Frankly Existential

This is a question I have thought about extensively primarily on a societal scale. It’s nearly universally agreed upon that people have the right to life. This is derived from our accepted view of rights-based ethics. As you can guess, this view of ethics comes from the idea that you can judge right and wrong based on whether or not your actions violate someone’s rights. With the right to life as such a fundamental view of modern society, what gives anyone the authority to challenge it?

Rights

First, let’s talk about the concept of rights.

Rights vs. Privileges

Rights and privileges are distinct concepts. From a basic level, rights are internal and privileges are external. Rights cannot be given or taken away as they lie inherently within us. Privileges are granted to us by a separate individual or entity. In the political sphere we hear debates over rights all the time. Are x and y rights that should be provided? Should people have a right to do z? For the majority of these debates, these are not revolving around rights at all, but rather privileges the people wish they had. If it is something that requires the labor or effort of someone other than yourself, it is not a right in the ethical sense. Governments call many things rights in an effort to protect their placement in law, though they do not guide rights in ethics.

For the sake of not breaking off in proving the right to life, I will provide three concepts used to defend it:

• Self-ownership
• Human dignity
• Universality

I will not go into detail on these at the current time. Next week will talk more about these concepts.

For now let us act under the assumption we all agree that life is a right.

Capital Punishment

To the disapproval of many of my friends and family, I view the death penalty as the most heinous and unjust punishment given to any criminal. Not only is it cruel, but there is no sound reasoning for it’s use and it is ineffective as a deterrent. Not to mention, it violates the individual’s rights.

Let us take an example of a murderer who is sentenced to death and logically dissolve the rationale for killing him. Many would say that a killer should be killed, he is getting what he deserves. Those who say this are doing one of two things:

1. Advocating for the stripping of someone’s rights
2. Conceding the there is no right to life

Either way this poses a logical problem. the first issue is just an indirect path to the second one. Rights, as mentioned previously, are inherent in all people. They are not given nor can they be taken. Everyone has them by virtue of being human. If you feel someone is deserving of losing their rights, you are claiming they deserve to be stripped of their humanity, at least partially. This idea violates the above concept of human dignity. You view them as less than human not because of anything within them, but because of something they have done. For them, you view life as a privilege that they have now lost. Now, what about you? Is your life also a privilege or do you actually have the right to it? Why do you have the right while another is only privileged to have it? If there are conditions under which you believe you can have your life taken from you under the guise of justice then for you it is a privilege as well. You get to live because no authority has told you you can’t. The view that to some life is a right and to others it is a privilege violates the principle of universality. Rights, as well as being inherent, are universal among all people again by virtue of being human. This logically necessitates the second idea, there is no right to life. It must be both inherent in universal to be a right. If not everyone gets to have it, it isn’t a right, plain and simple. It’s a privilege for those who we deem deserving.

The issue is, it is a right. Everyone, once alive, has the right to remain alive. Why does a court get to decide it no longer is? Well, they don’t, but for some reason people believe them when they say they do. This is related to a larger scale issue of the justice system and the system of democracy as a whole. This also leads to a bigger issue with how we perceive truth. Is something only true because the majority says so?

I think the reason I wanted to talk about the death penalty is to lay a foundation to further discuss the concepts of rights, justice, and truth. All of which are greatly related.

I think I’ll stop here and pick up next week with defending the right to life and a few others extending from that.

Thank you for reading. Be well.