Google AI: Michel Villey’s critique of modern rights centers on the idea that shifting the focus from objective cosmic justice (the just "thing" owed, rooted in Roman law and Aquinas) to subjective human "rights" (individual moral powers) birthed dangerous individualism and legal formalism.Exploring this intellectual pivot reveals exactly how these later philosophers built upon the framework Villey criticized:Jesuit Francisco Suárez: Villey viewed Suárez as a primary culprit in establishing modern subjective rights. Suárez argued that human beings possess an innate "power" or "dominion" over their own actions and property, separating the individual will from the objective order. This shift laid the groundwork for modern natural rights language.Thomas Hobbes: Hobbes took the subjective "faculties" of will and power that Suárez explored and completely secularized them. For Hobbes, the ultimate "right of nature" is a limitless individual liberty to preserve oneself. Villey critiqued this specifically because it abandoned classical justice and reduced law to a tool of subjective power.John Locke: Locke built heavily upon Suárez’s ideas of self-ownership and property, heavily defining individual rights as God-given entitlements to life, liberty, and property. Villey’s critique targets this Lockean trajectory, arguing that constructing society around these atomic, rights-bearing "monads" ultimately undermines true, objective social justice.

Michel Villey’s critique of modern rights centers on the idea that shifting the focus from objective cosmic justice (the just "thing" owed, rooted in Roman law and Aquinas) to subjective human "rights" (individual moral powers) birthed dangerous individualism and legal formalism. [1, 2]

Exploring this intellectual pivot reveals exactly how these later philosophers built upon the framework Villey criticized:

• Jesuit Francisco Suárez: Villey viewed Suárez as a primary culprit in establishing modern subjective rights. Suárez argued that human beings possess an innate "power" or "dominion" over their own actions and property, separating the individual will from the objective order. This shift laid the groundwork for modern natural rights language. [1, 2, 3]
• Thomas Hobbes: Hobbes took the subjective "faculties" of will and power that Suárez explored and completely secularized them. For Hobbes, the ultimate "right of nature" is a limitless individual liberty to preserve oneself. Villey critiqued this specifically because it abandoned classical justice and reduced law to a tool of subjective power. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
• John Locke: Locke built heavily upon Suárez’s ideas of self-ownership and property, heavily defining individual rights as God-given entitlements to life, liberty, and property. Villey’s critique targets this Lockean trajectory, arguing that constructing society around these atomic, rights-bearing "monads" ultimately undermines true, objective social justice. [1, 2, 3]