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1 1. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. by H. Rackham (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1934), 267 (1131a).

2 2. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 281 (1132b).

3 3. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 275 (1132a).

4 4. [Tr. – translation modified] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 277 (1132a) [C.M. – my italics].

5 5. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 279 (1132b) [C.M. – my italics].

6 6. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 275 (1132a).

7 7. [Tr. – translation modified] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 285 (1133a–b) [C.M. – my italics].

8 8. Ernest J. Weinrib, The Idea of Private Law (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 63.

9 9. “There would be no point [ … ] in concentrating on this quantitative equality unless the annulment vindicated equality in some sense. For if the initial sets of holdings embodied only an inequality, the subsequent gain by one party at the expense of another, to the extent that it mitigated the initial inequality, would itself be just” (Weinrib, Idea of Private Law, 63). In contrast to the interpretation outlined here, Weinrib does not want to understand this insight – “of course corrective justice presupposes the existence of entitlements” (80) – to mean that the justice of restitution and exchange presupposes the justice of equitable division. On the contrary, his argument is that this contradicts the “autonomy” (which he proclaims on 34–9 of his book) of private law (79f.). For one thing, however, that presupposes what remains to be demonstrated in the first place, and second, it is not evident why the formal difference of corrective and distributive justice is not supposed to be compatible with the substantive and normative dependence of corrective equality on the justice of distribution. Weinrib’s interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of private law subscribes to the maxim that nothing exists which ought not to. The price he has to pay for this consists in his having to deny that Aristotle has any understanding at all of the entitlements presupposed in private law: this is “a troubling lacuna in Aristotle’s explication of corrective justice” (76), a missing piece that was later provided by Kant (81f.). Weinrib wants to contest the political presupposition, and nature, of private law in every possible way. He is therefore prepared to fault Aristotle for not thinking of something and, in a radical act of dehistoricization, to present Kant as the solution to Aristotle’s supposed problems with providing a logical basis for his explication.

10 10. Cicero, De Officiis, trans. by Walter Miller (London: Heinemann, 1928), 255 (II.78).

11 11. Cicero, De Officiis, 263 (II.85). Nevertheless, this is only one part of justice: it further requires people “to use common possessions for the common interests, private property for their own” (De Officiis, 23 [I.7]).

12 12. Michel Villey, “Suum jus cuique tribuens,” in: Studi in onore di Pietro de Francisci (Milan: Antonino Giuffre, 1956), vol. 1, 363–71, here 365.

13 13. Michel Villey, La formation de la pensée juridique moderne, ed. by Stéphane Rials (Paris: Quadrige/PUF, 2006), 247.

14 14. Cicero, De Officiis, 211 (II.41–2).

15 15. Michel Villey, Le droit roman (Paris: PUF, 1964), 20.

16 16. G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. by A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 290.

17 17. Villey, La formation de la pensée juridique moderne, 247.

18 18. Villey, La formation de la pensée juridique moderne, 249.

19 19. Villey, La formation de la pensée juridique moderne, 247. Roman law “refrained from providing a definition of the content of the right of ownership” (Villey, Le droit roman, 84).

20 20. For the relation of private law and the commencement of action, see chapter 10, “Claiming One’s Own,” in this volume.

21 21. Body of Civil Law, in: The Institutes of Justinian, trans. by Thomas Collett Sandar (London: Longmans, Green, 1878), 13–17 [I.3.1].]

22 22. Michel Villey, “La genèse du droit subjectif chez Guillaume d’Occam,” Archives de philosophie du droit, IX (1964), 97–127, here 104.

23 23. Cf. the critique of Villey in Richard Tuck, Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 22–4, and Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law 1150–1625 (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2001), 13–42. Both criticize Villey’s fixation on Ockham, and not merely on the grounds of historical fidelity. They also criticize his fixation by arguing that the idea of natural rights (in Ockham, and, for Villey, beyond) is rooted in philosophical nominalism. For this, see also the discussion of the relation between the logical and the legal-political category of the individual [Individuums] in Ockham by Arthur Stephen McGrade, “Ockham and the Birth of Individual Rights,” in: Brian Tierney and Peter Linehan (eds.), Authority and Power: Studies on Medieval Law and Government Presented to Walter Ullmann on his Seventieth Birthday (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 149–65 esp. 149–51. Lastly, for an overview of the debate and a defense of Villey – both his interpretation of Ockham and the critique of modernity that he based upon it – see John Milbank, “Against Human Rights: Liberty in the Western Tradition,” Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, 1 (2012), 1–32. Villey’s insight into the fundamental difference between the modern and traditional – Greek and Roman – idea of rights is not affected by the question of his interpretation of Ockham.

24 24. Villey, “La genèse du droit subjectif chez Guillaume d’Occam,” 112.

25 25. Villey, “La genèse du droit subjectif chez Guillaume d’Occam,” 114f.

26 26. William of Ockham, A Letter to the Friars Minor and Other Writings, trans. by John Kilcullen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 21.

27 27. Villey, “La genèse du droit subjectif chez Guillaume d’Occam,” 117.

28 28. Ockham, Letter to the Friars Minor, 24. See also, in this volume, p. 9.

29 29. Giorgio Agamben, The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 115. Agamben cites Villey (134), but misinterprets him as having overlooked Ockham’s subtlety and attributes to him the intention of developing an affirmative concept of “subjective right.” Villey’s thesis, however, is precisely that Ockham unintentionally created this concept, and thus that his subtlety got him into trouble. One can speak of a systematic suppression of the modern character of rights in Agamben. For this, see chapter 6, “Excursus: The Biopolitical Context (Agamben),” in this volume.

30 30. Agamben, Highest Poverty, 138.

31 31. Agamben, Highest Poverty, 113.

32 32. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 194. This initially holds true for the right (as power) of the sovereign: “only if potentia and potestas essentially belong together, can there be a guaranty of the actualization of the right social order” (194). Yet it defines the concept of legal power in general, regardless of whether it is the power of the sovereign or of an individual.

33 33. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan or The Matter, Forme, & Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiasticall and Civil, ed. by Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 200.

34 34. Hobbes, Leviathan, 91.

35 35. Benedict de Spinoza, A Theological-Political Treatise, trans. by Michael Silverthorne and Jonathan Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 195.

36 36. Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, 195–6.

37 37. Hobbes, Leviathan, 117. For the “final cause” or “end” of the state see Hobbes’ discussion over the next few sections following this citation in Leviathan, passim. At a similar point, Spinoza speaks of “interest” in Theological-Political Treatise, 224. Leo Strauss (The Political Philosophy of Hobbes [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952], 43) and Carl Schmitt (The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes, trans. by George Schwab and Erna Hilfstein [Westport: Greenwood, 1996], 91, 96) refer to this goal-oriented character of the state, its advantageous character, when they call the concept of the state in the natural law tradition a “technical” concept.

38 38. [Tr. – Hobbes’ conception of “the sovereign” does not require that it be a single person of a specific gender, and the pronoun “his” here is simply a matter of convenience rather than an indication of anything essential about the sovereign. Where possible, I will use the gender-neutral pronoun “its” in reference to “the Sovereign.”]

39 39. Hobbes, Leviathan, 148.

40 40. Hobbes, Leviathan, 148. Cf. also ch. 40: “[T]he inward thought and beleef of men, which humane Governours can take no notice of” (323). In addition, see pp. 52–5 in this volume.

41 41. Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, 202. Martin Saar thus speaks of a “non-normative reformulation of the idea of a natural law” that connects the rules for living together back to the natural; Martin Saar, Die Immanenz der Macht: Politische Theorie nach Spinoza (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2013), 35.

42 42. Hobbes, Leviathan, 100f. (ch. 15) and 170f. (ch. 24). For more on the modern conception of property, see chapter 9, “Property before Property,” in this volume.

43 43. Talcott Parsons refers to law’s new function as “mediating ‘interface’” in the modern differentiation of politics and economy, state and society: “English legal developments contributed substantially to differentiating government from the societal community. Law became less an instrument of government and more a mediating ‘interface’ between the two. It had to serve the needs of government but was sufficiently independent to serve pluralistic private needs as well” (Talcott Parsons, The System of Modern Societies [Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1971], 62). Law can only fulfill this social function with the mechanism of the modern character of rights.

44 44. Hobbes, Leviathan, 92 (ch. XIV).

45 45. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 187–8.

46 46. Carl Schmitt opposes “the mere enactment of acts … consistent with the manner of thinking of the positivistic legal system, translated with the word law” to “a spatially concrete, constitutive act” of law as distributive “act of spatial ordering” (Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, trans. by G.L. Ulmen [New York: Telos, 2003], 78 and 81f.). According to Schmitt, law in its constitutive sense is external demarcation that nevertheless becomes substantial order. Schmitt therefore conceives constitutive law as the naturalized form of modern law. The real alternative, ethical or just law, breaks down in Schmitt (see also 113–19).

47 47. C.B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 88.

48 48. Benedict de Spinoza, Political Treatise, in: The Complete Works, trans. by Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), 676–754, here 683 (ch. 2).

49 49. Hobbes speaks of “qualities” in relation to natural laws (Leviathan, 253 [ch. 26]). Spinoza speaks of being “determined” in his Theological-Political Treatise, 195 (ch. 16).

50 50. Rudolf von Ihering, Geist des römischen Rechts auf den verschiedenen Stufen seiner Entwicklung (1865), unaltered reprint of the 10th edn. (Aalen: Scientia, 1968), part 3, 339.

51 51. Ihering, Geist des römischen Rechts, 330.

52 52. Ihering, Geist des römischen Rechts, 350. For what follows, see chapter 4, “Excursus: The ‘Formal’ and the ‘Material’ Side (Ihering),” in this volume.

53 53. See Markus S. Stepanians, “Einleitung: ‘Rights is a term that drips confusion’,” in: Stepanians (ed.), Individuelle Rechte (Paderborn: mentis, 2007), 7–33, esp. 23ff., with reference to Donald Neil MacCormick, “Rechte in der Gesetzgebung,” in: Stepanians, Individuelle Rechte, 164–83. For what follows, see also the overview in Jeremy Waldron, The Right to Private Property (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 79–94.

54 54. Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), 171; cf. Joel Feinberg, “The Nature and Value of Rights,” in: Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1980), 143–58, here 148f.

55 55. Raz, Morality of Freedom, 169.

56 56. Raz, Morality of Freedom, 181. To state this in greater detail: “Rights are the grounds of duties in the sense that one way of justifying holding a person to be subject to a duty is that this serves the interest on which another’s right is based. Regarded from the opposite perspective the fact that rights are sufficient to ground duties limits the rights one has. Only where one’s interest is a reason for another to behave in a way which protects or promotes it, and only when this reason has the peremptory character of a duty, and, finally, only when the duty is for conduct which makes a significant difference for the promotion or protection of that interest does the interest give rise to a right” (183).

57 57. Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, 196.

58 58. Villey, “La genèse du droit subjectif chez Guillaume d’Occam,” 101 (with regard to property rights): “But such a law did not create property, it only authorized it.”

59 59. Niklas Luhmann, Law as a Social System, trans. by Klaus A. Ziegert (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 111.

60 60. Luhmann, Law as a Social System, 86. This can also be seen as the point of Luhmann’s own concept of the self-reflection of law; for more on this, see part II in this volume.

61 61. Luhmann, Law as a Social System, 113.