The Philosophy Guy

Welcome to my blog! I figured for my first post I would start with something that’s been on my mind a lot recently. This post isn’t really about whether or not people should have rights, but what we actually mean when we talk about them. In social contract theory people have been debating the nature of rights for centuries. For writers such as Rousseau and Locke, they tend to focus on natural rights, rights that are intrinsic to a human being and ought not to be violated. This stance on rights actually creates a pretty strong rebuke of social contract theory, as philosophers such as Hume and Bentham have both made the claim that entitling people to natural rights in government leads to an individualization of society that erodes government from within.

My thoughts on this topic actually stem from a class on ideologies which I took last semester. This class required me to read both fascist and communist philosophy. Now, just to be clear, I do not in any way condone fascism or communism, however, I do believe the philosophies themselves raise legitimate criticisms of liberalism, even if their solutions are worse than the problems they aim to solve. Both communism and fascism attempt to rectify what they consider to be the atomization of society. They recognize that same entitlement and individualism encouraged by natural rights, and believe that this causes society to degrade over time. Their solutions, on the other hand, could not be more different. Communism essentially aims to eliminate the state entirely as an equal people would not require a state to govern themselves. Fascism instead encourages extreme responsibility to the state, placing it at the forefront of everyday life. In reading the works of both Marx and Engels and Alfredo Rocco, my one thought continued to be ‘this is a real problem in a liberal system, but these can’t be the solutions.’ When looking for ways to modify the liberal system such that we could reduce the atomization of society, without forcing people to completely forgo their individuality, I began to look at the root of the issue, natural rights.

For me, when I look at social contract theory ,natural rights always seem to present an issue to me. The necessity of consent in the social contract should mean that once the just government is created, natural rights are exchanged for legal rights. The stark difference between the two, in my view, is that natural rights do not carry a responsibility to anyone but yourself while legal rights carry the significant requirement of not doing any harm while utilizing them. This difference is where I would aim to solve the entitlement objection to social contract theory. I’m going to utilize examples from the United States as that’s where I’m from. In the U.S.,  we have the right to bear arms provided by the 2nd amendment to the Constitution. If bearing arms were a natural right, you would always be entitled to carry a weapon, regardless of the harm it caused to others. However, since it is a legal right, should you cause harm by attacking people you forfeit some portion of the right in accordance with the harm committed. The same goes with speech in the U.S. as you have the right to say whatever you’d like provided it does not incite violence or discrimination. Succinctly put, my solution to the objections raised against natural rights in social contract theory is that the government doesn’t exist to protect your natural rights. The government instead exists to protect your legal rights which carry an added responsibility to not do harm. Thanks for reading, and enjoy the rest of your week!