Googe AI: The Flaw in Tierney’s "Continuity" Thesis Canavan acknowledges that Tierney did brilliant historical work proving that the language of individual rights existed in the Middle Ages. However, Canavan argues that Tierney commits a massive philosophical error by conflating linguistic continuity with philosophical continuity.... Canavan argues that Tierney’s defense of Locke is a historical illusion. By tracing the ideas from Ockham to Blackmun, Canavan demonstrates that modern rights-talk did not organically mature from medieval Catholic natural law. Instead, it was an intellectual mutation fueled by nominalism. By prioritizing individual will over objective nature, Locke set off a chain reaction that inevitably led to Blackmun's secular, hyper-individualistic jurisprudence, where the individual’s choice supersedes the cosmic moral order.

 The critique you are referencing comes from Father Francis Canavan, S.J. (a prominent political scientist, Edmund Burke scholar, and Fordham University professor). Canavan aligned closely with Ernest Fortin and the broader Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition.

Canavan’s critique explicitly bridges the gap between medieval metaphysics and modern jurisprudence. He famously uses a sweeping historical trajectory—from William of Ockham to Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun (the author of Roe v. Wade)—to counter Brian Tierney’s defense of John Locke. [1]

Canavan’s argument dismantles Tierney’s thesis through the following progression:

1. The Flaw in Tierney’s "Continuity" Thesis

Canavan acknowledges that Tierney did brilliant historical work proving that the language of individual rights existed in the Middle Ages. However, Canavan argues that Tierney commits a massive philosophical error by conflating linguistic continuity with philosophical continuity.

• Just because a 13th-century canonist used the word ius (right), it does not mean they meant what Locke or a modern liberal means.
• In the medieval Thomistic framework, an individual's right was always part of an objective web of relationships bound by cosmic teleology and divine law. Canavan argues that Locke stripped away that teleological web, leaving the individual isolated.

2. The Ockham Shift: The Birth of Voluntarism

To show where Locke's worldview actually originates, Canavan points backward to William of Ockham (the father of nominalism and voluntarism), rather than the mainstream canon law tradition Tierney highlights.

• Ockham’s Nominalism: Rejected objective, universal human natures. If there is no universal "human nature," there is no objective cosmic standard for human flourishing (teleology). [1, 2, 3]
• Ockham’s Voluntarism: Argued that morality is not based on God's reason (what is inherently good for human nature), but purely on God's will (what God commands). [1]
• The Lockean Inheritence: Canavan argues that Locke absorbed this voluntarism. When Locke speaks of rights, they are ultimately based on the radical, sovereign will of the individual, untethered from an objective teleological end.

3. The Line to Harry Blackmun: Radical Autonomy

Canavan’s critique reaches its climax by drawing a straight line from Ockham's nominalism, through Lockean individual rights, straight to Justice Harry Blackmun’s jurisprudence in the late 20th century.

Canavan uses Blackmun as the ultimate proof that Fortin was right and Tierney was wrong. In opinions like Roe v. Wade and its subsequent legal legacy (such as the "mystery passage" in Planned Parenthood v. Casey), the American legal system defined liberty as the absolute right to define one's own concept of existence, meaning, and the universe. [1]

According to Canavan, this is the final, logical destination of the Lockean journey:

• The Sovereign Will: Justice Blackmun’s formulation of the "right to privacy" and autonomy transforms the human being into a completely self-constituting agent.
• The Destruction of Natural Law: If the individual’s will is the absolute source of meaning and rights, then objective natural law is completely dead.

Summary of Canavan's Verdict

Canavan argues that Tierney’s defense of Locke is a historical illusion. By tracing the ideas from Ockham to Blackmun, Canavan demonstrates that modern rights-talk did not organically mature from medieval Catholic natural law. Instead, it was an intellectual mutation fueled by nominalism. By prioritizing individual will over objective nature, Locke set off a chain reaction that inevitably led to Blackmun's secular, hyper-individualistic jurisprudence, where the individual’s choice supersedes the cosmic moral order.

Tierney attack on Fortin

Brian Tierney, a renowned medieval historian and legal scholar from Cornell University, mounts a powerful historical defense of John Locke. His work directly dismantles the critique leveled by Ernest Fortin and other Straussian scholars. [1, 2]

While Fortin views Locke’s natural rights as a radical, nominalist "aberration" that destroyed the classical-medieval tradition of natural law, Tierney argues the exact opposite. Through works like The Idea of Natural Rights, Tierney demonstrates that Locke did not invent natural rights out of thin air, but rather inherited and refined a deeply rooted, medieval Christian legal tradition. [1, 2]

Tierney’s defense of Locke against Fortin’s critique rests on three core pillars:

1. Rights and Duties Coexisted in Medieval Thought

• Fortin's Claim: Pre-modern natural law was exclusively about objective duties and virtue, while Lockean rights are modern, subjective, and anti-teleological.
• Tierney's Counter-Defense: Tierney proves that as early as the 12th and 13th centuries, canon lawyers (decretists) and philosophers like Henry of Ghent were already using the Latin word ius to mean a "subjective natural right" (an inherent moral power belonging to the individual). Tierney shows that medieval thinkers did not see a conflict between an overarching natural law and individual rights; rather, they believed natural law conferred those rights. Locke was simply continuing this tradition, not breaking it. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

2. The "State of Nature" is Not Radical Individualism

• Fortin's Claim: Locke’s "state of nature" is an artificial, individualistic construct that assumes humans are naturally atomized and untethered from social or divine obligations. [1, 2]
• Tierney's Counter-Defense: Tierney argues that Locke’s state of nature is not a lawless vacuum. In the Two Treatises, Locke explicitly states that the state of nature is governed by the Law of Nature, which "obliges every one." Tierney points out that Locke borrows heavily from medieval concepts of human agency and divine ownership—arguing that humans cannot destroy themselves or submit to absolute tyranny because they belong to God. Therefore, Locke's individuals are inherently bound by cosmic, moral duties from the start. [1, 2, 3, 4]

3. Consent and Self-Ownership Have Medieval Christian Roots

• Fortin's Claim: Locke’s concepts of self-ownership and government by individual consent are distinctively modern, nominalist inventions designed to elevate human will over divine teleology.
• Tierney's Counter-Defense: Tierney illustrates that the concept of "self-mastery" (dominium sui) was thoroughly discussed by medieval scholastics to explain free will and human dignity. Furthermore, the idea that legitimate political power requires the consent of the governed was standard medieval corporate law (e.g., the principle "what touches all should be approved by all"). Locke did not craft these ideas from nominalist rebellion; he weaponized existing Christian legal theology against the modern novelty of the "Divine Right of Kings." [1, 2, 3, 4]

Summary of the Debate

Issue	Fortin’s Critique of Locke	Tierney’s Defense of Locke
Origin of Rights	A modern, destructive break from classical virtue and natural law.	A organic evolution of 12th-century medieval Catholic canon law.
Human Nature	Atomistic, selfish, and strictly anti-teleological.	Social, divinely created, and bound by the Law of Nature.
Political Society	An artificial contract built purely on subjective self-interest.	A legitimate development of medieval theories of consent and corporate law.

By shifting the battlefield from abstract metaphysics (nominalism) to actual historical texts (canon law), Tierney rescues Locke from the charge of being a subversively "atheistic" modernizer, reframing him as a brilliant trustee of a long-standing Western tradition.

Would you like to look closer at Tierney's specific evidence from 13th-century canon law, or examine how Locke himself uses the concept of God's ownership to limit human freedom?