Where Do Natural Rights Come From?

[Agathon]

Originally posted by MacTBone
A mandate from the masses...

Seriously, "Natural Rights" are only ideas that most people in a society agree are necessary. For example there are/wre tribes of cannibals and presumably they did not think there was a "natural right" to life, so there wasn't.

Um, that's not what's meant by "natural rights". Natural rights are just that - rights that you have purely by virtue of your natural constitution as a human being. What you are talking about are rights that arise by convention.

The best analogue to natural rights I can think of, offhand, is the so called "divine right of kings' which kings were supposed to have just because they were kings. I don't believe the latter, why should I believe the former.

As for natural rights theorists: Locke was basically inventing a set of rights that suited him and his nouveau riche mates. Same goes for the US constitution - "We hold these rights to be self evident, that all [white, landowning] men [yes, we mean men] are created equal."

The next sentence was omitted, it read something like this - "All you non-white, non-landowning, non-men can get stuffed."

[Buck Birdseed]

I think some ideas can be derived a priori based on the optimal functioning of a society to everyone's mutual benefit. Would these be considered "natural" rights?

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Ramo
You put me on the wrong side of the debate.

And you call yourself a Libertarian. Cha!

[Ramo]

I don't. I'm an anarchist.

[RGBVideo]

There is no such thing as "natural" rights. People form different artificial agreements
to get maximum benefit and minimum injury to themselves.

...or so do I think...

[Capt Dizle]

The only natural rights are those things one can as an individual can chose to do irrespective of societal consequences.

I have the natural right to rape my neighbor's wife and daughter. I have the natural right to succor and protect the innocent or the guilty. I have these rights because nature has given them to me. Natural rights are simply the things I can do if I choose to. There are no other natural rights. Beware people making up false concepts out of thin air.

[Capt Dizle]

Originally posted by Tuomerehu
There is no such thing as "natural" rights. People form different artificial agreements
to get maximum benefit and minimum injury to themselves.

...or so do I think...

Your sig quotes me out of context. You have a natural right to do that. I have a natural right to deck you if I run across you in real life too.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Ramo
I don't. I'm an anarchist.

How on earth could you be a Socialist Anarchist?

[Dr Strangelove]

No one group can be considered superior to another simply because of the near impossibility of breeding the important traits in humans. It is rare for the child of a genius to be as gifted as his parent, and so on and so on simply because they are genetically too complex to accurately breed. Because desireable intellectual and emotional traits can't be bred true it follows that systems based on hereditary position ultimately will fail, as eventually the royal family will produce an heir who is an idiot. Natural rights, i.e., the rights of free speech, equal justice, assembly, equal representation, religious practice and the others, give a common grounds at least in part for everyone in the hopes that in a free society free people will be able to self-actualize their individual talents, thus improving the efficiency of society.

[Ramo]

How on earth could you be a Socialist Anarchist?

That's how it works. Anarchists are almost invariably Socialists. Anarchism is roughly the rejection of authority. Private authority isn't objectively different from public authority.

[Ben Kenobi]

Natural rights, i.e., the rights of free speech, equal justice, assembly, equal representation, religious practice and the others, give a common grounds at least in part for everyone in the hopes that in a free society free people will be able to self-actualize their individual talents, thus improving the efficiency of society.

-Dr. Strangelove

That's a pretty good summary on what comprises Natural Law. However the problem is this: is the tendency of most people to allow others to self-actualise individual talents, at the expense of their own?

Also, do these Natural Laws really improve the efficiency of society, particularly freedom of religion?

[Agathon]

The question isn't whether natural rights/law are good or not, but whether there are in fact any such things, or good reason to believe in them. I can't see any reason which doesn't work as well for the divine right of kings or any other similar piece of religious crankery.

[orange]

uh, nature?

[Kramerman]

Originally posted by Ramo


That's how it works. Anarchists are almost invariably Socialists. Anarchism is roughly the rejection of authority. Private authority isn't objectively different from public authority.

I always thought anarchists were as hardcore as capitalists come, as it would be pure survival of the fittest, if there is no state to doll out hand outs... but this is what ive always thought, very liekly i thought wrong on this instance.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I think some ideas can be derived a priori based on the optimal functioning of a society to everyone's mutual benefit. Would these be considered "natural" rights?

I would think so, a Kantian view of natural rights. That of course begs the question, what is the optimal functioning of society to everyone's mutual benefits? And if these things can be deduced a priori, why have some cultures strayed from what some believe to be natural rights (if they really are natural rights).

Natural rights, i.e., the rights of free speech, equal justice, assembly, equal representation, religious practice and the others, give a common grounds at least in part for everyone in the hopes that in a free society free people will be able to self-actualize their individual talents, thus improving the efficiency of society.

Perhaps that is correct, but it seems to me that these rights arose from the minds of learned men. I don't see what is 'holy' (if you will) about them. They seemingly can be abrogated at will if other learned men (which, undoubtably seems in short stock these days) decide to follow a new path.