Difference between revisions of "Unalienable Rights"

Latest revision as of 15:45, 7 May 2006

Unalienable Rights cannot be separated from the human identity. As integral parts of humanity, these rights cannot be relinquished, reduced, or taken by any means. References to "unalienable rights" are presented as statements of fact about the human condition.

Unalienable Rights in Art and Literature[edit]

The best known use of the term "unalienable rights" may be found in the United States Declaration of Independence. In the Declaration, the United States Congress explains the reason that the colonies must separate from the British Crown: that rule of the Crown is in direct conflict with the unalienable rights of the colonists. The colonists assert that self-preservation and the desire to benefit self and society as one sees fit are so integrated with human nature that they cannot be relinquished. The Congress unanimously proclaims that, by virtue of their basic humanity, they must alter or abolish any government threatening these rights.

In modern literature, rights that cannot be alienated from the nature of man are called natural rights. In contrast, rights based on religious and moral principles are called human rights, universal rights and, infrequently, inalienable rights.

Source of Unalienable Rights[edit]

In literature, the source of mankind's unalienable rights is said or assumed to be the force of nature or being that created them.

The Declaration of Independence says that the unalienable rights of man come from "their Creator." As was the Freemasonry custom of the era, mankind's creator was referenced, but not specified.

While human rights often rely on a generally accepted source to provide proof of existence, unalienable rights require no source. Proof of their existence is "self-evident."

Proof of Unalienable Rights[edit]

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights," ~US Declaration of Independence

The United States Congress asserts that unalienable rights are self-evident: evident for all to see. Other works of literature and film expand the necessity of natural rights to all thinking beings. In the extreme example of Warner Brother's Animatrix, the popular science-fiction prequel to The Matrix, the question of natural rights in thinking machines is addressed. That film and other philosophical works point out that one must make choices in order to think, and that one must have freedom in order to make choices.

Historical Recognition[edit]

Unalienable rights, as the foundation of natural laws, were discovered by the Stoic philosophers of third century B.C. Athens seeking a solution to the logical problems raised by Socrates. Stoic doctrine held that natural law was a Platonic “truth” with existence independent of human perception. As such, unalienable rights could be proven to exist via scientific experiments and observation. Stoic doctrine, while successfully demonstrated by experiment at the time, was also limited by the political influences of the Alexandrine empire, and later by the Roman empire. In the first century B.C., Cicero argued before a Roman court that civil laws not derived from our unalienable rights are, due to limitations inherent in our humanity, impossible to obey, and thus cannot be considered laws in any implementable sense. Cicero sited the sanguinary failure of Critias as an example. As a result of Cicero’s argument, the Roman law in question was struck down, setting a precedent which has been cited in courts of law for over two thousand years. During the middle ages, churches claimed that natural law was above customary law, which in turn was above tribal law and fiat law (the law of the kings). This hierarchy of law was the basis for creating the Dutch Republic and is still the guiding principle for its government today. While the existence of unalienable rights has been self-evident and used to create various degrees of stable government throughout history, John Locke and Adam Smith were among the first to advocate actively applying the assumptions and methods of natural law theory as a means of creating a more perfect government. John Locke's expansion of the concept to include man as a maker of things and natural owner of property was not universally recognized as self-evident, and was not included in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. After Locke, many philosophers expanded arguments of human rights further to include rights to privacy, voting, land, sexual expression, abortion, etc. As such, human rights encompass a broader set of arguments and moral ambiguities than the unalienable natural rights of Stoic doctrine.

Natural Rights History[edit]

The idea of rights that cannot be taken from human beings by virtue of their nature can be traced to ancient Greek and Medieval thinkers. Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf, and other influential thinkers codified these ideas in the modern era. John Locke used the concept of natural rights to justify much of his Second Treatise of Government in 1690. Natural rights were the original basis of the liberalism movement. Robert Nozick's popular 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia begins, "Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them."

Inalienable v. Unalienable[edit]

Controversy exists over whether inalienable means the same thing as unalienable. Unalienable is an archaic term always used in reference to that part of the human psyche which cannot be relinquished through any means. Proponents for a common definition assert that inalienable means the same thing. Whether or not they should mean the same thing is a matter of debate, but in current speech ([1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]), inalienable is widely used in the context of a plea for things not to be taken, or to be given back after they are taken, based on moral grounds.

See also[edit]

• Human rights
• Introduction to Philosophy
• Tom Paine