Difference between revisions of "What Are Rights?"

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Rights are a far more complex subject than we usually think.  Most people would be surprised at how much that their folk models of rights leave out.  Libertarians rely on such simple models because they can lead to the right ideological conclusions.  At least four fields consider rights: philosophy, law, economics, and anthropology.  A good model would be compatible with all four fields.
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== Natural Rights ==
 
== Natural Rights ==
 
Let's get [[Natural Rights]] out of the way first.  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".
 
Let's get [[Natural Rights]] out of the way first.  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".
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For more on natural rights, see:
 
For more on natural rights, see:
 
* [[Natural Rights]]
 
* [[Natural Rights]]
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== Hohfeld's Classification Of Rights ==
 
== Hohfeld's Classification Of Rights ==
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Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld created the standard legal classification of right, duty, privilege (meaning liberty), no-right, power, liability, immunity and disability in a 1913 article that he expanded into a book. Libertarians (and lay people in general) are usually ignorant of these important definitions.
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For the sake of simplicity, we are only going to consider right (also known as claim right) and duty.  A right can be expressed as "A has a right against B to C".  For example, Anne has a right against everybody to use her car.  '''For every right, there is a correlative duty.'''  A duty can be expressed as "B has a duty to A to C".  For example, everybody has a duty to Anne to let her use her car.  You cannot have a right without creating a duty.
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For more on Hohfeld's classification see:
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* [[Hohfeld’s typology of rights]]
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== Moral Rights And Enforced Rights ==
 
== Moral Rights And Enforced Rights ==
 
== A Positive Model Of Rights ==
 
== A Positive Model Of Rights ==

Revision as of 19:34, 18 February 2014