Notion Of Natural Rights Research Articles

Tracing the Roots of Modern Human Rights in Ancient Greek Thought

The establishment of the modern human rights regime, a pivotal development that transpired in the aftermath of the Second World War, marks a watershed moment in the annals of global governance. However, it is imperative to recognize that the foundational bedrock upon which this regime stands embodied by concepts such as freedom, equality, the right to vote, and the notion of natural rights extends its roots far beyond the mid-20th century. These bedrock principles have an intricate lineage, manifesting in various forms throughout history and across diverse cultures. To unravel this historical continuum, one need not look solely to the post-World War II era; rather, a profound exploration reveals that analogous ideals have left indelible imprints across different countries and epochs. Among these cultural tapestries, ancient Greece emerges as a particularly rich and influential backdrop, offering a plethora of ideas that resonate with the very essence of contemporary human rights. In an earnest pursuit of understanding the intricate interplay between ancient wisdom and modern conceptions, the present paper embarks on an insightful examination. Through a meticulous study, it endeavors to illuminate the myriad ideas and features that emanated from ancient Greece, serving as pre-cursors to, and reflections of, the multifaceted concept of human rights as it is comprehended and cherished in our present-day global discourse.

Riccardo Saccenti, Debating Medieval Natural Law: A Survey. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016, XIII, pp. 155.

Saccenti’s volume belongs to the category of Begriffsgeschichte, the history of concepts, and more particularly to the debate over the existence or nonexistence of a conceptual shift in ius naturale to encompass a subjective notion of natural rights. The author argues that this issue became particularly relevant in mid-twentieth century, first, because of the desire to delimit the totalitarian implications of legal positivism chez Hans Kelsen; second, in response to Lovejoy’s The Great Chain of Being and its progeny; and third, as a result of a revival of neo-Thomistic and neo-scholastic perspectives sometimes labelled “une nouvelle chrétienté.”

Why Free Market Rights are not Basic Liberties

Most liberals agree that governments should protect certain basic liberties, such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of the person. Liberals disagree, however, about whether free market rights should also be protected. By “free market rights,” we mean those rights typically associated with laissez-faire economic systems such as freedom of contract, a right to market returns, and claims to privately own the means of production.2 Those on the right often see such freedoms as core liberal commitments, while those on the left argue that an economic system should be organized to protect the interests of the less advantaged members of society. If free market rights should be protected, then most existing societies are unjust. These societies fail the liberal standard in the same ways as those societies that deny religious freedom or freedom of speech. If free market rights do not need to be protected, then liberalism allows for greater flexibility in the structure of our economy. Governments can regulate markets in ways that satisfy social justice or advance appropriate moral ends. This conflict over free market rights is played out not only in philosophical argument but also in the contemporary debates of politics and policy. There are two common arguments made on behalf of protecting free market rights. The first relies on a notion of natural rights, which is familiar from John Locke and Robert Nozick. Such arguments contend that we naturally have claims to property rights, contract rights, and freedom from taxation. The second, and more common, argument is made on the basis of efficiency.3 This argument claims that protecting such rights can lead to a society in which

THE CLASH OF RIGHTS: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF NEWS DISCOURSE ON HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE United STATES AND CHINA

This article examines the discursive strategies of news reports on China's human rights in The New York Times and People's Daily. After an analysis of local semantics, I argue that the discursive representations in the two newspapers reflect the struggle over articulation of human rights. The New York Times attempts to project the notion of natural rights as universal truth, whereas People's Daily defines human rights as a process of development to counter Western condemnation as well as to justify rights abuses in China. The struggle over articulation is also a manifestation of the hierarchy of discourse. The powerful try to fix the preferred meaning while the powerless strive to negate the dominant meaning.

Making rights from what’s left of Darwinism

The legal, political, and social meaning of the work of Charles Darwin has been claimed as resident to conservative and liberal homes alike. Peter Singer's unique admixture of personal liberal politics and what may look to be an extremely conservative philosophy of nature expose some over-simplicity in traditional ‘right’ and ‘left’ categories. In “Recovering the Left from Darwin in the 21st Century”, Steve Fuller provides us with insightful historical and sociological contexts for Singer's challenges. In this article, Kirk Junker takes one aspect of the trajectory ‘the notion of natural rights’ and examines their social construction, linguistic maintenance, and legal ramifications.

Human Rights, Natural Rights, And Europe’s Imperial Legacy

The author argues the concept of human rights is a development of the older notion of natural rights and that the modern understanding of natural rights evolved in the context of the European struggle to legitimate its overseas empires. The French Revolution changed this by, in effect, linking human rights to the idea of citizenship. Human rights were thus tied not only to a specific ethical-legal code but also implicitly to a particular kind of political system, both of inescapably European origin. In both cases, however, being employed was an underlying idea of universality whose origins are to be found in the Greek and Roman idea of a common law for all humanity. He ends by arguing that to defend human rights against its non-Western critics, one must be aware of the genealogy of the concept and then be prepared to endorse an essentially Western European understanding of the human.

The Liberal Critique of Rights in Montesquieu and Hume

The notion of Natural Rights or Human Rights has constituted the moral center of liberalism since its inception in the seventeenth century. Yet not long after the great founders, Spinoza and Locke, had laid the foundations, there emerged within the liberal tradition certain penetrating notes of skepticism as regards the political wisdom--and even, to some extent, the moral soundness--of an unmitigated stress on the rights of the individual. The most profound sources of these doubts were Montesquieu and Hume, each of whom contributed to laying the groundwork of what we may call "conservative liberalism."

Inalienable Right, Alienable Property and Freedom of Choice: Locke, Nozick and Marx on the Alienability of Labour

AbstractThis article attempts to illuminate a contradiction at the heart of the notion of natural rights. Natural rights are commonly thought to be both inalienable and the property of individuals. As the right or the law is privatized as my rights, her rights, our rights or their rights, rights come to be viewed as personal properties. A distinction is made between personal possession and private property (which entails the title to alienate what is owned) in order to speak significantly of our possession of inalienable rights. For Locke, we possess an inalienable right to life and liberty precisely because we do not own our lives and liberties. Moreover, we can alienate our person, or our ability to labour, precisely because it is our private property. For Nozick, rights are individual properties. Thus, for Nozick as distinct from Marx, one has the right to sell anything (one's life, liberty, labour or soul) at the market price.