What are they? Where do the come from?
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Inalienable Rights
- Thread starter Jayhawker Soule
- Start date
All rights are 'alienable'.
Terrywoodenpic
Oldest Heretic
Must be the USA... They thought the concept up.
Alex_G
Enlightner of the Senses
I tend to think it refers to those rights which are based on aspects of human nature, rather than any specific custom of tradition. Such that by the very fact of being human (which is not alienable), you will have certain faculties that justify the rights that go along with it, like being the sole owner of your own life, free to choose your way in life, and not be subject to slavery an torture and so on.
Inalienable just means to me contingent on a core aspect of human nature that we all have.
Alex
Inalienable just means to me contingent on a core aspect of human nature that we all have.
Alex
Last edited:
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
Whatever people consider them to be.
All of them can be and are taken away from time to time, though. So they're not really unalienable.
Thomas Jefferson, I suppose. He popularized the term.
Gjallarhorn
N'yog-Sothep
They are nothing, as all rights are constructs of the human mind without objective basis. The phrase came from minds that founded the US government.
CynthiaCypher
Well-Known Member
Nowhere, they don't exist.
Student of X
Paradigm Shifter
InformedIgnorance
Do you 'know' or believe?
Personally I think there are very few INALIENABLE rights, these I believe are the rights we have merely by being live, intelligent beings - the right to be alive and the right to be free from pain.
I think all other rights are CONTINGENT, I think that other rights are those that are peer acknowledged and indeed constructed upon entry into and continued membership of society. I said they are contingent, upon what? Our own actions, our adherence to the laws and in particular our respect for both the inalienable and contingent rights of others; these include free speech, freedom of association, political freedoms etc.
I think all other rights are CONTINGENT, I think that other rights are those that are peer acknowledged and indeed constructed upon entry into and continued membership of society. I said they are contingent, upon what? Our own actions, our adherence to the laws and in particular our respect for both the inalienable and contingent rights of others; these include free speech, freedom of association, political freedoms etc.
atropine
Somewhere Out There
That about sums it up.
BetrayTheArchetype
Member
There are no inalienable rights, as there are no rights.
The concept of rights is a human construct, designed to contain a society inside of useful and beneficial scopes in which most people are safe, prosperous, and happy.
However, nothing mentioned yet is a right, therefore none are inalienable.
If you believe you have a right or even an inalienable right to life, consider that every country in the history of the world has had a government sanctioned execution method. They may not have one now, but at some point in history every country on the planet has had execution as a punishment for criminal activity.
It's not all that inalienable. All you have to do is commit a capital crime. All you have to do is be born with severe deformation, for that matter. Life is not an inalienable right, as it can be surrendered without your permission in a vast variety of ways. Sometimes all it takes is liking the wrong person. That's not an act of wrongdoing on your part and it's not a natural phenomenon, and yet there are places that your life can be taken from you for it. It is NOT inalienable.
Liberty is not an inalienable right; I can easily point out the number of countries that have had - or even STILL HAVE - legalized slavery. If it was inalienable, I would not be capable of having a slave. As it is, all I have to do is move and buy one.
The list goes on. The problem with the concept of "inalienable rights" is multiple. The word inalienable means that it cannot be violated. Almost every concept in the human mind can be violated. You just have to be willing to break the law, make a law, or uphold a standing law to violate those concepts.
We're not even given the right to be born in the first place as abortion is legal in many places as of the time of this writing.
So, there are no inalienable rights. There are no rights at all, because what is here today is gone tomorrow. All it takes is a dramatic event or a shift in government policy and those truffles we ate today become fodder for prison tomorrow.
The concept of rights is a human construct, designed to contain a society inside of useful and beneficial scopes in which most people are safe, prosperous, and happy.
However, nothing mentioned yet is a right, therefore none are inalienable.
If you believe you have a right or even an inalienable right to life, consider that every country in the history of the world has had a government sanctioned execution method. They may not have one now, but at some point in history every country on the planet has had execution as a punishment for criminal activity.
It's not all that inalienable. All you have to do is commit a capital crime. All you have to do is be born with severe deformation, for that matter. Life is not an inalienable right, as it can be surrendered without your permission in a vast variety of ways. Sometimes all it takes is liking the wrong person. That's not an act of wrongdoing on your part and it's not a natural phenomenon, and yet there are places that your life can be taken from you for it. It is NOT inalienable.
Liberty is not an inalienable right; I can easily point out the number of countries that have had - or even STILL HAVE - legalized slavery. If it was inalienable, I would not be capable of having a slave. As it is, all I have to do is move and buy one.
The list goes on. The problem with the concept of "inalienable rights" is multiple. The word inalienable means that it cannot be violated. Almost every concept in the human mind can be violated. You just have to be willing to break the law, make a law, or uphold a standing law to violate those concepts.
We're not even given the right to be born in the first place as abortion is legal in many places as of the time of this writing.
So, there are no inalienable rights. There are no rights at all, because what is here today is gone tomorrow. All it takes is a dramatic event or a shift in government policy and those truffles we ate today become fodder for prison tomorrow.
dust1n
Zindīq
It seems that inalienable rights are rights that can't taken away by authority. It seems like all of them have their limits, almost at least. I can think of the right to have existed, which would inalienable and nothing could actually remove the fact from the matter. I was thinking the right to thought (within one's own head), but I suppose that could be subject to psychological conditioning.
I think the major one is probably the right to decision/freedom. No authority can legitimately displace you from your ability to decide for yourself what you will do next. They can lock you in a prison, sure, but your internal freedom would remain untouched, until the point of murder.
But really, when we claim to have inalienable rights, we claim to disobey all authority in the pursuit of those rights. We make them inalienable whenever we create environments in which they are effectively inalienable, for the time being, at least.
dust1n
Zindīq
There are magnolia trees today, there won't be in 100 years. Does that mean there are no magnolia trees?
EDIT: Ah, damnit, he's banned.
But Jefferson spelt it "unalienable."
I think we can trace it further back, perhaps to Rousseau, who popularized these Enlightenment" concepts.
Karl Streicher
Member
Your rights end when you cease to fight for them