| This dissertation examines the use of rights at the American founding in the light of the contemporary critique of rights as a vehicle of moral claims. Beginning with an analysis of the seventeenth century natural law tradition, I highlight the importance of an ethically imbued current that ascribed natural law a positive moral content. Elaborated by Samuel Pufendorf and later reworked by John Locke, Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, Emerich de Vattel and Francis Hutcheson, among others, this current offered an alternative to the more minimalist version of natural law elaborated by Thomas Hobbes. Critically, the Pufendorfian version balanced the permissive nature of rights—the right to act as one wished—with a sense of moral restraint—that one should use these individual freedoms to further the moral order intended by God. I then go on to consider the form in which natural law and natural rights were appropriated in America prior to the Revolution. Examining the appearance of this language in theology in the mid eighteenth century, I argue that the particular religious climate precipitated by the Great Awakening made Americans receptive to the Pufendorfian current. Reviewing religious writings and college curricula, I trace how this version of natural law became increasingly evident in the colonies. Moving onto the Revolutionary and founding period, I trace how this language of rights appeared in political writings. Finally, I argue that the heterogeneous historical tradition of rights demonstrates the narrowness of the contemporary critique of rights. The problem with rights is not the concept per se, I contend, but rather what rights have become in the modern world. |
