{"id":493,"date":"2012-06-20T09:29:19","date_gmt":"2012-06-20T13:29:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=493"},"modified":"2012-06-20T09:29:19","modified_gmt":"2012-06-20T13:29:19","slug":"a-problem-with-natural-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/06\/a-problem-with-natural-rights.html","title":{"rendered":"A Problem with “Natural Rights”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many distinguished, even brilliant thinkers, both past and present, have championed the doctrine of \u201cnatural rights\u201d (more commonly referred to nowadays as \u201chuman <\/em>rights).\u201d \u00a0\u00a0Without doubt, largely thanks to its enshrinement in America\u2019s Declaration of Independence, it remains <\/em>our public political philosophy.<\/p>\n

According to the creed, all human beings, simply by virtue of their humanity, possess the very same \u201crights.\u201d\u00a0 While these \u201crights\u201d have been variously described, traditionally they have been held to consist of claims to such basic goods as life, liberty, property, and maybe \u201cthe pursuit of happiness.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since these \u201crights\u201d are \u201cnatural\u201d or \u201chuman,\u201d they transcend all individuating circumstances.\u00a0 \u201cRights\u201d owe nothing to culture, say, or history\u2014an idea at one time conveyed through the fictive concept of \u201cthe state of nature.\u201d\u00a0 The latter refers to life prior to the formation of political society.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although rights theorists disagreed with one another over what life was supposedly like in it, they all agreed that it was for the sake of relieving themselves of the unqualified <\/em>character of human conduct in the state of nature that individuals leave it and join together to form a state.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

That is, according to the classical rights theorists, the state comes into being as a means of qualifying <\/em>conduct.\u00a0 Two of the most salient characteristics of a state are, first, an office in which all authority is thought to reside and, secondly, a mechanism of power attached to this authority.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A common authority\u2014one to which all members of the state are bound\u2014is responsible for both establishing <\/em>the terms in which the conduct of citizens is to be qualified as well as enforcing <\/em>these terms. It is for the sake of fulfilling these functions that individuals give rise to government. <\/em><\/p>\n

This is crucial, for even <\/em>by the lights of the great rights theorists their own theories cannot be sustained.\u00a0 There is no incompatibility between the idea of \u201cnatural rights\u201d and the idea of life beyond <\/em>the state of nature.\u00a0 However, there is indeed radical <\/em>incompatibility between the idea that the state exists for the sake of protecting \u201cnatural rights\u201d <\/em>and the nature of political life.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

To put it more simply, natural rights are unqualified in character.\u00a0 Yet it is precisely for the purpose of qualifying this unqualified situation\u2014the state of nature\u2014that the state was brought into being.\u00a0 Life under government is the antithesis of life in a state of nature, in other words, because in the former, citizens\u2019 conduct is conditioned by laws. In the latter, without a common authority (or, what amounts to the same thing, a commonly recognized<\/em> authority), there is no law.<\/p>\n

The laws under which we live in political society are duties<\/em>, first and foremost.\u00a0 Rights can be read from them, for sure, but it is important to grasp that every individual\u2019s right to such-and-such is simply the duty of each and every other person not to interfere with their exercise of it.\u00a0 And even then, these \u201crights\u201d are not <\/em>\u201cnatural\u201d or \u201chuman.\u201d\u00a0 Rather, they are culturally-specific acquisitions that derive their meaning from the complex of duties within which they are found.\u00a0 (This explains why neither in the Constitution, the common law, nor legislative law is there to be discerned any <\/em>references to the abstraction of \u201cnatural rights.\u201d)\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

There may very well be \u201cnatural rights.\u201d\u00a0 Yet talk of them, while rhetorically effective, is philosophically problematic and politically useless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many distinguished, even brilliant thinkers, both past and present, have championed the doctrine of \u201cnatural rights\u201d (more commonly referred to nowadays as \u201chuman rights).\u201d \u00a0\u00a0Without doubt, largely thanks to its enshrinement in America\u2019s Declaration of Independence, it remains our public political philosophy. According to the creed, all human beings, simply by virtue of their humanity,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nA Problem with "Natural Rights"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/06\/a-problem-with-natural-rights.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Problem with "Natural Rights"\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Many distinguished, even brilliant thinkers, both past and present, have championed the doctrine of \u201cnatural rights\u201d (more commonly referred to nowadays as \u201chuman rights).\u201d \u00a0\u00a0Without doubt, largely thanks to its enshrinement in America\u2019s Declaration of Independence, it remains our public political philosophy. 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