Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies

Virpi Mäkinen

Th.D., Academy Research Fellow (Academy of Finland) Docent (theological ethics and philosophy of religion), University Lecturer (theological and social ethics)

Mailing address:
Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
P.O. Box 4
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki
Finland

Tel +358-(0)9-191 21732
Mobile +358-(0)40-730 7299
Fax +358-(0)9-191 24509
Email virpi.makinen(AT)helsinki.fi

Research profile

Curriculum vitae

Areas of Expertise:

• History of moral philosophy
• Medieval political theory
• Medieval theology

Research Title and Abstract:

Moral Psychological Basis of Natural Rights 1200-1600

The research project belongs to moral and political philosophy, and it will focus on the influence that the ideas of self-preservation and self-ownership exerted on the emergence of natural rights language and theories in Western thought. By analysing the texts of several authors belonging to the late medieval voluntarist tradition of the late-thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and to the Spanish Thomist and neo-Thomist schools (the so-called School of Salamanca) of the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries. The particular attention is paid to the continuities and discontinuities between the medieval and early modern ideas of rights.

The project will shed new light on the moral psychological underpinnings of rights language and theories in Western culture, and on the transformations that it has undergone, highlighting the morally and politically important inborn human features, natural instinct towards self-preservation and the idea of self-ownership. The project will thus help to clarify our understanding of the Western intellectual developments toward the human rights.