Natural Law – The Science of Morality, Part 1: Rights
Natural Law – The Science of Morality, Part 1: Rights
This is the first part of a continuing series of presentations on Natural Law, the Science of Morality. Part 1 is about rights, which also deals with property, ownership, wrongs, force, violence, the Non-Aggression Principle, the Self-Defense Principle, freedom and slavery.
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What Are Our Rights? What Is a Right?
A right is an action that we have a right to do. It’s right (not wrong) behavior (moral). We have the right to drink, eat, walk, jump, breathe, speak, etc. Since there are nearly an infinite array of possible actions we have a right to do, knowing all our rights in the positive sense (”the right to do X…”) is not practical.
Instead of asking what is a right, what isn’t a right? A wrong isn’t a right. We don’t have a right to do wrongs. What are the actions we don’t have a right to do?
Positive rights also have a dangerous wrongful application whereby someone believes they have a “right” to be provided with something, like the “right” to housing, water, food, employment, ‘X’. This is not a True or Natural Right. This forces others against their will (i.e. violence) to be “obligated” to provide ‘X’ to others.
No one has a responsibility to provide you with any positive right. Everyone is responsible for their own actions, and to not infringe on or violate the rights of others. You don’t owe anybody anything other than not violating their rights.
What Is a Right? The Apophatic Path
To better understand what you have a right to do, you need to understand what you (and others) don’t have a right to do. This is apophatic knowledge of rights.
Apophasis is affirmation through negation: to arrive at knowledge of what something is by way of known negatives, by what it isn’t. We can gain knowledge of something by gaining knowledge of what something is not; to know rights by what you (and others) don’t have a right to do. This is a negative right: what we each have a right to not have done to us. Understanding what wrongs are leads to the affirmation of their opposite: rights.
What don’t we have a right to do? Behaviors that initiate harm to others. Initiating harm is a wrong, not a right. Wrongs initiate harm because they are behaviors that infringe on the property of others.
A wrong — the initiation of harm — is a violation of a right; it’s an attempt to deny someone the right to own or use their rightful property.
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