ABSTRACT
Traditional natural law is primarily and mainly an objective 'rule and measure,' a binding order prior to, and independent of, the human will, while modern natural law is, or tends to be, primarily and mainly a series of 'rights,' of subjective claims, originating in the human will. The foundations of Thomas Hobbes's individual "natural rights" are to be found in nominalism. The revolutionary belief that Natural Law was a product of private reason opened the way for arbitrary claims to be made in its name. Hobbes probably never believed in any historical state of nature, but he posited it as a useful means of illustrating seriously his conception of the social contract as an irrevocable agreement sanctioning the legal sovereignty of established authority. The final effect of Hobbes's and John Locke's philosophies was not to destroy the Natural Law, but to involve it in hopeless confusion with alien principles and arbitrary claims made in its name.
