It is often said that the dominant political and legal philosophy is positivism. I believe it is not. The dominant legal philosophy today is iusnaturalism, but a modern and individualistic iusnaturalism. And it is this individualistic iusnaturalism that underlies the philosophy of human rights. This individualism is the main difference between modern iusnaturalism and that of St. Thomas, for whom natural law is the bond between human beings, based on the principle of solidarity. Modern individualism has overturned the classical notion of justice by detaching it from the common good. It has completely forgotten the notion of general justice. It has reduced the notion of justice, at best, to a vindication of one’s own freedom. From the modern perspective, solidarity is a dressing, an addition to this reduced notion of justice, whereas in classical iusnaturalism solidarity is the manifestation of general justice. In this article, I will first present the most salient features of individualistic iusnaturalism, and then the essentially solidary dimension of St. Thomas’s iusnaturalism. This article concludes that solidarity is the essence of all justice, and that a moral life is essentially one of solidarity. By contrast, Modern iusnaturalism, which is at the basis of the philosophy of human rights, is individualistic and unsupportive, because it weakens the sense of responsibility towards the common good. The basic error of modern iusnaturalism is a deficient understanding of human freedom. The multiplication of new contradictory “human rights” is one of the manifestations of the inconsistency of modern iusnaturalism.

By Diego Poole

 Published on Forum Prawnicze, Dec. 2025 Read here

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Conference by Diego Poole in the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, May 2, 2025.

Venue: Zamek Królewski w Niepołomicach (the Niepołomice Royal Castle)

Natural Law Course, organized by the Department of Philosophy of Law and Legal Ethics, Department of Roman Law and its Centre for Law and Religious Freedom at Jagiellonian University in Kraków

To be published on Forum Prawnicze: Revista indexada en

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