Why May One Be Skeptical About Natural Rights?
Universal Human Rights as a Particularist and Relativist Concern
The concept of natural rights, as this idea has been understood during the course of modernity, has been one that has been subjected to considerable debate and critique. The idea of natural rights originates from the philosophy of John Locke and has done much to shape modern Western political philosophy. But can the idea of natural rights be objectively and rationally justified? Theorists of natural rights have yet to develop a full consensus on what is actually meant by this concept, and many more contemporary political philosophers and moral philosophers have begun to abandon this idea. However, the concept that human beings somehow possess something known as a “right” is certainly one that has contributed to the development of modern Western culture in innumerable ways. It is, therefore, worth considering the question of to what degree, if any, an individual or group of individuals can be said to possess “rights.” Certainly, this is a question that remains relevant to contemporary discourse.[1]
“Rights” in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds
The concept of “natural rights” is almost entirely a product of modernity. The notion that individuals and groups possess “rights” simply by virtue of their very existence would have been foreign to ancient and medieval thinkers. The great philosophers of antiquity were certainly interested in such questions as the nature of the good life, human nature, human social nature, optimal forms of political governance, and other related questions. However, the ancients thought that the concept of “rights” was based on the concept of citizenship in relation to institutional authority. For example, a nobleman might be said to possess rights because of his noble status. A king might be said to rule by right of inheritance or dynastic tradition or even by divine right. Particular action, whether public or private, might be said to be “right” on the basis of custom or tradition. Behaviors or actions of a specific kind might be encouraged or discouraged on the basis of what was considered to be matters of virtue as opposed to vice.[2]
However, the concept of natural rights did not exist within this framework. The only rights that would have been said to have been endowed by nature would be the right of the strong to rule over the weak. For example, in pre-modern political philosophy, political rule was largely justified on the basis of tradition and conformity to a range of inherited religious and cultural norms. Pre-modern philosophers also thought that justice derived from certain metaphysical properties. This is a notion that is found in the works of ancient philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, and which was later adopted during the late Roman medieval Christian era by thinkers such as Augustine and Aquinas. It was commonly helped that notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice were rooted in nature itself and that morality could, in part, be defined by living in accordance with these natural laws.[3]
Machiavelli’s Separation of Power and Virtue
It was the Renaissance-era political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli who first challenged these assumptions in a serious way. Machiavelli’s observation of the machinations of statecraft led him to the conclusion that power relations in society as shaped by conflict, guile, and cunning rather than adherence to abstract notions of virtue. In many ways, Machiavelli’s thinking was a return to pre-Socratic modes of thought such as that of the Sophists, which postulated that “might make right,” in contrast to the claims of moral philosophers who claimed that a legitimate ruler is one that rules justly and virtuously. Machiavelli instead taught that the first duty of rulers is not to act according to abstract notions of virtue but to retain power and that to do so involves the performance of acts that might not be considered to be moral or ethical in other contexts. For example, while it is generally considered to be morally unacceptable for individuals to use violence or deceit in order to advance their own interests within the context of their private lives, Machiavelli argued that actions of these kinds can be considered virtuous if they serve the interests of the exercise of statecraft in a successful way.[4]
Thomas Hobbes and the Beginning of the Enlightenment
Machiavelli's ideas were highly influential in the thoughts of the first political thinker, Thomas Hobbes, who was normally associated with the Enlightenment. It was Hobbes who observed that the constant strife among and within European nations concerning which ruler was the proper heir to a particular throne or which religious sect was entitled to rule by virtue of holding correct theological doctrine indicated that neither religion nor tradition were in and of themselves a sufficient basis for the achievement of political legitimacy. Instead, the principal concern of the exercise of statecraft was the maintenance of civil order. Hobbes argued that order was the foundation of civilization, which was the foundation of all other human endeavors. Without the maintenance of order, there could be no civilization, and consequently, there could be no human flourishing. For Hobbes, the legitimate ruler is not one who conforms to particular notions of metaphysical justice or abstract virtue or who merely conforms to tradition. In the Hobbesian view, a legitimate ruler is made that simply preserves order and consequently makes civilization possible.[5]
Hobbes consequently became a champion of the rising absolution monarchies of the early modern period out of conviction that the centralization of political authority into the hands of a “sovereign” ruler was necessary to prevent persistent strife and disorder generated by those with competing claims of authority. Hobbes understood that absolutism could, and probably would, lead to tyranny. However, Hobbes regarded sovereignty as the necessary price of civilization. It was within the cracks of tyranny that civilization was able to develop. While Hobbes’ theory provided much of the philosophical underpinnings of the modern state, it was John Locke who provided the wider political theory by which such “sovereign” states can be said to be legitimate. It was Locke who introduced the concept of “natural rights” into the Western philosophical canon. [6]
John Locke and Natural Rights
Locke’s position was that sovereignty alone was not enough to legitimize systems of political rule; otherwise, one simply became an apologist for tyranny. Instead, Locke insisted that individual citizens possess “rights” that cannot be legitimately withdrawn even be sovereign rulers. Locke considered these rights to be inherent in the nature of human beings and the nature of human societies. The rights that Locke championed were those of “life, liberty, and property.” In particular, Locke developed a notion of liberty based upon the concept of property, and where individuals are self-owners foremost of all. The individual is the legitimate owner of their own person and their justly acquired property (with this latter concept defined as having been generated by mixing resources found in nature with the labor of the individual that cultivates and develops those resources). [7]
It was this Lockean notion of “natural rights” that would shape the character of much of the political philosophy of the subsequent two centuries. Locke’s ideas became the foundation of modern liberalism and the political ideas that came to full fruition during the time of the Enlightenment. Indeed, it was the Lockean theory of natural rights that shaped many of the great revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. What is the American Declaration of Independence, but what is a regurgitation of Locke's ideas? Such concepts similarly influenced the “Declaration of the Natural Rights of Man” that emerged from the period of the French Revolution and subsequently helped to shape the character of the revolutions that occurred throughout Europe and the Americans over the course of the following century.[8]
Challenges to Natural Rights Theory
However, a question that remains involves the idea of whether or not John Locke’s idea of natural rights is one that can be rationally defended or whether this idea is just another Platonic noble idea that might have inspired struggles for freedom but which are instead just another set of myths that inspire humans to social action of the kind recognized by Georges Sorel. Certainly, the idea of natural rights had its critics even among those who had been influenced by the same English intellectual traditions as Locke. Certainly, the ideas of Locke were opposed by conservatives of his own time, such as Sir Robert Filmer, who rejected Locke’s conception of natural rights and instead defended the divine right of kinds. Jeremy Bentham, for example, dismissed the idea of natural rights as “nonsense built upon stilts” that could be used to undermine the stability of legitimate governments. Following the excesses of the French Revolution, Edmund Burke developed a critique of the concept of natural rights as one that would undermine the traditional and institutional foundations of a society that provided order and structure and prevented anarchy and chaos. [9]
It is also interesting to consider that while many of the champions of Lockean natural rights postulated that such rights were universal in nature, it could be argued that the theory of natural rights instead represents a certainly particularistic element of English political culture. Not only was Locke influenced by the English common law tradition of “the rights of Englishmen” that dated as far back as the Magna Carta, but Lockean natural rights theory also reflected the tenor of the times as it was during the early modern period in Protestant England with regards to the growth of bourgeois culture, the rise of the market economy, and the development of commercial culture. For example, while Locke is often hailed as having been a proponent of religious toleration, he was in fact, a proponent of toleration only for Protestants and Jews, but not for Catholics and atheists, in keeping with the Protestant dominance in England during his own time, and the liberalization of state policies regarding the liberty of Jews that has been instituted under the Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell. In other words, despite all the claims to universality that have been made by the followers of Locke until the present day, it could be said that Locke’s ideas were very much a product of the wider cultural foundations of his own English society and the political character of his own time.[10]
It would appear that Locke’s idea of natural rights was ultimately just another philosophical expression that was the product of the historical time period and surrounding cultural and institutional influences from which it emerged. Consequently, the idea of natural rights is one that is particular to the European intellectual culture of the early modern period and the Enlightenment. The fact that no consensus has yet to be reached among proponents of natural rights concerning the basis, essence, or applicability of these rights attests to the validity of this view of natural rights. A range of subsequent political philosophers, ranging from Mill to Marx to Nietzsche, have rejected the notion of natural rights as a sufficient foundation for the ordering of political society. Even modern liberals who consider Locke to be one of their forebears have engaged in a considerable modification of his thought.
Bibliography
Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. Edited by Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Second Treatise, Chapters I-V. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/locke-the-two-treatises-of-civil-government-hollis-ed
Macpherson, C. B. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962.
Rahe, Paul A. Machiavelli's Liberal Republican Legacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Simmons, A. John. The Lockean Theory of Rights. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Chapter 2.
Wenar, Leif. “Rights.” Edited by Edward N. Zalta. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2015. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/rights/
[1] Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. Edited by Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Second Treatise, Chapters I-V. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/locke-the-two-treatises-of-civil-government-hollis-ed
[2] Wenar, Leif. “Rights.” Edited by Edward N. Zalta. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2015. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/rights/
[3] Wenar, Leif. “Rights.” Edited by Edward N. Zalta. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2015. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/rights/
[4] Rahe, Paul A. Machiavelli's Liberal Republican Legacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
[5] Macpherson, C. B. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962.
[6] Macpherson, C. B. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962.
[7] Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. Edited by Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Second Treatise, Chapters I-V. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/locke-the-two-treatises-of-civil-government-hollis-ed
[8] Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. Edited by Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Second Treatise, Chapters I-V. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/locke-the-two-treatises-of-civil-government-hollis-ed
[9] Simmons, A John. The Lockean Theory of Rights. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Chapter 2.
[10] Simmons, A John. The Lockean Theory of Rights. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Chapter 2.