Where do rights come from?

[fluxrad]

A simple enough question:

[Arnfinn Madsen]

Even though many atrocities are conducted as form of a macro process most people seem to want good for people at a micro level. Most does not want their neighbour, friend etc. to experience unfair treatment from others. From this consciousness comes the notion of human rights.

It is not granted by state I think, state is only an attempt to make a system of it (courts instead of direct revenge etc.).

[SpearsBritney]

They are definately granted. You've heard of the golden rule; he who has the gold makes the rules.

[lehighguy]

They are inate, that doesn't mean they are respected.

[sam h]

Why make it either/or?

[[censored]]

I defer to the bill of rights.

[Dynasty]

The Declaration of Independence has your answer, at least according to the founding fathers.

...We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness...

[adios]

Which rights are natural then?

[spamuell]

The state. People want to protect their own rights so give up some of their own liberty to create a governing body, in order to ensure a standard of liberty for all. Yes, I like Hobbes.

[Cyrus]

[ QUOTE ]
A simple enough question: Where do rights come from?
* Rights are granted by the state.
* Rights are granted by God or are otherwise natural to everyone.

[/ QUOTE ]

That was the Old Europe. Now we have the New Europe... [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Actually, the new is the very old Athenian Democracy. Let's translate the synopsis.

We choose our rights. The polity, collectively, (not the state -kratos - which is a different thing) chooses to implement certain laws. To the extent that the lawmakers are representing the polity's (i.e. the citizens') will, the laws are too. And the laws contain the polity's morality, that pertains to the rights of the citizen.

Now, here's where it gets interesting!

No one forces us to do this, we choose to do it. In other words, in the time of Athenian Democracy (and so, I believe, should be the case for all seasons), the citiznes of the polity did not get guidance or orders from a higher entity but, in explicit recognition of Man's uniqueness and, yes, loneliness in the cosmos, "created the path by walking it".

There is no outside power "granting" us anything; not the all-mighty state/kratos, i.e. the supreme (super-structural) construct that exercises political power in a country, nor the "gods", however strong and omniscient (e.g. the Judaeo-Christian God) or benign and "human-like" (e.g. the Olympian 12) we make them out to be. No, it is us and us alone, always and for ever, no matter how we hide this behind Moses' Scriptures, the Apostles' "transmisssion" of the Master's Words, or Mohammed's "messenger".

And why do we enact those laws that establish rights? Because of our morality - which, let us repeat this, is not based on cosmic or pre-extant laws, guidelines or physical formulas. (Whence morality? Perhaps here.)

We and we alone, then, is the answer. You have omitted this from your questionnaire. Pericles is shaking his head.