For quite a while now I’ve been pondering the concept of “rights” as expressed in the Declaration of Independence. I’ve found that the only conclusion which can be drawn is that they do not exist.
Consider: the Declaration mentions “inalienable rights” which are “self-evident”. Both of these claims fail under careful consideration. I’ll attempt a deconstruction of rights based only upon what is explicitly mentioned in the Declaration.
That they are self-evident was, quite… evident to the Founding Fathers. Needless to say, they had waged a war fighting for these rights. But upon what logical foundation did they conceptualize them? History has shown that rights are alienable. Does one assume that an individual still has rights when the State denies that they do? Does one believe that the Jews retained their rights all the while being lead to the gas chambers?
Of course they are alienable; until recently, the only thing differentiating governments from one another was how much they ignored these rights. However, this doesn’t prove that the rights themselves do not exist - are they, in fact, self-evident? I see no reason to think so.
Consider that the Declaration states that “all men are created equal”, and that’s probably intended to extend to the concept of rights as well - the Founding Fathers assumed that whatever Deist God they believed in had endowed men with rights. But, assuming there is no such God – where are rights derived from?
They are not self-evident, either. Can I observe rights? Perhaps taste them with my tounge? Maybe handle them? How can I quanitfy them? Frankly, I cannot. My senses do not extend to such spiritual concepts.
The entire idea of “rights” needs to be abolished and replaced with more accurate wording - that word being “will”. An example would be the will to happiness. No men are born with the “right” to be happy, and what might make one man happy would be anathema to another. The only reasonable course of action is to shred the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and acknowledge that no such things exist.[/i]
A right is a justifiable claim (whether morally or civilly justifiable
depends on which sort of right is being considered) against all mankind,
in restraint of certain harmful actions being performed without
reasonable warrant. Any right can be violated: a right that could not
would need no protection (and therefore no declaration as a right). But
the violation of a right is entirely different from its alienation. If
A steals from B, he has violated B’s justifiable claim not to be
deprived of his property without reasonable warrant. But A has not
alienated B’s rightful claim to his own property: if he could do that,
one would have to conclude that he had done nothing wrong. This is the
sense which attaches to a right’s being inalienable: a violation can be
considered a wrong precisely because the injured party retains his
right in the matter.
Therefore: yes, “an individual still has rights when the State denies
that they do”. Rights are not in the gift of the State. Indeed, States
are founded to protect rights. That, historically, they have lamentably
failed to do so does not undermine the principle. And of course “the
Jews retained their rights all the while being lead to the gas chambers”.
That is exactly why the Holocaust was so wicked. Their rights were
being grossly violated: but those rights could not be removed.
As to the notion of rights being “self-evident”: it is perhaps an
unfortunate choice of term. Still, it is a useful shorthand for
expressing an interesting feature of rights: that people will
independently devise remarkably similar, if not identical, lists of
rights if asked to do so. This arises from common features of human
experience: we all want not to be murdered or raped or robbed, etcetera.
So, if not self-evident, rights are at least evident upon brief
consideration.
The connection of rights with universal features of human experience
also accounts for the principle of equality, without any need for appeal
to a “Deist God”. A so-called “right” not held in common with all
mankind is more properly called a “privilege”.
I would agree that rights are rooted in the Will. In a sense, we have
only one right (which manifests in various ways): personal autonomy.
There are many who lived happily under the Nazi regime, and gladly surrendered their freedoms. They certainly would disagree with your assertion about “rights”.
They willed to be lead and degraded for the name of what they saw as a higher purpose. That was their choice, and their concept of rights were vastly different than yours.
One need merely look at the Spartans and their tradition of placing infants on mountainsides to see that “rights” are entirely subjective and based on the perspective of the people.
Being disagreed with by happy Nazis is not exactly distressing.
People can say that they are surrendering freedoms (people can say anything): this does not legitimate taking them up on the offer. If a lunatic asks me to brutally murder him, I’ll still be arrested if I comply.
Mainly different by virtue of being wrong.
People can have false beliefs about all sorts of objective facts, and about well-grounded subjective opinions. There is a distinction between what is the case, and what is thought to be the case. The Earth wasn’t flat even when most people thought it was so.
While I’m not sure that the notion of rights espoused in the declaration of independence is a very useful one, I don’t think that we ought to toss out the concept of rights all together. Nor should we assume that there isn’t a reasonable basis upon which we have founded the concept of human rights.
History has shown that rights can be trampled and violated, and that horrible things can be done to innocent people. That doesn’t mean that the rights have disappeared, just that they are being ignored. We still recognise the fact that those people still had the right to not be gassed, ins’t that why people are still so outraged about what happened?
Shredding the universal declaration of human rights is most definitely not the most reasonable course of action. Whether or not rights exist is a philosophical argument, and not a very interesting one at that. The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a political not a philosophical document, and so whether or not a philosopher deems that rights don’t “exist” is really sterile, and completely beside the point. Not to mention the fact that you’ve attacked rights as set out in the declaration of independence, then switched and attacked the UN declaration.
Whether or not rights physically, or really, exist in philosophy, they are a useful way to express the basic sort of treatment that we would like to see any human receive as a function of being human. Your concept of a will to happiness fails to do better than the concept of human rights on two counts:
happiness is mentioned nowehere in the text of the UN declaration - it is not an espoused goal of the declaration. Replacing a right to safety of the person, with a will to personal safety is ridiculous. Replacing a right to not be tortured with a will to not be tortured is also ridiculous.
the claim here is that humans deserve these things because they are human, not because they want them or have a will to them.
Different cultures have had different concepts of rights. Some have had no such concept at all. How can one say that they’re wrong and we’re right if the idea of the ‘right’ has never been put to the test?
The idea of rights is based entirely on a cultural perspective. In a culture without the concept of rights, rights do not exist. They’re basically an excuse for intellectual laziness.
If ‘rights’ do exist, they’re entirely dependent upon who is doing the granting of them. They cannot be quantified as a natural property.
1. happiness is mentioned nowehere in the text of the UN declaration - it is not an espoused goal of the declaration. Replacing a right to safety of the person, with a will to personal safety is ridiculous. Replacing a right to not be tortured with a will to not be tortured is also ridiculous.
How so? The masochist would disagree with you - he wants to be tortured, and does not believe that he has a right not to be tortured, so long as he wishes it.
EDIT: To borrow a page from N’s book, rights do not actually correspond to anything in physical reality. They do not refer to an actual property of a human being, but instead to an ideal-concept. Cultures which lack this ideal-concept simply do not recognize rights, and thus for them they do not exist.
You’ve offered exactly the same argument as you did to a previous objection.
Apart from the incredibly obvious objection that most masochists want to be tortured in a different context than the one discussed in the UN charter, the real objection is that just because certain people don’t recognize the right, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Though rights don’t exist for certain cultures, that doesn’t even begin to prove that rights don’t exist. Some cultures also don’t have the concept of logic, does that also mean that logic doesn’t exist?
The rights as expressed in the declaration of independence are certainly not self-evident. William Talbott’s great book WHICH RIGHTS SHOULD BE UNIVERAL addresses this. In Talbott’s view, the reason that they were referred to as self-evident is because, at the time of their writing, the proof paradigm was very much in vogue. Old beliefs were rejected along with the Enlightenment etc etc and one way in which the founding fathers could appear philosophically justified would be an appeal to self-evidence, in order to fit their ideas with the proof paradigm.
Anyway, I definitely recommend Talbott’s excellent book.
In a very practical sense, the notion of “rights” is put to the test on a daily basis. In every culture, for instance, murders occur. Are you saying that in cultures without the concept of “rights”, victims passively stand there while they’re being stabbed, and are unaware that something wrong is happening? Just because a culture fails to formally codify rights, it does not mean that the individuals of which it is comprised do not understand the concept.
Who would choose to live in a culture without the idea of rights? Life in such circumstances would be “nasty, poor, brutish … and short”. Are brutal dictators wrong to behave as they do? If an adherence to Cultural Relativism prevents you from saying that they are, it might be thought “lazy” not to reconsider that doctrine.
That’s like claiming that “truth” is entirely dependent upon who is affirming a proposition. No-one is saying that all rights-claims must be allowed: they require justification. And what’s so special about “quantification”? People care more about qualitative distinctions. I’d rather meet someone who had a false belief about the mass of the electron (a matter subject to “objective” verification) than someone who had a false belief about the moral status of murder.
everyone has the right to live in accordance with the laws set out by our government. that doesn’t irritate me. i don’t want(need) to steal anything(be it someones possesions, someones body, someones life) so my actions are rarely limited by the government. i am as free as i can be in a civilized society without breaking any laws (i don’t think smoking weed is any of the governments business) but i still won’t do it in front of the police station.
There are no “rights” - Its a bad concept and one people who regard themselves as lefty or “progressive” should drop (I’m assuming most right wingers are gonna be against them any way!)
Don’t go asking people to “grant” you things (out of “the good of their heart”) - Go and get em - individually or collectively - “rights” are just another word for concessions wrested through struggle.
The existence of a right is not contingent upon its political recognition.
If your local government fails to recognize your rights and violates them, it does not mean that you no longer possess those rights–it simply means that the government is wrong and acting illegitimately.
As the eminent 20th-century Russian-American philosopher Ayn Rand proved, the source of man’s rights is his fundamental nature as a creature that must act in his own rational self-interest to ensure his survival.
“Self-evident” does not mean “able to be perceived by the senses”–it just means that they are obvious. I agree that they are not self-evident; otherwise everyone would accept the objective fact that they do exist–but that is not the case, so even though they do exist, their existence is not self-evident.
