good of individuals to that of race or nation, whilst some communists
have similarly exalted the interests of party or class over that of their
constituent individuals.
Rights: natural, human, legal
Like ‘authority’ and ‘justice’, ‘rights’ are frequently referred to in
political discussion without much attempt at definition. ‘Rights’ are
generally associated with individuals and are thus part of the broad
liberal tradition dominant in modern political thought. By definition
a right may be thought of not only as an authority to act possessed by
an individual but as universally possessed by individuals (in the same
situation), or by individuals within a specific legal system. This is so
by definition because the term ‘privilege’ would apply if only some
individuals have power to do something in a given situation.
The doctrine that all men possessed ‘natural’ rights started to come
to prominence in the seventeenth century as part of the debate, of
which Hobbes and Locke were a part, on the limitations on the power
of the British Crown. In the eighteenth century the revolutionary
potential of these ideas was dramatically realised in the American and
French revolutions. Such ideas were associated with deism – a
rational reformulation of Christian ideas – which stressed that the
Creator had instituted not only natural laws which governed the
motions of the planets and all other natural objects, but similar moral
laws governing human relationships. Man had been given the power
to discover all these laws by reason. By examining how men lived
together in existing societies we can see that there are certain pre-
requisites for civilised co-operative living which all men should
recognise. Thus the American Declaration of Independence pro-
claimed inalienable and God-given rights to the pursuit of life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness. These were elaborated in the French
Declaration of the Rights of Man.
Much of modern history could be read as the broadening of the
concept of rights from a narrow legalistic application of the idea only
to ‘civilised’ white men, to a broader concept of social and cultural
rights applicable to women, non-whites and children as well (some
readers may wish to add animals to the list). The concept of human
rights as expressed in the United Nations Universal Declaration of
Human Rights (1948) is thus a modern development of the earlier
CONCEPTS 61