Natural Rights

ER 11, Spring 2012

Moral reasoning

Immoral

Sex

Unethical

Money

Moral reasoning

Concerned with how we “ought to” treat each other; with what is “right” and “good”

What reasons do we have (independently of legal enforcement) to treat each

other in a certain way?

What does it mean to “have a (moral) right?”

To have an interest whose protection is important enough to require certain behavior of others, and to put rights-holder in position

to demand such behavior

Might be overruled, but only exceptionally

To say “X has a right” is to make very strong claim!!!

To say that “X has a right” is to make very

strong claim!!!

Different kinds of Rights: Liberty Rights

Other must not interfere

– Right to work as liberty right

– Right to life

– Right to marriage

Claim rights

Right has correlative duties – others must do something to make sure right is respected

– child’s right to education; employee’s right to pay

– Right to work/life/marriage as claim rights

Why do we stand in the sort of relationship that renders rights talk applicable?

It can’t just be that something is

Important

really reallyreally really really reallyreallyreally

Love

“But ain’t they right here….?”

First Answer

Natural rights theories

It is like this by nature

Not by convention; not by human design; not in virtue of any human activities

We “find it” to be true

merely acknowledge it

Natural Law

• Tragedy by Sophocles

• Classical depiction of individual who violates conventions for the sake of “what is right”

John Locke (1632-1704)

Social Contract Theory

TO understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in (…) (sec. 4)

Thought experiment: pre-state, pre-conventional

(a) What rights do people have then? (b) Why? (c) How do we know?

Our questions

Must read text carefully to see what is actually in there

Equality of Moral Status A state also of equality, wherein all

the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty. (sec. 4)

• God did not create us in such a way that one group was set up as superior. But how do we know?

• Might ask: “If God didn’t want one group of people superior to another, why did he create them differently?”

“Liberty, not License”The State of Nature has a Law of

Nature to govern it, which obliges every one: And Reason, which is that Law, teaches all Mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions. (sec. 6)

• Language of rights appears in section 7, so we are talking about both duties and rights

• So now we know what rights there are

• Why do “equality” and “independence” lead to duties and rights? Where does equality come from?

Refrain from Harming For men being all the workmanship

of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another's pleasure. And being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another's uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours. (sec. 6)

• Why refrain from harming? Because legitimate harming presupposes hierarchy, and there is no such hierarchy. Supportive reason: we are all the “workmanship” of God

And Support Actively! Every one, as he is bound to

preserve himself, and not to quit his station wilfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another. (sec. 6)

Can demand support of each other, because we all matter equally, and we are all creatures of God

Natural Rights

• What are they? Preservation of life, liberty, health, limb, goods

• Why do we have them? God

• Why equally? How do we know all this?

Christian theology enters in subtle ways to make sure we can infer ideas of equality

ideas about how human beings were created in the image of God

Creation of Adam, Sistine Chapel

Result so far

• If God is source of rights, we must rely enormously on details of revelations

• theory of rights would then be as secure as our confidence in these revelations