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20512
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Standard rights: life, free speech, assembly, movement, vote, stand (plus shelter, food, health?) [Wolff,J]
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Full Idea:
The normal liberal basic rights are right to life, free speech, free assembly and freedom of movement, plus the rights to vote and stand for office. Some theorists add the right to a decent living standard (shelter, food and health care).
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From:
Jonathan Wolff (An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) [2006], 4 'Liberty')
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A reaction:
I think he has forgotten to add education. In Britain Beatrice Webb seems to have single-handedly added the living standard group to the list.
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20514
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If rights are natural, rather than inferred, how do we know which rights we have? [Wolff,J]
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Full Idea:
If natural rights have a fundamental status, and so are not arrived at on the basis of some other argument, how do we know what rights we have?
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From:
Jonathan Wolff (An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) [2006], 4 'Liberty')
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A reaction:
He cites Bentham as using this point. Utilitarianism at least provides a grounding for the identification of possible basic rights. Start from what we want, or what we more objectively need? Human needs, or needs in our present culture?
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19794
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If we all give up all of our rights together to the community, we will always support one another [Rousseau]
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Full Idea:
The social compact reduces to a single clause, namely the total alienation of each associate, together with all of his rights, to the entire community. Since this condition is equal for everyone, no one has an interest in making it burdensome for others.
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From:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.6)
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A reaction:
He speaks elsewhere of basic natural rights which can never be alienated, such as self-defence. It is what small groups do all the time, if they start off as equals. Difficult to manage with large groups. Factions are the problem.
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7241
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In society man loses natural liberty, but gains a right to civil liberty and property [Rousseau]
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Full Idea:
What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and the absolute right to anything that tempts him; what he gains is civil liberty and the legal rights of propery in what he possesses.
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From:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.8)
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A reaction:
It is an appealing idea that the purpose of society is to increase liberty, not to restrict it. That, on the whole, is my view. American libertarianism opens up the world to gun crime, vigilantes, pornographers and bounty-hunters.
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19806
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We alienate to society only what society needs - but society judges that, not us [Rousseau]
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Full Idea:
Each person alienates, by the social compact, only that portion of his power, his goods, and liberty whose use is of consequence to the community; but we must also grant that only the sovereign is the judge of what is of consequence.
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From:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.04)
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A reaction:
The weakness here is how society sees its needs. He seems to assume that two societies will arrive at almost identical general wills, but Spartans, Prussians and Serbs may require the lives of your children for the state.
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