PSIR 307 HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT Rights Warm

PSIR 307 HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT Rights

Warm up exercise 1. Define the concept of ‘rights’ 2. State 3 rights that you exercised in the past week 3. Could we categorize the rights we have?

What are rights? “Rights are entitlements (not) to perform certain actions, or (not) to be in certain states; or entitlements that others (not) perform certain actions or (not) be in certain states” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Rights Indicate permissible actions Explain the form of governments and laws State a society’s boundaries of morality THEREFORE, to allow a ‘set of rights is to approve a distribution of freedom and authority, and so to endorse a certain view of what may, must, and must not be done’ (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

Category of Rights Privileges (or Liberties) e. g. collecting stamps Claims e. g. contractual rights like wages Powers e. g. hierarchical order of institutions, court structures Immunities e. g. civil servants immune to government changes

Category of Rights Privilege and the power holders have a freedom to act in certain ways. Claim and immunity provide their holders freedom from undesirable actions or states.

Case Study IS EUTHANASIA A HUMAN RIGHT?

Case study: Euthanasia Origin of Euthanasia comes from Greek meaning good death It is used to refer to cases of ending life to stop suffering. e. g. injecting a horse that has a severely broken leg Different countries have different laws on euthanasia

Case study: Euthanasia There is voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia Voluntary euthanasia refer to assisted suicide. It is legal in Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg and US states of Oregon and Washington. Non-voluntary euthanasia refers to a case of euthanasia there the consent of individual is not available

Case study: Euthanasia Dying with dignity? What counts as doctor assisted suicide? Termination of life: Switching off life support machines Rights such as bodily-integrity, self-determination and personal autonomy are among those put forward by supporters of euthanasia.

History of Political Thought on Rights Natural rights St. Thomas Aquinas (1224 -12740 Thomas Hobbes (1588 -1679) John Locke (1632 -1704) Prescriptive Rights Edmund Burke (1729 -1792) Rights of Man and Civil Rights Thomas Paine (1737 -1809)

Edmund Burke on Rights Burke’s reaction to the Natural Rights of Man is not directed at Locke but towards a reading of the French Constituent Assembly’s August 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens Burke’s criticism is based on the spill over of these natural rights What is this spillover? Is the natural rights a dangerous idea? How?

Edmund Burke’s Criticism of natural rights of man Rights of man (as defined in the French Revolution) are: 1. Abstract, even meaningless and simplistic 2. Excessively individualistic and unrelated to the actual existing communities 3. Politically dangerous since it threatens to subvert and destroy established laws and institutions and indeed customary or ‘prescriptive rights’

What are ‘prescriptive rights’? Burke believed that liberty, originating from a God given natural, is ‘mediated’ by already existing customs and established ways of doing. Rights that are ‘inherited’ and ‘prescriptive’ in character as they are ‘given or prescribed by civil society as a result of the forces of custom or tradition’ (Jones 2002, p. 136). Property rights as prescriptive rights.

Prescriptive Rights “The origins of property rights, like the origins of virtually every historical government, are shrouded in antiquity and even rooted in injustice. They cannot survive revolutionaries’ continual questions concerning the legitimacy of their authority, especially if the revolutionaries suppose that the only legitimacy comes from the simple majority of a people at any given moment. But if, over time, a government fulfills the purposes of civil society—namely, the development of man’s moral and reasonable nature—then the government (like the property holder) acquires a prescriptive authority. By the same token, the citizens of that land acquire all the rights that have accrued to them over time, through custom, legal precedent, royal charter, and Parliamentary law. ” (Ritchie 1992 cited in Liberty Fund 2013)

Jeremy Bentham’s Criticism of natural rights of man Philosophical criticism: Abstract statements about rights of man are meaningless without an already existing legal codes and legal systems. Only statements about specific rights and corresponding duties embodied in a system of law are meaningful Political criticism: Natural rights of man are a barrier to social and political reform Its better to employ a concept of utility

Karl Marx’ Criticism of natural rights of man Natural rights are excessively individualistic and abstract Emancipation of individuals had led to the emancipation of certain social groups from oppression but “emancipation of mankind depends on emancipation of individuals from all oppressive class institutions that exists in all civil society an not only within the apparatus of the state”(Jones 2002, p. 117)

Rights or Equality? Is it at all possible to enjoy rights; natural, prescriptive, civil; without the attainment of equality? How do different political thinkers link rights and equality as the two important concepts of political thought?

Sources Further Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. Daniel E. Ritchie (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund 1992).