Notion of Human Rights
Human rights are a product of a philosophical debate that has been argued since the beginning of mankind. Fueling this debate is the fact that many people have been unsatisfied with the notion that what is right or good is simply what a particular society or ruling elite feels is right or good at any given time. Great philosophers from the past such as Aristotle, Socrates and Thomas Aquinas focused extensively on their definition of human rights, among other ideas, and lead the way for more contemporary thinkers such as John Locke and Martin Luther King Jr. Notions of natural right were introduced by European philosophers such as Aristotle, but is was Aquinas who developed the idea more in-depth. In his Summa Theologica, he stated his belief that there were behaviors that were naturally right or wrong because God ordained it so. Aquinas's theory was that God decided what limits should be placed on the human political activity. Centuries later, Thomas Hobbes offered a different view on the divi
The divine basis of natural right was still pursued for more than a century after Hobbes published his ideas in the Leviathan. John Locke defended natural rights with the publication of his Two Treatises on Government, but his arguments made reference to what God had ordained or given to mankind. He argued that it was part of God's natural law that no one should harm anybody else in their life, health, liberty or possessions. These rights could never be given up. The existence of this natural law also established the right to do whatever was necessary to protect such rights. A successor to Locke was Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who in his Social Contract refuted attempts to tie religion to the foundations of political order and also separated the rights of a society from natural rights. In Rousseau's view, the rights in a civil society are sanctified as he stated "The social order is a scared right which serves as a basis for other rights. And as it is not a natural right, it must be one founded on covenants." This thinking provides the basis of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. This asserted that governments were established by the consent of the people to protect rights and is the source of the infamous passage that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Despite the universality of human beings, human rights are not necessarily universal. There are many areas of the world which deny its citizens the most common universal rights such as the right to life, to freedom, to own property and to own property. Citizenship rights such as voting, rights to standards of good behavior by governments, and social, economic and cultural rights. Some of the most recent and infamous opinions of human rights have been expressed by Martin Luther King Jr. Not only does he apply the notion of divine authority to human rights, he also applies this notion to governing laws as well. In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, King makes a distinction between a just and unjust law, stating "A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law." King applies further definition to just and unjust laws by referencing a man who preceded him by centuries, Thomas Aquinas. The English Bill of Rights was notable in that it made the King subject to the rule of l
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Approximate Word count = 1672
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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