ON THE 'RIGHTS' MUDDLE
May 15th 2001
The next issue, Number 60, will appear on June 15th 2001.
There are many examples of ethical imperatives that can be expressed equally well by reference to duties as by reference to rights. 'My neighbour has the right to be treated fairly by me' is operationally identical with 'I have a duty to treat my neighbour fairly'. There is little to choose between the two formulations - except perhaps that, since I am the one who is supposedly dishing out the treatment, the duty version is a little more direct as it places the onus where it properly lies ........ on me.
A problem that arises, among liberal secularists especially, is that they shy away from the word duty simply because it has connotations of traditional piety, sanctimonious authority, priggishness and nagging fear of impending disgrace if you fail in it. It would be an aid to clarity of thought and expression if we could set aside such hangups and allow duty, like many another four-letter word, a due place in our discourse. It is sometimes the best word and the main thesis of this article is that many proclamations of rights would be the more pointed for being recast in terms of duties.
The words of J S Mill are perhaps a suitable starting point ...... "To have a right is to have something that society ought to protect me in the possession of". Perhaps it would be well to extend this to "in the possession and exercise of". One should perhaps add that to claim a right (that I do not yet possess) is to "claim to acquire something that, in my opinion, society ought to support me in the acquisition of - with a view to its possible exercise." Mill was, among other things, a considerable writer and the shortcomings of his attempted definition of the word right is a measure of how elusive the idea is, a measure of how difficult it is to define.
There are three aspects of right that are worth noting:
a right may be exercised (if you know you have it); you may be advised that you have a right (if you do not know you have it) and that you may wish to exercise it; you may know that you do not currently have a particular right but you might attempt to claim it by suitable means of persuasion.
It will be noticed that in Mill's formulation, and in my suggested modifications of it, the unspoken assumption is made that rights apply only to mature adult human beings. Can we simply transplant these notions of rights to children and to sentient species generally?
I claim that it is glib and confusing to make this transfer without careful thought and that, often, ethical clarity can best be restored by the selective reference to duty. For example ...... which is the more realistic of the two following statements a) 'my dog has a right to be treated fairly by me' or b) 'I have duty to treat my dog fairly'?
I suggest that a) is unrealistic - how can my dog know about, or find out about, rights and take decisions as to their due exercise? Indeed statement a) comes perilously close to mere windbaggery while b) is a clear ethical imperative placed upon, and properly to be accepted, by me.
If for 'dog' we substitute 'young child' then the comparison still stands and the duty version is the better one. If for 'dog' we substitute 'near adult child' then both the rights formulation and the duties formulation are reasonable enough. Duty to children is always there but rights of children emerge realistically in their minds as their independent experience and knowledge accumulate.
I claim that the phrase 'animal rights' should be dropped in favour of 'human duties to animals' and that great care should be exercised in the use of 'rights of the child' - it all depends on the degree of maturity of the child.
Referring back to the paragraph on "three aspects of right that are worth noting" it is instructive to see what sense there is, if any, in the phrases 'right to life in patients in the persistently vegetative state' and 'right to life of the unborn child'. Even though we might well acknowledge duties to the PVS patient and to the foetus, it is a piece of nonsense to think of these human entitles as being aware of, choosing to exercise, or demanding rights.
Perhaps the silliest phrase of all in this emotive area is 'right to life of the unborn child'. This phrase is not only vacuous - it is oxymoronic as well; the foetus is, arguably, not a child until it is born - but that is another story.
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