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Articles

Natural Rights

Alan Chudnow asks if there are any natural rights which can be derived from reasoning.

Many philosophers and political theorists have believed that man is endowed with certain natural rights. Thomas Hobbes’ analysis in Leviathan indicated that individual humans had the natural right to survive. John Locke, in An Essay Concerning The True Extent and End of Civil Government, argued that humans had the natural rights of life, liberty, and property. The fact that these or other rights are ‘natural’ might be regarded as giving them a special status and inalienability over other rights that are culturally specific. Can ‘natural’ rights be derived by reasoning? To decide this question we (1) must first define what ‘rights’ are; and (2) define what would qualify as ‘natural’ about these rights.

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