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Post by EK - Shadow of Death on Oct 2, 2003 9:54:27 GMT -5
A person might choose to do any of those things in a state of nature, but that doesn't mean that they are entitled to it. You could hunt, kill, steal, etc., but these are not "rights". Most governments require you to get a license and permission to go hunting these days. Killing and stealing are totally out of the question. When we convict another for murder, it is not out of infringement on their natural rights, but infringement on the rights that our government has granted them so that it can maintain order. In a natural state, everything exists dependently on everything else and thus everything is as equal as everything else. Can one truly say that nature grants invulnerable things like rights? Hussar mentioned that freedom of choice is a right. I say that it is merely a fact of nature. We have freedom of choice in our societies too. If you wanted to go and kill a deer without a permit, you could. The problem is, and always is, consequences. The government would fine you for hunting illegally, trespassing, etc. If you wanted to kill someone outside of society, you could do so just as easily as when you're in society. The difference is that most societies would convict you for forcibly taking a right that they had bestowed to that person, their citizen. This isn't to say that its always happened like this. Dueling was quite common back in the Rennaisance. If you killed someone in an honorable duel back then, there would be no charges. If you do it now, duel or not, its murder one. Its all to do with a society's philosophy and a government's view on that.
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Post by Hussar on Oct 3, 2003 0:48:37 GMT -5
Just to correct something, dueling was almost always illegal in any city it occured in in Europe or in the Americas. There's a reason dueling occured at dawn, no one was around. The intentional taking of another's life has been illegal in societies since the time of Hammurabi.
I think we're getting caught up in semantics here. Rights are guaranteed by a Constitution. In most constitutions, those guaranteed rights are seen as inalienable. In other words, they exist independant of the individual and cannot be taken away, nor can they be given away. You cannot willingly enter into a contract that breaks your rights. Such a contract is null and void.
Now, human rights, are a fairly new invention. Most of them have not existed until the 20th century. Or rather, they may have existed, but they were not recognized. Either way, they exist now.
A constitution is not a charter of rights. There is a difference. Usually rights are guaranteed within a constitution, but not necessarily. In Canada, your rights were not put into the constitution until 1982. For the Brits it was the early 90's. Now, we had rights guaranteed by law, but, laws can be changed. Now, those rights are enshrined in the constitution and are much more difficult to be changed.
As far as I know, the Americans do not have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, they have their Ammendments to the Constitution which have been added over time. Again, it amounts to the same thing.
Realistically, arguing over man in the state of nature is ultimately self defeating. Man has not lived "in a state of nature" for thousands, if not tens of thousands of years. Society is a man made invention. It is all a means to allow us to dominate the planet. Not that I'm saying we developed society in order to do so. It's just that as our societies grew bigger and bigger, we were capable of so much more.
The purpose of a right is to mitigate the effects of a government upon an individual. You are right EK, in a state of nature, rights do not exist, since governments do not exist. However, as soon as you had a chief or any other sort of exercise of political power over the group, rights were born.
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Post by EK - Shadow of Death on Oct 4, 2003 9:51:54 GMT -5
That's exactly what I've been trying to say. Thank you.
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