In Defense of Natural Rights, Part 2

[Charles Bell]

From part 1 [ http://tinyurl.com/a87n3zq ] we assume a malevolent
universe for Hobbes and a benevolent universe for Rand for the context
of their respective theories on natural rights, for in the sense that
“malevolent” for Hobbes meant without a Sovereign with whom (or what,
if the “State”) an individual has contracted himself to obey, his life
will be brutish and short ever in a state of war, and in the sense
that “benevolent” for Rand meant that there are no conflicts of
interest between rational men if and only if the Sovereign (or
“State”) does not determine what is “rational” but rather facilitates
trade of interests (or not) between these men who are rational.

What Hobbes did is stand the medieval Aristotelian argument (Aquinas)
from natural law leading to man-made law by “rights” upside down to
consideration from natural law to natural rights, and thence by the
Sovereign, to man-made law designating legal rights. However, unlike
Hobbes, Rand did not take this legal positivist approach and instead
insisted that the Sovereign must ground his law in a moral context and
that natural rights expressed in law, statutory or common, are a means
to bind society to moral (natural) law. This returned the argument
back to the Aristotelian, but not medieval, order of (statutory or
common) laws following natural rights while at the same time deriving
these natural rights, antecedent to (statutory or common) laws, from
moral (natural) law.

Rand proceeds thus:
1. Only a living being can choose among alternative actions
2. Only a living being can be injured, damaged, or killed and cease
to be
3. A humanly, and only humanly, rational preference pattern will
connect 2. with 1.
4. 3. is moral law.
5. Moral rights, which are natural and consequential not supernatural
and deontological, are propositions against society based on 4 for all
the reasons discussed in part 1 [http://tinyurl.com/a87n3zq].

Furthermore, Rand abolished the ought-is distinction by 1. and 2. and
the fact that only human beings can do 3. in order to do 1. and 2. and
thus be morally acting animals but not deontological but rather
consequentialist – causality is never suspended – and the “natural”
for man is the moral. ["The moral and the practical are not
opposites."] Life itself is a value, the ultimate value, because
without which there are no other values.

Skeptical inquiry to Rand’s abolition of the purported (by the
skeptics) ought-is question consists mainly in the rhetoric: Prove
that life itself is a value, or say death in purpose of some other
value such as saving the life of another person, is not a greater
value than life. In the first instance, it should be noted that
without that one life of the savior, cared for and nurtured and
matured through the protection of the moral right to life by the
Sovereign, there is no saving of another life, and secondly moral law
is not sensibly formulated on the basis of the emergency and the rare
occasion. The proposition that without life itself there would be no
other value to attain, such as the saving of another life in an
emergency or rare occasion, still holds. It is meaningless to speak of
values, of good and evil, at all except in relation to the needs of a
living organism. That the heroic savior bargains the value of *the
risk of his life* and the not *his certain death* less than the saving
of another person does not mean he values his life less than that of
the other only that there is some trade in his mind at the time that
is worth the effort for his own reasons. It is a Hobbesian bargain
without formal contractual arrangement, assuming the savior is not a
lifeguard or policeman or such, that all human beings are equal in
right to life. We return to Rand’s benevolent universe premise.

“Its consequence is the inability to believe in the power or the
triumph of evil. No matter what corruption one observes in one's
immediate background, one is unable to accept it as normal, permanent
or metaphysically right. One feels: ‘This injustice (or terror or
falsehood or frustration or pain or agony) is the exception in life,
not the rule.’"

The Skeptics’ argument against natural rights in the Randian sense, in
the form of mainstream libertarian thought – from Robert Nozick who
actually proposed that hypothetical: “Why can’t death be taken a value
greater than life?” and ends his argument against Rand on the power of
feeling and intuition over reason to David Friedman who denies a
morality that if existing can be also held by insect as well as by
humans – is weaker than from those who deny natural rights outright
like Karl Marx or contemporaneously from Germain Grisez, John Finnis,
and Robert P. George who defend pre-Hobbesian natural law over natural
rights because skepticism whether from Hume or Kant is anti-
philosophical and more akin to the Hobbesian primitive of the brute
who, of course, knows not the value of the Sovereign to extend his
life and allow it to be happy.


From part 1 [ http://tinyurl.com/a87n3zq ] we assume a malevolent
universe for Hobbes and a benevolent universe for Rand for the context
of their respective theories on natural rights, for in the sense that
“malevolent” for Hobbes meant without a Sovereign with whom (or what,
if the “State”) an individual has contracted himself to obey, his life
will be brutish and short ever in a state of war, and in the sense
that “benevolent” for Rand meant that there are no conflicts of
interest between rational men if and only if the Sovereign (or
“State”) does not determine what is “rational” but rather facilitates
trade of interests (or not) between these men who are rational.

What Hobbes did is stand the medieval Aristotelian argument (Aquinas)
from natural law leading to man-made law by “rights” upside down to
consideration from natural law to natural rights, and thence by the
Sovereign, to man-made law designating legal rights. However, unlike
Hobbes, Rand did not take this legal positivist approach and instead
insisted that the Sovereign must ground his law in a moral context and
that natural laws expressed in law, statutory or common, are a means
to bind society to moral (natural) law. This returned the argument
back to the Aristotelian, but not medieval, order of (statutory or
common) laws following natural rights while at the same time deriving
these natural rights, antecedent to (statutory or common) laws, from
moral (natural) law.

Rand proceeds thus:
1. Only a living being can choose among alternative actions
2. Only a living being can be injured, damaged, or killed and cease
to be
3. A humanly, and only humanly, rational preference pattern will
connect 2. with 1.
4. 3. is moral law.
5. Moral rights, which are natural and consequential not supernatural
and deontological, are propositions against society based on 4 for all
the reasons discussed in part 1 [http://tinyurl.com/a87n3zq].

Furthermore, Rand abolished the ought-is distinction by 1. and 2. and
the fact that only human beings can do 3. in order to do 1. and 2. and
thus be morally acting animals but not deontological but rather
consequentialist – causality is never suspended – and the “natural”
for man is the moral. ["The moral and the practical are not
opposites."] Life itself is a value, the ultimate value, because
without which there are no other values.

Skeptical inquiry to Rand’s abolition of the purported (by the
skeptics) ought-is question consists mainly in the rhetoric: Prove
that life itself is a value, or say death in purpose of some other
value such as saving the life of another person, is not a greater
value than life. In the first instance, it should be noted that
without that one life of the savior, cared for and nurtured and
matured through the protection of the moral right to life by the
Sovereign, there is no saving of another life, and secondly moral law
is not sensibly formulated on the basis of the emergency and the rare
occasion. The proposition that without life itself there would be no
other value to attain, such as the saving of another life in an
emergency or rare occasion, still holds. It is meaningless to speak of
values, of good and evil, at all except in relation to the needs of a
living organism. That the heroic savior bargains the value of *the
risk of his life* and the not *his certain death* less than the saving
of another person does not mean he values his life less than that of
the other only that there is some trade in his mind at the time that
is worth the effort for his own reasons. It is a Hobbesian bargain
without formal contractual arrangement, assuming the savior is not a
lifeguard or policeman or such, that all human beings are equal in
right to life. We return to Rand’s benevolent universe premise.

“Its consequence is the inability to believe in the power or the
triumph of evil. No matter what corruption one observes in one's
immediate background, one is unable to accept it as normal, permanent
or metaphysically right. One feels: ‘This injustice (or terror or
falsehood or frustration or pain or agony) is the exception in life,
not the rule.’"
The Skeptics’ argument against natural rights in the Randian sense, in
the form of mainstream libertarian thought – from Robert Nozick who
actually proposed that hypothetical: “Why can’t death be taken a value
greater than life?” and ends his argument against Rand on the power of
feeling and intuition over reason to David Friedman who denies a
morality that if existing cannot be also held by insect as well as by
humans – is weaker than from those who deny natural rights outright
like Karl Marx or contemporaneously from Germain Grisez, John Finnis,
and Robert P. George who defend pre-Hobbesian natural law over natural
rights because skepticism whether from Hume or Kant is anti-
philosophical and more akin to the Hobbsian primitive of the brute
who, of course, knows not the value of the Sovereign to extend his
life and allow it to be happy.

[Charles Bell]

Part 3, More argument against natural rights:

Deny
(1) Existence exists.
(2) A is A.
(3) Consciousness is real.