accordance with virtue in a complete life, in which external circumstances are favourable. A virtue of character is the appropriate agreement between the rational and the non-rational parts of the soul, aiming at fine action (i.e., action that promotes the common good). This requirement of appropriate agreement distinguishes virtue from continence (mere control of the rational over the non-rational part). To show that a life of virtue, so defined, promotes the agent’s happiness, Aristotle argues that one’s own happiness requires the right kind of friendship with others, in which one aims at the good of others for their own sake.

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