Philosophy of human rights

Edmund Burke was an 18th-century philosopher, political theorist and statesman largely associated with the school of conservatism.[27] His views on natural rights are best articulated in Reflections on the Revolution in France, which directly attacked the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) and its authors.[28]

A great deal of Burke's uneasiness of the Declaration lies in the drafter's abandonment of the existing establishment.[29] For Burke, constitutional legitimacy was derived not from the Rousseauian doctrine of general will,[30] but from a form of inherited wisdom.[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.[34] This is the grounding from which Burke's attack of the Declaration is based.

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.[35] In stating that “the pretended right of these theorists are all extremes; and in a proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false”,[32] Burke identified that abstract rights are meaningless without a societal framework:

What is the use of discussing a man’s abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them.

— Edmund Burke[32]

In contrast to Locke, Burke did not believe the purpose of government was to protect pre-existing natural rights;[36] he believed “the primitive rights of man undergo such a variety of refractions and reflections, that it becomes absurd to talk of them as if they continued in the simplicity of their original direction.”[32] For Burke it was the government, as a result of long social evolution, that transformed the meaningless natural rights into the practical advantages afforded to citizens.[37]

It was not the rights themselves, as much as the level of abstraction and the placing of them above government which Burke found dangerous.[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”.[32] For Burke politics had no simple answers, and definitely no overarching, universal maxims such as those expressed in the Declaration.[39] Rather the rights afforded to individuals were to be assessed in the context of the social framework.[40] However, he acknowledged that the simplicity of the Declaration was attractive and feared its ability to undermine social order.[41] Burke believed that the absolute nature of these principles of abstraction were inherently revolutionary; they were uncompromising and any derogation from the principles a reason to rise up in arms.[42] This was a problem because;

All government… is founded on compromise and barter. We balance inconveniences; we give and take; we remit some rights, that we may enjoy others; and we choose rather to be happy citizens, than subtle disputants.

— Edmund Burke[32]

The natural rights “Against which there can be no prescription; against these no agreements is binding”[32] gave the revolutionaries the tools to destroy the very society that Burke believed afforded them with rights. In this way Burke thought the rights contained in the Declaration would lead to “the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow.”[32]

The 18th-century Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham criticised the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in his text Anarchical Fallacies. He famously asserted that the concept of natural rights was “nonsense upon stilts”.[43] Bentham criticised the Declaration both for the language that it adopted and the theories it posited, stating; “Look to the letter, you find nonsense; look beyond the letter, you find nothing.”[44]

One of the critiques Bentham levelled against the Declaration was its assertions of rights in the form of absolute and universal norms.[45] He identified that absolute rights possessed by everyone equally are meaningless and undesirable. They lack meaning because if everyone has, for example, unbounded liberty, there is nothing precluding them from using that liberty to impinge on the liberty of another. In this way “human government and human laws”[46] are required to give some bounds to rights in order for them to be realised.[47] Even if advocates of absolute rights recognise this necessity, as the proponents of the Declaration did, Bentham argues that it is in vain.[47] “It would be self-contradictory, because these rights are, in the same breath which their existence is declared, declared to be imprescriptible; and imprescriptible… means nothing unless it excludes the interference of the laws.”[48]

In addition to this contradiction, Bentham warned of the dangers of couching rights in absolute terms. 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.[49] “Against every government which fails in any degree of fulfilling these expectations, then, it is the professed object of this manifesto to excite insurrection.”[50] Bentham does not deny that there are some laws that are morally wrong; his uneasiness is in easily justifying a revolutionary call to arms – with the violence, chaos and destruction associated with it – based on a repugnant law.[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.[52] He acknowledged that it may be desirable to have rights, but “a reason for wishing that a certain right were established, is not that right; want is not supply; hunger is not bread.”[53] To establish rights existed by virtue of laws enacted by a sovereign was logically sound, but to assert rights established by nature was not.[52] “A natural right is a son that never had a father.”[54]

Not only did Bentham think that there was no logical basis for the theory of natural rights, but he believed that their individualistic approach was harmful to society.[55]

The great enemies of public peace are the selfish and the dissocial passions – necessary as they are – the one to the very existence of each individual, the other to his security…What has been the object, the perpetual and palpable object, of this declaration to pretended rights? To add such force as possible to these passions, but already too strong, - to burst the cords that hold them in, - to say to the selfish passions, there – everywhere – is your prey! - to the angry passions, there –everywhere- is your enemy. Such is the morality of this celebrated manifesto.

— Jeremy Bentham[56]

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.[57]

In "On the Jewish Question", Karl Marx criticized the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen as bourgeois ideology:

Above all, we note the fact that the so-called rights of man, the droits de l'homme as distinct from the droits du citoyen, are nothing but the rights of a member of civil society – i.e., the rights of egoistic man, of man separated from other men and from the community. ... according to the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1791:

"Liberty consists in being able to do everything which does not harm others."

Liberty, therefore, is the right to do everything that harms no one else. The limits within which anyone can act without harming someone else are defined by law, just as the boundary between two fields is determined by a boundary post.

Thus, according to Marx: "Security is the supreme social concept of bourgeois society, the concept of the police, the whole society exists only to ensure each of its members the preservation of his person, his rights and his property." For Marx, liberal rights and ideas of justice are premised on the idea that each of us needs protection from other human beings. Therefore, liberal rights are rights of separation, designed to protect us from such perceived threats. Freedom on such a view, is freedom from interference. 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. It is to be found in human community, not in isolation. 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.

Marxist critical theorist Slavoj Žižek argued that "liberal attitudes towards the other are characterized both by respect for otherness, openness to it, and an obsessive fear of harassment. In short, the other is welcomed insofar as its presence is not intrusive, insofar as it is not really the other. Tolerance thus coincides with its opposite. 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. This is increasingly emerging as the central human right of advanced capitalist society: the right not to be 'harassed', that is, to be kept at a safe distance from others." and "universal human rights are effectively the right of white, male property-owners to exchange freely on the market, exploit workers and women, and exert political domination."[58]

Alasdair MacIntyre is a Scottish philosopher who has published a number of works in a variety of philosophical fields, including political philosophy, ethics and metaphysics.[59] MacIntyre criticises the concept of human rights in After Virtue and he famously asserts that “there are no such rights, and belief in them is one with belief in witches and in unicorns.”[60]

MacIntyre argues that every attempt at justifying the existence of human rights has failed. The assertions by 18th century philosophers that natural rights are self-evident truths, he argues, are necessarily false as there are no such things as self-evident truths. He says that the plea 20th century philosophers made to intuition show a flaw in philosophical reasoning. 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.[61] Philosophers of the Enlightenment sought to cast aside the discredited notions of hierarchy and teleology as justifications for morality. Instead, MacIntyre argues, the Enlightenment placed the individual as the sovereign authority to dictate what is right and wrong. 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. Without this notion of ‘perfect humanity’ the only remaining foundation to build a moral theory on was the foundation of imperfect human nature.[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”.[64] Human rights are an example of a moral belief, founded in previous teleological beliefs, which make the false claim of being grounded in rationality.[65] To illustrate how the principles lead to conflict, he gives the example of abortion; in this case the right of the mother to exercise control over her body is contrasted with the deprivation of a pre-born child to the right to life. Although both the right to liberty and the right to life are, on their own, considered morally acceptable claims, conflict arises when we posit them against each other.[66]