https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272879650_On_the_Difference_Between_Social_Justice_and_Christian_Charity
Villey wanted to convey a message. We should realise, he argued, that the new conception of rights was the first step on the downhill road to modernity, individualism, egoism, and neglect of social solidarity and the common good, away from the superior conception of an overall objective and just order which was given a classical statement by Thomas Aquinas (Villey 1969, 141). The mediaeval Aristotelian synthesis of Aquinas had been the high point of philosophy, from which later scholastics such as Duns Scotus and Ockham had fallen away. The path of modern philosophy had been further downward. Hobbes, Spinoza, Gassendi, Locke, Wolff were among those who contributed to the déformation. Villey did not agree that, as asserted e.g. by Jacques Maritain (1961, 84), it was Grotius who began deforming the genuine idea of natural law. The decline had begun earlier.25 A sketch as brief as this cannot do full justice to Villey’s account of rights-concepts and their history. Insightful expositions and criticisms are made in writings by Brian Tierney from the 1980s onward (Tierney 1997). They are a rich source of information about mediaeval thought and contain significant objections to many of Villey’s theses (Tierney 1997, 13). He shows that concepts claimed to have originated with Ockham were current much earlier
https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/server/api/core/bitstreams/e8a3222c-2bdc-4bcf-900c-f161372e7273/content
