ABSTRACT
The notion of rights as powers or as liberties alone does not get one a theory of natural rights. Aristotle in the Politics arguably endorses a variety of rights that play a significant role in his overall political theory. The guiding idea behind Stoic natural rights, like that of the Enlightenment rights theorists who were reading them, relies on a straightforward analogy between conventional rights and natural rights. Just as there are conventional laws which generate conventional rights, so there are natural laws that generate natural rights. After establishing the basis of natural law and the natural community, Cicero begins setting out the rules and governing conditions of various powers, duties, religious offices, and magistracies. Cicero makes use of the language of rights in describing the exercise of these powers, and he derives the duties attendant upon them from laws that he deems to be natural.
