Ethics Finder

Human Rights

Although talk of human rights (and of the rights of non-human animals) is now familiar and part of the currency of moral and political debate, the idea of such rights and of what rights there may be is a matter of ongoing controversy. Writing in 1795 in response to the French Declaration of the Rights of Man the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham said that “natural rights is simple nonsense …. Rights are the fruits of law, without it there are no rights”. In general a ‘right’ is a form of entitlement and the easiest to understand this is in relation to legal rights which are protections or privileges accorded by law to individuals, groups or institutions. To have such a right is to be legally entitled to do something without interference or to be legally entitled to be provided with something. Bentham and other critics of natural rights agree with this but reject the claim that there are rights that people, animals, or other things have independently of law. Since the 17th century, however, there has been a growing belief that people (and perhaps other things) have rights in and of themselves in virtue of their nature. Thus in 1948 the UN adopted and ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights one of the authors of which was the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain who argued that natural rights are rooted in the natural moral law. In thinking about and appealing to rights whether ‘natural’ or ‘conventional’ it is important when speaking of a right to x to distinguish between a right to seek and pursue x without interference, and a right to be provided with x or the means to it. So, for example, it is one thing to say that A. people have right not to be prevented from having a family, another to say B. that they have a right to be provided with one or with the means to it (eg with reproductive services). B is a further claim and does not follow directly from A. One area of dispute is ‘rights inflation’ increase in the number and in the extent of rights, the latter being connected to the conflation of A and B claims.

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