Aristotle and the Origins of Natural Rights

Abstract

In Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle's Politics, I attributed three main theses to Aristotle: that a metaphysical theory of nature is part of the foundations of political philosophy; that the virtue of justice is central to practical politics; and that a fully just will respect and protect the rights of citizens. The third thesis is especially controversial because it challenges a widely shared view that the concept of rights is a modern discovery (or innovation) which is altogether alien to the thought of Aristotle and of classical writers and thinkers generally. However, this currently established view is itself a comparatively recent development. Commentators in the nineteenth century and much of the twentieth century translated and explicated Aristotle's Politics in terms of For example, Ernest Barker observed, Plato thinks of the individual as bound to do the duty to which he is called as an organ of the State: Aristotle thinks of the individual as deserving the which he ought to enjoy in a society based on (proportionate) equality.(1) I argued that these earlier scholars were correct, and I offered a philosophical reconstruction of Aristotle's politics which included a theory of justice and individual rights. The disagreement over whether Aristotle recognized rights in some form unavoidably involves disagreement over what rights are, and the theory of rights itself is still highly contested. There is no consensus concerning how (a) right is to be defined, how rights are to be theoretically grounded, or how rights theory is to be applied in particular circumstances. This is not, however, a good reason to dismiss the issue of whether there are rights in Aristotle: for Aristotle, like modern rights theorists, is concerned about the moral and legal status of the individual within the community, and he expresses this in terms of claims of justice. The issue is worthy of study not only because it can lead to a deeper understanding of Aristotle's conceptions of justice and the common good, but also because it may shed valuable light on the theoretical foundations of human rights, since he offers a theory of political justice which is based on a metaphysical theory of human nature. I shall discuss here the principal issues concerning the place of rights in Aristotles politics which are raised by the preceding essays.(2) Section I seeks to make clear the features which Aristotle's theory of justice shares (and does not share) with modern rights theories. Section II considers the relation of rights to the concepts of justice and merit (or desert) in Aristotles theory. Section III concerns the political dimension of rights in Aristotle's thought, and whether this makes them too derivative and precarious to play a serious role in his political theory. Section IV addresses problems in viewing Aristotle's proposed best constitution as a regime of rights. Finally, section V discusses the fundamental issue on which Aristotle and modern rights theorists disagree: the place of liberty in the exercise of individual rights. I Modern theories of rights take varied forms. Consider, for example, the opposing accounts of what it is that individuals have a to. Libertarians maintain that individuals have only the to negative liberty, that is, to freedom from the initiation of force by others. In contrast, social democrats contend that all individuals are entitled to welfare, which may require that the government use coercion against some persons in order to provide goods or services to others. There are also disagreements as to who should be counted as a rights-holder. Many persons (including those in various religious groups) hold that all living persons (including unborn babies) have the to life, which would be violated by abortion, while many others deny that human fetuses have any rights. Through this din of discordant rights claims, however, a concordant theme may be discernible: a is a claim of justice which a member of a community has against the other members of the community. …