Marsilius on Rights

Bibliographic Data

ID5160420
AuthorsBrian Tierney (0000-0003-1607-2909, corresponding author)
Year1991
Volume52
Issue1
Pages3
Publication date1991-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the History of Ideas (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-5037 • E-ISSN: 1086-3222
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2709579
OpenAlexW2325682768
LanguageEN
Citations received13

Modern accounts of the development of Western rights theories often trace the origin of such doctrines back to William of Ockham. Michel Villey, for instance, has argued that Ockham's nominalist philosophy led him to inaugurate semantic revolution when he explained the word ius in subjective sense as meaning an individual right, licit power. Then, the argument continues, Ockham's thought was developed by Gerson who defined ius as a power or faculty ... according to right reason. Gerson in turn influenced whole group of writers of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, including Conrad Summenhart, Jacques Almain, and John Major. Then Francisco Vitoria, who studied for fifteen years in the Paris of Almain and Major before taking up his chair at Salamanca, carried ideas derived from Ockham and Gerson to Spain and, from the later Spanish scholastics, especially Suarez, they passed into the mainstream of European political thought.1 I have argued elsewhere that Ockham's language was far from revolutionary, that there existed rich background of earlier juristic commentary for him to draw upon in his arguments about individual rights.2 At the beginning of the fourteenth century, for instance, the canonist Johannes Monachus gave some two dozen definitions of ius, including ius estpotestas virtuosa (ius is virtuous power3). Still, to understand the evolution of

Epistemology · Law and economics · Political science · Sociology · Theology · Classical Studies and Legal History · Historical Economic and Legal Thought · Medieval Philosophy and Theology · Philosophy

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