Liberty, Right and Nature is a vibrant and powerful contribution to the recently renewed debate over natural rights and natural rights language. Annabel Brett argues persuasively that in order to understand the development of the concept we need to look at the way in which the Latin language of ius functioned in a wide range of philosophical contexts. Dr Brett traces the range of the terminology of rights within the scholastic tradition from the thirteenth-century poverty controversy to the works of the sixteenth-century neo-Thomistic 'School of Salamanca'. A final chapter considers the consequences of this investigation for the rights theory of Thomas Hobbes. Dr Brett's analysis covers a panoply of theological and legal sources, and should prove indispensable to all those working in the field of medieval and early modern moral and political philosophy.
Annabel Brett takes a look at the texts traditionally cited in the history of thinking about rights, using a variety of new primary sources. She begins her analysis with scholastic texts from the thirteenth century and ends with a discussion of Hobbes' theory of natural rights.
