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Natural Rights/ Natural Law

Politicalunrest

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I have my own views on this subject which i have posted on my blog ( feel free to take a look its the one and only blog post on my blog here on Debate Politics)

But i want to know what others believe regarding natural rights and natural law. does it exist? is it important modernly? What are natural rights specifically? which rights are "natural" and which ones are unnatural? are there unnatural rights? what do you all think?
 
I believe that we're born with rights that can't be taken away until we're dead. For example, if you tape someone's mouth shut, you've taken away their freedom of speech, but they still have a right to speak.
 
The only right we have is force. The rest is just prefernce
 
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Natural and legal rights - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Natural and legal rights are two types of rights. Legal rights are those bestowed onto a person by a given legal system. Natural rights are those not contingent upon the laws, customs, or beliefs of any particular culture or government, and therefore universal and inalienable (i.e., cannot be sold, transferred, or removed).​

Both the idea of 'inalienable' rights, and of rights not contingent on any laws/culture/government are problematic in my view. If you have a judicial system which imprisons people, then obviously their liberty is not an inalienable right in the eyes of your justice system; if you kill people (be they criminals or foreign soldiers), then obviously even their very lives are not an inalienable right. If a 'right' is not recognised in any capacity by a particular society or even the world at large (eg. prior to the enlightenment), then how can we imagine it exists at all?

That said, there is an obvious difference between the rights to life and liberty on the one hand and (for example) the right to trial by a jury of one's peers: Whether or not they are 'rights,' life and liberty themselves obviously are not conferred by any government or culture, they belong to us from birth.
 
Inalienable =/= inviolable
 
ecofarm said:
Inalienable =/= inviolable
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Criminals violating people's rights wouldn't mean they're not inalienable. But most people would not say that the justice system likewise is designed to violate people's rights. They would say that criminals have surrendered their right to liberty: Hence, it's not an inalienable right.
 

Inalienable does not equal inviolable.
 
Mithrae said:
You know how to repeat yourself :applaud
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Well, at least that wasn't another paragraph claiming inalienable = inviolable. Progress!
 
ecofarm said:
Well, at least that wasn't another paragraph claiming inalienable = inviolable. Progress!
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I didn't say inalienable = inviolable :roll: Maybe if you were bright enough to write more than one line at a time there'd be some hope of intelligent discussion, but for now I can only assume that you struggle as much with reading as with generating new thoughts.
 
Natural rights are bunk. They don't exist. Rights are created explicitly by written declarations such as constitutions, statutes, judicial systems and administrative rules. They don't spring-up naturally.
 

You're right, I'm just a dummy. Explain how the founders were idiots because they didn't think about someone's rights being violated. Oops! They shoulda seen that!
 
ecofarm said:
Inalienable does not equal inviolable.
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His point is a good one. Prison violates pretty much every right of those individuals that are imprisoned.
 
Henrin said:
His point is a good one. Prison violates pretty much every right of those individuals that are imprisoned.
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Inalienable rights can be violated justly and otherwise.
 
ecofarm said:
Inalienable does not equal inviolable.
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No, it doesn't, but it does mean that such 'rights' cannot be taken away or given away. That's what inalienable means. Inviolable means they cannot be denied or denigrated by another.

I think rights, and the idea that certain ones could be 'inalienable' is a social construct, hence natural rights cannot really exist outside of a society, whatever that society might look like. Rights are not endowed by god or nature, but agreed upon by society.
 
Henrin said:
Why is that?
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Because inalienable does not mean the same thing as inviolable. That's why they used a different word.
 

The bit about 'endowed by God' was merely a phrase used to indicate that they arise naturally and not as a result of any piece of paper. Natural rights are not dependent on the existence of a deity.
 
ecofarm said:
The bit about 'endowed by God' was merely a phrase used to indicate that they arise naturally and not as a result of any piece of paper. Natural rights are not dependent on the existence of a deity.
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Are they not? After all, the nice thing about Natural Rights as opposed to any other is that have the benefit of being back a power higher than any man, ergo, not able to be taken away by man...
 
Hamster Buddha said:
Are they not? After all, the nice thing about Natural Rights as opposed to any other is that have the benefit of being back a power higher than any man, ergo, not able to be taken away by man...
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That needn't be derived via deity. It's merely a natural social event, whatever being the source of natural one may believe.
 
ecofarm said:
Natural rights are not dependent on the existence of a deity.
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That's because they don't exist, they cannot be reified, they are a socio-psychological construct. Of course, I can't prove that negative assertion. Can you prove your positive assertion that they do?
 
Andalublue said:
That's because they don't exist, they cannot be reified, they are a socio-psychological construct. Of course, I can't prove that negative assertion. Can you prove your positive assertion that they do?
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Abstract objects exist.
 
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