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1 results

  • 2 - Natural Law and Rights

  • from Part I - Foundations
  • Eric R. Claeys, George Mason University, Virginia
  • Book:
    Natural Property Rights
    Published online:
    17 April 2025
    Print publication:
    24 April 2025, pp 33-57

  • Summary

    Chapter 2 introduces the normative theory on which the book relies. Principles of natural law are guides for practical human action. The principles are “natural” because they are knowable through human reason and valid guides to action whether they have been accepted in any community’s laws. They are “law” in that they supply reasons or justifications for action. Natural law theory focuses human action on survival and on flourishing understood rationally. Natural law justifies reasoning with interests, understood as distinct components of a person’s well-being. Natural law also justifies reasoning with rights, understood as entitlements to act and be free from interference backed by claims against others. Natural rights focus social and political life on desirable, low, and uncontroversial goals like survival and freedom. Natural rights also help specialize – around distinct fields of human activity organized around people’s bodies, their capacities to make livings, their capacities to associate, and their capacities to use property.