green numbers give full details | back to texts | unexpand these ideas
20977 | Natural rights are nonsense, and unspecified natural rights is nonsense on stilts |
Full Idea: Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts. | |||
From: Jeremy Bentham (Anarchical Fallacies: on the Declaration of Rights [1796]) | |||
A reaction: If you want your opinion to be remembered, express it memorably! I take natural rights to be the basic principles and values which are obvious to almost everyone when they come for formulate legal rights (which are the only true rights). |
21003 | Only laws can produce real rights; rights from 'law of nature' are imaginary |
Full Idea: Right, the substantive right, is the child of law; from real laws come real rights; but from imaginary laws, from 'law of nature' can come only imaginary rights. | |||
From: Jeremy Bentham (Anarchical Fallacies: on the Declaration of Rights [1796], II.523), quoted by Amartya Sen - The Idea of Justice 17 'Ethics' | |||
A reaction: I am coming to agree with this. What are called 'natural rights' are just self-evident good reasons why someone should be allowed a right. A right can, of course, come from an informal agreement. The question is: why award that particular legal right? |