There is a direct, deeply influential lineage connecting William of Ockham’s voluntarism and nominalism to the modern concept of "natural rights" found in Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Historians of philosophy (most famously Michel Villey) argue that Ockham effectively invented the modern concept of subjective rights—shifting the definition of a "right" from an objective moral balance (what is fair) to an individual power or faculty (what I own/can do). Ockham's extreme stance on the Euthyphro dilemma laid the groundwork for Hobbes and Locke in three profound ways: 1. The Shift from Objective "Right" to Subjective "Rights" • Before Ockham (Aquinas/Aristotle): "Right" (ius) meant objective rightness—the proper, balanced distribution of things within a community based on an intrinsic cosmic order. • After Ockham: Because Ockham denied any intrinsic cosmic order (arguing everything depends on God's sheer will), the universe became a collection of isolated, radically free individuals. Consequently, ius shifted to mean a subjective right—a legal power or freedom belonging to an individual person. Ockham used this very concept to argue that humans have a "natural right" to choose their own rulers and hold property.

Yes, absolutely. There is a direct, deeply influential lineage connecting William of Ockham’s voluntarism and nominalism to the modern concept of "natural rights" found in Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. [1, 2]

Historians of philosophy (most famously Michel Villey) argue that Ockham effectively invented the modern concept of subjective rights—shifting the definition of a "right" from an objective moral balance (what is fair) to an individual power or faculty (what I own/can do). [1]

Ockham's extreme stance on the Euthyphro dilemma laid the groundwork for Hobbes and Locke in three profound ways:

1. The Shift from Objective "Right" to Subjective "Rights"

• Before Ockham (Aquinas/Aristotle): "Right" (ius) meant objective rightness—the proper, balanced distribution of things within a community based on an intrinsic cosmic order.
• After Ockham: Because Ockham denied any intrinsic cosmic order (arguing everything depends on God's sheer will), the universe became a collection of isolated, radically free individuals. Consequently, ius shifted to mean a subjective right—a legal power or freedom belonging to an individual person. Ockham used this very concept to argue that humans have a "natural right" to choose their own rulers and hold property. [1, 2, 3, 4]

2. Thomas Hobbes: The Secularization of Divine Voluntarism

Thomas Hobbes took Ockham's theological voluntarism and completely secularized it: [1, 2]

• The Sovereign as God: In Hobbes's Leviathan, the political Sovereign plays the exact same role as Ockham’s God. For Hobbes, there is no objective good or evil in the "state of nature". Good and evil only come into existence because the Leviathan commands them. [1, 2, 3]
• The Right to Everything: Because there is no objective moral order in nature, Hobbes argues that in the state of nature, every individual has a voluntaristic "right to all things"—a radical, unconstrained freedom of the will to do whatever it takes to survive. [1]

3. John Locke: The "Workmanship" Model of Rights

John Locke took Ockham’s voluntarism in a more protective, liberal direction: [1]

• God’s Property Rights: Locke's Second Treatise explicitly relies on a voluntarist framework: human beings possess natural rights to life, liberty, and estate because they are the "workmanship" of an all-powerful God.
• Because God willed us into existence, we belong to Him as His property. Therefore, no earthly king has the right to destroy or enslave another human being—doing so violates God's property claims.
• Individual Ownership: Locke then mirrors this divine voluntarism at the human level: when a human injects their own will and labor into nature, they create private property. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Summary Comparison

Philosopher	Where Morality/Law Comes From	What a "Right" Is
William of Ockham	The unconstrained, absolute Will of God	A God-given individual power or freedom
Thomas Hobbes	The absolute Will of the Sovereign State	A radical, individual freedom to survive at all costs
John Locke	God’s property rights over humans, discovered via reason	Inalienable boundaries protecting life, liberty, and property

By answering the Euthyphro dilemma with a declaration that will trumps reason, Ockham detached morality from a fixed teleological nature. This vacuum allowed early modern thinkers to construct political systems built around the wills, contracts, and rights of individual human actors. [1, 2]