Caynob

http://www.aynrand.o...dividual_rights Morality says, “If you want to live and attain happiness, perform these actions.” Politics says, “If you want a society in which life and happiness are possible to every individual, preserve everyone’s freedom to perform these actions.” If it is moral to pursue your own happiness, your own self-interest, and your own life, then you should possess the freedom to pursue these goals without interference from others. Oh okay, this clears it up a bit, so Obj rights are "if..then" conditionals instead of been innate. Also it seems there are two classes of rights: morality-class rights and political-class rights. So then I assume when Obj makes statement such as "there’s no such thing as one person’s right to rob, enslave, or murder his neighbor", it's talking about moral right and not political, that such actions are anti-life and therefore ammoral by obj standard. And since a morality-class right has to be moral, such anti-life actions cannot be considered moral rights. However on the other hand, it is physically possible for a society to have political rights that are amoral, e.g. right to steal, by government decree.

Hi, I have been studying philosophy for some time now, and have taken a liking to Objectivism. On the concept of rights for Obj though, I have need of some clarification and critique From my conversation with other objectivists outside of this forum, whenever I asked where do individual rights come from, all answers I got followed under something along this line: "Because we are men, A is A, therefore I have ___ right". (right is innate) And this is where I run into a problem, while the sentiment is nice, such reasoning without further clarification simply sounds dogmatic. And the Lexicon so far is of no help since it seems to reinforce that line of thought too. Since all other pieces of Objectivism sounds pretty rational to me, here is my current take on the concept of rights, and where I am looking for critique: To start from the source, my personal definition: Rights - definition: a cateogory of actions recognized by the members of a society that an individual of that society can undertake without intervention (force/coercion) from other members. -Rights is a core attribute of a society; rights to society is like shape to a building. -If a lone person is to live out by him/herself on a planet, then there is no rights, as there is no other individuals, no society. -Society is a man-made entity, and like all man-made entity (plane, car..etc.), depending on it's quality it can either be beneficial to human life or be destructive towards it. -Individuals are the building block of a society, and given the nature of humans (relys on the facility of reason and productivity to survive), a society constructed with the individual rights outlined in Obj would be stable and prosperous, as it is in sync with human nature. -A society constructed that lacks the obj individual rights, or constucted with rights not aligned with human nature (e.g. right to steal), goes against the nature of its building block, and will be unstable and destructive in the long run. The above are my thoughts on the concept of rights from long time thinking after my dissatisfaction with the simple dogmatic sounding answer. I am aware that even on Lexicon there are quotes that goes something like "there can be no right to (steal)", and that is what's causing me trouble and making me feel as if I might be missing something. Does the concept of right exist when there is no society? Does it make more sense to say: If a society, a group of individuals, delgate to themselves the right to steal from each other, then that society is destructive towards human life, as opposed to the statement, "there can be no right to steal". Hopefully I can get some quality clarification and critique here.