Natural Rights
Theory of Natural Rights The principle of natural rights is first and foremost among the various
theories related to the rights. John Locke, in his article Second Treaties on Civil Government,
published in 1690, gave the most effective statement on natural rights. But before that the theory of
natural rights had been presented by Thomas Hobbes. His ideas related to natural rights can be
understood by her concept called 'natural state'. It refers to the state of human life in the absence of
a systematic political institution and government - in other words, the natural state of a human being
against artificial condition under a government. According to Hobbs, the natural right he called 'Jas
naturalis'.
The natural rights theory propounded by Locke other liberal thinker, declared that all men are born
with certain inherent right. Rights inherited in individual human being rather than in society or state.
‘God gives them to his children just as he gives them arms, legs, eyes and ears.’ Rights, according to
this theory, were attributed to the individual as they are the intrinsic property of man. Whatever
right are granted to a man as citizen of this or that state, his natural rights go with him where he
goes. Natural rights were derived from natural law and were propagated by the social contract
theorists like Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. They assumed that man had certain natural rights before
the origin of the state and he surrendered some of them to a superior authority i.e. civil society in
order to safeguard the rest of them. Hobbes considered right to life as a natural right. Locke declared
right to life, liberty and property as the natural rights. Rousseau has prioritized the rights of Freedom
and Equality.
Contemporary political philosophies which continue to believe in the liberal tradition of natural rights
include libertarianism, anarcho-capitalism and Objectivism, and include scholars like Ludwig von
Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard. A libertarian view of inalienable rights is
laid out in Morris and Linda Tannehill's ‘The Market for Liberty’, which claims that a man has a right
to ownership over his life and, therefore, also his property, because he has invested time (i.e. part of
his life) in it and thereby made it an extension of his life. However, if he initiates force against and to
the detriment of another man, he alienates himself from the right to that part of his life which is
required to pay his debt: “Rights are not inalienable, but only the possessor of a right can alienate
himself from that right - no one else can take a man's rights from him.”
Critics of Natural Rights
The idea of natural rights was not accepted by the latter political philosophers.
It was felt that if rights are attributed to the individual absolutely, we cannot resolve the
conflict between man and society. For example, in a situation like famine, one man’s right to
life could be violated by hoarding of food by another man’s right to property. That is if the
two equally absolute rights conflict, there is no principle upon which this can be solved.
The most obvious criticism of this theory was what is meant by natural. It is found that the
word nature was used in a multi-dimensional sense such as: nature as a whole universe,
nature as the non-human part of the universe. In short, the term ‘natural’ remained vague at
the hands of various writers.
There can be no rights without a law. Rights imply certain duties; they imply social relations
on which duties can rest. As was pointed out by Green later on, every right must be justified
in terms of ends which the community considers good and that which cannot be attained
without rights.
The theory assumed that one could have rights and obligations independent of society. This
was an erroneous view because the question of rights emerges only in the society and in the
context of social relationship.
