A natural right is the concept of a universal right inherent in the nature of living beings, one that is not contingent upon laws or beliefs.

The theory of natural law, a law whose content is set in a state of nature and therefore has validity everywhere, derives from the theory of natural rights. Thus the natural rights were the rights present primarily in a state of natural anarchy. During the Enlightenment, natural law theory opposed the divine right of kings theory, and became the basis of classical republicanism which was explaining hypothetical reasons of establishing a positive law and a government.

The concept of a natural right can be contrasted with the concept of a social right or a legal right: A natural or social right is one that is said to exist even when it is not enforced by the government, while a legal right is one created by the government for the benefit of its members. James Madison explained that such rights as trial by jury arise not from nature but from the social contract, before government is established.^[1] The question of which rights are natural, which are social, and which are legal is an important one in philosophy and politics. Critics of the concept of natural rights argue that all human rights are legal rights, while proponents of the concept of natural rights say that documents like the American Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States, demonstrate the usefulness of recognizing natural rights.

The idea of human rights descended from that of natural rights; some recognize no difference between the two and regard both as labels for the same thing, while others choose to keep the terms separate to eliminate association with some features traditionally associated with natural rights.^[2] Natural rights, in particular, are the rights of the individual, considered beyond the authority of any government or international body to dismiss. The idea that animals have natural rights is one that has gained the interest of philosophers and legal scholars in the 20th century.^[3]

Concepts of natural rights

Many philosophers and statesmen have designed lists of what they believe to be natural rights; almost all include the right to life and liberty, as these are considered to be the two highest priorities.

Among philosophers, H. L. A. Hart has argued that if there are any rights at all, there must be the right to liberty, for all the others would depend upon this. The existence of natural rights has been asserted by different individuals on different premises, such as a priori philosophical reasoning or religious principles. For example, Immanuel Kant claimed to derive natural rights through "reason" alone. Some thinkers like John Locke emphasized "property" as primary. However, despite Locke's influential defense of the right of revolution, Thomas Jefferson substituted "pursuit of happiness" for property in the United States Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Independence is based on natural or "unalienable rights" as being endowed by the Divine Creator or Nature's God to every human being, arguing that it was "self-evident" truth that human beings by their very nature inherently have and seek to experience the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This being considered self-evident truth, like Hobbes, Locke and Jean?Jacques Rousseau ? also a major social contract thinker ? the right of human beings to follow their nature as a natural right antedating and not bestowed by government.

(It should be made clear on what basis these rights exist. They are, for instance, not extended to non-humans. The criteria may be based on the existence of reason.)

Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes (1588?1679) included a discussion of natural rights in his moral and political philosophy. Hobbes' conception of natural rights extended from his conception of man in a "state of nature". Thus he argued that the essential natural (human) right was "to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own Nature; that is to say, of his own Life; and consequently, of doing any thing, which in his own judgement, and Reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto." (Leviathan. 1,XIV)

According to Hobbes, to deny this right would be absurd, just as it would be absurd to expect that carnivores might reject meat or fish stop swimming. Hobbes sharply distinguished this natural "liberty", from natural "laws" (obligations), described generally as "a precept, or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do, that, which is destructive of life, or taketh away the means of preserving life; and to omit, that, by which he thinketh it may best be preserved." (ibid.)

In his natural state, according to Hobbes, man's life consisted entirely of liberties and not at all of laws - "It followeth, that in such a condition, every man has the right to every thing; even to one another's body. And therefore, as long as this natural Right of every man to every thing endureth, there can be no security to any man... of living out the time, which Nature ordinarily allow men to live." (ibid.)

This would lead inevitably to a situation known as the "war of all against all", in which human beings kill, steal and enslave others in order to stay alive, and due to their natural lust for "Gain", "Safety" and "Reputation". Hobbes reasoned that this world of chaos created by unlimited rights was highly undesirable, since it would cause human life to be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". As such, if humans wish to live peacefully they must give up most of their natural rights and create moral obligations in order to establish political and civil society. This is one of the earliest formulations of the theory of government known as the social contract.

Hobbes objected to the attempt to derive rights from "natural law," arguing that law ("lex") and right ("jus") though often confused, signify opposites, with law referring to obligations, while rights refer to the absence of obligations. Since by our (human) nature, we seek to maximize our well being, rights are prior to law, natural or institutional, and people will not follow the laws of nature without first being subjected to a sovereign power, without which all ideas of right and wrong are rendered insignificant - "Therefore before the names of Just and Unjust can have place, there must be some coercive Power, to compel men equally to the performance of their Covenants..., to make good that Propriety, which by mutual contract men acquire, in recompense of the universal Right they abandon: and such power there is none before the erection of the Commonwealth." (Leviathan. 1, XV) This marked an important departure from medieval natural law theories which gave precedence to obligations over rights. However, some thinkers such as Leo Strauss, maintained that Hobbes kept the primacy of natural law or moral obligation over natural rights, and thus did not fully break with medieval thought.

Other proponents

John Locke (1632?1704), was another prominent Western philosopher who conceptualized rights as natural and inalienable. Like Hobbes, Locke was a major social contract thinker who argued that all people know what to do and why they do it therefore making sense. He said that man's natural rights are life, liberty, and property. He greatly influenced the Revolutionary War with his writings of natural rights.

Thomas Paine (1731?1809) further elaborated on natural rights in his influential work Rights of Man (1791), emphasizing that rights cannot be granted by any charter because this would legally imply they can also be revoked and under such circumstances they would be reduced to privileges:

Contemporary opponents

Critics have argued that natural rights do not exist (in the sense that all rights are invented by men and are therefore by definition "artificial"). The attempt to derive rights from "natural law" or "human nature" is an example of the is-ought problem in philosophy, and, as noted above, different philosophers have created different lists of rights they consider to be natural. Proponents of natural rights, in particular Hesselberg and Rothbard, have responded that reason can be applied to separate truly axiomatic rights from supposed rights, stating that any principle that requires itself to be disproved is an axiom. Critics have pointed to the lack of agreement between the proponents as evidence for the claim that the idea of natural rights is merely a political tool. For instance, Jonathan Wallace has asserted that there is no basis on which to claim that some rights are natural, and he argued that Hobbes' account of natural rights confuses right with ability (human beings have the ability to seek only their own good and follow their nature in the same way as animals, but this does not imply that they have a right to do so).^[4] Wallace advocates a social contract, much like Hobbes and Locke, but does not base it on natural rights:

Jeremy Bentham, a utilitarian philosopher, famously stated: Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense ? nonsense on stilts

See also

• Natural person
• Leo Strauss

References

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