A basis for human rights
20th July 2007
Norman Geras has something interesting to say about human rights, a topic on which too many people have uninteresting things to say.
Oddly enough, the position he quotes Andrew Sullivan as espousing is very close to the position on the “rights of Englishmen” as delineated by Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France; quite the closest Andrew Sullivan has come to a conservative position as long as I’ve been exposed to him. (Hm. Perhaps the wrong phrase.)
There is an alternative to the will of God for grounding, justifying, human rights. This lies in the nature of human beings, and the needs, interests and capacities they all have by virtue precisely of being human beings and sharing a common nature.
… a position with which neither Aristotle nor Aquinas would have a problem, although Aquinas would dispute the purported lack of connection.