Difference between revisions of "Natural Rights"

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Natural rights are exactly as knowable as invisible pink unicorns: anybody can fantasize them any way they want. During the Enlightenment, when liberalism was invented, liberal natural rights were a propaganda tool used to undermine the equally fictitious natural rights of kings. But even among liberals there was no agreement about whether slaveholding was a natural right or not, because natural rights are really just words. Bentham famously dismissed the idea of natural rights as "nonsense on stilts". Unfortunately, most libertarians (including Nozick) start with this philosophical abomination rather than more factual alternatives.
 
Natural rights are exactly as knowable as invisible pink unicorns: anybody can fantasize them any way they want. During the Enlightenment, when liberalism was invented, liberal natural rights were a propaganda tool used to undermine the equally fictitious natural rights of kings. But even among liberals there was no agreement about whether slaveholding was a natural right or not, because natural rights are really just words. Bentham famously dismissed the idea of natural rights as "nonsense on stilts". Unfortunately, most libertarians (including Nozick) start with this philosophical abomination rather than more factual alternatives.
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Natural rights have a terrible historical record.  Natural rights in the 19th century and earlier considered wives, children and slaves as property, as they had been for millennia.  Look at Patrick Henry, Mr. "Give me liberty or give me death": he was a slave owner, as were many of the other founders of the US who howled for their own liberty, but not that of their wives or slaves.
 
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Revision as of 13:46, 12 December 2018