Natural Law and Perfect Community: Contributions of Christian Platonism to Political Theory

This paper undertakes two tasks. Firstly, it argues that the concept of subjective rights has no place in a Christian ethic of community, even in a "natural-law" ethic, because it is wedded, both historically and necessarily, to a theologically doubtful foundation of individual and collective proprietorship of human and non-human nature. Secondly, it elaborates and alternative communal ethic of love, law and natural order from within the Augustinian Platonist tradition of individual and collective non-proprietorship, concentrating on the theological contributions made by the medieval Franciscans (especially St. Bonaventure) and later by John Wyclif.