pug846

This topic naturally belongs in the ethic's forum, but I get to interact with people here who don�t participate in any of the philosophy forums. I�d appreciate it if the moderators would leave it here at least for a while. The topic does deal with politics.

Underlying most of the discussions in this forum is some sort of political philosophy, and (hopefully) some sort of ethical theory provides support for the political philosophy. The word �right� gets used a lot, as in, X has a right to Y.

What do you mean when you say X has a right to (welfare, work, etc.) Where does this right come from? Do rights exist apart from a political framework?

Do rights have to be agreed upon by the majority of the population? If the majority says that blacks don�t have the right to freedom of speech, do blacks still somehow have the right, even though it isn�t recognized by the government? If blacks still have the right, then where did the right come from if not from a democratic process?

And while I would appreciate hearing opinions from everyone, I�d prefer theists who want to attach rights to God in some fashion use another thread to discuss that viewpoint. Otherwise the thread is going to turn into a �God doesn�t exist, so you�re wrong,� and nothing productive will come from it. I�d also prefer the few Objectivist we have to not hash out Objectivism since Rand has been discussed pretty frequently.

meritocrat

In a political sense, the most common form of 'rights' are natural rights, civil rights and human rights.

Natural rights pertains to rights that people are born with. Civil rights relates to fair treatment in society (, e.g. when blacks in the US could not vote then they were denied their civil rights). Human rights are rights that are intrinsic to being human. For example, because a person is human they have an inherent right not to be a slave or to express themselves freely.

theyeti

No, rights are social constructs. They do not exist in "nature" or in some sort of abstract ideal form separate from the minds of people who believe in them. They exist when and only when society says they do, usually after one or more groups demands them and achieves them via the democratic process. It therefore makes no sense to proclaim that you have a "right" to something if you're feeling deprived (unless the legal code already enshrines that right). It only makes sense to give rational arguments for why something should be a right.

The particular right you refer to is already enshrined in the Constitution, and this has been the case ever since shorty after the civil war (14th amendment I believe). In many cases the courts had not already clarified that right, and in practice it was being denied, but legally the right already existed prior to the civil rights movement. But of course other rights did not, which is why black people had to fight for them.

But bascially yes, in a democracy rights are wholly dependant upon the will of the majority. We have a Constitution and a Bill of Rights for the purpose of defending certain rights from the "tyranny of the majority", but even these can be changed with a large enough super-majority. (The Republicans try it almost every year.)

theyeti