This post relates to another I made previously, here, about what rights are and why they should be preserved. I received some questions and constructive feedback, so I'd like to delve a little deeper.
The case made here is that rights are natural. They're inherent in people as a result of being able to make decisions, and nobody is "given" their rights by a person or group of persons, be it the president, society or the government.
So let's break this down.
First, a definition of rights: the property of oneself and the things s/he acquires. And we can understand this a little easier by analyzing what rights are not.
They're not "whatever the government gives you, and doesn't take away from you," as is commonly perceived After all, if they were we would always have our rights, by definition. The government couldn't "violate" them because if it did, they wouldn't be our rights anymore. When you take this to its conclusion, people have no rights- they're merely subjects to the will of their government-- which makes the term pretty useless.
They're not "the things you need to survive," because then the very laws of nature-- rather than giving you your rights-- would have the capacity to actually take them away! A poorer, "third-world" country would "deny" human rights to its citizenry by being physically incapable of providing them. The definition shoulders people everywhere with an obligation to provide for others and, paradoxically, the very concept encourages people not to. It encourages them to do nothing. If there's only barely enough food to go around and everyone is forced to struggle in order to make a living, why work for it when it is your "right" to receive it? And if nobody works for it, each with this same line of thinking, where then are their rights? Has everyone denied them to each other?
If only one man lived on Earth, and was too weak provide himself with "adequate" housing or food as according to official U.N. standards, would he deny his rights to himself?
Furthermore, given that people have an obligation, who exactly is the bearer of said obligation? Whoever the government points a finger at? What if the income of those people is insufficient to meet demands? It also becomes a curious matter that while rights are given to people, as people, they are provided for only within arbitrarily-defined country boundaries, since governments are unable to tax citizens outside the region they control.
It should also be noted that this is a highly convenient definition for the United Nations, whose power is disproportionately managed by leaders in richer countries. When the percentage of people who need government assistance for their "rights" is vastly outweighed by those who can provide them, as is the case in most of the Western world, the prestige of maintaining said rights is relatively easy to gain. Never mind the impossible burden imposed on poor locations.
They're not "what society gives the individual" unless you want a very obscure definition. People gain very different things from different societies, and some are essentially unidentifiable. It would also mean that different people within the same society would have a different list of rights, since some gain more from living with society than others. For some, society may even be a detriment-- with the costs of government outweighing the benefits of interaction and trade. To all those who understand rights in this fashion, get back to me when you can explain a "negative" right.
Add these together and what do you get?
Rights aren't needs, they're not given by the government and they're not given by society.
That leaves: nature. You could say you "give them to yourself," which isn't too bad of an explanation either.
And as it happens, defining rights in this manner is the only method that results in non-contradictory explanation.
Consider those rights that the government "gives" you as a citizen of the United States. One such right: freedom of speech, as according to the Constitution. But do you really have this right, in and of itself? Take for example the scenario where your neighbor invites you to eat dinner at his house, on the condition that you refrain from cursing. If it's true that you have the right to freedom of speech and you curse, then a contradiction occurs. Either your neighbor's property right trumps your free speech right and he kicks you out or your free speech right trumps his property right and he's forced to deal with it. The same sort of issue occurs in movie theaters or in public, where you are prohibited from standing up and shouting "fire" falsely. This is because, in reality, you do not have the right to freedom of speech independently-- you have a right to your property. On your property you may speak as you choose and on others', that's not necessarily the case.
An all-important distinction that needs to be made in the consideration of rights is that, while government is able to protect your rights-- that's entirely different from providing them. In addition, it necessarily violates some rights to protect others.
The thinking here isn't well organized and the concept isn't one that's simple to explain. If there are still questions, feel free to leave a comment.
Well I'm flattered that my ideas get a (sort of) response, although either I didn't explain them very clearly you've misread what I said, because my conception of rights as a societal construct has nothing to do with rights "given" by society. I simply reject your conception of "rights" as a semantic tautology. In other words, I believe you define "rights" the way you'd define "bachelor": A bachelor is, by definition, a single man, and a bachelor cannot be anything but a single man; it's simply what the word MEANS. Similarly, if rights are by definition a thing that inherently exists in nature, then they cannot be a construct or something "given" by government or anything else -- they must simply exist. So, insofar as your definition of what "rights" means is true, you're...right. I simply reject that definition on that grounds that the weight of historical and sociological evidence makes it unsustainable. The "self-evident" or "natural" rights expounded enlightenment thinkers (and still defended by some Western thinkers today) are simply a byproduct of a society that has come to expect certain things, much as past societies would have come to expect other things that they would have called "rights". Of course, that does make "rights" an amorphous or "obscure" (as you say) concept, and if that troubles you...well, too bad. History and society are amorphous and obscure :). You can stick to a tidy definition, but in practice it means little. And if this means different people in society have claim on different rights then...well, yeah. I claim a right to healthcare, you may deny it exists. A slaveowner claims a right to his property, the slave feels differently. And even if a society has a widely-accepted right, such as the right to not be beheaded by marauding swordsmen, then people may still be beheaded by swordsmen because of poor policing; that does not mean the right ceases to exist. Now, suppose the swordsmen take over and come to control all aspects of society -- now that "right" really is gone, because it has ceased to mean anything. So negative rights, schmegative rights. I don't buy into that because I don't buy into how you define the term (though I'll grant, yours is the easier, tidier, and more widely accepted definition). But oh well, Brooke will kill me if I keep writing this...
ReplyDeleteThe problem is- any other definition of the term results in rights contradiction. Give me a definition other than the one I've provided, and I'll show you how certain rights are forced to make way for others.
DeleteFor example, if you claim the "right" to housing, you infringe the rights of others to their property. They have to give it up as a means to provide you with something that nature doesn't hand out for free.
Unless you claim that people have no right to their property, in which case, your house wouldn't really be yours, would it? After all, if I don't have a house and I have the right to housing, on what grounds am I refrained from taking the house you're living in? It isn't yours- you don't have a right to your property- and so a contradiction occurs. Who's right to housing is "superior?"
Of course, all reasoning is grounded on assumptions. The assumption made here is that on a moral level, people have a right to themselves- the antithesis of slavery. If you assume this to be true, everything else falls into place.
If you can't tell I have little interest in talking rights as an absolute philosophic concept. You might as well say, "Love exists", and I'd respond, "okay, but what does it mean in practice?" Contradictory rights don't bother me: rights, as I define them (i.e. as they exist in practice), are always in competition with each other, sometimes with tension and sometimes in direct opposition. That is why they can change, expand, or shrink over time. Thus, whose right to housing is "superior" can vary widely depending on time and circumstances. But I feel as though I'm talking past you, so you can at least rest easy that your paradigm of rights is a powerful one, perhaps the dominant one in modern Western society, so most folks, including me, will agree with you much of the time. But as I think I said waaaaaaay back in my first comment, projecting your paradigm into other times and societies is, at best, terrible historical reasoning. Invent a time machine and try to explain your theories of rights to a Japanese feudal lord, an Indian Untouchable, a Roman senator, a first-century Christian, or an ancient Babylonian farmer and you may get some very strange looks.
DeleteBut rights, in a practical sense, are not a historic concept. People's understanding of rights has changed over time, but, as I said before, that does not change their objective nature. Just as people have gained a better understanding of science, so they have gained a better understanding of what a right is, but the true nature of these things hasn't changed as a result. In practice, rights are judgment regarding who has justice on their side with regard to a dispute between persons. In the ideal legal system, he who violates the rights of another should have the courts against him. Thus, legality with a contradiction of rights makes for a mockery of justice. It makes for a system that is centered around legitimized coercion and immoral action in opposition to those who can't- or refuse- to play the twisted game of politics. Government provision of goods isn't a "right" at all- just theft and redistribution under the guise of a right against those so misfortunate as to lose the favor of bureaucrats.
DeleteConsider also that if you favor a definition contrary to the one I've proposed, not only do you favor an inevitable rights contradiction, but also that different rights apply to different people. For example, you have the "right" to free healthcare, but only if you didn't already pay for it. You have the right to free housing, but only if you don't already own a house. Bonus "rights" are given to those favorable in the eyes of unjust law-makers, and others are taken from the oppressed minorities in the broken arrangement of government democracy.
It's not a philosophical matter anymore than the idea that theft is an immoral thing- which is a universally accepted principle. It's merely the recognition that organizations such as "government" and "society" are not actually existent. That individuals are just individuals, and that no matter what kind of badge you give a man or how official you make his job, it is unjust for him to hold other people at gunpoint and demand their property. The formation of rights as a result of this recognition is not applied in a moral sense, but a legal one- highly relevant in practice. Oppressive governments in post 17th-century and communist regimes in the bitter half of the 20th have formed law in violation of these rights, and those who lived in such times have paid a heavy price.
As posts on this blog go this one bored me. Writing about economic, ethical, and political principals is moderately interesting, but it becomes hilarious and engaging when we hear stories about haphazard attemps to apply them to a BYU dorm room full of people who I am sure don't share half your enthusiasm for capitalistic efficiancy.
ReplyDeleteJust sayin'
I promised a follow-up post on this particular topic (although apparently some are still dissatisfied), even though it's a little wordy and "out-of-touch."
DeleteYour regular program will return shortly.
All rights are socially contingent. Outside of a social framework what would a 'right' even look like? Also, there are risks involved in reifying 'rights' into some kind of metaphysical force in the universe, because it tends to short-circuit thinking. If someone has a 'right,' the logic goes, then they are in the right. People then fail to consider that that right--for instance property--is also actually a way of talking about and enforcing a certain mode of social organization and resource allocation. As such, much of what is actually going is passed over, without consideration.
ReplyDeleteYou as an intellectual, should harden your thinking and recognize the facticity of 'rights' and rights-speech.
"As such, much of what is actually going is passed over, without consideration."
DeleteExplain this for me please. I can tell there's an excellent point here, and I'd love to discuss it, though I fear you may have skipped out on a crucial coordinating conjunction word.
I deny the facticity of rights-speech.
Thanks for your comment, hope to see you around!
Eric Forsyth mentioned your blog today (is how I ended up commenting here today).
ReplyDelete