Page "Social contract" Paragraph 9

In the early 17th century, Grotius ( 1583 – 1645 ) introduced the modern idea of natural rights of individuals.

Grotius postulates that each individual has natural rights that enable self-preservation and employs this idea as a basis for moral consensus in the face of religious diversity and the rise of natural science.

He seeks to find a parsimonious basis for a moral beginning for society, a kind of natural law that everyone could accept.

He goes so far as to say in his On the Law of War and Peace that even if we were to concede what we cannot concede without the utmost wickedness, namely that there is no God, these laws would still hold.

The idea was considered incendiary since it suggested that power can ultimately go back to the individuals if the political society that they have set up forfeits the purpose for which it was originally established, which is to preserve themselves.

In other words, individual persons are sovereign.

Grotius says that the people are sui juris ( under their own jurisdiction ).

People have rights as human beings but there is a delineation of those rights because of what is possible for everyone to accept morally ; everyone has to accept that each person as an individual is entitled to try to preserve himself.

Each person should, therefore, avoid doing harm to or interfering with another.

Any breach of these rights should be punished.