Are Human Rights Self-Evident?

The best reason for asserting so bluntly that there are no such rights is precisely the same type as the best reason for asserting that there are no witches: every attempt to give good reasons for believing that there are such rights has failed.¹

The nature of human rights I take to be thus: that every human being possesses them solely by virtue of being human. I don’t maintain that people never have rights, only that they never have them merely because they are human. I am only concerned here with human rights that are affirmed as inherent, unchanging, and exceptionless.

I will briefly address the kinds of rights here. Rights can be conceived of in a negative or positive sense. Negative rights are moral entitlements of an individual to act freely in a given domain without others impeding their actions. The rights to freedom of speech and freedom of association are examples of such rights. Positive rights, on the other hand, are entitlements to some good, service, or a certain kind of treatment from other people. The right to healthcare could be an example, or perhaps the right to be referred to by one’s chosen pronouns.

In most cases, the existence of human rights is affirmed dogmatically, and not argued for. The proponent of them relies on everyone else around them being too afraid to question the concept because of the resulting social opprobrium. Nonetheless, one does hear assertions to the effect that they are “self-evident”. Famously, this term was used in the Declaration of Independence. In that document, it is declared of all men that they “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”. However, I hardly think that this line of argument is available to the many irreligious people who affirm the existence and self-evidence of human rights, so we will take the more commonplace claim that they are self-evident, that does not rely on a claim about the existence or nature of God.

“Self-evident” in ordinary speech seems to be roughly synonymous with “obvious”. The word “obvious” might be used to assert a couple of meaningful things about a proposition:

a) That it forms part of the common sense of human beings, i.e. a collection of beliefs that are essential to the practical business of life, or that are so well-established that anybody who questions them will seem like a fool to the majority of people. Common sense beliefs include, for instance, the belief that my computer exists when I do not perceive it.²

b) That it is something that can be easily reasoned out or proven.

Alternatively, it may be used simply to express a very strong conviction on the part of the speaker. Beliefs may appear to be obviously true to someone simply because they have always lived in an environment in which that belief has been reinforced, or because for what ever reason they have a strong emotional investment in that belief. This use of the word “obvious” has no legitimate bearing in a philosophical argument.

But what of the other two senses of the word? I don’t think that the existence of human rights is obvious in either sense.

Let’s take the idea that human rights are part of common sense. Almost nobody for almost all of human history believed in the existence of universal human rights. Societies have been based around restrictions of people’s freedoms since the dawn of time: taboos, obligations to perform religious rites, etc. The idea of universal human rights would have seemed very counterintuitive to most human beings for most of the species’ existence. If something really is so glaringly obvious, one would think that it would have been recognised much sooner. Certainly there is nothing inherently ridiculous or foolish about rejecting human rights. It is clear also that human rights are not essential or even conducive to us getting on with the practical business of life, because we did perfectly well without them for many centuries, and one could argue that today the concept of human rights has done enormous damage to communities by the atomisation that their enshrinement in law necessarily causes.³

If the existence of human rights is said to be easily proven, I call upon anyone to do so, because I am at a loss, and so are moral and political philosophers, because they cannot come to a consensus as to how these rights are justified either.

But let us assume that there is a more technical meaning to the phrase “self-evident”. In the history of philosophy, “self-evident” has generally been taken to mean “cannot be denied without self-contradiction”. My own existence, for example, is self-evident because to deny it I would have to exist, which would contradict my assertion. Human rights are easily shown to not be self-evident in this sense. I defy anyone to find the logical contradiction involved in advocating for the creation of Männerbunde⁴ whilst denying the moral right to form liberal advocacy groups. Even if I deny the right to freedom of speech, my act of saying this is not an affirmation of freedom of speech—it only assumes that I have the right to say the particular thing that I said in the particular circumstances in which I said it. In no way does this logically entail, say, paedophiles having the right to argue in defence of their behaviour.

Of course, none of this could prove that human rights do not exist, but I think that it does shed some light on how unexamined many claims concerning the status and justification of human rights are.

1. Alasdair MacIntyre.

2. Anyone who would deny this is a fool, even if he is regarded as a great philosopher.

3. After all, think of what political function human rights serve—they are used by the state as a pretext for disrupting communities’ ability to enforce their traditions and values, to live the form of life they wish to live, and to prevent the intrusion of outsiders, all of which are necessary for the continued survival of the community. They are also used as a way of preventing national governments from defending their borders.

4. A Männerbund is a “men’s alliance” or “men’s union”, referring to a type of brotherhood of warriors dating back to the Proto-Indo-Europeans.