The Nature

1
The Nature ValueofRights
2
Review Justifications for the Use of Force

• Self Defense (national interest)
• Defense of Liberty (last week)
• Defense of Basic Rights (this week)
• Enforcement of Justice (next week)

3
Review Liberty

• Public versus private behavior
• Mills Harm Principle interference with
  individual liberty justified only to prevent harm
  to others (negative duties)
• Also positive duties interfere with individual
  liberty to bring about necessary benefits to
  society (jury service, military service)
• Respect for individual liberty requisite to a
  healthy, just fair social order

4
Edmund BurkeReflections on the Revolution in
France

• Liberty, equality, fraternity are these worth
  tearing a nation apart?
• Liberty is not the sole or unqualified good
• What is liberty without wisdom and without
  virtue? It is the greatest of all possible
  evils for it is folly, vice, and madness without
  tuition or restraint

5
Burke on Liberty and Rights

• Liberty is one prominent ingredient among many in
  constructing a just, flourishing social order
• Other things include respect for property,
  equitable taxation, rule of law, morality,
  religion, the discipline obedience of armies. .
  . all these are good things too, and without
  them liberty is not a benefit whilest it lasts,
  and is not likely to continue long. . .
• Liberty, in short, is one among many rights

6
But What are Rights?

• Jefferson Declaration of Independence
• -- Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of
  Happiness
• Natural Rights, inalienable rights
• Constitution Bill of Rights
• M. L. King we have waited for more than 340
  years for our Constitutional and God-given
  rights
• U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights

7
Are these Legal Rights?

• Contracts, property, privileges defined in law
• These legal arrangements create duties and grant
  certain privileges or powers to act
• These duties and privileges establish claims
• I have a right to be paid for my work on this
  project
• I have a right to walk in the public park
• I have the right in the U.S. to a trial by jury

8
Human Rights are Moral Rights

• Jeffersons rights exist prior to law natural
  and inalienable
• King claims the rights are also God-given
• These natural rights cannot be repealed or
  abrogated by law (inalienable)
• Human rights (if they are anything) must be
  something else, more fundamental and basic, than
  legal rights in the normal sense

9
Are There Really such Things as Human Rights?

• Do rights make sense outside a specific legal
  system? (Utilitarians famously doubted there were
  such things Bentham rights are nonsense)
• Some social contract theorists (e.g., Hobbes)
  think that rights are defined only within a
  political system, as part of an implicit
  contract
• But for Locke, Jefferson, King (and Kant) there
  are also natural rights which are logically prior
  to any specific system and seem to limit its power

10
History of Rights

• King makes reference to natural law
• Idea of rights stems from Roman law, also in
  Christian conceptions of a covenant between God
  and persons
• Questions about whether there are such rights,
  and what these are specifically, thus leads to
  deep philosophical questions about the nature of
  human beings and their social order
• Susan Ford Wiltshires Bancroft Lecture

11
Joel Feinbergs thought experiment

• Imagine a social order in which there are no
  rights
• Nowheresville has duties, obedience, charity,
  goodness. . .just like us (!!)
• Is anything morally significant missing from such
  a social order?
• No individual ever deserves anything
• The benefits and privileges that come their way
  are all gifts they are not entitled there is a
  loss of moral status or standing -- respect

12
Moral Rights and Human Dignity

• Moral rights seem to be claims of some sort
• Negative claims for non-interference, sometimes
  called liberty-claims (life itself, speech,
  religion) that establish limitations on political
  power
• Positive rights that establish specific duties of
  performance on the political order (jury trials,
  equality under the law)
• Both establish a moral standing, dignity, that
  apply to individuals simply on account of their
  humanity

13
Are all claims equally valid?

• So called negative rights or liberty claims are
  minimalist in terms of duties no performance is
  required, merely limitation on action
• Positive rights are more problematic, call for
  duties of performance by others, government
• Especially problematic with respect to basic
  human needs (education, health care) who has a
  duty to provide these things?
• Compare Kants perfect and imperfect duties the
  former could be said to correspond to individual
  rights (respect). But the latter do not
  conclusively establish claims that persons can
  make

14
Concluding Reflections on Rights

• J. S. Mills essay establishes certain
  liberty-claims that individuals can make
  (privacy, non-interference), the granting of
  which guarantees positive utility
• Kant and the ancient religious and character
  traditions focus more on intrinsic feature of
  these rights, stemming from respect for moral
  status of persons humanity, whether in
  yourself or another
• Need to say something more about natural law