I was thinking about all the recent death penalty threads, and what’s the essential difference between my position (pro-DP, with increased substantive and procedural safeguards) and the position of those who are opposed to the death penalty in any way, shape, or form. What it comes down to, I think, is that they think the death penalty is a violation of human rights. I don’t.
Of course, that begs the question: what makes something a “human right”? There are lots of things that I personally think are human rights, especially freedom of speech and religion. Then there are some people who think that clean air and water are human rights, or that doing whatever the heck you feel like with your property is a human right.
As far as I can tell, labeling something a human right mostly a meaningless rhetorical flourish. Yet I do think that there are some rights that are so important to humanity that governments should not be allowed to deny them to anybody. That seems like a pretty functional description of a human right, so obviously I’m a little bit torn.
Thus, I’d like to get a discussion going on what makes something a human right. If you want to discuss concrete examples–the death penalty, guns, reproductive freedom, etc.–that’s fine by me. However, I’d rather not have this turn into another round of dueling statistics purporting to show that position X is better than position Y.
What making something a “human right?” Why a dogmatic politician of course.
No one person can actually know what “rights” humans were “given” and some people would say the only thing we’re “given” is the ability to do whatever the fuck we want. Call it darwinist, satanist, whatever… People write treatises on what they think are inalienable rights, but at the base of it all is just philosophical fabrications… Whatever a person thinks he has been given becomes his right…Whatever a large portion of people think they have been given becomes moral codes and government regulations
Now. This is something I’ll no doubt enjoy getting into once somebody inevitably posts something I disagree with. But I will for now put forth the following postulate:
Rights mean nothing without an authority to secure them.
This means that the concept of a “fundamental” or “inalienable” right is bunk. If somebody can violate your “right” with impunity, then it isn’t a right. Only once there is a way of ensuring that right does it begin to make sense.
For the sake of the argument, I’d rather drop the issue of the ability to enforce an asserted human right. Because personally, I would argue that Jews under German authority in the 1940s had a human right not to be gassed to death even before the liberation of the concentration camps. Surely that’s not too radical a notion, manny?
The way I see it, “rights” are the parameters within which a society operates. There’s nothing absolute or inalienable about them, nor are they necessarily democratically agreed upon. Nevertheless, the rights which are afforded to members of society will define the way in which that society operates. Any alterations to rights lead to a change to society. So for example, Greek and Roman societies operated within a system where e.g. slavery of non-citizens was acceptable, military service was required of citizens, women could forget about doing anything outside the home, etc. A much more limited set of rights, but which created successful societies. Feudal societies offered the right to protection in return for a surrender of economic power. Nowadays, we tend to favour the individual over society (or believe that society benefits from the actions of free individuals) and so have extended rights to individuals.
Rights come into existence when society decides that either the extension of that right will have no adverse affect (e.g "Fear not, you worship. Granting freedom of religion will not mean the end of the church’s hegemony) or that it will improve society (e.g. "These priests oppress us, brothers: granting freedom of religion will end the church’s hegemony). Rights in the former case tend to be granted, rights in the latter seized.
This doesn’t mean that rights are unimportant, however. In fact they’re very important, because they define society at a fundamental level. In the DP example, the question is, “fundamentally, is it right to take life?” A society that answers no to that question will be quite different from one that answers yes.
Equally, you could argue that if abolishing or granting a right would have little effect on society, it’s not really a right, more a state of affairs. At the risk of stirring things up, my (UK) perspective is that the right to bear arms comes under this heading: its loss wouldn’t (I think) cause a fundamental change in US society, comprable to the right to free speech, free assembly, freedom of religion.
I agree with kabbes that rights only exist when they’re enforced/enforceable: in fact, that was the jumping off point for this theory.
I disagree. Your position seems to imply that torturing political prisoners is okay, as long as they are powerless, for example – after all, by your logic they have no rights unless they also have the ability to enforce them.
Human rights are intimately connected to moral value judgements. While it might be correct to argue that they’re arbitrary, I don’t think they are a function of power. One could follow Nietzche’s thinking on this, of course, and argue that rights are essentially the mirror of power – the way in which the weak have learned to dominate and control the strong.
That’s not much of an answer, but I must admit that I’ve not spent a lot of time reflecting over the question.
The only way you can throw the enforcement arguement out the window, is if you believe in a universal right and wrong. (religion anyone?)
If you believe that every action can be categorized as good bad or indifferent, then natural rights make sense.
Otherwise, might makes right.
When you said you were going to do something about your androgynous name, I thought you were just blowing smoke:)
There sure isn’t room for doubt anymore…
Mr. Freedom
My definition: In order for there to be a society where there is the ability to make something of one’s life, certain preconditions essential to the autonomy and capacity of individuals to make meaningful choices must be met. That is, something beyond the mere formal existence of some choice is required to be able to say that every person exists and functions as a subject rather than an object within the group of individuals making up a society.
Those things might include freedom of expression, association, personal property etc. I guess I would say that those things that must apply at least to some minimum standard to everyone are human rights.
I note minty that you jump immediately to the question of government (and in a way characteristic of US political discourse):
Whilst this is obviously an important matter, at least according to my definition it may be necessary for governments impose certain things on some people in order to ensure that others have human rights.
I agree that the term is bandied about somewhat and sometimes seems to be a claim that a lack of the equal division of everything is offensive to personhood. In particular, it is sometimes supposed that a lack of (equal) access to some benefit available only in rich countries in the last 50 years is a violation of human rights. As a non-American, I would prefer that the term were “civil rights”: the notion that in order to be an effective (and indeed affective) actor in a particular society requires equality or minimum standards of certain goods or services, and that the distribution of such rights is made possible by both the intervention and self-denial of the civil state. Obviously the term has additional overtones for Americans.
This approach gets around the problem that what might be regarded as human rights under my definition would vary according to geography and history.
Of course the lack of such rights may have no remedy in practice. But they remain a standard worth assessing a society by, and their lack of universality (whether within a society or across arbitrary national boundaries) pricks the conscience of anyone interested in strangers.
[added in preview] Obviously, I do not agree with Freedom on his first point or the necessity of the second.
Might makes possible, not right. Sheesh, GD is usually filled with value judgments. But ask about human rights and suddenly everyone gets all wishy washy?
If we stick to the original most fundemental meaning of your question
Well down to the basics of human needs, a human right would be anything that could basically support our being. I know I know there are a lot of dopers that like to reduce things as far as they can go, and there are those who like to philosophize waaaaaay beyond. I will try to stick to the OP and say: Humans as a whole exert their own human rights outwardly upon the earth for the aquisition of energy. human right would be anything that supports your being. Sometimes that could be something as small as eating and drinking to maintain life. or as large as creating an empire where others can flourish.
Did I completely lose the main idea?? I guess if I have to ask I may have, maybe someone can extrapolate. I have to go to lunch…
Ah, I was about to link to that thread myself. Good show, kabbes. Cheers.
For those not familiar with my identity crisis, I used to be the aynrandlover and ARL that everyone refers to in there.
Ah, well, no, not a function of power. But I can’t see that a right can exist without it. Much like, I think, water isn’t a function of man, but man can’t exist without it.
Until there is a non-pluralistic society based and operated on ideal principles, I don’t think rights can possibly have any meaning other than in a utilitarian sense, and definitely not without the power to secure them. The verbal exchange of such a scenario demonstrates it well.
“We have a freedom of speech.”
~shoots gun “Okay, talk all you want.”
Without the power to secure them, rights are more than just functionally meaningless, they are contextually meaningless. For my own venture into meaninglessness, refer to my pit thread with spiritus, where I make quite a show of using a contextually and functionally meaningless word.
And yet, strange as it may seem, people continue to speak of human rights even about places where there is zero power to enforce them. See, e.g., China, Nigeria, Bosnia, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Thus, under any commonly accepted definition of human rights, the power to enforce an asserted human right has diddly squat to do with whether it is a human right.
If it helps the power-mongers ( ) out there, let me rephrase the question. What principles do or should people use to determine whether something is a human right?
Oh, and I’m so glad you’re no longer aynrandlover, eris. Finally, I no longer have to resist the urge to refer to call you Nathaniel Branden.
I agree that rights are connected to moral judgements.
I find it morally reprehensible that anyone would try to control another’s religion/sprituality/thoughts about Truth. I define the thinking about and questioning what is true as an individual to be a human right. Fundementalist Christians annoy the crud out of me for trying to deny a free, personal search for truth.
Some people find abortion similarly icky. They do not see how anyone could have a right to an abortion.
A human right is made when it is morally correct. Tricky ground indeed.
And yet, as obvious as it is, we–who live in a land where our rights are secured with force–speak of human rights problems in land where they are not secured with force.
Can’t speak for kabbes, but it seems clear to me that inalienable rights certainly don’t exist. My right to not be tortured basically means that it’s wrong to torture me, but it is certainly possible to alienate that “right” from me. The concept may or not be bunk, but the reality is certainly bunk, unless it is protected by force. I have no rights that can’t be taken away from me by a single bullet.
Just because we have a word for the concept of “rights” in our language doesn’t mean that they actually exist.
I think that on this point actually you can speak for me MrO - that’s indeed what I was trying to get at.
minty - I think that when the UN refers to “human rights” they are talking about an ideal rather than an actuality. These are rights that we would like to see the residents of all countries enjoy. However the mere fact that Nigerians don’t get these rights show that there is nothing inalienable, fundamental or natural about them.
What do we learn from this? Global human rights will only exist once we have a global authority to enforce them. Ah - so we’re back to my original point - rights are meaningless without the power to back them up.
Furthermore, rights reflect the values of the authority that guarantees them. Where that authority is democratic in nature, the incumbent rights tend to guarantee the freedom that produced that democracy. Where the authority is non-democratic, rights are of rather a different nature. Did Russians under communism have rights? Of course they did. In fact, they enjoyed many rights that you don’t. Such as the right to a fixed price for goods and, I believe*, the right to have a job. In our democracies, we don’t consider those rights to be worth much. But clearly at some point, somebody did.
In the end, I feel this means that rights actually grow organically (ugh) from the society that produces them. Rights are guaranteed by authority, authority can ultimately only be granted by the people the authority has sway over** and so the people indirectly end up deciding what the most important rights are to them. And who else has the “right” to tell them that they are wrong?
pan
[/quote]
*I might be wrong. The argument is purely to make a point anyway, so isn’t worth me pursuing. If this right didn’t exist then just insert another.
**probably my most controversial axiom. But if you take the long term view, it is hard to imagine a society in which an authority holds over a majority who do not want it. Civil war would seem inevitable. But perhaps that is a debate for another thread.
