Thoughts on Natural Rights
Thinking about the subject of "natural rights" and the way justice is suppose to work, it's sort of trying to understand a misnomer; no such thing as rights exist in and of itself, however, when somebody says the right to life is a natural right, they are just observing the reciprocal regularity and patterns seen in nature when individuals interact with one another. These observations then become natural law and part of the vernacular, only being modified when their conditions can't hold up any longer.
Economic laws work the same way, there's the law of demand, marginal utility, diminishing returns, Gresham's law, among others which have been distinguished. Also, the physical laws of the universe can only be accounted for when you see how phenomenon reacts in some shape or form. To me everything really seems to be based off principles, the profound metaphysical analysis may be uncertain in regards to the actual final cause or reason of the thing. Only by taking an disinterested and objective account of things as they are, can you actually be aware of how things work and their general fundamentals.
One may want to go to the classics, and refer back to Paine, Jefferson, or Locke, who really took these ideas of understanding justice and each mans relation to it seriously. The prevailing thread among these common-sense minded Anglo thinkers was seeing that the only absolute is the individual; there was to be no society or any conception of justice without first establishing individual rights as the principle. Across antiquity you also find early understandings of this notion in many Eastern philosophies as well from Cyrenaics and Epicureans in the West.
Anyone that attempts to subdue mans inherent self-interest is in fact revolting against an observable thing in nature. As Bastiat says, "laws are created because laws already exist", man takes what he sees in everyday living, and creates protections for person, liberty, and property. Even the one who wants power over others often realizes he's denying this right for others, yet for himself he wants to make sure his right is protected so he can continue his schemes.
Thanks for reading and sharing!
Go ahead translate and publish my articles as you wish, that's fine with me.
It is worth remembering that customs also come in the list of sources for the right. As for natural jurisprudence, it is rather abstract!
Eu concordo, tudo vem da cultura. Valeu por ler!
This was actually good. Your whole text supports system I just fully introduced in my blog post. I claim that state was created by society, and it is supposed to serve it. Laws are there just to strengthen the ties of society.
Thanks!
I think the idea of the State and Government gets confused a lot. To be clear, government has always been a product of society as a way individuals self-organize to ensure legal protections. Indigenous American tribes operated in similar way. The State, on the other hand, is the conquering group of people who metastasizes the social order of self-government in order to exploit it's citizens. Thomas Paine and the anti-federalists like Jefferson understood this although as we know the idea of the State took over the US.
Even Aristotle supposedly got this mixed up, and all the governments around the world are indeed just States.
I wrote about this here—https://steemit.com/freedom/@superfluousman/government-versus-the-state
Well, I think here is were our view or understanding of a word differs. I see state rather as a physical body under goverment. I find state to be nescessary in modern days, but I do also see that goverment has not had need for state in some small groups like villages. I think that nation has been mixed with society and that has created idea that state is behind everything, rather than society and that has led to this goverment control and over-expansion of state.
The State is just a collection of individuals who seek power over others, same thing as a gang or any other criminal class. Government in its true form is suppose to be about "self-governance", where individuals consent to its terms in a community. If you have an imposing faction that seeks to dominate you and others then they are no different than armed thugs.
I like Weber's idea of the state: "The state has a monopoly on violence"