The Ethics Of Liberty - Natural Law and Natural Rights

 


The Ethics Of Liberty by Murray Rothbard

Rothbard concludes the first section of his book by making an important transition from natural law to natural rights.  Where, in the previous chapter, he contrasted natural law with positive law, here he introduces the concept of natural rights and shows how they emerge out of the natural law ethic.

The classical version of natural law following the tradition of Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas failed to fight off the theories of the positivists and produce liberty.  Their cardinal sin was that they considered the State as a center of virtue and goodness.  Their corollary sin was equating society with the State.

Fortunately, there was a separate branch of natural law theory, which separated State and society, and therefore did promote political freedom.

                "the Levellers and particularly John Locke in seventeenth-century England
                ... transformed classical natural law into a theory grounded on
                methodological and hence political individualism."

They based their concepts on the individual since he is the fundamental unit of human action.  Society doesn't think.  Groups don't feel.  Even parliaments don't choose except by an aggregation of individual choices.  It is the individual that "thinks, feels, chooses, and acts".  Locke in his "Second Treatise On Government" deduces natural rights from the starting point that each person has their own body and the right to use it to support their own life.  To this we add the concept of property, which is a mixture of an individual's labor with nature.  As a result, a person has a right to own that property because he has removed that material from nature and added a part of himself to it.  Moreover, right of ownership exists because he uses that property to sustain life.

                "Every man has a property in his own person.  This nobody has any right to but
                himself.  The labour of his body... are properly his.  Whatsoever then he removes
                out of the state that nature hath provided... he hath mixed his own labour
                with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property."

Once someone takes something out of the common state of nature, for the purpose of sustaining his life, that thing is now rightfully his and no one else has the right to take it from him.

Others continued to develop natural rights theory into the 18th and 19th centuries.  Most prominent were names like Lysander Spooner, Herbert Spencer, and Theodore Woolsey.  Woolsey said the following about natural rights.

                "by fair deduction from the present physical, moral, social, religious 
                characteristics of man, he must be invested with [natural rights]...
                in order to fulfill the ends to which his nature calls him."

The "ends to which nature calls him" is natural law.  In this quote we see how natural rights proceed out of natural law concepts.  Natural law is the way individuals should live.  It is aligned with a fixed human nature.  There are two parts to natural law. First is the universal, objective part which we can find in the Bible and through observing human society.  These are boundaries everyone should adhere to in order to live a satisfying, meaningful life.  The other part is particular, personal, or subjective.  This part applies only to an individual.  It is based on his personality, likes, dislikes, talents, and limitations.  So to fully understand natural law you need to understand yourself.  God created you to be exactly who you are.  Your purpose in life is to live that out.  The challenge is to live out your particular natural law within the boundaries of universal natural law.

Natural rights protects individuals from the actions of other people.  They provide the space for individuals to live out natural law before God and according to their own conscience.  When recognized in society, natural rights will not allow one group of people to force others to act according to the group's desires.  It will allow individuals to make their own decisions about how they live and use their property.  Of course, natural rights don't protect on their own.  Rather they are ideological principles that must be enforced in the physical world, even by violence.  Violence in the protection of natural rights is the definition of the legitimate use of violence.

In the previous chapter Rothbard explained how natural law was in opposition to legal systems which are based on tradition and positive law.  Here he says similar things about natural rights.  They justify revolution and motivate radical restructuring of legal systems.  One historical example Rothbard gives is the American Revolution.  Thomas Jefferson, when justifying the revolution in the the Declaration Of Independence, did not invent new ideas.  He was elucidating existing Lockean natural rights doctrine, even while demonstrating his talent as a writer.

                "all men... are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that
                among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness"

When Jefferson writes "the pursuit of Happiness" he is referring back to natural law.  This Happiness isn't pleasure, whim, or emotion.  He is alluding to the happiness that Aristotle talks about which is a perfection of human nature or a deeply enriching life of virtue.  Living your life by following natural law according to your conscience makes you happy in a true, moral sense.  Jefferson is saying that we have a natural right to make our own decisions in life broadly, even absolutely.

The abolitionists arguments against slavery show another example of how radical natural rights ideas are.  Read the quote from William Lloyd Garrison and think about what current laws you could say the same thing about.

                "The right to enjoy liberty is inalienable... all these laws which are now in force,
                admitting the rights of slavery, are, therefore, before God, utterly null and void... 
                and therefore they ought instantly to be abrogated."

Rothbard then clarifies one point on the issue of rights.  Exercising a right does not mean that the action is moral.  Rights and morality are two different things.  It is within a person's rights to do something that is immoral as long as it does not violate the rights of any other person.  This is the distinction between a vice and a crime.  A vice is an immoral exercise of one's own rights.  A crime is an immoral act which violates the rights of another.

Through the rest of the book, Rothbard will use natural law and natural rights ideas to develop a political philosophy which would produce liberty through the proper application of "law, property rights, and the State".

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