An example of a philosophical approximation would be "Everyone has a right to their life". This works most of the time,
I think there are two very different uses of the word "right". One of them is a legal construct... something that is agreed upon by a society... that people will be legally allowed to do a certain thing, as opposed to not allowed to do it. I agree with this kind of right. The other kind is a "divine right" or a "natural right". I don't think I believe in this kind of right, although I agree with the idea that it might be a good or a bad idea for a certain society to include certain basic rights. But whether it's a good idea is going to depend on what that society wants to optimize for, so even saying that "X should be a right" (as opposed to "X is a natural right" which I think is just a totally wrong way of speaking)... is still culturally relative. It's not something that is objectively true or false.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-11-16 03:52 pm (UTC)An example of a philosophical approximation would be "Everyone has a right to their life". This works most of the time,
I think there are two very different uses of the word "right". One of them is a legal construct... something that is agreed upon by a society... that people will be legally allowed to do a certain thing, as opposed to not allowed to do it. I agree with this kind of right. The other kind is a "divine right" or a "natural right". I don't think I believe in this kind of right, although I agree with the idea that it might be a good or a bad idea for a certain society to include certain basic rights. But whether it's a good idea is going to depend on what that society wants to optimize for, so even saying that "X should be a right" (as opposed to "X is a natural right" which I think is just a totally wrong way of speaking)... is still culturally relative. It's not something that is objectively true or false.