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The concepts of "natural rights" by definition are those rights which are inborn by reason of being present at the time of birth, or shortly thereafter. One of these rights, is life itself. A person, simply by being born, has a natural right to live. This is not a right given by any government, but is a person's right given by his creator, God or Nature. Thus, the right to life is a natural right.

Another natural right would be the "pursuit of happiness." Pursuit being literally to chase after, and pursue those things which make a person happy. This is a natural right, which follows after a person is born, and of an age old enough to find pleasure in anything. Thus, a baby has a right to be comfortable, which it would find pleasurable. It follows, then, that a child has a right to reasonable food to survive, dry comfortable clothing, and to be able to play, in the pursuit of his or her happiness.

Liberty is also termed a natural right, as any human being would not be happy if kept prisoner and prevented from the pursuit of happiness. Together with "life", "pursuit of happiness," and ability to have property, these form the basis for human rights.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.118.38.8 (talk) 18:29, 6 April 2004‎ (UTC)

That could use some work. Natural rights form a natural hierarchy (sorry for the pun). You have to start with life like you stated above. Liberty has to follow life since life is rather worthless without it. Property follows from life as a means to living, "hey, that's my knife and cow!" The pursuit of happiness isn't a natural right per se. It's more of the point to living and more of a natural result of the above. I'll have to review Piekoff's Objectivism again and try not to plagarize it. Some actual history of natural rights would be good too.

- NolanEakins — Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.224.156.74 (talk) 05:06, 5 September 2005‎ (UTC)

Precondition for Liberty

Life is not a right given by any government, but this is the 21st century. It is apparently verging on over consumption, if not overpopulation. It needs a transformation of economic, religious and racial factors so as to support life. Hence the need to govern the governed by governing natual rights to be "...able to play, in the pursuit of his or her happiness."

This precondition for "..."life", "pursuit of happiness," and ability to have property," are natural rights to life, which are limited by food, shelter, transportation, and communication. This commonality is fundamental to the purpose and limits of governance. Beyond these natural rights to life is liberty.education

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.193.169.78 (talk) 05:51, 13 January 2006‎ (UTC)

Objections

If Natural Rights are limited to food, shelter, transportation, and communication then the liberty we speak of is not a precondition but very much conditional because the environment concerning these factors are subjected change. (precondition doesn't change) If we need transformation, then it contradicts the meaning of "precondition". Thus it doesn't follow that we are really governing natural rights if we are altering it to begin with. Thus if natural right to life is not given by the government then why bother governing it to begin with? The Natural Right you speak of isn't "natural" in the respect that natural is independent from human artificial reality.

The problem with natural right to life is that it is an abstraction of the phenomena of human existence. We see the person live, thus we assume that it entails that it means that the person has the right to live. We see that person has property, thus we assume that it entails that the person has the right to property. This begs the question, why do people have the right to live and the right to property? We are simply saying the person live, therefore he should live. Isn't there the natural right to death? Death is natural after all isn't it? I personally think that "natural" rights are to be based upon utilitarian preconditions on what makes people genuinely happy. Pursuit to Happiness and having property is very consistent with the Utilitarian Values that proposes happiness of both individuals and community. The Utilitarian approach must focus on what makes most people happy, and by happiness I mean any kind of utility that benefits them without a disproportional compromise of the other party (minority). Therefore, we do not need a deontological perspective of pursuit of happiness and right to live and right to property. [[user:public|Philonus|] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Philonus (talk • contribs) 04:39, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Proposed Redirect to Inalienable rights

I redirected this article to Inalienable rights, but Zephram Stark reverted the redirect with this comment:

Natural Rights is NOT the same as Human Rights/Inalienable Rights. Please do a Google search or read any dictionary or encyclopedia to verify this. The two terms are polar opposites.

However, the OED defines "natural right" as:

A right considered to be inherent or inalienable, esp. in connection with the individual's relationship to the state and to society. Cf. human rights s.v. HUMAN a. 3b. Freq. in pl.

It seems to me that a "right considered to be inalienable" is the same thing as an "inalienable right". --JW1805 18:56, 21 September 2005 (UTC)


The Declaration of Independence refers to Natural/Unalienable Rights, not Human Rights

In the United States Declaration of Independence, "Jefferson did not just assert one thing after another; rather, each term logically implies the others." "Take 'unalienable,' for example. A piece of property can be given away because you would still be human even without it. Property is alienable. 'Unalienable rights' are those which are inherent in human nature so that it is logically impossible for a human to be without them. If we have these rights by being humans, then we are obviously all equal in regard to them. Conversely, anything we have just by being human is unalienable. 'Their creator' is whatever endowed us with this nature." "If 'happiness' were defined as this or that, here, there would be no liberty to pursue something else. It follows logically that 'happiness' must necessarily be whatever a human pursues, and 'pursue' must mean whatever humans do in regard to happiness, and 'liberty' is just this unalienable right to pursue. And these linkages come because each of these concepts already involves the others. Since the linkages do not depend on something else, they are 'self-evident' and that is ultimately what truths are and mean, and we are human and are the ones saying this." ~ The Focusing Institute (Introduction to Philosophy)

This is one of 18,000 hits on Google for Unalienable vs. Inalienable, but User:Mel_Etitis and his buddies ignored them all to destroy this unique and factually correct article about Unalienable Rights as used in the United States Declaration of Independence to redirect it to the article for Inalienable Rights which puts Life and Liberty in the same classification as Palestine's desire for Mediterranean property and Iran's desire for nuclear fuel cycles. Now the Natural Rights article is being wiped out and redirected to something that claims to essentially be the same thing as Human Rights. Natural Rights and Human Rights are polar opposites. Do a Google search or open any dictionary or encyclopedia to verify this.

The article to which Mel redirected people who wanted to know what Unalienable means in the Declaration of Independence says in so many words, that the self-evident, unalienable parts of humanity are essentially the same thing as Iran and Palestine's pleas for material commodities. The article then says that the concept is an example of the Naturalistic fallacy, which essentially states that pleas for material commodities based on moral grounds are meaningless. Somewhere in the argument, the simple fact is lost that the Declaration of Independence: is not a plea, does not base its arguments on moral grounds, does not seek material commodities, and has nothing to do with the current usage or meaning of the word Inalienable.

The Criticism section of "Inalienable Rights" basically says that rights founded upon moral grounds are a joke. I couldn't agree more, but the United States Declaration of Independence is clearly not founded on moral grounds. Read it!! To those who are trying to subvert the meaning of the DOI, are you redirecting people from the Declaration of Independence to something that calls it and its fundamental concepts "largely groundless," "non sequitur," "an example of the naturalistic fallacy," and "a more elegant version of 'Because we said so'" because you hate the United States of America? What is your agenda? When you want to wipe out an article, please make sure that it doesn't change the meaning of the things that reference it. Please make some sort of good-faith effort to reach a consensus. --Zephram Stark 19:00, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Rights of Man 110: The representatives of the people of France..considering that ignorance, neglect, or comtempt of human rights, are the sole causes of public misfortunes..have resolved to set forth..these natural, imprescriptible, and unalienable rights.
Rights of Man 111: The end of all political associations, is, the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression.
To suggest that there are subtle shades of difference between these various terms is just silly. All of these articles should be merged into a single article.--JW1805 19:20, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
There are no subtle shades between the "unalienable rights" of the Declaration of Independence and the human rights that Mel is making fun of. Mel is absolutely right in saying that rights based on morals are a fallacy, because morals are subjective. But the DOI specifically bases its "unalienable rights" on the fact that they are "self-evidently" "unalienable." There are no morals involved. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are as unalienable from the human condition as breathing. --Zephram Stark 19:59, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
How are "liberty" and "the pursuit of happiness" "as unalienable from the human condition as breathing"? Millions of people today, and in history, have had their liberty taken away from them. The slaves of Thomas Jefferson and other "founders" certainly did not have that liberty. Many people live in miserable poverty and never have the opportunity to "pursue happiness"—how have they retained that right? I don't mean to dismiss the importance of rights—I think they are important—but I think you should consider that your arguments are not irrefutable. — Mateo SA | talk 05:29, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
I could write a book to answer the question of how Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness is as unalienable to the human condition as breathing, but proving that the argument is correct is not necessary to proving that the argument exists. My point in bringing up breathing is that there are some rights that are not morally based. Given that, we can safely say that not all rights are subject to the naturalistic fallacy. Rights based on what the "self-evident" nature of what humanity is are different from rights based on what humanity should have.
The right to breath is self-evident. You can verify that by simply trying to stop breathing. The right to liberty is harder to prove, but not the assertion that it exists. The founding fathers definitely assert that we are created with this right and that it cannot be relinquished. My only concern here is in keeping the two disparate concepts separate.
To answer your question, however, simply imagine what the world would be like if we had the ability to relinquish our right to liberty. If any dictator in the history of the world had ever figured out a way to coerce people into giving up their liberty, that nation would never fall regardless of how corrupt it became. The leader would simply do what was was required to keep civilians in line. He might threaten to kill a person's family unless they gave up their right to liberty or their right to pursue happiness, and that is all that would be required. Everybody would fall into line out of concern for their families.
But that is exactly what happens, according to our illustrious president here in the United States, right? President Bush said that the people of Iraq were being coerced into giving up their freedom. According to him, all we needed to do was invade Iraq, everyone would be free of their threats from Saddam, they would love America, and we could defeat terrorism. He believed that so much that, as soon as we occupied the country, he declared "Mission Accomplished!!" Yet, we all know that isn't exactly what happened. Why? Because the people of Iraq had not given up their freedom. It is impossible to do so. It is part of human nature. Even if Saddam had the ability to threaten each person with the lives of their family and friends, it would not have been possible for them to stop striving for liberty. They could have stopped for a while, like one can hold their breath for a while, but even the strongest willed of them would not have been able to hold out forever. If Saddam were really the oppressor that Bush made him out to be, he would have been overthrown. Such is human nature. It is impossible for that not to happen. It is built into us. It is a natural right that we can see for ourselves simply by witnessing that no dictator in history has ever been able to maintain indefinite control of the population through fear. A stable government must be at the consent of the governed. --Zephram Stark 22:25, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Breathing is a Natural Right

Let's consider the difference between Natural Rights an Human Rights (since the article on Inalienable Rights says that they are essentially the same thing as Human Rights).

A pretty basic example of this would be breathing. Breathing is not something we have a moral right to do. It is part of what it means to be a human. We cannot give up our right to breath. We can't permanently stop breathing even if someone said, "Give up your right to breath, or we will kill all of your family and friends." Breathing is a natural right. --Zephram Stark 19:17, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Some people claim that there are other things, besides breathing, so closely tied to humanity that they cannot be relinquished. The founders of the United States of American claim that "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" are other natural rights, not based on any moral reasoning, but simply because they are a "self-evidently" part of what it is to be a human being. They called these rights "unalienable" which means exactly what it sounds like: they cannot be alienated! We don't need anyone to reinterpret these words. They mean exactly what they sound like. That's why they were written that way. --Zephram Stark 19:28, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

  • Please see the OED definition above: "...esp. in connection with the individuals relationship to the state and to society." Thus, breathing is not a natural right/human right/etc because it has nothing to do with the state and society.--JW1805 19:34, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

If you think the OED is the word of God or an irrefutable truth, that is your opinion. Wikipedia is not restrained by OED definitions and even if it were, there IS a connection between a person's natural rights, including breating, and their state/society. An individual cannot give up his unalienable rights to the state. It is impossible to relinquish any of them, including breathing.

Suppose a group of terrorists strapped bombs to your family and told you, "The next time you seek nuclear fuel cycles, we will kill them all." Could you save your family? Could your relinquish your right to nuclear fuel cycles? Of course, because you have the physical ability to give them up. You could go the rest of your life without a single nuclear fuel cycle. It is possible. However, what would happen if the terrorists instead said, "The next time you seek a to protect your life, we will kill them all." Could you physically relinquish your right to life? Could you let someone beat you to death without raising your hands in defense? Could you let someone push you in a pool without trying to stay afloat? The founding fathers of the United States say, "no." Your right to life is unalienable. It is built-in. It is not something that you can relinquish, even if you try—-even if the lives of all your loved ones depend upon it. The DOI is not based on morals. It doesn't claim to be. It is based, as it says, on the "self-evident" nature of mankind. --Zephram Stark 19:52, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

  • Well, I was just taking your suggestion to open "any dictionary" to try and verify your statement that the two words were "polar opposites". I happened to open the OED (which is the world's most respected and definitive dictionary of the English language) and it did not seem to agree your statement. To say that Wikipedia is not restrained by the historical usage and accepted definitions of words is just ridiculous. --JW1805 20:46, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
It certainly is ridiculous, which is why I can't figure out the reason you are trying to change the historic usage of the words of the most important document in the history of my country. Click here, read through the actual principles of the Declaration of Independence, and tell me if you think it has anything to do with a plea for fairness or any of the other crap you are trying to redirect it to. The foundation of the United States of America is based on observable human characteristics. It is not a plea, it is a declaration. --Zephram Stark 21:16, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

To answer your questions above: Yes, you can physically relinquish your right to life. People commit suicide all the time. Yes, you could let someone beat you to death without raising your hands in defense. Again, that happens and has happened all the time. Many individuals, after being physically or mentally abused for long periods, will not defend themselves. An example of this would be the slaves beaten to death by some of the contemporaries of the "founding fathers". As to the assertion that one cannot relinquish one's right to life "even if the lives of all your loved ones depend upon it", I would say that countless people have gone to war and lost their lives, allowed themselves to be martyred, killed themselves, etc. to protect the lives of their loved ones. And someone could kill themselves—give up their right to breath—if someone threatened the lives of their loved ones. If those are your arguments for the "self-evident" and indisputable concept of natural rights, they are very poor arguments. So perhaps you could consider that your understanding of the concept of natural rights might be wrong, and that others are entitled to their opinions as well.

To use your words, if you think that the Declaration of Independence is "the word of God or an irrefutable truth", again that is your opinion. Wikipedia is not restrained by OED definitions, but it is also not restrained by the definitions used in the Declaration of Independence. Wikipedia is supposed to describe what other authorities say about particular concepts; i.e., it describes the existing body of knowledge and opinion in the world, without making assertions as to its validity. JW1805 was not saying the OED was irrefutable and did not try to "change the historic usage" of the DOI. He simply pointed out that at least some authorities do not agree with you. While you may fervently believe in your concept of natural rights, the point of Wikipedia is not to assert your beliefs, but to describe what people generally believe, and when they disagree, to describe those points of disagreement.

Finally, why do keep referring to "pleas for fairness"? The article "human rights" does not make that assertion. How would merging the articles "natural rights" and "human rights" make people think that the DOI is a "plea for fairness"? — Mateo SA | talk 05:18, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

See my answer in the above section for most of this. Your question about "irrefutable truth" is not relevant to what I said. I never used the word "irrefutable" and I certainly don't mean to imply it in reference to any interpretation of the Declaration. In fact, I tried adding a section in Support of the Declaration, in the "Inalienable Rights" article, without touching the Criticism section. The support section was promptly deleted. The people controlling that article don't want anyone to know that a dispute exists, despite the fact that a Google search for "unalienable vs. inalienable" yields 18,100 hits. Likewise, a very NPOV section on "Inalienable vs. Unalienable" was deleted, and the entire "Unalienable rights" article of cited and relevant information was deleted along with all history and discussion of it. --Zephram Stark 22:35, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

I realize that I am addressing a very old discussion, but there is an important distinction to be made: there is a difference between relinquishing your life and relinquishing your right to life. In the scenario posted above, where someone would shoot my whole family if I resisted them, I have merely relinquished my life, not my right to it. My assailant would have violated my right to life, and a right can only be violated if it is still held. Also, a right to life does not imply an obligation to life. Many people would say that a person who declines treatment when terminally ill is exercising a right to death, or exercising a right to live on their own terms. If we took the right to life as implying an obligation to stay alive as long as possible, then people would be obligated to take every treatment, even when that would only lead to a short extension of life, and even that filled with suffering. It's similar to a mugging: If someone holds me up at gun point, and demands my wallet, I have not forfeited my right to my wallet, my rights to it have been violated.--RLent (talk) 19:35, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

There are Two Fundamentally Different Concepts

Human Rights are based on morals. They are used in pleas for fairness, and to show victimhood. Because their basis is subjective, they have no Platonic factual existence.

Natural Rights are based on factual evidence that we can see for ourselves or prove via the scientific method. Because their basis is not subjective, natural rights can only be used for statements about the factual nature of man. A plea for a natural right negates the possibility that the item in question could be a natural right because natural rights are unalienable—-we don't have to ask anybody for them—-there is no way to give up the item in question.

The founding fathers of the United States of America did not create a Plea for Independence. They did not ask permission for their rights. These rights already belonged to them because they were unalienable—-they could not give them up in the first place. They are a natural part of what human beings consist of. They are natural rights. --Zephram Stark 20:41, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps you should note the name of the document called "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights". The UDHR, like the Declaration of Independence", does not make a "plea" for rights, but assumes that they exist and that they are "inalienable" to all human beings (see the text of the UDHR at http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/eng.htm. This is a concept common to many ideas of human rights. While you are entitled to your opinion about the nature of natural rights vs. human rights, other people have different views. The point of Wikipedia is to describe that existing knowledge, not to make an argument for one POV or another.
I am not on what you base your claim that "Human Rights are based on morals. They are used in pleas for fairness, and to show victimhood." Many of the provisions of the UDHR are similar to statements in the Declaration of Independence or other similar documents. For example, Article 3 of the UDHR declares that "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.", a statement very similar to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". Most claims for human rights are based simply on the assumption that those rights exist and are worth protecting. In that the concept of human rights is quite similar to that of natural rights.
What sort of "factual evidence" is used to prove the existence of natural rights? And how has the existence of natural rights been proven using the scientific method? I know of many theories of natural rights—such as that presented in the Declaration of Independence—but I have never heard of anyone providing a scientific proof of their existence. In fact, I would think that most scientists would consider the abstract concept of right to be inherently unprovable. Considering this, I would assert that the basic distinction between "human" rights and "natural" rights is that a religious or philosophical argument is made for the existence of natural rights, while human rights are simply assumed to exist. This explains why many asserted human and natural rights are identical (again, such as the right to "life and liberty"). The difference between them is that natural rights theory provides an argument for their inherent nature, while human rights theory simply assumes that they are inherent. — Mateo SA | talk 04:47, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Hopefully, I have answered these questions to your satisfaction in the two sections above. If not, please tell me which parts I have not answered. Terms like Natural Rights and Human Rights are not truths, they are constructs to describe concepts that exist. We can mix up the meanings of the constructs all we want, but the concepts remain pure. Without mixing it up with any other document, "unalienable" as used in the Declaration of Independence means: cannot be alienated. I don't need to tell you that, it's evident in the text of the document. It's evident without any interpretation at all. The most I can do to deter people from changing the meaning would amount to nothing more than if people read the Declaration without any "expert interpretation." The funny thing is, everyone I know here in the physical world who reads Principles of the Declaration of Independence gets it without any interpretation or annotation. Why is it so hard for my online friends to get it? Are they biased? That's the only conclusion I can come to. Do you really have to ask what the rights in the Declaration are based upon? It says right in the text: they are held to be self-evident. You can claim that you do not see evidence of them, but that doesn't change the fact that the American founding fathers created a pretty damned good nation based on them that held together for more than two hundred years until the concepts were discarded in favor of the USA Patriot Act. --Zephram Stark 23:31, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Proposed merge

Inalienable rights beedn't be (though they're usually claimed to be) natural, and natural rights needn't be (though they're often claimed to be) inalienable. I'd vote against the proposed merger. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 10:57, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Text of the Unalienable Rights Article

I propose that we clean up the text of the deleted "Unalienable Rights" article and use it for this article on Natural Rights. There are definitely two disparate concepts here. Whether you agree that certain rights are morality based or physically based is irrelevant. We need to describe the difference between the two concepts. Here is the text of the "Unalienable Rights" thread. We've all heard the rhetoric, that the information is all evil and needs to be wiped from the face of the Earth, but lets try to be a little more objective about our thoughts on the article. Okay? For instance, if you think that something cannot be verified, ask for a source. --Zephram Stark 23:30, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

For old text of Unalienable rights article, see [1]

  • Wow, that is really one poorly written article. My favorite part is in the "Proof of unalienable rights" section, which has the quote: "The United States Congress asserts that unalienable rights are self-evident", and then goes on to mention The Matrix. And you wonder why no one else seems to agree with your point of view? --JW1805 02:50, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Also, please note that this article was the subject of a VfD. The consensus was to delete and redirect to Inalienable rights.--JW1805 03:10, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
Please look up the word consensus.
I appreciate your attempt at a personal attack, but seeing as how I wrote very little of that article, your comments means nothing to me. I pasted it here so that we could talk about the various parts of it and possibly use some of it to create a strong article for Natural rights, but that doesn't appear to be in line with your agenda. Instead, you deleted it and gave us a link to a page that we can't edit. I don't know what you are so afraid of, but if that information is so dangerous to you that we can't even discuss it, I guess you have no choice but to delete it and rearrange my responses to people so that they don't even make sense. --Zephram Stark 03:18, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
I didn't personally attack anyone, I just said it was a badly written article. This talk page is not the place to paste a big chunk of text from another article. I don't have an "agenda", and I certainly don't consider anything in that silly article to be "dangerous". If you want to add to this article, go ahead, but try and stick to documented facts, rather than original research or attempts to "prove" a certain point of view. I don't know what you mean by "rearrange my responses", when did I do that? On the definition of "consensus", I would say that since every single person (except you) who contributed to that VfD voted to delete or redirect, I would call that consensus. --JW1805 04:31, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

"For instance, Jonathan Wallace has asserted that proclaiming some rights as 'natural' is another way of saying 'Stop asking questions' and 'I have won this argument.'"

This is in here twice.

Native American Influence?

Recently I read a book called 14911491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and it makes the case (though not throughly, as the book's main purpose is elsewhere) that Native American/Indian models of government and society had a strong impact on the development of ideas about natural rights in Europe (arguably these ideas underlied some Native societies - he cites the Iroquois). He notes that Native American/Indian examples were used to bolster these ideas in the works of many philosophers. I don't feel like I have a deep enough knowledge of the subject to write a section on it, but I'm wondering if those of you who have read deeper into the works of people like Locke and who know more about the history of American Native groups think this is reasonable. Right now articles on the enlightenment, liberalism, and ideas like natural rights are strongly grounded in European philosophers but don't mention the influence of America or go into how these ideas affected life at the time.--adamatari 23:35, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

It is certainly true hat the Iroquois Confederation influenced the American Colonists creation of the United States of America. They were not offering them any 'new' information, however. It was viewing the governmental working of the Confederacy based on these principles they found inspiring; a working model of democratic government based on these philosophies, which was absent in Europe in anything other than a convoluted or shallow sense. Alexander (talk) 08:11, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Proposed merger with Inalienable rights

Since no one has commented yet, I will. It seems to me that this article covers the same topic as the article on Inalienable rights. I propose that the two be merged; perhaps a new section in this article (Natural rights) article be created on the inalienability of natural rights. Please discuss. -Pfhorrest (talk) 07:46, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Update: Yes, I am aware of the previous discussion regarding this, and I think that it was mired in the confusion of several different issues, particularly the confusion of meta-ethical realism (particularly naturalism) vs anti-realism (the question of whether whether rights actually "exist" in some "natural", [meta]physical, cognitive, descriptive sense) and that of universalism vs relativism. I suppose I should comment on that more here so we don't just have a repeat of the previous discussion.

As I understand it, "natural rights" does not mean "natural" in the sense of "physical", but in contrast to "artificial" (c.f. legal rights); rights that people have just in virtue of being a person, "naturally", rather than in virtue of special protections granted by a particular polity. Thus any form of moral universalism, whether naturalist or not, can sustain a notion of natural rights as distinct from legal rights, even while different universalist theories of metaethics may disagree over whether those "natural rights" are "natural" in the sense of ethical naturalism.

Non-naturalists still believe in a universal ethics or morality, and so could support a notion of "natural rights" which are not grounded in "natural" moral facts. Even subjectivism comes in universalist varieties such as ideal observer theory and divine command theory (which appears to have been the metaethics Jefferson had in mind with the DOI, vis the "Creator" terminology); and there are even noncognitivist universalisms such as R.M. Hare's universal prescriptivism, and possibly even Kantianism. (Kant's exact metaethical position is unclear). Any of these metaethical positions is compatible with the notion of natural rights, but none of them would claim natural rights to be "natural" as in "physical" things.

That said, it seems pretty clear that Inalienable Rights and Natural Rights refer to the same thing; rights which are not contingent on any political structure but necessarily possessed by their bearers. I'd be strongly tempted to say that Human rights is supposed to refer to the same thing too, except strictly speaking Natural Rights could theoretically by borne by things other than humans (other terrestrial animals, extraterrestrial or artificial intelligences, etc), so I'm not proposing that that article be merged as well. (Likewise why I do not suggest the merger of Civil rights and Legal rights; although both refer to rights you have in respect to a particular polity, civil rights are rights you have in virtue of being a citizen specifically, while even non-citizens may have legal rights in respect to a particular polity).

On a somewhat tangential note, User:Zephram_Stark seems clearly PoV as a relativist in his claims that "morals are subjective"; that highly PoV assumption should not factor in to the organization of information here on Wikipedia. (Update 9/29: apparently Stark has been banned for some time now. Since he was the only vehement dissenter in the previous discussion, I think I'll go ahead and roll the unique content of Inalienable rights into Natural rights, probably creating a subsection on "Inalienability". As soon as I have the time, that is).

Also tangentially, regarding the debate between 'inalienable' and 'unalienable' (still present on the Inalienable rights page), a quick survey of dictionaries via both Google's "define:" function and Dictionary.com shows consensus that they are synonyms and no basis for this claim that their etymologies have anything to do with liens. (Dictionary.com: inalienable/unalienable; Google: inalienable/unalienable). Update 9/29: I removed the unsourced claims on "a-lien-ability" shortly after posting this comment.

-Pfhorrest (talk) 08:54, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

  • Oops. I posted this in the wrong place just now. An inalienable right is one that cannot be waived or transferred by its possessor. That is a statement purely about what can be done with the right, once its existence is accepted; the question of where the right comes from in the first place (including whether or not it is "natural") is an entirely separate one. - Oliver P. (talk) 17:09, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Libertarian rights in history

A recent edit by User:Simultaneous movement notes a libertarian view on the inalienability of rights. It is placed at the end of the History section, where it does fit chronologically (though it is not explicitly dated). However, it does not seem to fit there properly; the segue from the rest of the history is nonexistent and jarring. I'm looking for suggestions for better places to put it; maybe working in some more recent history of libertarian and anarcho-capitalist thought, to fill in the gaps between the Declaration of Independence and this relatively recent book?

I'm also slightly wondering about the notability of it; it does seem to present a different point of view not precisely covered elsewhere in the article - the view that rights are alienable but only by their owners - but it does not seem substantially different from the standard view of inalienability (nobody argues that peoples' inalienable rights over themselves are absolute to the point of making there no such thing as morally justified punishment), and refers especially to one particular self-published work from 1970. I think, again, that this could be helped by rounding it out into a more general addendum about modern libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism.

-Pfhorrest (talk) 06:23, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't think Friedrich Hayek belongs in the list of libertarian authors. It's debatable whether he could be called a libertarian, but more importantly I don't believe he advocated natural rights - certainly not in his later work. If you're going to list Hayek here, please reference something he wrote to back it up. For that matter, there should be references to the works of the other authors to show how they advocated natural rights, though I'm not disputing that they did. That's why I put citation needed on that sentence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Msgilligan (talk • contribs) 08:05, 26 February 2010 (UTC)


Statutory rights

I recently discovered an orphaned article on Statutory rights. This appears to be a synonym with legal rights, and as the article is orphaned and has very little content, I suggest it be merged into Natural and legal rights. -Pfhorrest (talk) 07:49, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

"Old-fashioned Whiggish History"

THIS ARTICLE IS BASED ON OLD-FASHIONED WHIGGISH HISTORY. Please, read the work of Johann Sommerville, Quentin Skinner, and Brian Tierney. Seriously, this essay needs help. The gap between the Stoics and Luther is not just a problem, it fundamentally undermines the entire piece! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.207.7.175 (talk) 16:35, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

(The above comment was written at the top of the talk page; moved here in proper order, plus subheading).
First of all this is not, or at least shouldn't be, an essay; it's an encyclopedia article, and if you think it reads like an essay, that's a problem with it we need to fix. But more importantly, if you think something with the article is lacking and you have the knowledge and especially citable sources to improve it with, great! Please feel free to make the changes you think are appropriate. If this article has missing or incorrect information, that's only because nobody who knows better has fixed it yet, so if you know better, then by all means please fix it. --Pfhorrest (talk) 23:56, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

As far as I can see they both cover the same topic. Just look at the history section, looks like two times the same topic with a slightly different lemma.91.14.197.149 (talk) 00:19, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, Natural Law is referring to religion and Natural and legal rights is more in the politics section.74.100.137.79 (talk) 00:19, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

  • Oppose I wouldn't say that they cover the same topic to such an extent that we should keep only one, any more than both science and religion should be merged into relationship between science and religion. Moreover, natural law does not exist simply in contradistinction with positive law, but also with divine law. Some argue that the content of our legal rights cannot be known except by reference to natural law. Untangling these issues in a single article seems overly broad and is best dealt with by having multiple articles. RJC TalkContribs 16:05, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

The section on legal rights asserts that these exist as a construct of state or other entities, rather than an inherent dignity of our humanity. The UN Declaration is listed in this section, but the opening sentence is quoted which falls firmly on the side of rights stemming from the dignity inherent in human beings. Doesn't that make it a statement of natural rights, rather than legal rights? 94.195.213.22 (talk) 22:53, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

It depends on which part of the Declaration you're looking at. The positive rights (near the end I think) are legal rights, while the negative rights are natural rights. However I think the Declaration itself implies that everything listed within falls under natural rights, which is not true. AThousandYoung (talk) 03:07, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

People

Natural Rights Theory holds People as rights holders. Men, women, animals, aliens, angels, artificial intelligences, etc have rights because and only because they are People.

I put People in the chart listing who has rights but it was apparently removed inappropriately. AThousandYoung (talk) 03:08, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

That's not a chart exhaustively listing everyone who has rights, it's just a navigation template to other articles about rights. It already has a link to this page. You only added another, redundant link to this page. That's why it was removed. That was noted in the edit summary of the edit which removed it. --Pfhorrest (talk) 09:23, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Pangle on Locke

RJC, you added the statement that "Thomas Pangle has defended Locke's influence on the Founding, claiming that historians who argue to the contrary either misrepresent the classical republican alternative to which they say the revolutionary leaders adhered, do not understand Locke, or point to someone else who was decisively influenced by Locke."

I agree that your statement is an accurate summary of Pangle's view, but it does not, by itself, establish that philosophers such as Hutcheson and Burlamaqui were "decisively" influenced by Locke. I know that there are such scholarly claims out there (Ursula von Eckardt comes to mind), but there are also counter-claims. For example, Burlamaqui's recent editor notes that Burlamaqui is closer to Leibniz than to the Pufendorfian tradition. John Witherspoon, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, likewise pointed to LEIBNIZ's decisive influence on Shaftesbury and Hutcheson. (Someday that will be the golden cornerstone of a Ph.D dissertation...) And of course Shaftesbury's affinity for Leibniz and pronounced disgust with Locke's moral philosophy is already well-documented; and Hutcheson prominently bowed in the direction of Cicero and Cumberland. At this point I'm not going to try to bring such observations into the article, but please keep in mind that Pangle is skating on very thin ice here. --Other Choices (talk) 23:11, 22 May 2010 (UTC) And the same goes for Zuckert: I've seen his passing references, which simply don't bother to offer any discussion of Hutcheson's and Burlamaqui's prominent and repeated Ciceronian association of VIRTUE with happiness -- an association shared by Jefferson (who copied Cicero's discussion of happiness as a teenager and who fondly remembered this passage from Cicero in his old age), and in striking contrast to Locke. I hope that you don't seriously believe that Pangle and Zuckert actually make their point. And if they don't make their point, should they be included on this subject here?--Other Choices (talk) 08:22, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

WP:NPOV. It doesn't matter whether they make their points. It is a widely held scholarly view on the subject. RJC TalkContribs 21:42, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Why did Jayzames delete the Islamic section?

Jayzames, recently you deleted the discussion of natural rights in the medieval Islamic tradition. I'm not familiar with this tradition, so I hesitate to revert your post. However, somebody else might decide to revert, if you don't explain your position. I, for one, am inviting you to explain why you thought that section wasn't worth keeping in the article. What was written appeared to be referenced. Was there a problem with the cited sources? --Other Choices (talk) 08:47, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Actually there is no tradition of "natural rights" in Islamic law, as all rights (in practice duties, or "faraid," are emphasized more than rights) are bestowed by god, and these rights are bestowed on the collective "umma" or community rather than on individuals.
What was written was referenced, but very thinly so. I'll refer you to this RFC as to what the problem is, one particular user spammed a vast number of articles with huge amounts of thinly sourced Islamic apologetics. In this case, the reference is to Weeramantry, who treats the matter in the source in question only in a cursory and superficial way. The notion that Islamic law has a developed notion of "natural rights" or "natural law" is definitely not the mainstream; all law comes from god. Even Anver Emon, one of the sources previously referenced had to state up front, "Respected Islamicists such as Patricia Crone and the late George Makdisi have stated in no uncertain terms that there is no natural law tradition in Islam," making for only a very modest and marginal case for natural law in Islam. This section was put in just for apologetic reasons.
Various people are now stuck trying to clean up large areas of Wikipedia that have been spaminated with Islamic apologetic fringe theories, I'm just trying to do the law related ones.Jayzames (talk) 07:10, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
In fact, developments in medieval Islamic thought necessarily precluded the development of natural rights (though it was arguably getting close through notions like the double truth of Averroes) because Islamic orthodoxy rejected rationalism and philosophy after Al Ghazali, which would have been a prerequisite for "natural law," i.e. laws deduced from reason, simply from observation of reality, that would bestow rights simply for being a human being, in favor of whatever was specifically spelled out in the books of revelation. After Al Ghazali, even the possibility of natural law was obviated. According to Al Ghazali, for example, even the burning of cotton by fire was caused directly by God, and not by the laws of nature; this became the prevailing view in Islam. Philosophers like Al Farabi, who were aware of, wrote about, and admired some aspects Greek democracy, always made sure to ultimately dismiss such institutions as "ignorant" because they were (in the Greek case) based on reason and not on divine revelation, hence there is no "natural law" tradition in Islam, and assertions to the contrary are thin and largely apologetic.Jayzames (talk) 07:28, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
And, I just realized I have to despaminate the natural law article as well.Jayzames (talk) 07:40, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for your explanation. I, for one, will not object if you remove the "Islamic" section of the natural law article.--Other Choices (talk) 08:05, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Link to dab page

The article currently reads:

...In contrast, natural rights (also called moral rights or unalienable rights) ...

The link to moral rights leads to a dab page which links back to this article and to Moral rights (copyright law). As I understand WP:LINK and WP:DAB, we shouldn't do this, so I removed the link. Another user put it back, commenting "that's intentional to link to other meanings of the term "moral rights". I don't understand that reasoning. Wikipedia is not a dictionary or a thesaurus -- we don't use links to educate the user about other meanings of terms. If it's important to clarify that moral rights here does not refer to the term in copyright law, then I'd suggest the wording

...In contrast, natural rights (also called moral rights -- not to be confused with moral rights in copyright law -- or unalienable rights) ...<

but I think that's a bad idea. --Macrakis (talk) 21:35, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Natural Rights as A Perspective... among many

I am quite aware that there is going to be resistance to my assertion here but my argument is quite simple. I have added a caveat to describe natural rights as "...a philosophical and political perspective, wherein,..." and the original entry continues "...rights are not contingent upon the laws, customs, or beliefs of a particular society or polity". I understand the argument that the Natural rights are necessarily universal but... where are these universal rights stated? If you can't show them to me and then cite them, then I will assert on this basis that the Natural Laws argument is a perspective, among many. Obviously, there are laws we can look up and cite. I want to see where they exist.

To be fair, Pfhorrest has argued that ""natural rights" are not themselves a perspective, though there are different perspectives ON them (e.g. on whether or not they exist)". I find this to be inadequate as a rebuttal. Natural rights is a perspective in so far as there is no law text or constitution for that matter, that outlines "universal rights". There are however, interpretive arguments based on texts, this makes natural rights a perspective. Edunoramus (talk) 00:25, 23 August 2010 (UTC)—

As I understand it, you want the article to reflect the fact that there may not be any such thing as natural rights. That is fine, but your citation-needed tags are a bit over the top. Also, your attempts at balancing the article are linguistically awkward. I will change the lead to say the original "some philosophers draw a distinction," put the statements about natural and legal rights in the subjunctive, and note the existence of natural rights is not universally accepted. This is, however, an article on natural rights theory and so it can't actually argue for their existence, just that their existence has been supported by sources A, B, C, etc. (which it does). RJC TalkContribs 04:04, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
Yes, my point of contention was a grammatical or linguistic one, not a substantial one.
If someone asks "what's a natural right?", your answer isn't going to begin "part of a perspective which...". It's going to begin "a right which...".
The questions "are there any natural rights?" and (if yes) "what rights are natural?" are separate from the question "what is a natural right?".
The Overview section already begins "The question of which (if any) rights are natural and which are merely legal is an important one in philosophy and politics." I'm a strong defender of NPOV, but it's a pet peeve of mine when people try to make definition sound more neutral by defining something which some concept or perspective or theory is about as a concept or perspective or theory itself. "Natural rights" are just rights which are natural (of which there may or may not be any). "Natural rights theory" is the perspective which claims that natural rights exist. --Pfhorrest (talk) 06:46, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

1. What I am taking issue with in my suggested edits starts with the fact that this article is simultaneous about both natural and legal rights; it is one thing to work to describe natural law on it's own but when we take on natural and legal rights in juxtaposition then it becomes more complex and the need for a balanced perspective becomes inherently necessary. On this basis, I believe that the introduction should offer an even-handed perspective as an argument on both sides in accordance with Wikipedia's npov principles. Right now, I believe that this article leans to the natural rights perspective and in some instances, represents opinion and conjecture as fact. Specifically, I see it as arguing that legal rights are morally relative, which despite the surface-level appearance of innocence, it is actually a Right-leaning critique. For more on this critique from the Right, see this Roger Kimball article for background: Kimball- The Dictatorship of Relativism.

2. In terms of the legal rights side of the argument, more than simply being "contingent upon local laws, customs, and beliefs" there is distinct purpose to legal rights which has to with the imposition of will, either allow for will to be imposed upon a person or an entity to oblige action and/or to permit their inaction. Legal rights are a political resource wherein a person or an entity is given power (and sometimes resources); sometimes this comes at the expense of the imposition upon other persons or entities and thus, there is an effect upon rights of others. It seems to me that the position of the natural rights argument is to assert that there is a universal or natural order that forbids such an imposition upon rights and thus, it makes it possible to forbid such action on the basis of the inherent natural right.

3. In order to push this piece closer to npov, perhaps we could start with the admission that there is an underlying tension between positive and negative rights; wherein positive rights permit or oblige action and negative rights permit or oblige inaction. I guess what I am getting at is that this article could benefit in a shift from a normative position to a descriptive or positive position; and in this way, it would aim for a description of how things 'are', and ease up on how they 'should' be. (see Hume's Is ought problem) Hopefully, this will be a compromise that will not yield a neutralized definition that makes natural law sound like merely "some concept or perspective or theory".

4. I am not so much concerned with the question of "are there any natural rights?" nor, am I suggesting that there may not be any such thing as natural rights. I just want to see a adequate argument on both sides. I will say however, as a critique, this piece really does seem to avoid getting to describing what natural rights are in comparison to legal rights. The feeling I get, and part of my reason for stepping in is that in juxtaposing natural rights with legal rights, there seems to be some underlying moralistic axe to grind that presents itself simply as a normative position. As I read the piece, I am still left wondering about the point of it other than making an assertion about the importance of natural rights while suggesting that legal rights are lesser because they are morally relative. I say let's just work to sum up the territories on both sides of the issue, in the opening paragraph, say where you stand but allow the other side their due. In terms of clarifying the legal rights side, actually, I think it is beyond the scope of my own expertise and I suggest asking for input from someone in the legal profession to describe legal rights in an appropriate and fair way. I am happy to set this motion, if you all are amenable. Edunoramus (talk) 19:56, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

I see this article as working together in conjunction with several other articles, notably Negative and positive rights and Claim rights and liberty rights, to flesh out several different concepts of what is a "right". These issues are all orthogonal to each other, but some of your comments above seem to conflate them.
Mostly in response to your point 2: A claim right is an obligation or duty of one person to another, whereas a liberty right is a freedom, privilege, or permission for one person, implying a corresponding lack of obligations. Each of these can be either positive or negative: you can have have a claim right against others somehow imposing on you, which would be a negative claim right; or you could have a claim right requiring others to do something for you, which would be a positive claim right; or you could have a liberty right saying that nothing is wrong with you doing something (you are under no obligation not to), which would be a positive liberty right; or you could have a liberty right saying that nothing is obliging you to do something (you are free to refrain from doing it), which would be a negative liberty right.
Any of those may be either legal or natural in nature; that is the only distinction which this article is about. Take a negative claim right for example, say the right to personal security, i.e. the right not to be assaulted, i.e. an obligation upon others to not assault you. A particular legal system may or may not grant or acknowledge this right (though most generally do). Under a legal system which does grant it, you have a legal right to personal security; under those which do not, you do not. In either situation, it may or may not be the case there there is some "natural" system of rights independent of what any legal system says, which in turn may or may not include such a right. Natural rights theorists will generally claim that natural rights supersede legal rights, and so claim that if you have a natural right to be free from assault, then anything, legal or otherwise, which so imposes upon you, is wrong, whether or not the law says it is.
But that is not the defining feature of natural rights. The question is: do you have a right to X because there is a law on the books saying you do (in which case, X, is a legal right); or do you have a right to X because you just do in some grand universal scheme of inherent, necessary deontological relations (in which case, X is a natural right; determining if this is the case is of course much more difficult than just looking up what a law book says). You could have one or the either or both or neither. And either could be about any of what you may or may not do or what others must or must not do to you; natural rights are not (in concept) limited to saying what others may not do to you.
Either way, the bulk of the article is about arguments over which if any rights are natural and which are merely legal; the entire article is about the controversy. (The "overview" section summarizing the controversy used to be in the lede and got moved out because it was too huge; we don't need to make the lede into yet another rehash of the same argument that the entire article goes on and on about.) And saying "merely legal" isn't meant to denigrate legal rights and bias the article in favor of natural rights: it's merely that legal rights are rather, well, mundane; if you want to know what legal rights you have in a particular jurisdiction, just look up the laws of the jurisdiction, there's not a whole lot of discussion to be had over it. Natural rights are the controversial side, and so the part that gets the most discussion. --Pfhorrest (talk) 23:19, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
Addendum: I brief summary of what I think the structure of this article lede is meant to be: "[_____] is how natural rights differ from legal rights. There is controversy about what if anything counts as a natural right." Then the rest of the article is about that controversy. I'm not sure what there really is to say about legal rights by themselves, rather than just distinguishing them from natural rights: the old article at legal rights was just about that distinction, which is why it was merged with natural rights (which was also about the same distinction) into this. --Pfhorrest (talk) 23:38, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I would have been in favor of an article just on natural rights, but someone in the philosophy WikiProject gained a consensus around having articles distinguishing various kinds of rights. I'm not sure about your desire to move from a normative explanation to a positive one, since every description of a theory that I've seen (that is not woefully inadequate) either describes it well enough to make it seem right or describes problems with it well enough to make it seem crazy (both of which fall under normative theorizing). I know that positivists argue that it is possible to state theories objectively, but I've only ever had bad pudding from that cafeteria. I do agree that the links to moral relativism could go (I forget when they were added) and that legal rights could use some fleshing out in the body of the article. Again, however, this is an article on a distinction that many people find untenable: their view can come as criticism but would be inappropriate to be repeated throughout an article explaining the distinction in the first place. RJC TalkContribs 23:27, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
I have been thinking about this article and I am beginning to understand the logic of having natural rights and legal rights linked together in a definition. Doing so problematizes the concepts in a way that requires the complexity of the ideas to be clearly articulated. In my view, this article is not at the level of any form of clear articulation yet. It really represents natural law as a theory and POV but falls short on how it might actually work in the "real world" with real people. So, in this regard, I am interested in having someone from the pro-natural rights side explain the relationship between Civil Rights and Natural Rights, especially as civil rights is deemed a legal right. --Edunoramus (talk) 12:39, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
I just replied to this in response to your comments on Talk:Civil and political rights, but I think you're conflating some different senses of terms here. "Civil right" can mean several completely different things; that's why the link on this page goes to a disambiguation page. The most common (in my experience) usage is about the kinds of rights that civil rights movements advocate, which is what the article civil and political rights is about. That is not the sense used here. Another usage is about the kinds of rights offered by civil law jurisdictions; that is also not the sense used here.
Another sense is juxtaposed to "human rights", with a meaning implying that human rights are natural and universal while civil rights (in this sense) are artificial constructs which vary from state to state; in essence, a synonym for "legal rights" as opposed to "natural rights". THAT is the sense used here, and only in passing; mentioning that sometime, some people (apparently) say "civil rights" and mean the same thing as "legal rights", instead of meaning one of the other two things above. (Honestly I am completely unfamiliar with that usage in my own life, but it was mentioned in an old version of the Civil rights article and I didn't see good reason to remove it).
Also, as far as "how [natural rights] might actually work in the real world with real people", that may be a good question, and if you know of any reliable sources discussing it feel free to include them in this article; but I don't see how that has any impact on the neutrality of this article. It sounds like you're just calling into question the concept of natural rights yourself, which I would be happy to discuss in some other place but Wikipedia is not a forum. --Pfhorrest (talk) 19:33, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
On second thought, this type of merging strikes me as a type of reverse content forking that is aimed at inferring that two topic articles are treating the same subject, when in fact the topics themselves are contestable in terms of notions and ideals related to positive liberty and negative liberty. In this sense, the suggestion to merge is coming from the natural rights oriented side of the argument in an effort to neutralize the arguments in support of legal and civil rights. Please correct me if I am wrong. (See also Civil and political rights). --Edunoramus (talk) 15:06, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
You said this exact paragraph both here and on Talk:Civil and political rights (with just a different link back here instead of to there), and I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to say in either place. It sounds again like you are conflating several things. As mentioned above, "civil rights" in the sense discussed on Civil and political rights are neither opposed nor aligned with natural rights. And natural rights vs legal rights has nothing to do with the positive liberty vs negative liberty distinction, although civil and political rights are usually (but not perfectly) aligned with negative liberty while economic, social and cultural rights are aligned (again, imperfectly) with positive liberty. But that has nothing to do with this article. --Pfhorrest (talk) 19:33, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
I disagree with your characterizations above. I see natural rights as having something to do with conceptions of negative liberty and I see civil and political rights as aligned with conceptions of positive liberty. For me, legal rights are a mix of both, while I am not so sure about the characterization of economic, social and cultural rights. I need to look into it further, specifically the way in which UDHR and the ICESCR texts are being interpreted, at first glance the UDHR seems to affirm and support a natural rights stance, while appearing on the surface to affirm something more emancipatory; I need to understand the background on it better, my gut feeling is that it is conflicted. -- Edunoramus (talk) 01:41, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
That is incorrect. Natural rights may be both positive and negative, as may legal, civil, political, etc. If you feel that you need to get a handle on the background and how these rights truly relate to one another, might I suggest that you are approaching the article in the wrong spirit. Verifiability means that we do not report on the truth, but only on what has been written in reliable sources; doing otherwise would require that we engage in original research. RJC TalkContribs 19:22, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
I see, so in terms of verifiability, where do you place your claim to reliable sources when it comes to pitting Hobbes against Rousseau as it relates to the state of nature argument? There is a point at which it becomes conjectural, unless one makes an attempt to clearly state the argument on both sides. This is my point... I do not know the background on the documents offered as evidence, so in order to understand the context better, I simply need to look into it further. - Edunoramus (talk) 01:48, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Reworked/trimmed down lead

The lead for this article seemed to be too long so I thought it would be appropriate to do a little work on it. I led the lead with the name of the article and bolded it, as well as bolding the definitions of natural and legal rights since Natural Rights and Legal rights both redirect to this article. I trim down some of the jargon in an attempt to make the article more readable by a general audience. The original text also seemed a little wordy so I trimmed out what I thought were extra words in the text that I reused.

I also removed the last two paragraphs from the original lead. Considering that this is an article about philosophers/political scientists distinction between natural and legal rights, I think it's a foregone conclusion that there is debate on the issue (if they all agreed they'd all be out of the job) and mentioning it in the lead is unnecessary. I thought the paragraph about James Madison was individually significant, so I edited it so that it could better stand on its own and moved to the Debate section.

If you think that the edit can be improved, please feel free to make your own contributions or discuss on the talk page. I know I was being bold with this edit (there hadn't been much activity lately), but I'd ask that the edit not be reverted; I think the lead is just the beginning, it looks like this entire article could use some work. --NINTENDUDE64 17:28, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't object to your overall objectives, but I think some of the details need working out:
  • "Natural and legal rights is a theoretical distinction..." sounds ungrammatical, which is why it was worded the other way. (All the other "theoretical distinction" articles on rights begin like that too). It would be better if we could have the title at the start of the first sentence, but I think grammaticality comes first. Maybe something like "Natural and legal rights are two types of rights distinguished between by..." But now that gets a little verbose. I'm open to suggestions.
  • Saying natural rights are inherent "from mankind's own humanity" rules out possible natural rights of non-humans; animal rights advocates may take objection to this. More generally, saying what natural rights are inherent from, or what their source is, is a very tricky and controversial metaethical question, so I think it's a bad idea to state any position in that debate here in the lede, which leaves only what natural rights are not: contingent upon the laws, customs, or beliefs of any particular society or government.
  • A minor nitpick, but I'm not sure "beyond the scope of" is clearly accurate. Natural rights claims often address subjects that legislatures consider within the scope of their power. I preferred "not contingent upon", but I can see how that might be a little jargony. Again, I'm open to suggestions.
  • I think changing "relative" to "specific" is problematic because the "relative" of legal rights was standing in contrast to the "universal" of natural rights, and both linked to the respective articles on moral universalism and moral relativism.
  • On that note, you removed some other useful wikilinks.
  • I see you also removed the "civil rights" and "moral rights" disambiguation terms; there are disambiguation pages which link here from those terms, so I think they need to be here in the article.
--Pfhorrest (talk) 19:50, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
  • I like your first suggestion and will definitely make that change. I think my original edit could've been better had I put Natural and Legal rights in quotes, but even that would've been wonky. Grammar does need to come first and your suggestion also fulfills the goal of including the article title as the first words in the lead.
  • I think that the idea of animal natural rights is still somewhat of a recent and minority position, so I question its weight for inclusion in the lead. In the article, the concept is only briefly mentioned. However, I can see your point that using "humanity" would close the door on animal rights. Perhaps "existence" would be a better term to use and conveys the same principle. I suspect that the wording could be reverted later by others since humanity is a popular way to define natural rights (along with rights from God or rights from nature's god, but those are obviously controversial and can be elaborated in the article content itself where appropriate).
  • I see your point that some legislative bodies do consider statutes defining or enumerating natural rights within their scope, so a different rewording may be in order or maybe restoring the "contingent upon" phrasing.
  • I also see your point about the duality of moral universalism and relativism and should be linked in the lead. However, I do prefer the wording that legal rights are culturally and political specific to their sources. I'll see what I can do about this since it is an important distinction.
  • Yeah, I kinda forgot to re-wikilink some things. I certainly encourage you or anyone else to add those wikilinks and I don't think they warrant much discussion since they're not content changes.
  • I was deliberate in my removal of civil rights and moral rights. Civil rights in the original lead were associated with legal rights and I disagree with that assertion. I think civil rights can be defined both negatively and positively, which means that they can be either natural or legal. Also, the page on moral rights just redirects to this article.
Thanks for the comments and the help, I appreciate them. And of course feel free to comment and contribute further. --NINTENDUDE64 22:39, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for being so conciliatory. A few things still bother me though.
  • The point about animal rights advocates objecting to the "mankind's own humanity" phrase was only a specific example of how someone might object to any claim of where natural rights come from. As you mention, in addition to the humanistic account, there are also religious accounts of it; there are what we might call "personalistic" accounts whereby natural rights derive from personhood or the possession of free will; there are utilitarian or hedonistic accounts whereby rights derive from the ability to suffer; etc. Any one of those would be objected to by opponents of those theories. (As for the specific wording that stands now, about "existence", that is trivially false; my soda bottle here exists but does not therefore have rights). So I think it's best not to say at all (in the lede) where natural rights derive from. Rather, we should simply say that they are rights which do not derive from social or governmental laws, customs, or beliefs, since that is what all accounts of natural rights have in common: some kind of inherent rights superior to or prior to man-made law.
  • Just a point of clarification, not relevant to the article anymore (since you reverted to the "not contingent upon" wording, which fixed the problem), but I didn't mean that legislatures sometimes set out to enumerate natural rights (though some do); what I meant was that the kinds of things which legislatures may rule upon, declaring a legal right or not, are often the same kinds of things which natural rights claims are about, so the scope of the two overlaps significantly. For example, there may be a natural right to free speech; and legislatures may rule upon the regulation of speech (either in accordance with or in defiance of any natural right to it there may be).
  • The civil rights language was there because an old version of Civil rights that I cleaned up (and split into Civil rights (disambiguation) and Civil and political rights) mentioned three different senses of the term "civil rights" (those mentioned on the dab page now), one of which was synonymous to legal rights (and usually used in contrast to the phrase "human rights"). I am not familiar with this usage myself but since others seemed to be I thought it wise to keep it. Both it and moral rights were linked to their respective disambiguation pages to show the other senses of those terms besides the ones used on this page.
    • A sort of side-note to your last point above, the sentence "civil rights can be defined both negatively and positively, which means that they can be either natural or legal" concerns me. The legal/natural distinction is different from the negative/positive distinction. Both natural rights are legal rights can be ether positive or negative. That's why we have a separate article on Negative and positive rights.
Thanks again. --Pfhorrest (talk) 00:49, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Now that I read it again, replacing humanity with existence is odd and isn't a commonly used defining term. I think in this case it may be hard to appease an animal natural rights perspective, and it is currently not a weighty aspect of the topic. However, I don't agree with leaving out the source of natural rights nor with defining them by what they are not. Where natural rights derive from is important to justify their universality. Also taking their universality into account, I think applying theological perspectives should be avoided since that would entail a cultural definition. The commonality between secular and nonsecular (and agnostic) sources for natural rights is humanity (i.e. the human existence as oppose to other forms of existence).
  • Pertaining to the point about scope, I may not have used the best wording in my own explanation. I share the sentiments of your explanation.
  • From a philosophical and political science perspective, not all civil rights are legal rights so I don't think it would be appropriate to associate them specifically with either type. For example, speech and thought freedoms are natural and civil; freedoms from discrimination are legal and civil.
Thank you for the continued input. From this, I really only see justification for switching existence back to humanity. If you have any addition comments or contributions, I'm always open to further discussion and editing. --NINTENDUDE64 02:29, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
I still strongly disagree about specifying the origin of natural rights in the definition thereof in the lede. The lede of a conceptual, philosophical article like this absolutely must be neutral and not make blanket claims contrary to notable minority opinions. For any value of X you care to choose, defining natural rights as "rights which derive from X" is making the encyclopedia take a stance on a controversy, since there is not consensus among experts as to what the origin of natural rights are, and the encyclopedia is only supposed to report consensus amongst experts in its own voice. We could of course go into more detail on who takes what position, attributed to the appropriate people, but that would be too long for a lede.
Perhaps we could go for something more neutral without defining them entirely negatively like I suggested before. Maybe something like "rights inherently possessed by all ____ by their nature"? The question then becomes filling in that blank. "Humans" has the same problem as the current version. "People" is much better but still there are dissenting opinions. "Subjects" or "Entities" or "Beings" etc become too broad, like the "existence" version you had before. "Right-holders" is precisely accurate but only because it's tautological; but I guess we are kind of looking for something somewhat tautological anyway. Maybe "Natural rights are those inherently possessed by their bearers by virtue of their nature" or something? Leaves open who bears such rights, and why; theories of which can be elaborated upon further down in the article.
Regarding the "civil rights" issue, I think you misunderstand me. I'm discussing different senses of the term "civil rights", which is why there is a disambiguation page which the term that was here linked to. In the sense of "civil rights" which denotes certain objects of rights (such as free speech as you mention), yes, those civil rights may be natural or legal or both. But there is apparently another sense of "civil rights" (a different meaning) which distinguishes them from human rights or natural rights, not in the object of the rights but in the basis of them; rights granted by law versus rights inherent by nature. I admit that this sense is unfamiliar to me but it existed in the wiki before I came along and had supporters at the old Talk:Civil rights so I thought it best to leave it there.
--Pfhorrest (talk) 06:14, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
I share this concern, but for a different reason. I do know some animal rights theorists, but I find them removed from the natural rights tradition.. The "is-ought" problem has scared most philosophy professors from speaking about "natural" rights. I still think that it is incorrect to say that natural rights derive from humanity, however, as though they were identical with "human rights." A natural law would contain within it certain rights, for example, but these rights were not be derived from or necessarily contingent upon humanity. I don't suggest that all natural rights theories must be expressions of natural law, but some are, and the mention of "humanity" excludes some natural right theories without justification. RJC TalkContribs 14:02, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
I think you bring an interesting perspective, RJC. Claiming that natural rights are derived from humanity could entail to some that they're related to (or are) human rights, vicariously entailing that legal rights aren't which isn't true. I don't think this train of thought it 100% accurate, but I understand the concern with the terminology used and that it could lead lay people to believe something that isn't true. Reading through some of the reference material, the source where natural rights derive from is a matter of debate, as is referenced in the article content. What does appear to be common is that natural rights are self-evident. I think using this terminology is best; even though it may seem to be weighty towards Jefferson's interpretation (even though technically it isn't exclusive or originated by Jefferson), it addresses the is-ought problem and finds common ground among various theories of natural rights, whether they be humanistic, theocratic, naturalistic, or even logical. Also, it doesn't define natural rights based on what they are not, which I believe would be a faulty approach.
I still don't agree with including "civil rights" in the lede definition of legal rights. Although there may be different senses of what civil rights are according to the disambiguation page, the contents of one Wikipedia article should not affect the content of another (i.e. using Wikipedia itself as a source). It is the responsibility of the editors of the other article to point to the correct corresponding articles. In the sense that this article is concerned with, there is no basis in equating civil rights to legal rights; they demonstrably include both natural and legal rights and associating them with strictly legal rights is factually inaccurate as far as this article's distinctions are concerned. In addition, and much more importantly, this article's content doesn't support that assertion anywhere and the lede is obviously meant to be a primer for the article itself. --NINTENDUDE64 19:59, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
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