Do we as humans have any natural rights?

Question

I have a question that I have been thinking about for a while and I would like to hear what others think.

Do we as humans have any natural rights?

My wife has said (and I don't necessarily disagree), that all have the right to enough food, good water, and to be "treated decently."

Does anyone have any thoughts?

Answer 1

Yes, I think we do. Most people agree, but this becomes a tricky issue because it is a difficult belief to defend sometimes. Some people defend the theory of natural rights by an appeal to God (God gives us our innate value, and thereby gives us our rights to be treated as creatures of innate value). Without involving God, however, we are short on ways to defend this view, even though most people in the world share it.

Probably the strongest argument for natural rights apart from the theistic one is Kant's argument that natural rights spring from our rational nature. Because humans are intelligent, reasoning beings, we are entitled to be treated as ends in ourselves (not to be used by other people). This implies that we have rights to things like freedom (though not the freedom to harm others), medical care, food, shelter, etc.

Most of us are willing to accept that we have natural rights on the basis of common sense alone. When we are treated as though we do not have natural rights, or we see someone else treated that way, a certain instinctive indignation arises in us that revolts against the thought that this kind of treatment could ever possibly be right. This is why we are appalled by things like slavery, wrongful imprisonment, and oppression.

Answer 2

Yes. It's called Human Rights.

Answer 3

The word “right” in this context means about anything you want it to mean. The dictionary defines it as "a just claim or title, whether legal, prescriptive, or moral". To answer your question, why does it matter if we have natural rights or not? Are you asking a question because you don’t understand what the work “right” means and you want to know more? Or is the word so subjective that any answer could be right? If so, why bother ask the question?

I believe that a right is something that you can do without fear of punishment from the government. Therefore I don’t think we have any natural rights. If you define a right some other way, what makes you right and me wrong? I find it interesting that people like to use vague words like this in an argument. You have NO RIGHT to . When people are angry they don’t want to use words that are objective, because that might allow their opponent to make a valid argument against them.

Answer 4

Nature does not have any issue with affording its creatures unbonded rights. Left alone Nature provides all those things in perfect abundance and that is about as natural as it gets. So yeah, those rights are the rights of humans by nature (even the right to be treated decently, nature is fair to a fault), they are taken away from people, by people mostly via and as a result of human forms of rationalism.




PS: I love your answers IQ and Alex.

Answer 5

We are offered the right to gain our means through mutually considerate ways however... we do not outweigh... the rights of any parts of the sum, that make up the whole.

Humans are only one species and a poor one at that save for a precious few like your wife... if that is indeed the way she exists, with and within all surrounds, not just each other.

Answer 6

Of course we do--we are born with them. A natural right is simply the freedom to do whatever you want, so long as your actions do no harm to others, or prevent them from being able to do likewise as they please.

The "rights" your wife lists are not rights at all, but obligations put upon others. Such entitlements require a society to actively take from its productive members in order to provide benefits. And in so doing, it is _reducing_ the rights of those who must provide, by taking their labor (or the fruits thereof) for others' use.

Let's say you find yourself stranded on a deserted island. You find yourself hard-pressed to find enough food or drinkable water, and the wild animals on the island have no interest in treating you as anything other than a potential meal. Now whom can you point to as having violated your "rights"? Mother nature? Fate?

Let's say now that you come across a second stranded person, who has succeeded in raising just enough food to feed himself. What right do you have to his food--what claim do you have to the products of his hard labor? Must he starve in order to fulfill your "right to enough food"? If he refuses to share, is he then violating your rights? Would you feel you had the right to take his food, by theft or by force?

In discussing natural rights, it is very important that we not confuse them with non-natural rights, or with entitlements. Natural rights exist independent of society or other humans. Other "rights" are essentially arbitrary permissions granted by governments, and can just as arbitrarily be reduced or revoked. Entitlements are not rights at all, but rather claims made upon some people to satisfy the wants or needs of others.

Answer 7

Everything embodied in the Constitution of America and the Bill of Rights... in my opinion

Answer 8

I don't think we have any natural "rights" at all, pehraps duties and obligations to our species or planet, but rights, nah. The closest thing I can think of to a right would be self-preservation, which is arguable.

Answer 9

Everything has that right, everything!

Everything has beauty in it, but not everyone sees it...Confucius.

I guess your wife is one of those few that can see it. You are a lucky man...lol

Enjoy!

Answer 10

Life, Love, and Nourishment.
those are our only rights as humans.