One of the oldest Western philosophies on human rights is that they are a product of a natural law, stemming from different philosophical or religious grounds.
These approaches include the notion that individuals in a society accept rules from legitimate authority in exchange for security and economic advantage (as in Rawls) – a social contract.
Of these, Aristotle is often said to be the father of natural law,[2] although evidence for this is due largely to the interpretations of his work by Thomas Aquinas.
He wrote that "even the will of an omnipotent being cannot change or abrogate" natural law, which "would maintain its objective validity even if we should assume the impossible, that there is no God or that he does not care for human affairs."
This is the famous argument etiamsi daremus (non esse Deum), that made natural law no longer dependent on theology.
Locke turned Hobbes' prescription around, saying that if the ruler went against natural law and failed to protect "life, liberty, and property," people could justifiably overthrow the existing state and create a new one.
[11] The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes suggested the existence of a hypothetical social contract where a group of free individuals agree for the sake of preservation to form institutions to govern them.
Originating from within the Courts of Equity, the fiduciary concept exists to prevent those holding positions of power from abusing their authority.
[15] Martin Latsis, chief of the Ukrainian Cheka explained: "Do not look in the file of incriminating evidence to see whether or not the accused rose up against the Soviets with arms or words.
[19][20] Interest theories highlight the duty to respect the rights of other individuals on grounds of self-interest: Human rights law, applied to a State's own citizens serves the interest of states, by, for example, minimizing the risk of violent resistance and protest and by keeping the level of dissatisfaction with the government manageableThe biological theory considers the comparative reproductive advantage of human social behavior based on empathy and altruism in the context of natural selection.
Jeremy Bentham, Edmund Burke, Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx are examples of historical philosophers who criticised the notion of natural rights.
[31] He thought that it was arrogant and limiting for the drafters of the Declaration to cast aside traditional notions that had stood the test of time.
[32][33] Although it may seem to the drafters that they had abandoned the shackles of tradition, for Burke, they had limited their findings to the narrow minded conception of one person or group.
Burke did not deny the existence of natural rights; rather he thought that the a priori reasoning adopted by the drafters produced notions that were too abstract to have application within the framework of society.
[38] He stated “those who pull down important ancient establishments, who wantonly destroy modes of administration, and public institutions… are the most mischievous, and therefore the wickedest of men”.
A government that is able to protect every person's right absolutely and equally is a utopian aspiration, but the Declaration couches it as the conditions for its legitimacy.
[51] Of the theoretical faults, Bentham thought that natural rights were a construction adopted to pursue the selfish aims of the drafters, of which no logical basis could be found.
Such is the morality of this celebrated manifesto.Bentham thought that society was dependent upon people's ability to pursue the greater good, not just the short-term satisfaction of their own desires.
The advancement of natural rights, which he saw as celebrating selfishness, was to provide the means to break down the social community that makes human life bearable.
What this view denies is the possibility — according to Marx, the fact — that real freedom is to be found positively in our relations with other people.
So insisting on a regime of rights encourages us to view each other in ways which undermine the possibility of the real freedom we may find in human emancipation.
My duty to be tolerant towards the other effectively means that I should not get too close to him or her, not intrude into his space—in short, that I should respect his intolerance towards my over-proximity.
MacIntyre then outlines that, although Ronald Dworkin is not wrong in asserting that the inability to demonstrate a statement does not necessitate its falsity, the same argument can be applied in relation to witches and unicorns.
[60] MacIntyre made this critique of human rights in the context of a wider argument about the failure of the Enlightenment to produce a coherent moral system.
However allegiances to historical notions of morality remained and philosophers sought to find a secular and rational justification for existing beliefs.
[62] The problem, MacIntyre maintains, is that teleological morality was developed to overcome defects in human nature; to posit an example of the ideal.
[63] For MacIntyre, the result was a collection of moral stances, each claiming to have a rational justification and each disputing the findings of the rival notions.
[61] MacIntyre believes that a number of contemporary moral debates that occur in modern society can be explained as a result of this failure of the “Enlightenment Project”.
In a broad sense, it covers a wide range of human interests and aspirations; more narrowly, it refers to material goods.
The British philosopher had significant impacts upon the development of the Government of the UK and was central to the fundamental founding philosophy of the United States.