Where Do Rights Come From

Chapter 11.2: Positive and Negative Rights

Chapter 11.2

Rights basics

• A simple definition

• Positive vs. Negative Rights

  • What they should be…

  • What they’ve become…

• Where do rights come from?

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A simple definition

Even if you cannot precisely define rights, you have an intuitive sense of them. You can tell when yours have been violated, and you probably have a pretty good idea of the kinds of things you should and shouldn’t do in order to respect the rights of others. No matter what its source, this intuitive understanding has helped human beings survive and cooperate for uncounted millennia.

In chapter 13, we will use a deductive process to develop a comprehensive philosophical definition of rights. In the meantime, we need something simpler—a dictionary-style definition to use as a starting point. We want this definition to describe what a right is, while avoiding the pitfall of including things that a right is not.

A right is…

A moral claim to which one is justly entitled

Notice that this we did not say “a moral or legal claim.” Legal rights are, in practice, a real phenomenon, and thus tend to be included in many definitions of rights. However, as we will presently discuss, the legal or civil rights government offers are protections of rights, but they are not the actual rights themselves. Thus, in order to avoid muddying the philosophical waters, we will not include the term “legal” in our simple definition.

Unfortunately, we are, as a civilization, already waist deep in waters muddied by misconceptions about what rights are…

• Some love the idea of rights, but still don’t know how they can possibly be preexistent natural phenomena.

• Some believe, in a form of extreme positivism, that without a physical reality, rights are no more real than unicorns—that rights cannot be “natural” unless they can be seen and touched.

• Some have been tricked by political ideologies that have an interest in changing the definition of rights to suit their agenda. If rights are natural, then they cannot be adjusted, accommodated, or revoked. Government-granted “rights” are clay to be molded as those in power see fit, and that is exactly how some people and ideologies want it to be.

• Some of these misconceptions are the result of a simple lack of knowledge. Most of us are busy just trying to make ends meet and have a little fun with the people we care about. Studying this stuff takes time. Misconceptions may be promulgated by those who do have the time (academics, media personalities, ideologues) and then absorbed, actively or involuntarily, by the rest of us.

To those who want rights to be real, take heart: they are. In the next few chapters, we will explore how.

To those who want to use power to mold the definitions of “rights” as they see fit…we’re onto your game.