Natural Rights

Part of a Festschrift for Fred Miller, this essay reconsiders Miller's interpretation of Aristotle in terms of natural rights. After defending Miller against his numerous critics, I draw a somewhat different lesson from his interpretation than he himself does: Miller helps us to see that an Aristotelian theory of justice can do all the work that we would reasonably want a theory of rights to do while avoiding significant problems that the idiom and rhetoric of rights tend to generate.

In this book Billy Christmas advances an interpretation of justice grounded in a distinctive theory of property. Christmas’ account of property is at the same time pluralistic – it justifies various forms of property of external objects – and grounded in one original natural right: the right to freedom. Indeed, one main take-away of the book is that freedom as non-interference does not only justify private property: it can also justify common property.

Lays out an account of the origins and development of liberal political and economic theoryIncludes case studies that cover thinkers and ideas from the English Civil War through to liberalism's first encounters with socialism Provides comparative analysis of distinct intellectual traditions including English natural rights theory, the Scottish Enlightenment, Victorian-era utilitarianism and classical political economyIntegrates history of economic thinking into broader milieu of modern political, moral and natural philosophyExamines secondary literature and research from a range of disciplinary areas including political (...) theory, modern intellectual history, economic thought and modern British history and philosophyThis book re-examines the philosophical roots of classical liberal political economy, as well as addressing the relationship between the empire and liberalism. It proposes an interpretive model based upon the interconnection between distinct theories of natural rights and the harmony of interests. It takes a fresh look at classical liberalism by exploring economic arguments in thinkers like Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Paine, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, who are not typically viewed as economic thinkers, and by highlighting the importance of Bernard Mandeville and Adam Smith in the development of interest-based liberalism. It also re-examines lesser-known economic tracts by thinkers such as John Locke, David Hume and John Stuart Mill in light of their more well-known political writings. With classical liberal assumptions still prominent in contemporary debates about economic justice, it is vital for every democratic citizen to understand the complex origins and development of the ideas that did so much to shape our world today. (shrink)

This book gives an account of a full spectrum of property rights and their relationship to individual liberty. It shows that a purely deontological approach to justice can deal with the most complex questions regarding the property system. Moreover, the author considers the economic, ecological, and technological complexities of our real-world property systems. The result is a more conceptually sound account of natural rights and the property system they demand. If we think that liberty should be at the centre of (...) justice, what does that mean for the property system? Economists and lawyers widely agree that a property system must be composed of many different types of property: the kind of private ownership one has over one's person and immediate possessions, as well as the kinds of common ownership we each have in our local streets, as well as many more. However, theories of property and justice have not given anything approaching an adequate account of the relationship between liberty and any other form of property other than private ownership. It is often thought that a basic commitment to liberty cannot really tell us how to arrange the major complexities of the property system, which diverge from simple private ownership. Property and Justice demonstrates how philosophical rigour coupled with interdisciplinary engagement enables us to think clearly about how to deal with real-world problems. It will be of interest to political philosophers, political theorists, and legal theorists working on property rights and justice. (shrink)

Consciousness, which is one of the central issues of German idealism, has received various interpretations among German philosophers. Assuming the thing-in-itself, Kant presented consciousness in pieces and presented it in the form of three critiques. After him, Reinholt and Schultze, by criticizing the thing-in-itself, provided the ground for a new interpretation of consciousness by Fichte. Fichte with approval Schultze's critique of the thing-in-itself, rightly gathered consciousness into the unity of the absolute subject. He then gave a revolutionary interpretation of how (...) consciousness develops by creating a dialectical relationship between consciousness, self-consciousness, and intersubjectivity. In this article, we try to explain Fichte's interpretation of consciousness according to the relationship that he establishes between consciousness, self-consciousness and intersubjectivity, and to present the calendar of consciousness and self-consciousness in the political situation. He first argues that consciousness logically requires an order in which self-consciousness provides its development and He then considers the order in consciousness as dependent on the creation of a relationship that occurs in the process of recognition between subjects. (shrink)

Human rights are thought to guarantee pluralism by protecting individual liberty from imposed religious conceptions of virtue. Yet critics often argue that this secular focus on merely avoiding violations can also enable unfettered individualism and undermine appeals to the common good. This book uncovers in secular rights pioneer Hugo Grotius a rights theory that points toward the enlargement of individual responsibility. It grounds this connection in Grotius' unexplored theological corpus, which reveals a dual metaethics and jurisprudence. Here a deontological natural (...) law undergirds a secular theory of rights that is self-aware of its own limitations. A teleological practical reason then guides the exercise of these rights, so as not to compromise the political order that defends them. The book then illustrates this symbiosis of rights and responsibilities in five areas: consent theories of government, rights of rebellion, criminal punishment, war and international responsibility, and Atonement theology. This reassesses Grotius' legacy as a secularist opponent of classical political thought, and suggests that modern liberalism and universal human rights are compatible with a world of resurgent religion. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the morality of two types of national security electronic surveillance (SIGINT) programs: the analysis of communication “metadata” and dragnet searches for keywords in electronic communication. The chapter develops a standard for assessing coercive government action based on respect for the autonomy of inhabitants of liberal states and argues that both types of SIGINT can potentially meet this standard. That said, the collection of metadata creates opportunities for abuse of power, and so judgments about the trustworthiness and competence (...) of the government engaging in the collection must be made in order to decide whether metadata collection is justified in a particular state. Further, the moral standard proposed has a reflexive element justifying adversary states’ intelligence collection against one another. Therefore, high-tech forms of SIGINT can only be justified at the cost of justifying cruder versions of signals intelligence collection practiced by a state’s less-advanced adversaries. (shrink)

The purpose of this analysis is to widen and clarify the debate which arose during the last years around granting patents (and other ownership rights) upon different methods and mechanisms of manipulating and engineering life. In doing so, I draw a limited, prima facie argument against many sorts of entitlements or granting rights to those capable of manipulating life at its core level. The general tendency nowadays is to put pressure on the institutional setting in order to accept and promote (...) the manipulation of life as a novel discovery and invention, i.e. to grant patents. I will argue why this is not only socially risky, but also morally doubtful. (shrink)

Hugo Grotius (1583—1645) Hugo Grotius was a Dutch humanist and jurist whose philosophy of natural law had a major impact on the development of seventeenth century political thought and on the moral theories of the Enlightenment. Valorized by contemporary international theorists as the father of international law, his work on sovereignty, international rights of commerce […].

: Many people have lamented the proliferation of human rights claims. The cure for this problem, it may be thought, would be to develop a theory that can distinguish ‘real’ from ‘supposed’ human rights. I argue, however, that the proliferation of human rights mirrors a deep problem in human rights theory itself. Contemporary theories of natural rights to welfare are historical descendants from a theory of rights to subsistence which was developed in twelfth-century Europe. According to this theory, each human (...) being has a special role to fulfil in God's plan and therefore has inalienable rights to subsist. Later theories have secularized this idea by claiming that human beings are purposive agents. Secularization, however, comes at a price. In the case of these theories, the price is a failure to provide satisfactory answers to the most basic questions we would expect of a theory of natural rights to answer. They have failed to provide a basis for ascribing these rights to all and only to human beings. They have not been able to generate a clear and viable criterion for ascribing duties correlative to these rights. And they cannot limit rights-claims in a non-arbitrary way. Hence we should abandon these theories. (shrink)

Research Articles Eric Mack, Social Philosophy and Policy, FirstView Article.

This paper argues that the founding fathers of the tradition of Scottish Enlightenment natural jurisprudence, Gersholm Carmichael (1672–1729) and Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746), articulated a view of rights that is pertinent to the contemporary dominance of the language of rights. Maintaining a metaphysical foundation for rights while drawing upon the early-modern Protestant natural law tradition, their conception of rights is more significantly indebted to the pre-modern scholastic natural law tradition than often realized. This is illustrated by exploring some of the background (...) to their respective theories of rights, detailing the precise reasoning that Carmichael and Hutcheson brought to bear upon their conception of rights, and then exploring their application of their understanding of rights to the question of property. (shrink)

Spinoza's use of the phrase “sui iuris” in the Tractatus Politicus gives rise to the following paradox. On the one hand, one is said to be sui iuris to the extent that one is rational; and to the extent that one is rational, one will steadfastly obey the laws of the state. However, Spinoza also states that to the extent that one adheres to the laws of the state, one is not sui iuris, but rather stands under the power [sub (...) potestate] of the state (TP 3/5). It seems, then, that to the extent that one is sui iuris, one will not, in fact, be sui iuris. In this paper, I offer an interpretation of Spinoza's notion of being sui iuris that enables us to overcome this paradox and sheds light on Spinoza's relationship to the republican tradition. I work towards this goal by distinguishing between two ways in which Spinoza uses the locution, which correspond to two different conceptions of power: potentia and potestas. This distinction not only allows us to save Spinoza from internal inconsistency, it also enables us to see one important way in which Spinoza stands outside of the republican tradition, since he conceives of liberty not as constituted by independence, or citizenship in a res publica, but as being sui iuris in the first sense described above: being powerful. (shrink)

This article examines the character of Scanlon’s contractualism as presented in What We Owe to Each Other . I offer a range of reasons for thinking of Scanlon’s contractualism as a species of natural rights theorizing. I argue that to affirm the principle that actions are wrongful if and only if they are disallowed by principles that people could not reasonably reject is equivalent to affirming a natural right (of an admittedly non-standard sort) against being subject to such reasonably disallowed (...) actions. I argue that Scanlon’s invocation of the value of human life can be seen as an attempted grounding for this principle that is akin to standard natural rights attempts to ground fundamental rights. Lastly, I argue that the invocation of the value of human life does not in fact well support the sort of requirement of justifiability to others that characterizes this contractualist variant on natural rights theorizing; if anything, it better supports the sort of ascriptions of rights characteristic of traditional natural rights theorizing. Key Words: contractualism • natural rights • justifiability to others • wrongfulness. (shrink)

The Euthyphro problem and the natural law : an investigation of some aspects of the medieval debate on natural law -- Aristotle : natural law and man in the "metaxy" -- St. Thomas Aquinas : the "lex naturalis" -- Thomas Hobbes : The state of nature and natural rights -- John Locke : natural law, natural rights and God -- Concluding remarks and a heavenly dialogue.

Does one have an obligation to keep one’s promises? I answer this question by distinguishing between two broad conceptions of promising. On the normativized conception of promising, a promise is made when an agent validly offers to undertake an obligation to the promisee to perform some act (i.e., give up a liberty-right in relation to her) and the promisee validly accepts the offer. Keeping such promises is morally obligatory by definition. On the non- normativized conception, the nature of promising does (...) not conceptually entail any connection with the obligation to keep promises. A promise might be understood, for example, as an assertion that one will do something along with special assurance that one will do so and an invitation to rely on that assurance. A particularly attractive and relevant non-normativized account of promising takes promising simply to be giving one’s word concerning one’s future conduct. So understood, it is plausible—as a substantive matter—that one has an obligation to (1) alert the promisee, if one realizes that he will not perform the promised action, (2) apologize and compensate the promisee, if one does not perform the action, but one has no obligation to perform the promised action. (shrink)

Natural rights theorists such as John Locke and Robert Nozick provide arguments for limited government that are grounded on the individual's possession of natural rights to life, liberty, and property. Resting on natural rights, such arguments can be no more persuasive than the underlying arguments for the existence of such rights, which are notoriously weak. In this article, John Hasnas offers an alternative conception of natural rights, “empirical natural rights,” that are not beset by the objections typically raised against traditional (...) natural rights. Empirical natural rights are rights that evolve in the state of nature rather than those that individuals are antecedently endowed with in that state. Professor Hasnas argues that empirical natural rights are true natural rights, that is, pre-political rights with natural grounds that can be possessed in the state of nature, and that, when taken together, they form a close approximation of the Lockean rights to life, liberty, and property. He furthers argues that empirical natural rights are normatively well-grounded because respecting them is productive of social peace, which possesses instrumental moral value regardless of one's conception inherent value. Professor Hasnas thus offers his conception of rights as solved problems as an alternative and potentially more secure footing for the traditional natural rights arguments for limited government associated with Locke and Nozick. Footnotesa I wish to thank my fellow contributors to this volume, Ellen Frankel Paul, and Ann C. Tunstall of SciLucent, LLC, for their exceedingly helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay, and Annette Hasnas for the keen insight she provided into how human beings behave in the state of nature. (shrink)

If we have a natural right to liberty, it is hard to see how a state could be legitimate without first obtaining the (genuine) consent of the governed. I consider the threat natural rights pose to state legitimacy. I distinguish minimal from full legitimacy and explore different understandings of the nature of our natural rights. Even though I conclude that natural rights do threaten the full legitimacy of states, I suggest that understanding our natural right to liberty to be grounded (...) in our interests in a certain way might not commit us to requiring consent for minimal legitimacy. Thus, even if natural rights effectively block the full legitimacy of states - on the assumption that rarely, if ever, the requisite consent will be forthcoming - they may allow minimal state legitimacy. Footnotesa I am grateful to my fellow contributors to this volume and to other readers for helpful questions and comments on an earlier version of this essay and in particular to Fred Miller, David Schmidtz, and John Simmons for written comments. Ellen Paul's detailed comments have helped me, as always, to correct many confusions and errors, and Harry Dolan's excellent editing has discovered others that I have endeavored to address. (shrink)

This collection of essays is dedicated to the memory of the late Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick, who died in 2002. The publication of Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia in 1974 revived serious interest in natural rights liberalism, which, beginning in the latter half of the eighteenth century, had been eclipsed by a succession of antithetical political theories including utilitarianism, progressivism, and various egalitarian and collectivist ideologies. Some of our contributors critique Nozick's political philosophy. Other contributors examine earlier figures in the (...) liberal tradition, most notably John Locke, whose Second Treatise of Government, published in the late seventeenth century, profoundly influenced the American founders. The remaining authors analyze natural rights liberalism's central doctrines. (shrink)

Robert Nozick worked in a Lockean tradition of political philosophy, a tradition with deep resonance in the American political culture. This paper attempts to explore the formative moments of that culture and at the same time to clarify the role of Lockean philosophy in the American Revolution. One of the currently dominant approaches to the revolution emphasizes the colonists' commitments to their rights, but identifies the relevant rights as “the rights of Englishmen,” not natural rights in the Lockean mode. This (...) approach misses, however, the way the Americans construed their positive or constitutional rights in the light of a Lockean background theory. In a word, the Americans recreated an amalgam of traditional constitutional principles and Lockean philosophy, an amalgam that nearly guaranteed that they and the British would speak past each other. The ambiguities and uncertainties of the British constitution as extended to the colonies provided an incentive to the Americans (but not the British) to look to Locke as a guide to their rights, thereby helping win a place for Lockean theory in American political thinking. (shrink)

Non-consequentialist libertarianism usually revolves around the claim that there are only “negative,” not “positive,” rights. Libertarian nega- tive-rights theories are so patently problematic, though, that it seems that there is a more fundamental notion at work. Some libertarians think this basic idea is freedom or liberty; others, that it is self-ownership. Neither approach is satis- factory.

TO assert that one should come to terms with the past if one wants to understand the present would be to underline the obvious. And yet, even though we know much more of the history of natural rights theories now, especially of the origin of these theories before the seventeenth century, than we did, say, twenty years ago, this increase in knowledge seems to have had little impact on contemporary philosophical discussions about the nature of rights. Sometimes it seems that (...) philosophers, especially the more analytically minded ones, regard the history of ideas as a separate subject with little or no relevance to their research. One of the reasons might be a tendency to regard conceptual analysis of rights as being relatively impartial between different theories in which these concepts might function. Even those who would allow for a close connection between a certain conception of the nature of rights and a theory of rights would find it prudent to distinguish more or less sharply between the question of what it means to have a right on the one hand, and the question which rights we have on the other hand. I would like to suggest that concepts of rights are the concepts of a theory and that we need to understand the theories from which they have emerged in order to fully understand contemporary rights language. One way of making this claim plausible would be to focus on an issue that has become central to contemporary debates about rights, that is, the conception of the rights-holder as a sovereign individual. I believe that our notion of individual sovereignty wavers between two quite different conceptions of sovereignty. The difference between the two will become obvious if we consider the relation between moral rights and more general moral obligations that people might have. I will then draw attention to a recent account of the history of natural rights theories. The point of doing so is this: if the account is true, then we have to acknowledge that ‘our’ ideas of natural rights (and especially of the sovereignty that people are supposed to possess according to these theories) have.... (shrink)

The author argues the concept of human rights is a development of the older notion of natural rights and that the modern understanding of natural rights evolved in the context of the European struggle to legitimate its overseas empires. The French Revolution changed this by, in effect, linking human rights to the idea of citizenship. Human rights were thus tied not only to a specific ethical-legal code but also implicitly to a particular kind of political system, both of inescapably European (...) origin. In both cases, however, being employed was an underlying idea of universality whose origins are to be found in the Greek and Roman idea of a common law for all humanity. He ends by arguing that to defend human rights against its non-Western critics, one must be aware of the genealogy of the concept and then be prepared to endorse an essentially Western European understanding of the human. (shrink)

In Natural Right and History Leo Strauss argues for the continuing “relevance” of the classical understanding of natural right. Since this relevance is not a matter of a direct return, or a renewed appreciation that a neglected doctrine is simply true, the meaning of this claim is some- what elusive. But it is clear enough that the core of Strauss’s argument for that relevance is a claim about the relation between human experience and philosophy. Strauss argues that the classical understanding (...) articulates and is continuous with the “lived experience” of engaged participants in political life, the ordinary, and he argues (in a way quite similar to claims in Heidegger) that such an ordinary or everyday point of view has been “lost.” The author presents here an interpretation and critique of such a claim. (shrink)

An important figure in the natural law tradition and in the Scottish Enlightenment, Gershom Carmichael defended a strong theory of rights and drew attention to Grotius, Pufendorf, and Locke. Gershom Carmichael was a teacher and writer who played an important role in the Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. His philosophy focused on the natural rights of individuals--the natural right to defend oneself, to own the property on which one has labored, and to services contracted for with others. Carmichael argued (...) that slavery is incompatible with the rights of men and citizens, and he believed that subjects have the right to resist rulers who exceed the limits of their powers. Although he appealed to the authority of Grotius and Locke, the grounds on which he defended natural rights were distinctively his own. He drew upon the Reformed or Presbyterian theology to propose that, in respecting the natural rights of individuals, one shows one’s reverence for God’s creation. Inasmuch as all of mankind longs for lasting happiness, which can be found only in worship of or reverence for God, such reverence is the natural law which obliges all to respect the rights of all. Natural Rights includes Supplements and Observations on Pufendorf (1724), Natural Theology (1729), Logic (1722), two theses, and a manuscript on teaching, all in English for the first time. Gershom Carmichael (1672-1729) was the first professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow, preceding Hutcheson, Smith, and Reid. James Moore is Professor of Political Science at Concordia University in Montreal. Michael Silverthorne is Honorary University Fellow in the School of Classics at the University of Exeter. Knud Haakonssen is Professor of Intellectual History and Director of the Centre for Intellectual History at the University of Sussex, England. (shrink)

Whether or not Strauss's observation is historically accurate, it does suggest two sets of questions for philosophical examination. (1) Is Strauss correct to view natural duties and natural rights as the same type of ethical concept? Do they serve the same function? Do they work on the same level, and are they necessarily in competition with each other? (2) Does saying that the individual human being is the center of the moral world require that one reject the idea of a (...) human end, or telos? Does accepting the ethical centrality of a human telos require that one reject ethical individualism? Are they mutually exclusive?Footnotes* For criticism, we are grateful to the other contributors to this volume and to its editors, as well as Paul Gaffney. (shrink)

This paper shows that the perceived difference between utilitarianism and natural rights theories in the eighteenth century was much less sharp than that in the twentieth century. This is demonstrated by exploring Josiah Tucker's critique of Locke and his disciples and the way in which the latter responded to it. Tucker's critique of Locke was based on a sharp distinction between a conception of natural rights as individual entitlements and the conception of the public good. The disciples of Locke did (...) not share Tucker's views and his interpretation of Locke. In defending natural rights they appealed less to the notion of moral agency and more to utilitarian ideas. The extent to which the advocates of the rights of man employed utilitarian ideas is obscured by the fact that they never divested themselves of the political advantage of using the words ‘natural rights’ even when their arguments were closer to the principle of utility. (shrink)

Before going any further, something should be said about the word "natural" that appears in my title. Miller distinguishes two ways in which rights can be called natural, and holds that Aristotle recognizes natural rights in one sense but not the other. First, "natural" can be contrasted with "conventional," "legal," and "customary." This is the familiar distinction the Greeks made between physis and nomos. Aristotle makes use of the distinction when he contrasts natural and legal justice. According to Miller, Aristotle (...) has a theory of natural rights in the sense that he has a theory of natural justice that serves as the basis for his recognition of rights. It is naturally and not merely legally just that certain people be treated in certain ways; they have a valid claim, based on natural justice, to such treatment, and this claim is valid whether or not it is recognized by a legal system. On the other hand, the term "natural right" can also be used in a second way, to designate a right that is possessed in a state of nature, that is, at a time prior to the existence of political communities. Miller holds that Aristotle does not recognize natural rights of this sort, but as he points out, this would not prevent Aristotle from recognizing natural rights in the first sense. The natural rights Miller finds in Aristotle are not possessed by all people at all times; rather, his thesis is that when the polis does come into existence, Aristotelian natural justice requires that political systems be structured in ways that recognize the rights of certain human beings. More specifically, when the polis arises, certain people have a natural right to hold various political offices and to own property. (shrink)

Not everyone agreed with Barker when he wrote those words. Few students of the Politics would agree with him today. Disagreement comes from different sides. On one hand--the "rights" hand, one might call it--Karl Popper argued in 1945 in The Open Society and its Enemies that Aristotle's essentialism was less interesting than Platonism but equally congenial to modern totalitarianism. On the other hand--call it the "anti-rights" hand --scholars such as Alasdair MacIntyre and the legal historian Michel Villey would have it (...) that the whole modern conception of rights, especially human or natural rights, is a pernicious fabrication of the Enlightenment, with roots going back no further than the similarly pernicious nominalism of William of Ockham. As far as the current consensus is concerned, then, whether one favors rights or not, and whether one admires Aristotle or not, there are no rights--or at least no individual natural rights--in Aristotle. (shrink)

Today talk of rights is very much in vogue both in philosophical and popular ethics; so much so that it is common to find even philosophers unabashedly going straight to discussing what rights we have without touching on what their foundation might be. This is so in spite of there being a time-honoured tradition of scepticism about rights, conceived as ‘natural’ ones, going back at least to Jeremy Bentham. The present paper is intended as a contribution to this sceptical tradition (...) for I shall try to prove that there are no natural rights or that nobody is the holder of any such right. (shrink)