Another appeal in moral reasoning is the appeal to rights. But what is a right? What is the basis of a moral right? What are some fundamental rights?
Moral Rights Defined
A right is basically a claim that one person asserts against someone else. At a minimum it means that others have an obligation to you. It either means that they are constrained in their action in relation to you, or that they are obligated to provide you with something.
So we have Negative and Positive Rights
Negative rights are the rights to be free from other’s interference. You have something and other should not take it from you.
Positive right are rights to be helped in some way. You are lacking something and you make a claim on others to provide it.
A right is defined in terms of an obligation. Our most fundamental obligations are based in moral principles (just like the basis of a legal right is the law).
What is the moral principle that lies behind rights claims? In most philosophers’ view, rights are grounded in human dignity, in the basic principle to respect persons as sentient, rational, free and social creatures.
So rights claims are claims to things required by the dignity of the human person, by his or her being a reality that is the locus of intrinsic value; persons are not valuable simply because they are good for something else, but they are valuable in their own right! Without persons, moral value considerations would disappear.
Rights and obligations are correlative; they are the flip side of each other. Can not have rights without obligations.
One way to think about a right is to ask what is the correlative obligation. If there does not seem to be a strong correlative obligation, then the right is not strong.
What can we say is central to being a person, and so violating it is violating our human dignity or violating our rights?
What are we entitled to? These are our basic moral rights, and should be preserved as we think about how to treat each other.
Plausible Basic Rights
Probably most fundamental is the right not to be killed. This is a negative right. The correlative obligation is to not kill others.
Another right is the right not to have bodily injury and pain inflicted on one.
Another is the right not to be deceived.
Another is the right not to have one’s confidence revealed to others.
Positive rights
Most fundamental is the right to be aided in times of need.
Another positive right is the right to decisional authority as regard’s oneself (and one’s family).