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Aliantha · 06-03-2007, 09:58 PM

From Wiki on natural rights:

The first philosopher who fully made natural rights the source of his moral and political philosophy was Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). Hobbes argued that it is human nature to love one's self best and seek one's own good (this is a view known as psychological egoism). Since it is unavoidable ("necessity of nature") for human beings to follow their nature, it becomes a right to do so. According to Hobbes, to deny this right is to deny that we have a right to be human, which would be absurd, just as it would be absurd to demand that carnivores reject meat or that fish stop swimming. However, this was not a right in the conventional sense of imposing obligations on others, but merely a "liberty." Therefore, we have no obligations by birth or nature, but only unlimited rights - leading to a situation known as the "war of all against all", in which human beings have to kill, steal and enslave others in order to stay alive. Hobbes reasoned that this world of chaos created by unlimited rights was highly undesirable, causing human life to be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". As such, if humans wish to live peacefully they must give up most of their natural rights and create moral obligations in order to establish political and civil society. This is one of the earliest formulations of the theory of government known as the social contract.

Hobbes objected to the attempt to derive rights from "natural law," arguing that law ("lex") and right ("jus") though often confused, signify opposites, with law referring to obligations, while rights refer to the absence of obligations. Since by our (human) nature, we seek to maximize our well being, rights are prior to law, natural or institutional. This marked an important departure from medieval natural law theories which gave priority to obligations over rights. However, some thinkers such as Leo Strauss, maintained that Hobbes kept the primacy of natural law or moral obligation over natural rights, and thus did not fully break with medieval thought.

06-03-2007, 09:58 PM	#704
Aliantha trying hard to be a better person Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Brisbane, Australia Posts: 16,493	From Wiki on natural rights: The first philosopher who fully made natural rights the source of his moral and political philosophy was Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). Hobbes argued that it is human nature to love one's self best and seek one's own good (this is a view known as psychological egoism). Since it is unavoidable ("necessity of nature") for human beings to follow their nature, it becomes a right to do so. According to Hobbes, to deny this right is to deny that we have a right to be human, which would be absurd, just as it would be absurd to demand that carnivores reject meat or that fish stop swimming. However, this was not a right in the conventional sense of imposing obligations on others, but merely a "liberty." Therefore, we have no obligations by birth or nature, but only unlimited rights - leading to a situation known as the "war of all against all", in which human beings have to kill, steal and enslave others in order to stay alive. Hobbes reasoned that this world of chaos created by unlimited rights was highly undesirable, causing human life to be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". As such, if humans wish to live peacefully they must give up most of their natural rights and create moral obligations in order to establish political and civil society. This is one of the earliest formulations of the theory of government known as the social contract. Hobbes objected to the attempt to derive rights from "natural law," arguing that law ("lex") and right ("jus") though often confused, signify opposites, with law referring to obligations, while rights refer to the absence of obligations. Since by our (human) nature, we seek to maximize our well being, rights are prior to law, natural or institutional. This marked an important departure from medieval natural law theories which gave priority to obligations over rights. However, some thinkers such as Leo Strauss, maintained that Hobbes kept the primacy of natural law or moral obligation over natural rights, and thus did not fully break with medieval thought. __________________ Kind words are the music of the world. F. W. Faber