Rights: historical evolution and philosophical foundations

Introduction

Rights have a history and a philosophy: they have been claimed at different times in different forms, and thinkers have given different answers to the question of why persons have them.

Meaning and importance of rights

A right is an entitlement or a justified claim: what we may rightly claim as citizens, as individuals and simply as human beings, something that the rest of society must recognise as legitimate. Not everything that I want is a right; rights are those claims that I and others regard as necessary for a life of respect and dignity. They are claimed on two grounds, that they are conditions of dignity and self-respect (the right to livelihood, freedom of expression), and that they are necessary for well-being and the development of talents (the right to education). A claim that is injurious to others or to oneself, such as smoking or taking banned drugs, cannot be claimed as a right. Rights are claimed chiefly against the state: each right says what the state must do and what it must refrain from doing, so that rights place limits on the state's authority and make rulers accountable, for the state exists for the sake of the individual and not the reverse.

Historical evolution of rights

1. Seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Rights were said to be given by nature or God and derived from natural law; three were identified: life, liberty and property. They were used to oppose arbitrary power. The French Revolution of 1789 and other struggles against powerful monarchies belong here.
2. Nineteenth century and after. Excluded groups demanded the same rights: the poor the vote; women the vote, degrees and work. The list of rights expanded from civil and political rights to economic ones as democracies recognised that political rights could not be exercised by people who lack basic needs.
3. The twentieth century. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (10 December 1948) built on the idea that all persons are entitled to certain claims as human beings. Cultural rights, environmental claims and rights of children and of the sick in times of war or crisis were added.
4. In India. Demands for equal citizenship were part of the colonies' struggle for independence, and the Constitution recognises Fundamental Rights, together with a ban on untouchability that reflects a local social practice; the courts have reinterpreted them (the right to life now includes livelihood).

Philosophical foundations of rights

The philosophical question is why persons have rights at all. The main answers are set out below, with their weaknesses.

Theories of rights

The held texts set out four answers to the question of where rights come from.

1. Natural rights theory. Political theorists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries held that rights come from nature or God through natural law, so that they are inborn and inalienable and no ruler confers them; life, liberty and property were named as the basic three, with the rest derived from them. The idea served to resist arbitrary rule and to protect individual freedom, and it survives in Nozick's argument that redistribution by the state violates the natural rights of individuals. Criticism: a law laid down by nature or God appears unacceptable today, so the term human rights has largely replaced it.
2. Legal theory. Because constitutional and legal recognition matters so much, several theorists define rights as claims that the state recognises; constitutions give such rights the highest standing, which in India are the Fundamental Rights. It shares the positivist starting point of the legal view of justice, which treats law as the command of the sovereign (Hobbes, Bentham, Austin). Criticism: legal endorsement gives a right special status but is not the ground on which it is claimed; rights have been expanded and reinterpreted, often by groups the law once left out, before the law caught up.
3. Moral theory (Kant). Every person has an intrinsic worth, a dignity beyond any price, and so must be treated morally: we should treat others as we wish to be treated, and never use a person merely as a means to our own ends. This idea became a rallying point for people struggling against social hierarchies and for human rights.
4. Human rights theory. Building on the moral view, it holds that every person has a claim to certain things merely by being human, each person unique and of equal worth, so that no one is born to serve another; the UN Universal Declaration rests on this understanding. Its list is open: claims to clean air and water, sustainable development and the rights of children have been added as societies faced new threats.

Assessment. Each view captures part of the truth. Rights are claimed on moral grounds, as conditions of dignity and well-being; their success depends above all on the support of governments and the law; and their content keeps growing through the struggles of excluded groups.

Conclusion

Historically, rights have been won by struggle and widened from civil and political to economic, cultural and collective claims; philosophically they have been grounded in nature, in the law of the state and in human dignity, with modern practice resting on the idea of dignity enforced through law.