Topics Ethics

Question My question regards the notion of negative rights. Personally, I believe the notion of “rights” is itself a human creation, and that rights do not ultimately exist outside of this creation. Rights come from nowhere else but humans. This being the case would seem to imply that all rights would, by definition, be positive, even if means determining a right not to do something. Humans desicion-making process itself entails deciding to do, or not to do something, or allowing, or not allowing something to be done, all of which have been positively decided. What am I not understanding?

Accepted:
November 1, 2016

Comments

As best I can tell, you may

As best I can tell, you may be confusing two different senses of the word "positive." When philosophers refer to your "positive" right, as opposed to your "negative" right, they typically mean your right to have some good or service provided to you, as opposed to your right not to be interfered with in some activity. So (putting it a bit simplistically perhaps) a right to adequate health care would be a positive right, while a right to speak freely in a public park would be a negative right.

But philosophers also use the word "positive" to label rights that are conferred by explicit human decrees, such as rights conferred on citizens by the decrees of legislatures or courts. The contrast is often with "natural" rights, which are supposed to be rights that we possess regardless of any human decree. You seem to be saying that all of our rights are positive rights in this second sense, which -- even if true -- wouldn't imply that all of our rights are positive rights in the first sense. A legislature or court can decree that you have the "negative" right to speak freely in a public park.