One of the most telling questions in last night’s presidential debate was: “is health care in America a privilege, a right, or a responsibility?” Of course neither candidate’s answer was very good, but what’s more interesting to me is how malleable this question really feels. Just what is the answer to this question tied to? Liberal thought, with its self-evident truths, equal individuals and inalienable rights has created such a nebulous concept of what it is to be human that we now have an environment in which it makes sense to ask questions like “is x a right?”. If being a person is just being an individual, an equal person in society, then rights are just things everyone has. And if being a person just means being equal to everyone else, then the most we can say about me is that I am equally equal as they are. And how are we supposed to discover what is or is not a right when this is all we have to work with? Maybe I was wrong a moment ago – maybe the environment we now have is one in which it no longer makes sense to say “x is not a right”. What would that even mean? That equality does not include it? But how would we know this? Equality means “just as human as others”, but humanity in the liberal state means “just as equal as others”. This isn’t only tragic, it’s vicious.
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Ben Pierce is studying for a degree in philosophy. He is interested in intersections of theology and philosophy, drawing on roots in the Augustinian and Protestant Reformed traditions.
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8 October, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Interesting line of thought. I addressed it in a similar way on my site. The good news is that if two of us are thinking about this, there is hope that others are, as well.
Enjoy!
Nita
http://www.joyouslife.wordpress.com
9 October, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Rights discourse is awful too because it relies on a line of philosophy that has thought about the human individual as an atomic unit. Enough said.
7 November, 2008 at 4:18 pm
It looks like you’ve defined “person” in terms of itself: “If being a person is just being an individual, an equal person in society…”
A second attempt at it seems to contain the same circularity, it would be hard to explicate the definiens in this: “…if being a person just means being equal to everyone else…” in terms that didn’t include the definiendum.
The concept of a right is a tricky one. I have a hard time with them myself. I try to take obvious cases and do analysis, but I rarely end up with a general definition in the Platonic style. Mostly I come to something like Wittgensteinian conclusions, in that the question “What is a right?” seems to be a metaphysical confusion stemming from the use of the word “right.” The mere fact that we commonly say things like “It’s my right to do this or that,” doesn’t mean that there exists some particular entity (conceptual or otherwise), “a right,” that in a (mysterious but) literal metaphysical sense I “have.” Even so, I still say things like, “I have the right to speak my mind, etc.” and certainly mean what I say.
Is the question “What is a right?” quite the same question as “Is x a right?” I am inclined to think, not necessarily. The first seems a more purely metaphysical question, whereas the second could likely be answered according to the ordinary use language about rights.