Talk:Right

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Contents 1 History of the concept of 'rights' 2 fr interwiki 3 Bias to discussion of negative rights 4 Possibly poor example 5 rename to Rights? 6 individual/group rights 7 Golden Rule 8 Really tangled paragraph 9 perhaps a discussion of views in other systems?

[edit] History of the concept of 'rights'

This long rambling essay really has little to do with rights. If no one objects, I'm going to delete this entire section.--JW1805 02:21, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Actually, there is very little in this article concerning the concept of rights. It is largely a series of essays describing contributors' views on topics related to the concepts of rights. It is not appropriate for Wikipedia. Much of it—particularly the history section and the section "Rights portrayed in drama and media"—is effectively original research. Other parts (e.g., "The inaction problem") simply express contributors' opinions on a topic related to rights. Many of those parts discuss the concept of human rights or natural rights (which already have their own articles), not rights in general.

I think much of this article needs to be deleted. In fact, I think it might be best if it was deleted and re-started from scratch, with someone doing some actual research and backing up their statements with citations. — Mateo SA | talk 02:36, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree, I'm going to delete the History, Media, and Inaction sections. The others are workable, I think. --JW1805 02:59, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] fr interwiki

I have been told that the interwiki of this page to French language actually points to the page about Law. Checking the en interwiki of the page fr:Droit, it points back to Law. So this should be fixed. I couldn't help as I don't know any French. -- Lerdsuwa 16:17, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Since languages are different, you can't always get a one-to-one correspondence between articles. I have seen some cases where articles had more than one interwiki for the same language. THe French word "Droit" would cover both. So the only way to "fix" it I know of, would be to make a second interwiki link on the French article, on e pointing here and one pointing to "Law"... ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 16:38, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps fr:Droits de l'Homme would be more on the mark? - Jmabel | Talk 18:32, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bias to discussion of negative rights

The article currently says things like:

Most modern conceptions of rights are universalist and egalitarian; in other words, equal rights are granted to all people. Such rights may be defined in terms of the Golden Rule ("do unto others as you would have them do unto you"). An individual agrees to respect the rights of others in exchange for the assurance that the others will respect the same rights for him in turn.

This appears to be talking solely about negative rights! Is that satisfactory? Dealing with positive rights at the same time makes the writing task much harder but is very necessary for teaching our readers about the subject properly. -- pde 00:40, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how that remark is specific to negative rights. Could you expand on your remark? - Jmabel | Talk 18:39, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Possibly poor example

"Property rights provide a good example…" Yes and no. It's a matter of an example of what. I think we would do better to give two examples, one of rights that are recognized as truly universal, and property as the other, because property rights, by their nature, are in some respects particular: they pertain to the owner of specific property. Freedom of thought or of speech might be good examples of truer universality, at least in the realm of theory if not in practice (since they are abridged by some governments). That is, my having certain thoughts or uttering certain speech doed not deprive anyone else of thought or speech, but my owning particular private property is precisely at the expense of anyone else's claim on that property. - Jmabel | Talk 06:21, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] rename to Rights?

Shouldn't this article be called "Rights" instead of "Right"? RJII 01:07, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] individual/group rights

I see that there is a seperate individual rights article. I guess that means this article needs to include talk of both individual and group rights, so it needs some modifications. Maybe individual rights should be merged into this article? RJII 01:28, 16 May 2006 (UTC) I created a group rights article, if anyone wants to work on that. RJII 01:35, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Golden Rule

From the article:

Such rights may be defined in terms of the Golden Rule ("do unto others as you would have them do unto you"). An individual agrees to respect the rights of others in exchange for the assurance that the others will respect the same rights for him in turn.

Clearly a well-intentioned explanation, but not necessarily on the mark. It does get at one thing: a moral injunction to treat others as one wishes to be treated oneself. If we are getting that into the article, I would think that it should be by way of the concept of social contract.

The Golden Rule and the categorical imperative do not lead directly to a set of rights: they lead to a system of moral obligation, which can be translated into a theory of justice, from which a concept of rights can be derived.

Anyway, I think we need to get something like that into the article rather than the sentences just quoted, but I know that my wording here is too academic. I'm open to ideas. - Jmabel | Talk 03:19, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Following that up: we should probably mention the School of Salamanca, who were (as far as I know) the first to clearly articulate anything resembling the modern, universalist theory of human rights (16th century), rooting a theory of popular sovereignty in the concept of natural law. There might be precursors of which I'm unaware in the Muslim world or in Asia; I'm pretty sure there was nothing comparable (and comparably articulated) in Classical times, nor in Asia before that time. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which we quote in the article, was in no small measure a defense of slavery based on the different nature of the slave. - Jmabel | Talk 03:26, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

The golden rule is a religous edict that has been put under scrutiny for years. There is even a history of Jewish Christian conflict over this rule. The rule is an example of the Ethic of Reciprocity and has been found to be flawed on the basis that it does not take into account the wishes of others and would mean that people have to accept what others like regardless of their individual preferences, or that others have the right to force their preferences on you. Simply put the golden rule if turned to establish rights would indicate that because I like getting tatoos or sodomy I have the right to give others tatoos and anything else I like. For obvious reasons this logic is flawed and it has been stated that the rule should be amended to, "do unto others as they would have done to them". Regardless the golden rule deserves not palce in this article concerning rights and I move to have it removed. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Stratvic (talk • contribs) 26 September 2006.

[edit] Really tangled paragraph

The conception of a right to something that implicitly creates an obligation on someone else to provide that thing (a positive right) is widely challenged. You can not enforce your wish for something (under the auspices of a right) if it implicitly constitutes an obligation on another to do something for you. However, one person's right to something creates a negative right in that you have the right for that thing not be interfered with by another, and that other is obligated not to interfere with your right to it. The obligation test is widely used to determine what constitutes a right. To illustrate: You have the right to own an axe, but you do not have a right to an axe. If you do own an axe, others have an obligation not to steal it.

I've got a post-graduate education, and I had to read practically every sentence of this paragraph more than once to parse it. And it has a lot of problems beyond that:

• Normally we avoid second person. I don't see why it is needed here.
• "widely challenged" with no citation: I have almost never seen this challenged except by liberatarians. I'm pretty confident that most people, for example, consider that the right to life extends to the point of creating an obligation for a government or society to attempt to rescue victims of a natural disaster. I would doubt that there is a "widely" held belief that a person dying of thirst while someone next to him had abundant water could be reasonably expected to die respecting his neighbor's property rights.
• By the second sentence, this has switched to imperative (or, more precisely, hortatory) mode, which is entirely inappropriate. It becomes a statement of a narrowly libertarian conception of rights, in the article's narrative voice.
• Again "widely used" without citation. I cannot name a country where this, in general, has the force of law. Certainly not the U.S., one of the more libertarian countries in the industrialized world, but one which recognizes a right to a publicly financed primary and secondary education.

In short: poorly written libertarian cant.

I'll allow at least 48 hours (and probably more) for someone to rewrite this in a way that belongs here, but if it hasn't been substantially fixed by then, I intend simply to remove it. - Jmabel | Talk 22:35, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

It is the the right to pocess an axe that is the right not the owning of an axe. I have the right implies that it is something that has been granted which can be denied. A right is that which can be described but cannot be denied. It simply exist as a law of nature. To grant a right implies to that which cannot be denied ever again. Hence the quandry and misuse of the word and that to which it implies. All rights are priviledges because they can and will be denied. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.86.16.187 (talk • contribs) 16 December 2006.

As far as I can see, this addresses none of the issues I raised. - Jmabel | Talk 06:06, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] perhaps a discussion of views in other systems?

It's my understanding that the distinction between law and right is quite different in some other languages, such as French and German using droit and Recht respectively to cover both, and that this partly reflects their legal systems' different conceptions of the underlying ideas. Of course this article shouldn't go off on linguistic tangents, but insofar as the language reflects a different conceptual viewpoint, it might be worth discussing how universal and/or controversial the law vs. right distinction is, and how it relates to philosophy of law and so on. --Delirium 23:59, 5 March 2007 (UTC)