Widely divergent views exist among modern scholars concerning the relationship between natural law and natural rights. Some hold that the two concepts are logically incompatible with one another. Others maintain that natural rights were derived from natural law in the work of Aquinas or, alternatively, that natural law was derived from natural right in the work of Hobbes. All these views seem open to criticism. An alternative approach is suggested by a consideration of the idea of permissive natural law.

Of course Aquinas uses the term ius in an “objective” sense, to mean “the just,” “the just thing,” or the “just state of affairs” called for by the virtue of justice. But he also uses ius in a “subjective” sense, to refer to a right or rights that someone, the “subject,” has. Brian Tierney fails to see this, for three reasons, I think: though he has been an effective critic of Villey's historical analyses, he now seems gripped by Villey's non sequitur (if objective then not subjective); he looks to Aquinas's “phrases,” “usages,” and “terms,” sometimes neglecting the arguments in which Aquinas uses them; and, at least in this new essay, he employs a simplistic understanding of the modern idea of rights.

The problem addressed by Professor Tierney is also a problem on which Professor Ernest Fortin, a member of this journal's editorial advisory board, has written extensively and forcefully. Unfortunately, the lingering effects of an untimely stroke make it impossible for him to respond to Tierney's essay. The editor of the Review of Politics has consequently asked me to respond in his stead. My goal is to be faithful to Fortin's position, but of course the following remarks must be taken as my own. It would be contrary to Fr. Fortin's generous spirit for me not to note at the outset that he is genuinely impressed with Tierney's tireless research on the question of the origin of modern natural rights theories, even if he does not always agree with Tierney's assessment of the matter.

When I was an undergraduate I barely missed taking a course from Brian Tierney—he was on leave the year I studied medieval history—but I have been instructed by him ever since. His work on the medieval origins of the concept of rights has changed the landscape of thinking about rights. In this present essay he continues his role as chief archaeologist of the doctrine of rights, laying bare here the shards of a version of natural law that, he argues, naturally grew into, or grounded the notion of rights.

I find myself in a difficult situation, beleaguered on all sides. According to Finnis, Aquinas derived a doctrine of natural rights from his teaching on natural law. According to Kries, echoing Fr. Fortin, the two ideas, natural rights and natural law, are radically opposed to one another. This leaves me with a hope that some readers, faced by these extremely opposed assertions, may find a note of sweet reasonableness, a sort of golden mean, in my own position, namely that Aquinas did not himself articulate a doctrine of natural rights, but that this doctrine was not inconsistent with his teaching on natural law. The two doctrines could coexist, as they did in some later neoscholastic writings.

Let us consider first the criticisms of Finnis. My own position was set out succinctly in a previous work. “When Aquinas was writing unreflectively and following the common practice of his age, he did use the word ius in a subjective sense in phrases like ius dominii. … Yet it remains true that he developed no explicit doctrine of subjective rights or natural rights.” This still seems to me a correct judgment. Moreover it corresponds quite closely to Finnis's reading of Aquinas in his earlier book.

Intense ethnic conflicts bring to the surface important paradoxes about the function of memory in politics. The capacity to remember is vital for political success, but too much memory, or the wrong kind of memory, stokes the fires of revenge. Successful political action demands both the capacity to remember and the capacity to forget. How and when each comes into play is difficult to formulate conceptually. A classic text in which the politics of memory plays a central role elucidates these issues and suggests central political dimensions of remembering and forgetting. This essay uses the story of Joseph in the Hebrew Bible to explore the politics of memory and to suggest factors that produce constructive and destructive results. It examines two principal forms: prudential and mythic, the qualities of which differ importantly. It concludes with an account of a third form: memory as a step toward political reconciliation.

The conundrum of memory: Healthier to remember? Surely it is best sometimes to forget–though not to forget Kosovo now. Eventual obliviousness may equally free all sides from the hereditary obligation to hate. ... What's happening there now amounts to a religious war between the future and the past. Beware: in that place, the past is a black hole.“ –Lance Morrow1

In the Poetics, Aristotle criticizes Herodotus by claiming that poetry is more philosophical and more serious than history. Aristotle's remark may be understood as a defense of poetry against Herodotus's attempt to supplant the political teaching of the poets and the wise men. Aristotle aligns poetry with philosophy because the poets' political teaching serves the city at the same time that it anticipates political philosophy. In the second section of the article Herodotus's quarrel with the political teaching of the poets, especially Homer, is considered in light of Aristotle's account of the poets. Approaching Herodotus in this manner underscores the significance, for Aristotle, of the politics of Herodotus's History. The third section of the article begins with a discussion of Herodotus's indebtedness to, and difference from, the pre-Socratic philosophers, and goes on to consider Herodotus's quarrel with the wise men. Herodotus's quarrel with the poets and the wise men provides us with a better idea of why Aristotle sought to associate poetry with philosophy, and distinguish them from history.

According to Aristotle, nature (physis), habit or custom (ethos), and reason (logos) are the first principles of social explanation as well as the first principles of moral excellence. Just as we explain the order found in a polity as the product of natural, customary, and rationally stipulated kinds of order, so we become excellent persons through our good natural potential, the development of that potential in right habits, and sound ethical reflection upon those habits. For Aristotle, nature and convention are not mutually exclusive; rather, nature, custom, and reason form a hierarchy such that custom presupposes nature, but cannot be reduced to it, while reason presupposes custom, but cannot be reduced to custom. It is argued that Aristotle's account of social order is superior both to the prior Sophistic accounts and to the account in Aquinas. Because Aristotle roots the order of deliberate human action in the order of nature and the order of custom, he focuses his ethical analysis not on the abstract freedom of choice but on the concrete freedom of the person who must act.

The article explores a cross-cultural approach to the history of political thought. With reference to Maruyama Masao's classic equation of fourteenth-century European scholasticism with eighteenth-century Japanese Confucianism, a comparison between Marsilius of Padua and Ogyu Sorai reveals, behind their ostensibly similar “communal functionalist” outlook, their contrasting views on the role of language as a medium for political communication. Marsilius believed in human's associative power by means of such linguistic communication as oratory and discussion, whereas Sorai underrated speech to favor government by ritual. This contrast has repercussions for the two traditions of political thought in Western Europe and Japan. The exalted status of speech in political communication constituted a mainstream of late medieval and early modern political discourse in Western Europe, whereas the Japanese Confucian idea of government by ritual survived until the mid-nineteenth century when it clashed with European thought then being imported into Japan.