Modern rights theory made liberty alienable property, sanctioning slavery

Evidence

Medieval jurists talked about “property rights” in a state of nature, but they tended to do so in terms of claims, a notion that implied that every right entailed a reciprocal duty in accordance with objective (because divinely given) criteria. In the later Middle Ages, however, the idea was introduced that a property right was any right that could be held against all other men, and that could be freely transferred by its possessor. In the sixteenth century there developed a debate between those for whom liberty itself was property (something owned ), and therefore alienable in the same way and under the same terms as any other property; and those (like the Dominicans, for whom the welfare of humans rather than their essential liberty was what mattered) who held that liberty was not in that sense a property. In this way, a theory of rights sanctioned practices—such as slavery—that an antisubjectivist theory disallowed. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 629

Categorization

• DEFINE: Asad’s key contrast: medieval ‘claims’ (right entailing reciprocal duty, divinely grounded) versus modern subjective rights (absolute and alienable) — a precise definitional pivot.
• SEED: Inversion angle: the very doctrine of the sovereign individual — so central to modern liberal self-image — historically underwrote slavery and absolutism. Crisp paradox essay.