Mystic Banana
so you’re saying “natural right” theory is the basis of human rights, then?
Yes, that was very clear.
Of course, part of contemporary opposition to natural law is on the basis of it’s religious bias…
Modernity tries to ignore natural moral law and to substitute the concocted “rights” exposed in post #85.
Professor Robert P George (Princeton) in
The Clash of Orthodoxies, ISI Books, 2001, thinks that the “heyday of moral relativism is over, even among doctrinaire socialists”, and quotes the “distinguished liberal political philosopher, Joel Feinberg” as warning: “Liberals must beware of relativism – or, at least, of a sweeping relativism – lest they be hoist on their own petard.” (p 18).
Pagans came to this knowledge of the natural moral law: The Roman philosopher Cicero (died 43 B.C.) wrote in
De Republica, 3.22: “True law is right reason in agreement with nature. It is of universal application, unchanging, everlasting. We cannot be freed from it by Senate or people. This law is not one thing at Rome and another at Athens, but is eternal and immutable, valid for all nations and for all times. God is the Author of it, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge. Whoever is disobedient to it is abandoning his true self and denying his own nature.”
Faithful Catholics believe the Magisterium on affirming the rights of all not to be tortured, not to be raped, to freely practise their faith; the rights of the unborn, frail elderly, the handicapped and of every innocent human being not to be directly killed.
insidecatholic.com/feature/how-john-locke-influenced-catholic-social-teaching.html
*How John Locke Influenced Catholic Social Teaching *, Joe Hargrave, Nov 5, 2010.
“In Locke’s and Leo’s treatment of charity, however, it is also made clear that the right to private property coexists with an obligation to give charitably, and even a right to theft in cases of extreme want. In the short term, this may justify some sort of safety net for the unemployed and those unable to care for themselves. But may we not ask whether or not a free economy would generate a level of wealth and prosperity that would almost entirely eliminate the sort of extreme poverty that would morally justify theft – and whether it has in fact done so in many nations already?
“There are fewer uncharitable assumptions made in politics as often as the accusation that the advocates of freer markets are acting out of selfishness. If market economies based upon the protection of private property and driven by competition and technological innovation tend to reduce the cost of goods and services over time, then surely none will benefit more than the poor.”
