In this classic work, Leo Strauss examines the problem of natural right and argues that there is a firm foundation in reality for the distinction between right and wrong in ethics and politics. On the centenary of Strauss's birth, and the fiftieth anniversary of the Walgreen Lectures which spawned the work, _Natural Right and History_ remains as controversial and essential as ever. "Strauss... makes a significant contribution towards an understanding of the intellectual crisis in which we find ourselves... [and] brings (...) to his task an admirable scholarship and a brilliant, incisive mind."—John H. Hallowell, _American Political Science Review_ Leo Strauss was the Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Political Science at the University of Chicago. (shrink)

In Natural Rights and the New Republicanism, Michael Zuckert proposes a new view of the political philosophy that lay behind the founding of the United States.

Natural Right and History is widely recognized as Strauss’s most influential work. The six lectures, written while Strauss was at the New School, and a full transcript of the 1949 Walgreen Lectures show Strauss working toward the ideas he would present in fully matured form in his landmark work. In them, he explores natural right and the relationship between modern philosophers and the thought of the ancient Greek philosophers, as well as the relation of political philosophy to contemporary political science (...) and to major political and historical events, especially the Holocaust and World War II. Previously unpublished in book form, Strauss’s lectures are presented here in a thematic order that mirrors Natural Right and History and with interpretive essays by J. A. Colen, Christopher Lynch, Svetozar Minkov, Daniel Tanguay, Nathan Tarcov, and Michael Zuckert that establish their relation to the work. Rounding out the book are copious annotations and notes to facilitate further study. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Natural Law and Natural Rights is widely recognised as a seminal contribution to the philosophy of law, and an essential reference point for all students of the subject. This new edition includes a substantial postscript by the author responding to thirty years of comment, criticism, and further work in the field.

Inspired by the work of prominent University of Notre Dame political philosophers Catherine Zuckert and Michael Zuckert, this volume of essays explores the concept of natural right in the history of political philosophy. The central organizing principle of the collection is the examination of the idea of natural justice, identified in the classical period with natural right and in modernity with the concept of individual natural rights. Contributors examine the concept of natural right and rights in all the (...) manifold and interdisciplinary dimensions associated with the Zuckerts’ oeuvre. Part I explores the theme of natural right in the ancient and medieval political philosophy of Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, and St. Augustine. Part II examines the early modern break from the classical tradition in the work of Montaigne, Spinoza, Montesquieu, Locke, and Hegel as well as the legacy of the modern natural rights tradition as explored by Leo Strauss and Pope John Paul II. Part III treats the theme of natural rights from the Puritans through the Founding period in such figures as Thomas Jefferson and Gouverneur Morris and up to the Progressive era with Booker T. Washington and Theodore Roosevelt. Part IV addresses questions of natural justice in literature, including works of Euripides, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Edith Wharton, and Tom Stoppard. "In this collection compiled in honor of Catherine and Michael Zuckert, the contributors address a wonderful variety of serious issues in important literary and philosophic texts. Their topics range from Plato on piety to Stoppard on socialist utopianism, and from Aristotle and Augustine to Euripides, Locke, Hegel, Shakespeare, and Booker T. Washington. The volume stands as an impressive introduction to the liberal arts and a lively introduction to many great issues of liberalism, Christianity, justice, and liberty; it is also a tribute to the Zuckerts' breadth of study, teaching, and influence." —_Robert K. Faulkner, Boston College_. (shrink)

Natural right and the historical approach -- Natural right and the distinction between facts and values -- The origin of the idea of natural right -- Classic natural right -- Modern natural right : Hobbes ; Locke -- The crisis of modern natural right : Rousseau ; Burke.

This book shows how political argument in terms of rights and natural rights began in medieval Europe, and how the theory of natural rights was developed in the seventeenth century after a period of neglect in the Renaissance. Dr Tuck provides a new understanding of the importance of Jean Gerson in the formation of the theories, and of Hugo Grotius in their development; he also restores the Englishman John Selden's ideas to the prominence they once enjoyed, and (...) shows how Thomas Hobbes's political theory can best be understood against this background. In general, the book enables us to understand more fully the characteristics of the natural rights theories available to the men of the Enlightenment, and thereby to appreciate the complexity and equivocal nature of modern right theories. (shrink)

It is commonplace to speak of education as a right. Yet it has been seldom defended as a natural right. Natural rights are pre-social, while education is social intrinsically. This analysis attempts to show how Aristotle’s concept of education can be conceived as a natural and necessary process to fulfill individual autonomy. In this sense it approaches Locke’s conception of a natural right. To the degree that it succeeds, the firmest possible basis for education in modern constitutionally premised social (...) order is established. It will stand on a par with life, liberty and property and will be equally resistant to tyrannical inroads of either government or majoritarian politics. Moreover, it will refocus society on its absolute duty to treat its citizens justly, that is, will full regard for their inalienable rights. (shrink)

I argue that Robert Nozick, in his well-known book “Anarchy, State, Utopia”, is working with Locke’s notion of the natural right to property merely instrumentally. I use the term “instrumentally” in the sense that the pieces of the source are not used within the context of the original work but are used atomically to support one’s argument or theory. Instrumental use of Locke’s theory causes incoherence in his theory. This paper introduces the incoherence in the question and explains how this (...) incoherency is inherent to Nozick’s interpretation and usage of Lockean Proviso. (shrink)

Roman property law and Roman contract law as well as the property centered Roman ethics put forth by Cicero in several of his works were the traditions Grotius drew upon in developing his natural rights system. While both the medieval just war tradition and Grotius's immediate political context deserve scholarly attention and constitute important influences on Grotius's natural law tenets, it is a Roman tradition of subjective legal remedies and of just war which lays claim to a foundational role (...) with regard to his conception of subjective natural rights. Grotius made use of Roman law and Roman ethics in order to submit a normative case for a rights-based just war in the East Indies. His conception of a law of nature was originally conceived to apply a theory of compensatory justice to the high seas of Southeast Asia, envisaged as a natural state lacking political authority. Eventually, however, this argument was to reveal its anti-absolutist implications, and contributed—by virtue of its applicability to individuals, private entities and commonwealths alike—to the emergence of a rights-based constitutionalism. This article discusses Grotius's early treatise De iure praedae commentarius and its offshoot Mare liberum, which already contained an inchoate version of subjective natural rights, as well as the elaborate natural rights doctrine which can be found in Grotius's early Theses LVI and in the Defensio capitis quinti maris liberi, a defense of the fifth chapter of Mare liberum, written around 1615 and directed against the Scottish jurist William Welwod's attack on Mare liberum. (shrink)

An important figure in the natural law tradition and in the Scottish Enlightenment, Gershom Carmichael defended a strong theory of rights and drew attention to Grotius, Pufendorf, and Locke. Gershom Carmichael was a teacher and writer who played an important role in the Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. His philosophy focused on the natural rights of individuals--the natural right to defend oneself, to own the property on which one has labored, and to services contracted for with others. (...) Carmichael argued that slavery is incompatible with the rights of men and citizens, and he believed that subjects have the right to resist rulers who exceed the limits of their powers. Although he appealed to the authority of Grotius and Locke, the grounds on which he defended natural rights were distinctively his own. He drew upon the Reformed or Presbyterian theology to propose that, in respecting the natural rights of individuals, one shows one’s reverence for God’s creation. Inasmuch as all of mankind longs for lasting happiness, which can be found only in worship of or reverence for God, such reverence is the natural law which obliges all to respect the rights of all. Natural Rights includes Supplements and Observations on Pufendorf (1724), Natural Theology (1729), Logic (1722), two theses, and a manuscript on teaching, all in English for the first time. Gershom Carmichael (1672-1729) was the first professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow, preceding Hutcheson, Smith, and Reid. James Moore is Professor of Political Science at Concordia University in Montreal. Michael Silverthorne is Honorary University Fellow in the School of Classics at the University of Exeter. Knud Haakonssen is Professor of Intellectual History and Director of the Centre for Intellectual History at the University of Sussex, England. (shrink)

The two main theses of are: (i) that persons possess an original, non-acquired right not to be precluded from making extra-personal material their own (or from exercising discretionary control over what they have made their own); and (ii) that this right can and does take the form of a right that others abide by the rules of a (justifiable) practice of property which facilitates persons making extra-personal material their own (and exercising discretionary control over what they have made their own). (...) I articulate some of the good reasons we have to affirm persons' possession of an original, non-acquired right of self-ownership and argue that the same good reasons support the ascription to persons of a natural right of property. I contrast an conception of the actions through which (initial) rights over extra-personal objects arise with a conception of (initial) entitlement-generating actions. I argue that the fact that the natural right to property can and does take the form of persons' rights that others abide by the rules of a (justifiable) practice of property explains how there are many instances of (initial) entitlement generation which are not plausibly explained by those wed to the inherent feature conception of entitlement-generating actions and why there is a strong conventional dimension in the procedures through which persons acquire (initial) property rights. (shrink)

This collection of essays is dedicated to the memory of the late Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick, who died in 2002. The publication of Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia in 1974 revived serious interest in natural rights liberalism, which, beginning in the latter half of the eighteenth century, had been eclipsed by a succession of antithetical political theories including utilitarianism, progressivism, and various egalitarian and collectivist ideologies. Some of our contributors critique Nozick's political philosophy. Other contributors examine earlier figures in (...) the liberal tradition, most notably John Locke, whose Second Treatise of Government, published in the late seventeenth century, profoundly influenced the American founders. The remaining authors analyze natural rights liberalism's central doctrines. (shrink)

In the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP), Spinoza argues that an individual’s natural right extends as far as their power. Subsequently, in the Tractatus Politicus (TP), he offers a revised argument for the same conclusion. Here I offer an account of the reasons for the revision. In both arguments, an individual’s natural right derives from God’s natural right. However, the TTP argument hinges on the claim that each individual is part of the whole of nature (totius naturae), and for this reason (...) inherits part of the natural right of that whole. Using several analogous cases from the Ethics, I show that this form of argument from division is not compatible with Spinoza’s considered metaphysical views. The revised argument, by contrast, avoids the pitfalls of his earlier efforts. It also better reveals the deep roots by which the monistic metaphysics of the Ethics feeds into Spinoza’s conception of natural right. (shrink)

In the history of philosophy, Fichte's thought marks a crucial transitional stage between Kant and post-Kantian philosophy. Fichte radicalized Kant's thought by arguing that human freedom, not external reality, must be the starting point of all systematic philosophy, and in Foundations of Natural Right, thought by many to be his most important work of political philosophy, he applies his ideas to fundamental issues in political and legal philosophy, covering such topics as civic freedom, rights, private property, contracts, family relations, (...) and the foundations of modern political organization. This volume offers the first complete translation of the work into English, by Michael Baur, together with an introduction by Frederick Neuhouser that sets it in its philosophical and historical context. (shrink)

In this paper, I would like to argue that brain-dead small children have a natural right not to be invaded by other people even if their organs can save the lives of other suffering patients. My basic idea is that growing human beings have the right to grow in the form of wholeness, and dying human beings also have the right to die in the form of wholeness; in other words, they have the right to be protected from outside invasion, (...) unless they have declared their wish to abandon that right beforehand. I call this the principle of wholeness. Natural rights, which were discussed by Hobbes and Locke in the 17th century, have to be extended to include the right to grow and die in the form of wholeness in the age of scientific civilization, where peripheral human lives are being threatened by aggressive biomedicine and other advanced technologies. (shrink)

This collection of essays is dedicated to the memory of the late Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick, who died in 2002. The publication of Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia in 1974 revived serious interest in natural rights liberalism, which, beginning in the latter half of the eighteenth century, had been eclipsed by a succession of antithetical political theories including utilitarianism, progressivism, and various egalitarian and collectivist ideologies. Some of our contributors critique Nozick's political philosophy. Other contributors examine earlier figures in (...) the liberal tradition, most notably John Locke, whose Second Treatise of Government, published in the late seventeenth century, profoundly influenced the American founders. The remaining authors analyze natural rights liberalism's central doctrines. (shrink)

Both Hobbes and Kant tackle the issue of natural right in a radical and controversial way. They both present systematic, secular theories of natural law in a highly religious age. Whereas Hobbes transforms natural right by placing the rational individual bent on self-preservation at the centre of political philosophy, Kant transforms natural right by putting the metaphysical presuppositions of his critical philosophy at the heart of his reasoning on politics. Neither attempts to provide an orthodox view of natural right as (...) directly or indirectly derived from God's commands, although subsequent to their philosophical deduction as natural rights or laws both do not entirely repudiate the idea that these rights or laws can be portrayed as having divine support. (shrink)

This paper offers an imminent interpretation of Kant's political teleology in the context of his response to Moses Mendelssohn in Theory and Practice III concerning prospects of humankind's moral progress. The paper assesses the nature of Kant's response against his mature political philosophy in the Doctrine of Right . In `Theory and Practice III' Kant's response to Mendelssohn remains incomplete: whilst insisting that individuals have a duty to contribute towards humankind's moral progress, Kant has no conclusive answer as to (...) how individuals might act on that duty. `Theory and Practice III' lacks a clear conception of the distinctness of political morality from the domain of virtue; Kant's resort to teleological argumentation is indicative of his lack of an account of instituting Right. The latter can be found in the Doctrine of Right —yet Kant's earlier teleological arguments contribute crucially to the development of his mature morality of Right. Key Words: inborn duty • moral progress • political teleology • principles of Right. (shrink)

The paper suggests that Bastiat’s theory of interests, harmony, and the State is rooted in a particular conception of Natural Right, in which the Lockeans and thomistic streams of thought meet. But it also suggests that Bastiat’s interpretation of the role that Providence plays in human events is not able to give a sustainable theory of liberal order. The paper also considers the criticisms to Bastiat’s economic and political theory coming from exponents of classical liberalism, from the Austrians, and from (...) Catholic thinkers of that time, such as L. Taparelli d’Azeglio and M. Liberatore.The conclusion is that although the economic theory of Bastiat is by now obsolete from the conceptual point of view, his political theory and his criticism of the state do remain extraordinarily topical.Cet article suggère que les théories des intérêts, de l’harmonie et de l’Etat de Bastiat sont ancrées dans une conception particulière du droit naturel au confluent des pensées lockéenne et thomiste. Cependant, il suggère aussi que l’interprétation que donne Bastiat du rôle de la Providence dans les affaires humaines ne débouche pas sur une théorie recevable de l’ordre libéral. L’article examine aussi les critiques qu’adressent les partisans du libéralisme classique-tels que les économistes autrichiens, les penseurs catholiques de l’époque comme L. Taparelli d’Azeglio et M. Liberatore-à l’égard des théories économiques et politiques de Bastiat. L’article conclut que le caractère obsolète des théories de Bastiat d’un point de vue conceptuel ne remet pas en cause la singulière actualité de sa théorie politique et de sa critique de l’Etat. (shrink)

In 1776, the American Declaration of Independence appealed to "the Laws of nature and of Nature's God" and affirmed "these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness...." In 1935, John Dewey, professor of philosophy at Columbia University, declared, "Natural rights and natural liberties exist only in the kingdom of mythological social zoology." (...) These opposing pronouncements on natural rights represent two separate and antithetical American political traditions: natural rights individualism, the original Lockean tradition of the Founding; and Progressivism, the collectivist reaction to individualism which arose initially in the newly established universities in the decades following the Civil War. (shrink)

: Many people have lamented the proliferation of human rights claims. The cure for this problem, it may be thought, would be to develop a theory that can distinguish ‘real’ from ‘supposed’ human rights. I argue, however, that the proliferation of human rights mirrors a deep problem in human rights theory itself. Contemporary theories of natural rights to welfare are historical descendants from a theory of rights to subsistence which was developed in twelfth-century Europe. (...) According to this theory, each human being has a special role to fulfil in God's plan and therefore has inalienable rights to subsist. Later theories have secularized this idea by claiming that human beings are purposive agents. Secularization, however, comes at a price. In the case of these theories, the price is a failure to provide satisfactory answers to the most basic questions we would expect of a theory of natural rights to answer. They have failed to provide a basis for ascribing these rights to all and only to human beings. They have not been able to generate a clear and viable criterion for ascribing duties correlative to these rights. And they cannot limit rights-claims in a non-arbitrary way. Hence we should abandon these theories. (shrink)

TO assert that one should come to terms with the past if one wants to understand the present would be to underline the obvious. And yet, even though we know much more of the history of natural rights theories now, especially of the origin of these theories before the seventeenth century, than we did, say, twenty years ago, this increase in knowledge seems to have had little impact on contemporary philosophical discussions about the nature of rights. Sometimes (...) it seems that philosophers, especially the more analytically minded ones, regard the history of ideas as a separate subject with little or no relevance to their research. One of the reasons might be a tendency to regard conceptual analysis of rights as being relatively impartial between different theories in which these concepts might function. Even those who would allow for a close connection between a certain conception of the nature of rights and a theory of rights would find it prudent to distinguish more or less sharply between the question of what it means to have a right on the one hand, and the question which rights we have on the other hand. I would like to suggest that concepts of rights are the concepts of a theory and that we need to understand the theories from which they have emerged in order to fully understand contemporary rights language. One way of making this claim plausible would be to focus on an issue that has become central to contemporary debates about rights, that is, the conception of the rights-holder as a sovereign individual. I believe that our notion of individual sovereignty wavers between two quite different conceptions of sovereignty. The difference between the two will become obvious if we consider the relation between moral rights and more general moral obligations that people might have. I will then draw attention to a recent account of the history of natural rights theories. The point of doing so is this: if the account is true, then we have to acknowledge that ‘our’ ideas of natural rights (and especially of the sovereignty that people are supposed to possess according to these theories) have.... (shrink)

This paper pays special attention to T.H. Green's account of rights as developed in the Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation. Green's theory can be viewed as having at least two main levels. The first level is his general account of rights, emphasizing the notions of social recognition, of a power or capacity that each right-holder has, and of the common good subserved by proper rights. The second level is that of universal rights; here special (...) attention will be paid to Green's critique of seventeenth-century natural rights and to the theory of human rights that Green evolved to replace and improve upon the old natural rights tradition. In its account of contemporary human rights theory, the paperwill emphasize the special role that social recognition plays in both the moral project of justifying human rights and in the institutionalization that is a necessary feature of any fully constituted human right, functioning at full capacity. (shrink)

If we have a natural right to liberty, it is hard to see how a state could be legitimate without first obtaining the (genuine) consent of the governed. I consider the threat natural rights pose to state legitimacy. I distinguish minimal from full legitimacy and explore different understandings of the nature of our natural rights. Even though I conclude that natural rights do threaten the full legitimacy of states, I suggest that understanding our natural right to (...) liberty to be grounded in our interests in a certain way might not commit us to requiring consent for minimal legitimacy. Thus, even if natural rights effectively block the full legitimacy of states - on the assumption that rarely, if ever, the requisite consent will be forthcoming - they may allow minimal state legitimacy. Footnotesa I am grateful to my fellow contributors to this volume and to other readers for helpful questions and comments on an earlier version of this essay and in particular to Fred Miller, David Schmidtz, and John Simmons for written comments. Ellen Paul's detailed comments have helped me, as always, to correct many confusions and errors, and Harry Dolan's excellent editing has discovered others that I have endeavored to address. (shrink)

What happened to the doctrine of natural right in the nineteenth century? We know that it flourished in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We know that something like it - the doctrine of human rights and new forms of social contract theory - flourished again in the second half of the twentieth century and continues to flourish in the twenty-first. In between there was a period of decline and hibernation - uneven, to be sure, and never complete - but (...) a period in which to invoke natural right was always to invite intellectual ridicule and accusations of political irresponsibility. Thus article asks: How far can the decline of natural right in the nineteenth century be attributed to the reaction against the revolution in France? How far it was the effect of independent streams of thought, like positivism and historicism? Why was radical thought so ambivalent about natural right throughout the nineteenth century, and why was socialist thought in particular inclined to turn its back on i? As a framework for thought, natural right suffered a radical decline in the social and political sciences. But things were not so clear in jurisprudence, and natural right lived on to a much riper old age in the writings of some prominent economists. So we have to ask: What is it about this theory that allowed it to survive in these environments, when so much of the rest of intellectual endeavor in the nineteenth century was toxic or inhospitable to it. Finally, I shall ask how far American thought represents an exception to all of this. Why and to what extent did the doctrine survive as a way of thinking in the United States, long after it had lost its credibility elsewhere. (shrink)

The essays in this collection investigate two political traditions and their critical interactions. The first series of essays deals with the development of natural rights individualism, some examining its origins in the thought of the seminal political theorist, John Locke, and the influential constitutional theorist, Montesquieu, others the impact of their theories on intellectual leaders during the American Revolution and the Founding era, and still others the culmination of this tradition in the writings of nineteenth-century individualists such as Lysander (...) Spooner. The second series of essays focuses on the Progressive repudiation of natural rights individualism and its far-reaching effect on American politics and public policy. (shrink)

Robert Nozick worked in a Lockean tradition of political philosophy, a tradition with deep resonance in the American political culture. This paper attempts to explore the formative moments of that culture and at the same time to clarify the role of Lockean philosophy in the American Revolution. One of the currently dominant approaches to the revolution emphasizes the colonists' commitments to their rights, but identifies the relevant rights as “the rights of Englishmen,” not natural rights in (...) the Lockean mode. This approach misses, however, the way the Americans construed their positive or constitutional rights in the light of a Lockean background theory. In a word, the Americans recreated an amalgam of traditional constitutional principles and Lockean philosophy, an amalgam that nearly guaranteed that they and the British would speak past each other. The ambiguities and uncertainties of the British constitution as extended to the colonies provided an incentive to the Americans (but not the British) to look to Locke as a guide to their rights, thereby helping win a place for Lockean theory in American political thinking. (shrink)

All the above views are statements of or from the so-called emotive theory of value, or are closely related to that theory. Where causal primacy lies or whether all these theories and views are effects of a more deep-laid cause is difficult to determine. Nevertheless, the common bonds between the various views are evident; the views themselves are prevalent. Any work which challenges the current subjective intuitionism in matters of "right," "good," and the like stands out in illuminated relief. Such (...) a work is Natural Right and History by Leo Strauss. (shrink)

When Professor Georges Gurvitch, the highly esteemed occupant of the chair of philosophy at the University of Strausbourg before World War ll and the author of a series of brilliant studies in the pluralist philosophy of law, referred to Pierre—Joseph Proudhon as the central figure in the development of modern social and judicial philosophy, the basis of his highly flattering judgment was the philosophy of law that serves as the basis of Proudhon’s mutualism, a socio-legal conceptualization that had not only (...) greatly infiuenced Gurvitch’s own thinking but which had exerted tremendous infiuence as well over the thought of such outstanding social theorists as Herzen, Tolstoi, and Kropotkinl To state, therefore, that Proudhon was not only the first to call himself an anarchist but also “the most important" anarchist thinker of the modern period} is to establish his right to be heard. We are not entitled to skip lightly over his conception of law and justice as past generations have done. After outlining Proudhon’s legal theory and his conception of natural right, this paper will attempt to demonstrate that Proudhon’s thinking on law is an outstanding contribution to modern political theory. It is not too much to say, in fact, that his philosophy of law and natural right stands as a highly suggestive antidote to the hopeless confusion in contemporary political theory, a confusion that stems not only from the cloudy conception of justice posited by the social contract theorists but from the defective conception of justice advanced by the advocates of state socialism as well. (shrink)

Natural Right and History is widely recognized as Strauss’s most influential work. The six lectures, written while Strauss was at the New School, and a full transcript of the 1949 Walgreen Lectures show Strauss working toward the ideas he would present in fully matured form in his landmark work. In them, he explores natural right and the relationship between modern philosophers and the thought of the ancient Greek philosophers, as well as the relation of political philosophy to contemporary political science (...) and to major political and historical events, especially the Holocaust and World War II. Previously unpublished in book form, Strauss’s lectures are presented here in a thematic order that mirrors Natural Right and History and with interpretive essays by J. A. Colen, Christopher Lynch, Svetozar Minkov, Daniel Tanguay, Nathan Tarcov, and Michael Zuckert that establish their relation to the work. Rounding out the book are copious annotations and notes to facilitate further study. (shrink)

According to one recent account, in the “preliberal epoch” before the seventeenth century people did not think of individuals “as possessing inalienable rights to anything — much less life, liberty, property, or even the pursuit of happiness.” The statement is not true, but it is excusable. Compared with the flood of writing on the classical rights theories of the early modern period, there has been only a thin trickle of work on medieval ideas concerning individual natural rights, (...) or human rights as we say nowadays, rights inhering in the human person as such. Some modern authors see the seventeenth-century rights theories as a radical departure from ancient and medieval ways of thought; they are content to explain the ideas of Hobbes and Locke and Pufendorf by reference to some aspect of the intellectual, political, or economic life of the seventeenth century itself. C. B. MacPherson, for instance, emphasizing economic factors, inaugurated a minor academic industry when he interpreted Locke's teaching that everyone had a property right in his own person as a reflection of the possessive individualism of early-modern capitalism. (shrink)

Non-consequentialist libertarianism usually revolves around the claim that there are only “negative,” not “positive,” rights. Libertarian nega- tive-rights theories are so patently problematic, though, that it seems that there is a more fundamental notion at work. Some libertarians think this basic idea is freedom or liberty; others, that it is self-ownership. Neither approach is satis- factory.

The idea of equality exerts considerable influence on our moral imaginations, yet it has remained philosophically elusive. Although men and women have thought equality worth dying for, philosophers have been largely unable to give any systematic account of its importance as a moral ideal, or of its function in moral and political theory.

This chapter contains sections titled: A Lockean Argument for the Right to Liberty Our Rational Moral Competence From Liberty to Lockean Contractarianism.

If Kant's account of rights had continued the "early modern Natural Law tradition", basing rights on some notion of human flourishing, there would be no difficulty about including socio-economic rights for the needy in his theory. However, his division of moral philosophy into Rechtslehre and Tugendlehre limits Rechtspflichten to duties that a moral agent can be coerced to fulfill. If a state is to give the needy statutory rights, the justification for using coercion on its citizens (...) cannot be that they have a duty of virtue to assist the needy. In order to determine whether such a justification can be found, the one innate socio-economic right Kant admits, a child's right to be cared for and educated, is examined and found to be a right against its parents, not against the state. Kant does, however, hold that a state should establish institutions to provide for abandoned children and for the poor in general. His justification for a state's use of coercion with regard to such statutory rights is considered and a criterion is suggested for the possible consent of its non-virtuous citizens to proposed measures for assistance to the needy. It is suggested that if advocates of aid to the needy cannot justify their proposals by such a criterion they will have to provide a very different account of rights than Kant gives in his Rechtslehre , which is concerned with the moral permissibility of using coercion. Wenn Kants Lehre von den subjektiven Rechten nichts anderes wäre als eine Fortsetzung der "ihr vorangehenden modernen Naturrechtstradition" und die subjektiven Rechte infolgedessen auf das eine oder andere Konzept von menschlichem Wohlergehen gestützt hätte, dann wäre es nicht sonderlich schwierig, sozio-ökonomische Rechte für die Bedürftigen in diese Lehre einzubauen. Nun schränkt Kants Einteilung der Moralphilosophie in Rechtslehre und Tugendlehre den Begriff der Rechtspflicht allerdings auf diejenigen Pflichten ein, zu deren Erfüllung ein Mensch gezwungen werden kann. Deshalb kann, wenn ein Staat den Bedürftigen durch ein positives Gesetz irgendwelche Rechte auf Hilfe gewährt, die Rechtfertigung der Anwendung von staatlichem Zwang nicht darin gesucht werden, daß die dadurch in Anspruch genommenen Personen die Tugendpflicht haben, die Bedürftigen zu unterstützen. Um festzustellen, ob sich staatlicher Zwang in bezug auf solche Hilfspflichten überhaupt rechtfertigen läßt, erörtert der Beitrag das Recht des Kindes auf Fürsorge und Ausbildung als das eine und einzige angeborene sozio-ökonomische Recht, das Kant akzeptiert. Freilich ist das Recht des Kindes ein Recht gegen seine Eltern und nicht gegen den Staat. Gleichwohl nimmt Kant an, daß der Staat Einrichtungen schaffen sollte, die für verlassene Kinder und für die Armen im allgemeinen zu sorgen haben. Der Beitrag untersucht die Rechtfertigung, die Kant für die Anwendung von staatlichem Zwang zur Durchsetzung solcher positiv-gesetzlicher Rechte gibt, und arbeitet die Gründe dafür heraus, warum der nicht tugendhafte Staatsbürger in die vorgesehenen Hilfsmaßnahmen für die Bedürftigen einwilligen könnte. Wenn sich die Verfechter von Hilfsmaßnahmen für die Bedürftigen außerstande sehen, ihre Vorschläge auf Gründe dieser Art zu stützen, dann werden sie mit einem Konzept von subjektivem Recht aufwarten müssen, das sich von dem Konzept Kants von Recht und Rechtslehre , bei dem es allein um die moralische Erlaubtheit von Zwangsmaßnahmen geht, ganz erheblich unterscheidet. (shrink)

Hegel criticizes Kant's categorical imperative and what he takes to be Kant's social contract theory of political obligation, but these criticisms miss the mark, for Kant is not really a consent theorist, nor is his categorical imperative empty. The most distinct break Hegel makes with Kant's philosophy of right is rather his rejection of a theory of natural rights, a theory central to Kant's Metaphysics of Morals. While Hegel offers a theory of natural right in some sense, he does (...) not think individuals have natural rights. (shrink)

Francesco guicciardini rather than niccolo machiavelli was the first significant theorist to consider the role of interest in moral and political life, But the idea of interest rose to normative status because traditional natural law ethics, Which repressed the pursuit of interest in the name of right reason, Was transformed in the early modern period. The transformed version, It is proposed, Legitimized the pursuit of interest by introducing a philosophy of ethical egoism.

Discussions concerning whether there is a natural right to health care may occur in various forms, resulting in policy recommendations for how to implement any such right in a given society. But health care policies may be judged by international standards including the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The rights enumerated in the UDHR are grounded in traditions of moral theory, a philosophical analysis of which is necessary in order to adjudicate the value of specific policies designed (...) to enshrine rights such as a right to health care. We begin with an overview of the drafting of the UDHR and highlight the primary influence of natural law theory in validating the rights contained therein. We then provide an explication of natural law theory by reference to the writings of Thomas Aquinas, as well as elucidate the complementary “capabilities approach” of Martha Nussbaum. We conclude that a right to health care ought to be guaranteed by the state. (shrink)

Fichte's Foundations of Natural Right was one of the most influential books in nineteenth-century philosophy. It was read carefully by Schelling, Hegel, and Marx, and initiated a tradition in German philosophy that considers human subjectivity to be relational and intersubjective, thus requiring relations of recognition between subjects. The essays in this volume highlight this little-understood book's most important ideas and innovations. They offer discussions of Fichte's conception of freedom, self-consciousness, coercion, the summons, the body, and human rights, together with (...) new analyses of his deduction of right, his views on the social contract, and his arguments for the separation of right from morality. The essays expand and deepen ongoing debates in the scholarship and chart new avenues of thought about Fichte's most enduring work of political philosophy. They will be essential reading for students and scholars of German Idealism, nineteenth-century philosophy, and the history of political thought. (shrink)

Classical Iiberalism has at least two distinct strains. Its natural rights version requires extensive use of moral concepts. Some denigrate this tradition on grounds that it has been made obsolete by empiricist epistemology and materialist metaphysics. Since that tradition requires knowledge of moral truth and since empiricism precludes this, the tradition is hopeless. Since it also requires a teleological explanation of human action, and since mechanism precludes this, the hopelessness of the tradition is compounded. I argue that neither the (...) empiricist nor the mechanistic view may be taken for granted - indeed, if anything, they are obsolete, and the road is open to a philosophy which makes the natural rights tradition even more credible than it was when developed by John Locke. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Can Laws Be Unjust? The Moral Background The Law as Teacher Liberalism and the Law Should the Law Allow Torture?

Does one have an obligation to keep one’s promises? I answer this question by distinguishing between two broad conceptions of promising. On the normativized conception of promising, a promise is made when an agent validly offers to undertake an obligation to the promisee to perform some act (i.e., give up a liberty-right in relation to her) and the promisee validly accepts the offer. Keeping such promises is morally obligatory by definition. On the non- normativized conception, the nature of promising (...) does not conceptually entail any connection with the obligation to keep promises. A promise might be understood, for example, as an assertion that one will do something along with special assurance that one will do so and an invitation to rely on that assurance. A particularly attractive and relevant non-normativized account of promising takes promising simply to be giving one’s word concerning one’s future conduct. So understood, it is plausible—as a substantive matter—that one has an obligation to (1) alert the promisee, if one realizes that he will not perform the promised action, (2) apologize and compensate the promisee, if one does not perform the action, but one has no obligation to perform the promised action. (shrink)