What is the source of man's right to his own life?


mpp

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Hello / if this should rather be in ethics, please move it.

my question:

how would you support the premise that my life is mine.

or phrased differently: I own my life, no one has a claim to my life, I have a right to my own life.

It seems self-evident enough but in philosophy you need to support such statements.

how would you give proof for this one?

thanks for all contributions.

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Hello / if this should rather be in ethics, please move it.

my question:

how would you support the premise that my life is mine.

or phrased differently: I own my life, no one has a claim to my life, I have a right to my own life.

It seems self-evident enough but in philosophy you need to support such statements.

how would you give proof for this one?

thanks for all contributions.

"My life is mine" is practically tautological.

"I own my life" isn't much improvement.

"No one has a claim to my life" sounds like save me from being a victim.

"I have a right to my own life"--and, maybe, to someone else's?

Look, I think something simple is looking for unnecessary if not inappropriate complexity. This appears to be a variation of property rights as the basic right theme common in some un-philosophical libertarian thought trying to shoehorn in the right to life as secondary and derivative. The right to life, however, is the basic right. Putting it in terms of "I" or "my" implies not individualism but atomatism implicitly denying common moral equal social existence. If I say "I have a right to life," the idea is so does everyone else. If I say "I have a right to my own life," that too is a true statement, but it does not travel. It stops with you. Start with what Rand said a right is and work off that.

--Brant

and cut out the "proof" business--substitute "demonstrate" as a proof is off facts and facts are innumerable and each set of facts you address will need a new proof ("proof of" is not a "proof" for the former is informal and the latter is formal)

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Ah Brant, we can do better than that. We are to support the premise that one has the right to one's life. It is a very important premise and as such it has to be backed.

All of capitalism is based on that premise. We have to have at least a few arguments supporting it.

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It is a property issue, your body being your property.

A...

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Ah Brant, we can do better than that. We are to support the premise that one has the right to one's life. It is a very important premise and as such it has to be backed.

All of capitalism is based on that premise. We have to have at least a few arguments supporting it.

Now you want a property rights discussion. You started with something else covering it over. The cover shouldn't be on top but underneath supporting it all. Tell me you've read Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal so we aren't going to be talking pass each other. I no longer call myself an Objectivist, but this is still basically an Objectivist forum. "The right to life," in Objectivism (and classical liberalism) means . . . ? As for what "all of capitalism is based on," that isn't even OBJECTIVISM101 and only true if narrowly considered.

--Brant

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Let's go to the thread title--the question of "the source of man's right to his own life." There's a contradiction in the phrasing. "Man" is first used applied to the concept of "man." That's all men (and wo-men). But "his own life" is a particular life. So, should we say instead "a man's right to his own life"? Sure. Then we can say, "man's right to life." Now we have universality right out of the box. The answer, of course, to the tread title question, is in human nature: cognitive consciousness and free-willed choice from rational thought and/or morality/ethics. Capitalism is next, folks. Trade: If you'll let me have sex with you, I'll provide for and protect you and the kids. (Am I on the right track here?). If you make me king, I'll provide and protect. STOP! Mr. King! It's time to invent rights. We're calling them "natural rights" because they're based on human nature. And no one has the right to violate them, not even you--you who bow down before Zod God, just like the rest of us.

--Brant

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M,

Arguments you seek are made in several books. Rand makes one run at it in Howard Roark’s final courtroom speech in The Fountainhead. She make a new one, a fuller one, in John Galt’s speech in Atlas Shrugged. She then wrote the supplementary essay “Man Rights” that is included in the book Brant mentioned. You might like to read those arguments and weigh them, if you have not done so already.

The philosopher Robert Nozick addressed those arguments near the beginning of his career and wrote up his criticisms in a paper “On the Randian Argument” (1971), which is reprinted in his book Socratic Puzzles. Nozick’s paper received a precise rebuttal from Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl in 1978, and that paper together with Nozick’s is reprinted in the book Reading Nozick (1981). Beyond reading Rand’s presentations, I highly recommend these two papers.

I would sketch Rand’s arguments (from AS forward) for the propositions that the life of each person rightly belongs to that person alone and that each as a right to their own life as follows. She argues from the character of life that it is an end in itself at the level of individual organism, she argues a certain relation between any organism life and values, and she argues from the nature of mind and psyche of humans, they should choose to live as an end in itself and treat others as ends in themselves. To talk of having a right is different than saying it is right to do something. Rand’s move to the having of a right to one’s own life appeals to its rightness, but adds focus on the right uses of force and why each person living their own life requires the social norms we call “having a right” against certain uses of force.

I think Rand has a lot correct, though profoundly incomplete, concerning the fundamental nature of life and human existence. And I think close study of her view is very worthwhile.

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