 Let’s start with one closely connected to the problem of obligation. Just now, it was said that the ground of obligation lay in our natures as rational, social, self-preserving beings. This is correct but it needs amplification. Grotius did not conceive of our essences as static; instead, they are dynamic, expressive of our abilities and activities. This is emphatically reflected in his conception of rights (ius, or iura in the plural). He distinguishes between several meanings of iura, the most important of which conceives of a ius as “a moral quality of a person, making it possible to have or to do something correctly” (DIB I.1.4). For Grotius, a ius or right is a capacity or power possessed by the agent; it is a “faculty” or an “aptitude” of the person (ibid.). To have a ius is to have the ability to engage in certain specified actions without moral or legal sanction. So, for example, when he endows humans with the right to self-preservation, he grants us the power to pursue our own interests without needing the permission or assistance of the state or any other authority. Because rights are centered on the individual subject, one will often read that Grotius propounded a theory of “subjective right” (see, e.g., Kingsbury &amp; Roberts 1990: 31 and references there).