Abstract
In legal theory we tend to understand human rights as inherently individualistic. In order for them to apply, it is enough that they promote individual interests, no matter the effect on common good. The individualistic conception (or the „I-conception”) of rights thus accentuates the uniquely human disposition for freedom over human sociability, postulates a competitive society of atomistic individuals and prioritises the individual-to-state relationship before other forms of association. But do these features follow necessarily from the imperative to recognise fundamental moral value of each and every individual?
The author sources from the works of intellectual historians in order to analyse three historical natural rights traditions: late medieval scholasticism (Ockham), early modern scholasticism (Vitoria) and Calvinism (Althusius). All three recognised various natural rights of individuals against papal or imperial power and postulated a kind of covenant between the ruler and his subjects whose violation by the ruler possibly triggered the right to resist. At the same time, however, they grounded natural rights in Christian morality and underlined the natural human sociability and inclination to form a political community. The author puts this non-individualistic, Christian-Aristotelian account on a par with the I-conception and suggests that we should restore some of it in order to strike a balance between individualist and collectivist theories.