Abstract
We will have seen that natural rights, far from merely an historical inheritance, are indispensable logical tools if moral grievances are to be argued rationally, given the social organisation we have or want. These natural rights consist above all of those protections or immunities which secure the individual’s free and equal position amongst other individuals, with their central emphasis therefore on the rights to life, limb and property, all of these most necessary conditions if a person is to be able to pursue his life compatibly with the similar interests of others. The rights to life and limb refer to a person’s physical or mental integrity: he is to be free from compulsion or other avoidable interference, whereas the right to property extends this immunity to things, or assets, sometimes opportunities.
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Notes and References
See also Stuart M. Brown Jr., ‘Inalienable Rights’, Philosophical Review, 64 (1955) pp. 192, 205ff.
C. L. Ten, Mill on Liberty (Oxford, 1980) pp. 118–9.
See I. Berlin, ‘Equality’, Proceedings Aristotelian Society, 56 (1956) pp. 301, 309.
Marvin Schiller, ‘Are There Any Inalienable Natural Rights’, Ethics, 79 (1969) pp. 309, 313.
B. Williams, ‘The Idea of Equality’, in Problems of the Self (Cambridge, 1973) p. 238.
See H. J. McCloskey, ‘Rights — Some Conceptual Issues’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 54 (1976) pp. 99, 105ff.
Stuart M. Brown, ‘Inalienable Rights’, pp. 206–7; Melden, ‘The Play of Rights’, Monist, 56 (1972) pp. 479, 480 and passim.
Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge (Oxford, 1951) p. 505.
See, for example, Hume’s appreciative comments on the merits of effort and labour in his Enquiries, ed. Selby-Bigge (Oxford 1955) 309n.
R. Wollheim, ‘Equality and Equal Rights’, Proceedings Aristotelian Society, 56 (1956) pp. 281, 282.
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© 1984 S. J. Stoljar
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Stoljar, S. (1984). Life, Limb and Property. In: An Analysis of Rights. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17607-6_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17607-6_8
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