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Due_Example5177 t1_j77xdn0 wrote

Reply to comment by jayz0ned in There Are No Natural Rights (without Natural Law): Addressing what rights are, how we create rights, and where rights come from by contractualist

I’ll categorically reject that notion. We recognized rights before the city-State emerged.

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jayz0ned t1_j780lbh wrote

Some rights could have existed but we are talking about pre-history, so how society functioned then is not entirely known. And their conception of "rights" may be different to how we consider them now.

Rights need recognition (either explicit or implicit) by whatever society they are a part of, whether that is a hunter gatherer society or a modern state. We now have a society which is so complex that it encompasses the entire world and is why groups of people can violate rights, even if they personally never recognized that right.

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Due_Example5177 t1_j7874ob wrote

I’d argue that rights do NOT need recognition to exist. Take the Halocaust, for example. Few people would argue that the rights of the Jews and others targeted and systemically slaughtered were not violated, despite their rights to life not being recognized by the State. Those who would, we generally ostracize. Or take slavery, same thing there. That, to me, clearly and demonstrably disproves your notion that rights have to be recognized to exist. They’re therefore independent of recognition and exist separately from the State. Surely you’re not arguing that slavery and the Halocaust did not violate people’s rights? Of course, I’m sure you’re not. But that’s the logical conclusion of your argument, and we must follow amsuch arguments to their logical conclusions to test their validity. Having done so, I would hold that argument as clearly invalid. No, rights must be more primal than that. I won’t argue that people will not suffer the violation of their rights out of fear of stepping out of line of the masses, or some such phenomena, of course. But hell, homosexuality was illegal in many parts of America until 2003, are we going to seriously say that I had no right to exist until then? Of course not-that’s absolutely absurd.

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