Volume 3, 2007
Human Rights
Donald V. Poochigain
Pages 131-135
Human Nature and Human Rights
Human rights are universally accepted duties to one another as persons which make possible all other human relations. In order to get along in the world beings are grouped and treated as equal, distinctions being made only when an individual is familiar. Treatment of beings according to their general characteristics constitutes natural or species rights of which human rights are an instance. Such rights are an abstraction, an average of the behavior of all group members, extreme deviation from which is disregarded as pathological. Encompassed in human rights are welfare considerations as well as freedoms, all together establishing a minimal condition of life which everyone owes every other.