Hugo Grotius – Individual Rights as the Core of Natural Law

2014

The Dutch humanist Hugo Grotius’ status as an important forerunner of the Enlightenment is well recognized, bolstered by his famous etiamsi daremus-dictum in the Prolegomena of De iure belli ac pacis. Less well known is that Grotius was the first central Protestant thinker to redefine the concept of ius, so that it was understood as individual or subjective rights. His understanding of ius as a personal moral quality, which he subsequently delimits as the expletive justice or perfect right to one’s own (suum), was given a pivotal role in his system of natural law. These concepts of ius and suum, which Grotius differentiates from other rationally derived moral principles, inspired John Locke…