759 locke hobbes natural law and natural rights
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Hobbes, Locke, Natural Law and Natural Rights
A Tract Book Essay
By
Anthony J. Fejfar
Copyright 2006 by Anthony J. Fejfar
What are rights? That is what are legal rights? Some people
wonder. The best definition is that for every right there is a corresponding
duty of someone else to refrain from certain conduct or to engage in certain
conduct.
Where do rights come from? Are they just thin imaginary wisps
which fleetingly come and go? Or, are rights more substantial? John
Locke argued that all of us have Natural Rights which we are entitled to in a
State of Nature which proceeds society. Thus, from a Lockean point of
view it perfectly possible to argue that you are being treated unjustly as a
matter of Natural Law, even though corrupt human law will not say so. With
Locke, I can argue that even the United States Supreme Court has made a
mistake in interpreting the Constitution.
I argue that behind Locke is something like my theory that Natural
Rights all subsist as Aristotelian Substantial Forms or Immutable Platonic
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Forms. Thus, Natural Rights are imprinted into the very nature of reality
itself. Because Natural Rights subsist in reality, Locke could argue that
they existed in a State of Nature prior to society.
In contrast to Locke, Thomas Hobbes argued that in a State of
Nature life is a dog eat dog, world of cutthroat survival of the fittest.
Hobbes argued that all right are simply social constructions which the people
or the sovereign find convenient to use. Hobbes, in this sense was a
positivist. Rights are merely arbitrary social conventions, and are paper
thin. I argue that even if the world of the Forms did not exist, that the
Quantum Field does exist, and that the Quantum Field is affected by
meaning. Thus, rights could become imbedded in the Quantum Field, and
in this sense, operate to function like the Aristotelian Substantial Forms, and
like the Immutable Platonic Forms.
However, I need not go that far. It is apparent to me that
Aristotelian Substantial Forms and Immutable Platonic Forms do exist. We
experience language as substantial and objective when needed. Language is
not just paper thin. Language is rich with meaning. Language has depth.
Literature and poetry move are hearts, as do Constitutions.
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