Natural rights are a theory of universal rights that are seen as inherent in the nature of people and not contingent on human actions or beliefs. Universalism refers to any concept or doctrine that applies to all persons and/or all things for all times and in all situations, and may mean different things depending on the field: see Universalism For Universal truth, see Universality (philosophy) For Universal ethic, see Universal ethic, Moral universalism or Moral... In jurisprudence and law, a right is the legal or moral entitlement to do or refrain from doing something or to obtain or refrain from obtaining an action, thing or recognition in civil society. ... Animal liberation redirects here. ... Manifestations Slavery · Racial profiling · Lynching Hate speech · Hate crime · Hate groups Genocide · Holocaust · Pogrom Ethnocide · Ethnic cleansing · Race war Religious persecution · Gay bashing Movements Discriminatory Aryanism · Neo-Nazism · Supremacism Fundamentalism · Kahanism Anti-discriminatory Abolitionism · Civil rights · Gay rights Womens/Universal suffrage · Mens rights Childrens rights · Youth rights... Civil rights or positive rights are those legal rights retained by citizens and protected by the government. ... The term collective rights refers to rights which are held and exercised by all the people collectively, or by specific subsets of the people. ... The Fathers rights movement can be seen as part of the mens movement and/or the parents movement, it emerged in the 1970s as a loose social movement providing a network of interest groups, primarily in western countries. ... The gay rights movement is a collection of loosely aligned civil rights groups, human rights groups, support groups and political activists seeking acceptance, tolerance and equality for non-heterosexual, (homosexual, bisexual), and transgender people - despite the fact that it is typically referred to as the gay rights movement, members also... Group rights are rights that all members of a group have by virtue of being in that group. ... Human rights are rights which some hold to be inalienable and belonging to all humans. ... The term inalienable rights (or unalienable rights) refers to a set of human rights that are in some sense fundamental, are not awarded by human power, and cannot be surrendered. ... Individual rights represent the moral rights of individuals in society prior to government. ... In modern English and European systems of jurisprudence and law, a right is the legal or moral entitlement to do or refrain from doing something or to obtain or refrain from obtaining an action, thing or recognition in civil society. ... This box:      Mens Rights involves the promotion of male equality, rights, and freedoms in society. ... Within the philosophy of human rights, some philosophers and political scientists make a distinction between negative and positive rights. ... Reproductive rights (also Procreative liberty) refers to human rights in areas of sexual reproduction, including the rights to reproduce (such as opposition to forced sterilization) as well as rights not to reproduce (such as support for access to birth control and abortion), the right to privacy, medical coverage, right to... Social rights refer to what are usually positive rights, which ensure to all people a fair standard of treatment. ... The division of human rights into three generations was initially proposed in 1979 by the Czech jurist Karel Vasak at the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg. ... The term women’s rights typically refers to freedoms inherently possessed by women and girls of all ages, which may be institutionalized or ignored and/or illegitimately suppressed by law or custom in a particular society. ... Labor rights or workers rights are a group of legal rights and claimed human rights having to do with labor relations between workers and their employers, usually obtained under labor and employment law. ... Manifestations Slavery · Racial profiling · Lynching Hate speech · Hate crime · Hate groups Genocide · Holocaust · Pogrom Ethnocide · Ethnic cleansing · Race war Religious persecution · Gay bashing Pedophobia · Ephebiphobia Movements Discriminatory Aryanism · Neo-Nazism · Supremacism Kahanism Anti-discriminatory Abolitionism · Civil rights · Gay rights Womens/Universal suffrage · Mens rights Childrens rights · Youth... This article needs additional references or sources for verification. ... In jurisprudence and law, a right is the legal or moral entitlement to do or refrain from doing something or to obtain or refrain from obtaining an action, thing or recognition in civil society. ...

One theory of natural rights was developed from the theory of natural law during the Enlightenment in opposition to the divine right of kings, and provided a moral justification for liberalism. Natural law or the law of nature (Latin: lex naturalis) is an ethical theory that posits the existence of a law whose content is set by nature and that therefore has validity everywhere. ... The Enlightenment (French: ; German: ; Italian: ; Spanish: ; Portuguese: ) was an eighteenth century movement in European and American philosophy — some classifications also include 17th century philosophy (usually called the Age of Reason). ... The Divine Right of Kings is a European political and religious doctrine of political absolutism. ... Liberalism is an ideology, philosophical view, and political tradition which holds that liberty is the primary political value. ...

The concept of a natural right can be contrasted with the concept of a legal right: A natural right is one that is claimed to exist even when it is not enforced by the government or society as a whole, while a legal right is a right specifically created by the government or society, for the benefit of its members. The question of which rights are natural and which are legal is an important one in philosophy and politics. Critics of the concept of natural rights argue that all humans rights are legal rights, while proponents of the concept of natural rights in countries such as the United States assert that founding documents like the American Declaration of Independence and social contracts like the Constitution of the United States make natural rights valid by implication. In modern English and European systems of jurisprudence and law, a right is the legal or moral entitlement to do or refrain from doing something or to obtain or refrain from obtaining an action, thing or recognition in civil society. ... For other uses, see Society (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Philosophy (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Politics (disambiguation). ... The United States Declaration of Independence was an act of the Second Continental Congress, adopted on July 4, 1776, which declared that the Thirteen Colonies in North America were Free and Independent States and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to... Page I of the Constitution of the United States of America Page II of the United States Constitution Page III of the United States Constitution Page IV of the United States Constitution The Syng inkstand, with which the Constitution was signed The Constitution of the United States is the supreme...

The idea of human rights descended from that of natural rights; some recognize no difference between the two and regard both as labels for the same thing while others choose to keep the terms separate to eliminate association with some features traditionally associated with natural rights.^[1] Natural rights, in particular, are the rights of the individual, and considered beyond the authority of a future government or international body to dismiss. Human rights are rights which some hold to be inalienable and belonging to all humans. ... As commonly used, individual refers to a person or to any specific object in a collection. ... An international organization (also called intergovernmental organization) is an organization of international scope or character. ...

Conceptions of natural rights

Many philosophers and statesmen have designed lists of what they believe to be natural rights; almost all include the right to life and liberty, as these are considered to be the two highest priorities. H.L.A. Hart has argued that if there are any rights at all, there must be the right to liberty, for all the others would depend upon this. The existence of natural rights has been asserted by different individuals on different premises, such as a priori philosophical reasoning or religious principles. For example, Immanuel Kant claimed to derive natural rights through "reason" alone. Some thinkers like John Locke emphasized "property" as primary. However, despite Locke's influential defense of the right of revolution, Thomas Jefferson substituted "pursuit of happiness" for property in the United States Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Independence also based natural or "inalienable rights" on human nature, arguing that it was "self-evident" that human beings by their very nature seek life, liberty, and happiness. This assumed, like Hobbes, Locke and Jean–Jacques Rousseau — also a major social contract thinker — the right of human beings to follow their nature as a natural right antedating and not bestowed by government. For other uses, see Life (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Liberty (disambiguation). ... H. L. A. Hart (Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart) (1907-1992) is considered one of the most important legal philosophers of the twentieth century. ... The terms a priori and a posteriori are used in philosophy to distinguish between two different types of propositional knowledge. ... Kant redirects here. ... For other persons named John Locke, see John Locke (disambiguation). ... Thomas Jefferson (13 April 1743 N.S.–4 July 1826) was the third President of the United States (1801–09), the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and one of the most influential Founding Fathers for his promotion of the ideals of Republicanism in the United States. ... The United States Declaration of Independence was an act of the Second Continental Congress, adopted on July 4, 1776, which declared that the Thirteen Colonies in North America were Free and Independent States and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to... Jean-Jacques Rousseau (June 28, 1712 – July 2, 1778) was a Geneva-born philosopher of the Enlightenment whose political ideas influenced the French Revolution, the development of socialist theory, and the growth of nationalism. ...

(It should be made clear on what basis these rights exist. They are, for instance, not extended to non-humans. The criteria may be based on the existence of reason.)

The first philosopher who fully made natural rights the source of his moral and political philosophy was Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679). Hobbes argued that it is human nature to love one's self best and seek one's own good (this is a view known as psychological egoism). Since it is unavoidable ("necessity of nature") for human beings to follow their nature, it becomes a right to do so. According to Hobbes, to deny this right is to deny that we have a right to be human, which would be absurd, just as it would be absurd to demand that carnivores reject meat or that fish stop swimming. However, this was not a right in the conventional sense of imposing obligations on others, but merely a "liberty." Therefore, we have no obligations by birth or nature, but only unlimited rights — leading to a situation known as the "war of all against all", in which human beings have to kill, steal and enslave others in order to stay alive. Hobbes reasoned that this world of chaos created by unlimited rights was highly undesirable, causing human life to be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". As such, if humans wish to live peacefully they must give up most of their natural rights and create moral obligations in order to establish political and civil society. This is one of the earliest formulations of the theory of government known as the social contract. Hobbes redirects here. ... Psychological egoism is the view that humans are always motivated by rational self-interest, even in what seem to be acts of altruism. ... Bellum omnium contra omnes, a Latin phrase meaning the war of all against all, is the description that Thomas Hobbes gives to human existence in the state of nature thought experiment that he conducts in Leviathan (1651). ... John Lockes writings on the Social Contract were particularly influential among the American Founding Fathers. ...

Hobbes objected to the attempt to derive rights from "natural law," arguing that law ("lex") and right ("jus") though often confused, signify opposites, with law referring to obligations, while rights refer to the absence of obligations. Since by our (human) nature, we seek to maximize our well being, rights are prior to law, natural or institutional. This marked an important departure from medieval natural law theories which gave priority to obligations over rights. However, some thinkers such as Leo Strauss, maintained that Hobbes kept the primacy of natural law or moral obligation over natural rights, and thus did not fully break with medieval thought. Natural law or the law of nature (Latin: lex naturalis) is an ethical theory that posits the existence of a law whose content is set by nature and that therefore has validity everywhere. ... Leo Strauss (September 20, 1899 – October 18, 1973), was a German-born political philosopher who specialized in the study of classical political philosophy. ...

John Locke (1632–1704), was another prominent Western philosopher who conceptualized rights as natural and inalienable. Like Hobbes, Locke was a major social contract thinker who argued that all people know what to do and why they do it therefore making sense. For other persons named John Locke, see John Locke (disambiguation). ...

Thomas Paine (1731–1809) further elaborated on natural rights in his influential work Rights of Man (1791), emphasizing that rights cannot be granted by any charter because this would legally imply they can also be revoked and under such circumstances they would be reduced to privileges: For other persons of the same name, see Thomas Paine (disambiguation). ... Thomas Paine wrote the Rights of Man in 1791 as a reply to Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke, and as such, it is a work glorifying the French Revolution. ...

It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It operates by a contrary effect — that of taking rights away. Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few. ... They...consequently are instruments of injustice.

The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.

Critics have argued that natural rights do not exist (in the sense that all rights are invented by men and are therefore by definition "artificial"). The attempt to derive rights from "natural law" or "human nature" is an example of the is-ought problem in philosophy, and, as noted above, different philosophers have created different lists of rights they consider to be natural. Proponents of natural rights, in particular Hesselberg and Rothbard, have responded that reason can be applied to separate truly axiomatic rights from supposed rights, stating that any principle that requires itself to be disproved is an axiom. Critics have pointed to the lack of agreement between the proponents as evidence for the claim that the idea of natural rights is merely a political tool. For instance, Jonathan Wallace has asserted that there is no basis on which to claim that some rights are natural, and he argued that Hobbes' account of natural rights confuses right with ability (human beings have the ability to seek only their own good and follow their nature in the same way as animals, but this does not imply that they have a right to do so).^[2] Wallace advocates a social contract, much like Hobbes and Locke, but does not base it on natural rights: David Hume raised the is-ought problem in his Treatise of Human Nature. ... This article is about a logical statement. ...

We are all at a table together, deciding which rules to adopt, free from any vague constraints, half-remembered myths, anonymous patriarchal texts and murky concepts of nature. If I propose something you do not like, tell me why it is not practical, or harms somebody, or is counter to some other useful rule; but don't tell me it offends the universe.

Jeremy Bentham, a utilitarian philosopher, famously stated: Jeremy Bentham (IPA: or ) (February 15, 1748 O.S. (February 26, 1748 N.S.) – June 6, 1832) was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. ... This article discusses utilitarian ethical theory. ...

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts.

See also

• Leo Strauss

Leo Strauss (September 20, 1899 – October 18, 1973), was a German-born political philosopher who specialized in the study of classical political philosophy. ...

References

1. ^ Peter Jones. Rights. Palgrave Macmillan, 1994, p. 73
2. ^ Wallace, Jonathan (2000-04). Natural Rights Don't Exist. The Ethical Spectacle. Retrieved on 2007-08-23.