The Right to Life: Religious, Philosophical, and Legal Origins

Abstract

This chapter investigates the human origins of the idea that human life has an inherent value. The concept has religious and philosophical roots and serves as the underlying principle for the modern day right to life. We see its development from a religious belief in the sanctity of human life, through philosophical musings about why human life is valuable and whether individuals enjoy certain rights by virtue of their humanity, to the gradual development of a right to life in international law. It is discovered that a concept of the sanctity of human life is not specific to any single human culture. The universally recognized value in human life, when combined with a natural law philosophy and widespread moral revulsion at the disregard for human life during the Holocaust, cemented itself into a legally recognized international human right to life in the mid twentieth century.