Rights and Freedom
Janet Radcliffe Richards has an excellent chapter on moral relativism in Human Nature After Darwin, including this on pages 198-9:
Any set of moral standards must include, as part of those standards, criteria for the appropriate treatment of other people…This means there are necessarily conflicts, when some people think they should do what other people think they should not be allowed to do. And, indeed, the essence of what it is for people to have different moral principles is disagreement: if there were no disagreement, there would be no difference. And since there is disagreement, it follows that not everyone can be given the freedom to follow their own principles.
This is what I was talking about the other day in ‘Gain and Loss’. There are different moral principles; there is disagreement; there are different people with competing interests, wants, needs; they are inevitably going to be in competition with other people’s interests, wants, needs. My desire for quiet competes with your desire to mow the lawn (and loses, every time); I’m not free to make off with your lawn mower in order to prevent your making a noise with it. But, on the plus side of the ledger, you’re not free to sell me into slavery.
That’s the whole point of rights: to limit certain freedoms. Rights entail limitations on the freedom to mistreat people or to interfere with certain of their freedoms (but not others). They have to do that in order to be effective rights. That’s why the whole subject is difficult and why bills of rights are a new idea and not (to put it mildly) universal yet; that’s why they have to be codified rather than implicit, and that’s why they’re needed. The freedom to mistreat people, to exploit them and use their labour, to dominate and confine and impregnate them, to subordinate and segregate and revile them, is a highly prized one. Naturally rights aren’t something that just get granted with no problem. Rights amount to a recognition that, left alone, the strong will bully the weak (see the discussions in Plato’s ‘Republic’ and ‘Gorgias’), and after millions of years we’ve decided we don’t want that. The price is a limitation on the freedom of the strong. There’s no free lunch.
This thread seems to be a continuation of the one initiated by JM’s request, so I’ll throw this in here. While trawling to see whether there was already a story in English about Bavarian Prime Minister Stoiber’s call to stiffen penalties for blasphemy (after actor Mathieu Carriere had himself symbolically crucified for a few minutes as part of a protest about fathers’ rights) I came across the following on http://www.pcog.org/Default.asp?siteMapId=ScriptureBeliefs. The page includes this statement:
“We believe God so loved this world of helpless sinners that He gave His only begotten Son (John 3:16), who, though in all points tempted as we are, lived without sin in the human flesh (Heb. 4:15) and died for us as a representative and substitutionary sacrifice (Heb. 10:12). This made it legally possible for man’s sins to be forgiven and for God to release him from their penalty, since Jesus, whose life was of greater value than the sum total of all other human lives (because it was He who brought them into being), has paid the penalty in man’s stead.”
That “legally possible” is killing me, as it implies certain limitations on god’s freedom of action. I mean, if he set everything in motion himself… it sounds like he flipped from the boredom of playing solitaire with his self-created game. Hey, if you’ve eternity in which to play, why not stick by the rules? At least it makes it a little bit more interesting and less predictable. Oh, no, I didn’t say that, did I?
Legally possible…yeah, that is funny. Because, what? Otherwise God would have been hauled before the Supreme Court to explain hisself?
The boredom thing strikes me often. Can you imagine the boredom? It’s not as if he’s got anything to read, or would enjoy it if he did (because he already knows what it says).
I was thinking of it the other way round, not so much him getting hauled before a court, as for knowing what was legal for him to do and finding a loophole. “I do so love the little critters and they have to suffer so much for the punishment I imposed upon them for the sins I’m responsible for making them commit. Pity, there’s nothing I can legally do to help them. Hang on, I’ve got it! I’ll kill my son. Then everything will be alright.” [happy band of eavesdropping angels applauds in ecstatic sycophancy]
I know. And that one’s funny too. But they’re all funny. Theodicy is funny stuff.
Oh, and I forgot to add, in god’s monologue, after he says “I’ll kill my son,” “that’s legal.”
Back to the idea that when some groups win some freedoms, other groups are forced to give up some of theirs, Eric Foner (Columbia U) wrote an excellent book which deals with this idea fairly extensively. It’s _The Story of American Freedom_ (Norton, 1998).
Ya. I’ve read a little of that – but only a little; it’s one of those books on the list of things to read properly one day. But I’m a great fan of Foner’s.
Hey, there’s a thought – Doug, why don’t you write it up for ‘Favourites’? Just three or four paragraphs. Favourites are short.
I appreciate the suggestion Ophelia, but to do that, I’d have to re-read it, as it’s been 6 or 7 years since I read it, and I have a memory like a sieve. And then there’s the World Cup and …
Well…if you’re ever inspired…there it is.
Thanks, but I felt lucky just being able to find the dusty book on my shelves.