What is a right? How would you define it? My proposed definition: a social trust of an individuals sound judgement in autonomy. I think I get pretty close, although theres one exception. Consider this: every individual has the same guaranteed rights in an egalitarian society, which is to say each individual is trusted equally to have sound judgement. The individual is imbued with an irrevocable authority in each and every of a set of specific jurisdictions that the society maintains and enforces. These jurisdictions of authority are granted automatically upon birth, although they dont belong to the individual themselves usually until they reach a socially agreed-upon certain age. Your rights are trusted to your legal guardians before that, because you are not considered to have good enough judgement to wield them yourself. The only way to receive legal emancipation from guardians before the agreed-upon age is to prove to society that you are capable of good judgement in your own and societys interests. If society agrees, you can be emancipated, but not until then. The only way to lose emancipation after the agreed-upon age is to prove the opposite, through damaging society or the self with mis-judgement, and have done so beyond an agreed-upon threshold (called a law). In an egalitarian society rights are only shifted to a proxy when the individuals quality of judgement is in question, both in terms of their own interests and in the interests of society. Rights are trusts in judgement, an agreement between the society and the individual that the individual can be responsibly autonomous. It is an agreement that is made automatically and assumes good faith until a threshold of contrary evidence is reached, at which point the right is shifted to a proxy within a strict set of parameters. The exception to this definition is the right of property, for no good reason at all unfortunately. Otherwise I believe its pretty close. How do you define a right in society?
Posted on: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 18:07:01 +0000
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