tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post114525869601485655..comments2023-10-29T10:32:36.914-04:00Comments on Philosophy, et cetera: The Conceptual Development of 'Rights'Richard Y Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1145751058437517842006-04-22T20:10:00.000-04:002006-04-22T20:10:00.000-04:00"Natural Law" and "Natural Rights" are an attempt ..."Natural Law" and "Natural Rights" are an attempt to ground morality in something other than human nature, even though Aquinas writes of the natural law in S.T. as based on man's rational nature (which he fails to mention is not the only nature). But then the natural law is grounded in the Eternal Law, and when the two conflict, then the ET trumps. It's all crap.<BR/><BR/>"Rights" are precisely those claims which the individual does NOT grant to government. To think of them in any other sense is nonsense.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1145499264072599492006-04-19T22:14:00.000-04:002006-04-19T22:14:00.000-04:00Do you think so? One could sensibly talk about the...Do you think so? One could sensibly talk about theft violating one's (natural or legal) rights, of course. But to say a thief has committed a <I>human rights</I> violation sounds extremely odd to my ear. Perhaps we have different concepts in mind. But mine is more in line with Pogge's: a <I>human right</I> is a right specifically against the <I>government</I>.Richard Y Chappellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1145490511716568532006-04-19T19:48:00.000-04:002006-04-19T19:48:00.000-04:00"Victims of theft aren't said to have had their "h...<I>"Victims of theft aren't said to have had their "human rights" violated; not unless this arbitrary confiscation of property was undertaken by government agents acting in an official capacity, or some such. "</I><BR/><BR/>But the fact we don't talk that way doesn't mean our human rights aren't violated. Especially in the United States I think people would say the right to property (within reason) is a right and that theft is wrong precisely because it infringes on that right. It's just that theft-talk is older that rights-talk and thus rhetorically trumps the later talk.Clark Goblehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03876620613578404474noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1145424298416032382006-04-19T01:24:00.000-04:002006-04-19T01:24:00.000-04:00While plausible, I'm not really convinced that the...While plausible, I'm not really convinced that the move from natural law to natural rights was one of a narrowing of morality, because I'm not convinced that it had anything to do with morality. Natural law theory is not a theory of morality; it is a theory of practical reason (qua authoritative). No serious natural law theorist, so far as I know, had ever identified morality with natural law; the latter just identifies the framework of obligations that practical reason identifies. Likewise, it seems to me that natural rights theory was never considered a theory of morality by natural rights theorists; it was a theory of social justice.<BR/><BR/>I haven't read Pogge's argument, but the claim that God has no natural rights, taken as indicating something about natural-rights idiom, seems odd to me. For instance, it is explicitly rejected by Spinoza, and, it would seem, by Locke. The reasoning given, that natural rights were proposed as having to do with harms and benefits to the rightsholder appears to me to be an anachronism, unless Pogge is attributing it to something in the nineteenth century. It isn't early modern natural rights theory, which is better characterized as holding that rights follow from certain kinds of <I>powers</I>, e.g., Locke argues that makers have certain rights over what they make, simply in virtue of the fact that they made it. That is, to put it very, very roughly and crudely, unlike later utilitarian theories of natural rights, rights are not had in virtue of one's passivity, but in virtue of one's activities. If I recall correctly, in fact, Locke argues that human beings have no right to harm each other because harming other human beings violates <I>God's</I> rights.Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.com