Constitution, Society, and Leadership Week 6 Unit 1 History of Rights: Topic Introduction

1. Constitution, Society, and Leadership Week 6 Unit 1 History of Rights: Topic Introduction Christopher Dreisbach, Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University

2. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-iUnit Overview-i • This unit has three main sections • Review: Types of Rights • Review: History of Ideas • Looking ahead to the 3 remaining units

3. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-iiTypes: A Review-i • Four basic types of rights • Inalienable and positive • Inalienable and negative • Conferred and positive • Conferred and negative

4. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-iiiTypes: A Review-ii • An inalienable right • Cannot be taken away • Cannot be given away • The Declaration of Independence claims at least three inalienable rights • Life • Liberty • Pursuit of Happiness

5. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-ivTypes: A Review-iii • Conferred rights can be • Taken away • Given away • All rights the Constitution recognizes are conferred rights.

6. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-vTypes: A Review-iv • A positive right entails someone else’s duty to help the rights holder exercise that right. • E.g., in a valid contract to buy a car, the buyer has a right to the car to the extent that the seller has a duty to give up the car.

7. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-viTypes: A Review-v • A negative right is simply the right to be left alone in the enjoyment of that right. • E.g., while I might have a right to brush my teeth, no one else has a duty to brush them in order for me to exercise my right. • Roe v. Wade confers a negative right on a woman to have an abortion. • No one has a duty to give her one.

8. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-viiTypes: A Review-vi • In addition to the four basic types of rights • Rights can be legal, but not moral • E.g., the legal right prior to 1865 to own slaves in the United States • Rights can be moral, but not legal • E.g., Rosa Park’s right to take an empty seat on a public bus in Montgomery, Al in 1955. • And a right can be both moral and legal.

9. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-viiiTypes: A Review-vii • Thus there are at least 8 logically possible sorts of rights: • Legal, inalienable, positive • Legal, inalienable, negative • Legal, conferred, positive • Legal, conferred, negative

10. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-ixTypes: A Review-viii • Moral, inalienable, positive • Moral, inalienable, negative • Moral, conferred, positive • Moral, conferred, negative

11. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-xHistory of Ideas: A Review-i • Our topic this week is the history of rights • More to the point: the history of the idea of rights • Recall: One way to think about the general history of ideas in western thought is to divide that history into five basic periods • While recognizing that a sixth period appears to be emerging

12. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-xiHistory of Ideas: A Review-ii • These periods include • Ancient • Medieval • Early Modern • 19th Century • 20th Century • And perhaps: • Early 21st Century

13. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-xiiHistory of Ideas: A Review-iii • Each period can be distinguished from the others by at least 4 characteristics • Dates • Intellectual focus • Key thinkers • Each period ends in skepticism

14. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-xiiiAncient Thought: A Review-i • 650 BCE-45 CE • Intellectual Focus: Logic • Key Thinkers • Pre-Socratics • Socratics • Socrates (d. 399 BCE) • Plato (d. 347 BCE) • Aristotle (d. 322 BCE)

15. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-xivAncient Thought: A Review-ii • Post-Socratics/ Hellenists • Epicureans • Stoics • Cicero (d. 43 BCE) • Skeptics • Skepticism as the final dominant view in the Ancient period

16. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-xvRights in Ancient Thought • Rights are implied in Ancient discussion of duty • E.g., if I have a duty to treat you with respect, then you have a right to be treated with respect • But there is no explicit mention of rights during this period

17. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-xvMedieval Thought: A Review-i • 450-1500 • Intellectual Focus: Religion • Key Thinkers • Jewish Scholars • Christian Scholars • Augustine (d. 430) • Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) • Erasmus’s In Praise of Folly as a skeptical capstone of the medieval period

18. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-xviiRights in Medieval Thought • Explicit focus on rights emerges in the latter third of the Medieval period E.g., The Magna Carta—1215 • But a consistent and coherent discussion of rights does not begin until the early Modern period

19. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-xviiiEarly Modern Thought: A Review-i • 1500-1800 • Key Intellectual Focus • New Science • Rationalism v. Skepticism

20. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-xixEarly Modern Thought: A Review-ii • Key Thinkers • Empiricists • Thomas Hobbes (d. 1679) • John Locke (d. 1704) • George Berkeley (d. 1753) • David Hume (d. 1776): A Skeptic • Rationalists • Rene Descartes (d. 1650) • Benedict Spinoza (d. 1677) • Gottfried Leibniz (d. 1716)

21. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-xx19th Century Thought: A Review-i • 1800-1900 • Key Intellectual Focus • Immanuel Kant’s Philosophy • Evolution • American Philosophy • Transcendentalism • Pragmatism

22. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-xxi19th Century Thought: A Review-ii • Key Thinkers • Immanuel Kant (d. 1804) • Georg Friedrich Hegel (d. 1831) • Charles Darwin (d. 1882) • Karl Marx (d. 1883) • Ralph Waldo Emerson (d. 1882) • Henry David Thoreau (d. 1862) • William James (d. 1910) • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (d. 1935)

23. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-xxii19th Century Thought: A Review-iii • Ends with nihilism as a dominant intellectual movement

24. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-xxiii20th Century Thought: A Review-i • 1900-present • Possible early 21st Century movement: globalism • Key Intellectual Focus • Science v. Philosophy • Analytic Philosophy • Postmodernism

25. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-xxiv20th Century Thought: A Review-ii • Key Thinkers • Bertrand Russell (d. 1970) • G. E. Moore (d. 1958) • Ludwig Wittgenstein (d. 1951) • Jacques Derrida (d. 2004) • Jean Baudrillard (d. 2007) • Jean-François Lyotard (d. 1998) • Michel Foucault (d. 1984)

26. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-xxv20th Century Thought: A Review-iii • Postmodernism • The dominant intellectual movement at the end of the 20th Century • A form of skepticism

27. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-xxviLooking Ahead-i • This week we will look at some influential theories of rights in an historical context • Keeping in mind the various types of rights • Next week we will look at contemporary theories

28. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-xxviiLooking Ahead-ii • This week relies heavily on Patrick Heyden, ed., The Philosophy of Human Rights (St. Paul, MN: Paragon, 2001).

29. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-xxviiiLooking Ahead-ii • In one sense the history of rights is as old as the history of law, since • Law implies someone’s duty to obey • This implies someone’s right to have that duty obeyed • But the explicit language of “rights” • Emerges tentatively in the Medieval Period • Becomes pronounced in the Early Modern Period

30. History of Rights: Topic Introduction-xxixLooking Ahead-ii • This week’s discussion has the following units • Unit 2: Magna Carta to the Declaration of Independence • Unit 3: Rousseau to the End of the 18th Century • Unit 4: Kant to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

31. Week 6 Unit 1 History of Rights: Topic Introduction Constitution, Society, and Leadership