Natural Rights as Powers to Act

2020 ◽  
pp. 102-120
Author(s):  
Susan James
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
The Right

Spinoza grounds his political philosophy on a highly counter-intuitive conception of natural right as the right to do anything in your power. Just as big fish eat little fish by the right of nature, so humans act by natural right, regardless of what they do. In this essay I explain what leads Spinoza to hold this view and show how, in doing so, he contentiously rejects some of the most central assumptions of the natural law tradition. Finally, I consider whether Spinoza’s view can contribute anything of value to current discussions of natural right. I argue that he draws our attention to prerequisites of a cooperative way of life that contemporary theorists frequently neglect.

Natural Right in Hobbes and Kant

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard Williams
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Critical Philosophy ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
Rational Individual ◽  
Divine Support ◽  
Orthodox View

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.

JUSTICE, EQUALITY, AND NATURAL RIGHTS CLAIMS: A RECONSIDERATION OF AQUINAS'S CONCEPTION OF RIGHT

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 446-460 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Porter
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
Objective State ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Right

AbstractAccording to a widely held view, Aquinas does not have a notion of subjective natural rights, understood as moral powers inhering in individuals. This article argues that this way of reading Aquinas is wrong, or at best, seriously misleading. Aquinas does identify the right, the object of justice, with the relation established between parties to an equitable exchange or interaction, and in this sense he identifies right with an objective state of affairs. But this line of analysis does not commit him to any particular construal of what constitutes a just relation. In particular, it leaves open the possibility that in some situations, the right, understood as an objectively equitable relation, presupposes that someone's claim of a right, is duly acknowledged. Moreover, in many contexts Aquinas says that individuals can claim certain liberties and immunities on the basis of some natural right, in terms that make it clear that these claims lie within the discretion of the individual. His overall conception of natural law and natural right implies that individuals can legitimately make certain claims by right, claims that emerge within some contexts and not others. He does not have a theory of rights, but neither do the scholastic jurists of the time, and his appeals to what someone can claim by right are reminiscent of their views. If they can be said to have a notion of subjective natural rights, the same can be said of Aquinas himself.

Kant’s Naturrecht Feyerabend, Achenwall and the Role of the State

Kant Yearbook ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-71
Author(s):  
Mike L. Gregory
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Sustained Attention ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Law System ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
The Will ◽  
Subjective Rights

Abstract Kant’s Naturrecht Feyerabend has recently gained more sustained attention for its role in clarifying Kant’s published positions in political philosophy. However, too little attention has been given to the lecture’s relation to Gottfried Achenwall, whose book was the textbook for the course. In this paper, I will examine how Kant rejected and transforms Achenwall’s natural law system in the Feyerabend Lectures. Specifically, I will argue that Kant problematizes Achenwall’s foundational notion of a divine juridical state which opens up a normative gap between objective law (prohibitions, prescriptions and permissions) and subjective rights (moral capacities). In the absence of a divine sovereign, formal natural law is unable to justify subjective natural rights in the state of nature. In the Feyerabend Lectures, Kant, in order to close this gap, replaces the divine will with the “will of society”, making the state necessary for the possibility of rights.

scholarly journals THE CONVERGENCE OF TECHNOLOGIES, HUMAN REPRODUCTION AND NATURAL LAW: THE PHILOSOPHY OF TRANSHUMANISM

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 (2) ◽  
pp. 100-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
О. Рыбаков ◽  
O. Rybakov ◽  
С. Тихонова ◽  
S. Tikhonova
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Technological Development ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Human Reproduction ◽  
Philosophy Of Law ◽  
Biomedical Technology ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Convergence Of Technologies

<p>The article deals with analysis of transhumanist prospects for the philosophy of law. Modern transhumanists consider morphological freedom as a concept, revealing the natural right to happiness. The authors take this idea as a starting point and consider the logic of the convergent biotechnology development. They believe that the extension of natural law has the character of a dialectical strategy of assumptions and tactics of the local bans in the sphere of human reproduction. This situation is typical of biomedical technology in general. The legislator authorizes a technology by endorsing forms of reproductive relationships and blocking technologies that support immoral forms. As a result, it gradually enhances understanding of how technology must be applied to ensure the human natural rights. Convergence of technologies makes real a hypothetical design of rights to reproduction, while the conflict of morality and the imperatives of technological development can be resolved from the standpoint of the primacy of natural law.</p>

Teleological Groundings of Rights and Duties

2019 ◽  
pp. 89-117
Author(s):  
Rowan Cruft
Keyword(s):  
Natural Rights ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
The Right

Chapter 7 develops a teleological account of the grounding of duties and rights. It argues that a ‘natural’ right—that is, a duty that is owed to someone independently of anyone’s recognizing or deciding that it is owed to them (i.e. a duty that bears Chapter 4’s ‘Addressive’ requirements independently of anyone recognizing this or creating it)—must be a duty grounded wholly or predominantly on the right-holder’s own good. By contrast, legal, conventional, and promissory rights need not be grounded or justified by the right-holder’s good. Many alternative accounts of the grounding of ‘natural’ rights—from e.g. Darwall, Kamm, Nagel, Ripstein, Scanlon—are considered and rejected.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Rowan Cruft
Keyword(s):  
Natural Rights ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
The Right

The aim of the book—to offer a philosophical assessment of the concept of a right—is introduced, along with terminological distinctions. Chapter 1 defends the author’s Hohfeldian assumption that all claim-rights entail correlative duties owed to the right-holder. The chapter ends by clarifying the idea of a ‘natural’ right as simply a right that exists independently of anyone recognizing that it exists. So conceived, natural rights need imply neither a theistic nor a ‘state of nature’ grounding, and can include many rights protecting our sociality.

Rights to Punish for Libertarians

Dialogue ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 675-694
Author(s):  
Jordan Howard Sobel
Keyword(s):  
Natural Rights ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
Upper Limit ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
Equal Right

Thomas Hurka derives rights to punish from what I will term the Libertarian Rights Principle, which is “that there is really only one natural right, namely the equal right of all persons to the most extensive liberty compatible with a like liberty for other persons, and that all other natural rights are species or instances of the right to liberty.” These rights to punish, he says, (1) extend only to punishing violators of rights, never to “punishing” the innocent; (2) extend only to punishing for violations pursuant to intentions publicly announced prior to these violations; (3) are subject to the “upper limit qualification” (p. 652) that a permissible punishment for the violation of a right cannot be an act that would violate a more important right (i.e., a punishment that would infringe on a liberty more important than the one infringed upon in the violation); and (4) are subject to the “minimum necessary qualification” (p. 653) that a punishment p for violating a right r is not permissible if a punishment p' that would, were it permitted, violate a less important right than would p, would protect r as effectively as would p.

scholarly journals Philosophy, revelation and politics: The recovery of medieval Islamic political philosophy

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-55
Author(s):  
Funda Günsoy
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Radical Enlightenment ◽  
The Right ◽  
Right Order ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Ancient Political Philosophy

In contemporary philosophical thought, Leo Strauss is associated with the rediscovery of ancient political philosophy against modern political philosophy. The rediscovery of ancient political philosophy is the rediscovery of classical rationalism or “moderate Enlightenment” against modern rationalism or “radical Enlightenment” and can be understood as recapturing the “the question of man’s right life” and “the question of the right order of society”. This article would like to show that it was his study of medieval Islamic and Jewish texts that enabled Strauss to rediscover the classical rationalism. Also, in this article we would like to argue that although the opposition between Athens and Jerusalem, Reason and Revelation embodies two irreconcilable alternatives or a way of life in his thought, this opposition should be only examined with references to claims about radical rationalism of modern philosophy. In this case, we would like to argue that there can be seen a commonality between these “opponents”, i.e., Athens and Jerusalem, Reason and Revelation in terms of both their attitudes towards morality and their approaches to the relationship between philosophy and society.

scholarly journals PRIGIMTINIS ĮSTATYMAS IR PRIGIMTINĖS TEISĖS: NUO TOMO AKVINIEČIO IKI THOMASO HOBBESO

Problemos ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 75-87
Author(s):  
Andrius Navickas
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
The Political ◽  
Rights Theories

Straipsnyje analizuojama prigimtinio įstatymo koncepcijos politinėje filosofijoje sklaida. Susitelkiama ties dviejų mąstytojų – Tomo Akviniečio ir Thomaso Hobbeso – teorijomis, svarstomi jų filosofinių pozicijų panašumai ir skirtumai. Teigiama, kad perėjimas nuo Akviniečio prie Hobbeso politinės filosofijos yra glaudžiai susijęs su esmine transformacija, kurią galima vadinti perėjimu nuo klasikinės prigimtinio įstatymo koncepcijos prie prigimtinių teisių teorijos. Taip pat akcentuojama, jog tiek Akviniečio, tiek Hobbeso filosofinės įžvalgos yra svarbus diskusijų objektas ir šiandien. Tokio pobūdžio diskusijos galėtų reikšmingai praturtinti šiuolaikinę politinę filosofiją.Prasminiai žodžiai: prigimtinis įstatymas, prigimtinės teisės, Akvinietis, Hobbesas. NATURAL LAW AND NATURAL RIGHTS: FROM AQUINAS TO HOBBESAndrius Navickas Summary  The article deals with the concept of “rights” in the political philosophy. The author compares political philosophy of Aquinas and Hobbes, shows their similarities and differencies. The main aim of such analysis – to reveal the transformation in political philosophy, which can be named as the switch to natural rights theories. The author stresses that the tradition of natural law has various versions. The works of Aquinas and Hobbes represent two of them, which still are relevant for contemporary philosophical discussions.Keywords: natural law, natural rights, Aquinas, Hobbes.

scholarly journals The Natural Right To Parody: Assessing The (Potential) Parody/Satire Dichotomies In American And Canadian Copyright Laws

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 69-98
Author(s):  
Amy Lai
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
Legal Definition ◽  
The Core ◽  
Copyright Laws ◽  
American Law ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Right

This paper argues that the right to expressing oneself through parodies should constitute part of the core freedom of expression of a normative copyright regime. By drawing upon natural law legal theories, the paper proposes a legal definition of parody that would help to bring the copyright jurisprudence of a jurisdiction more in line with its free speech tradition. It argues that a broad parody definition, one that encompasses a great variety of expressive works but would not compete with the original and its derivatives in the market, is preferable to a narrow one. The paper then explains why the parody defence in American law and the parody exception in the Canadian copyright statute should follow the proposed parody definition, which would properly balance the rights of copyright owners with those of users.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document