this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
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I agree, but technically it was both protecting human rights and taking away other human rights (to own slaves). Do you see what I mean?
Owning others is NOT a human right. It is a violation thereof.
At the time it was a legal right that some humans had, even though it came at the expense of others' moral right (that most people now believe they had, including myself) to be free. Please tell me you understand this. I don't think owning others is a human right in a moral sense, even if it was a legal right for some back then. There is a difference between legal rights and moral rights, because legality is not the same as morality. Sorry if that sounds obvious but I think it's necessary to clarify in order to approach this question with understanding.
Yes, when we talk about human rights we mean as distinct from legal rights. No law can grant or take away a human right, it is inherent to the human condition.
You've shown that you understand the distinction but I'll point out as well that moral right is a third, distinct thing.
Human rights describes the individuals that the rights pertain to, no? So those human rights could either be based in legality or in morality, which wouldn't always align. People may also have different beliefs about which human rights are morally justified and which ones aren't. If there's a third kind of human right that isn't based on what's legal or what's believed to be (or, fundamentally is) moral, then what's it based in?
Inherent to the human condition is interesting, but isn't that still a moral stance/belief? Even if you argue that it's objectively moral (and if you don't believe in moral subjectivism/moral relativism) or objectively the right thing for humans to have rights based on the kind of beings that they are, how is that separate from morality? As far as I know when someone says "this is a human right" they're usually asserting that they believe it's morally correct for humans to have a certain right, and that it would be wrong to violate that right. Occasionally someone says "this is a legally protected human right" to emphasise that it's a legal right enforced by law. I'm not sure by what metric rights could be ascribed or theorised conceptually to apply to certain individuals, if not law or ethics.
For example, you could say that the law did violate the enslaved's moral human rights, by assigning other humans a legal right to own them, which many at the time would have also believed was their moral right, even if we don't agree with that today or assert as being objectively immoral. If their human right to not be enslaved wasn't legal or moral, I don't see what the third option could be.
I would also add that it seems that rights are a human concept/social construct, even just in the sense that we're interpreting what we believe to be ethical/right/moral, even if it's objectively correct; or we're enforcing laws based on what people believe is correct, or in some cases what serves certain people personally at the expense of what most people believe is right if the laws are corrupt/undemocratic.
So I think if we're going to claim that a certain right "just is", since we're the ones creating these concepts even if it's based on our observation of the world and an interpretation that was theoretically objectively correct if not a belief, it falls on us to rationalise and describe how we're coming to these conclusions and what we're basing this assertion of a certain right on. Otherwise, "it's a human right because it's a human right" is just circular reasoning and has no explanation. How are we formulating our basis for what is a human right? Is it legality? Is it moral beliefs or what we reason (or even logically prove somehow) is objectively morally right? Or ... what?
For example, in the case of animal rights theory, many people believe that there are moral rights that animals hold as moral patients, i.e. "negative rights" (= freedom from something being done to an individual) not to be exploited and killed by humans (moral agents), which extend logically from the belief (or fact) of human rights also being morally correct. And in this view, humans by way of our laws, do hold legally the "positive rights" (= freedom of an individual to do something) to exploit and kill animals, but these legal rights are simultaneously violating the moral rights of the animals to not have these things done to them by humans/moral agents.
In this case too, similar to what you said about the human condition, we could argue that something about the condition of animals (which could for example be sentience/consciousness, which they share with humans who are also animals), is the basis for them having these rights, but even then we're still speculating based on what we believe is either subjectively or objectively moral (since in that case obviously what's legal is in contradiction with what's deemed to be moral), and I'm not sure what third definition of rights could be being applied there whether it be in the context of human rights or animal rights.
Legal rights are not human rights. I suggest you go look up the definition of human rights, they're a separate concept.
A country or state passing a law that makes it legal to punch clowns in the face on Tuesday doesn't make that action a human right, it just means that country passes fucked up laws.
I'm fairly sure human rights can be used to describe either moral rights or legal rights. In most contexts people are using human rights in a moral sense, but it can be used in a legal sense too. If you're arguing for a third definition of human rights which isn't based in morality (what's good) or legality (what's been passed as law), then what is it based in?
Human rights are those that apply to all humans. So the right to own slaves can't be a human right as it doesn't apply to the owned people. The law created two categories of people, so the rights conferred by that law were not human rights.
all I hear is you think humans have a right to own slaves
That's a weird assumption when I said it was good that it was abolished. Humans shouldn't have the right to own slaves is my belief. (But they did have that right at the time legally speaking). Or another way to put it, is that I don't think humans have the moral right to own slaves, even if they did have the legal right. This was a response to someone else telling me that banning slavery was an authoritarian decision. I just wanted to get clarification and try to understand it better.
when you say banning slavery took away people's rights, that means you Believe owning humans is a right.
Legal rights vs moral rights, that's the confusion.
They legally had that right at the time. I don't think they should have had that right, or that they morally have that right. I think we're talking about 2 different meanings of the term "right". In one sense (legally), they had the right, as in it was codified into law. That's not a belief as much as a fact. The part which concerns my belief is whether I think they should have had the right or if they have the moral right, which I don't. I hope that makes sense.
if you don't believe they had the right to own slaves, then they had no rights taken away, if your saying they did have rights taken away then you are saying they had a right to own slaves.
Do you agree that someone can theoretically have a legal right to do something bad (as in, be legally allowed to do it) without that being a good or moral right for them to have?
I think you're only believing "right" to mean one thing and one thing only, when I'm using it in a sense where legality and morality don't necessarily coincide (even if they do in other contexts, conditionally).
So when I say they had the legal right to own slaves, and that right was taken away from them, that isn't a matter of opinion/belief because that's factually what happened, but that doesn't mean that I think they had the right morally speaking, which is a different concept.
I hope this makes sense.
any authority has no incentive to make laws that are moral, only to make laws that maintain the system. rights are not given to you by an authority they are something you have as a person and cannot be taken away only violated.
So you heard someone use a white supremacist talking point, and now you're ignorantly repeating it under the banner of asking if it has merit?
It does not. Repeating this line as you've done here is what the white supremacist who fed it to you wants you to do, as it appears to give legitimacy white supremacy. It does not. It is a false claim.
They weren't a white supremacist and they were in favor of banning slavery while simultaneously believing it to be an authoritarian decision. They were using this to argue that authoritarianism can be justified sometimes. Your comment assumes that saying something is authoritarian means that you're against it.
Look buddy, I'm from the south and this is a talking point for Confederate sympathizers. This train of thought has no substance to it. The civil war didn't just happen to people, slavery did. People did what they had to do to get out and there's nothing authoritarian about that. You're not being more intelligent than everyone else and you're not the smartest person in the room like this gentleman would like you to believe, you're being gullible.
Same shit, different spread. So they're twisting the facts to support a different kind of authoritarianism, instead of white supremacy. That's not much better.
When we talk about human rights we usually talk about the "what", and talking about just the "what" leads to misconceptions like that. So the question is why we have human rights. And the formulation human right treaties take is some form of "Human dignity is inviolable", which means that all human lives are worth the same, and that value can't be diminished in any way. Human rights are then listed in order to protect that ideal.
When you consider this, it becomes obvious that owning humans can't be a form of the right to private property because it relies on some humans being above others.
That's also the reason why free speech doesn't include things like slander or ordering someone killed.
I think I see what's happening here. The missing piece of the puzzle is that there are 2 kinds of rights.
"Negative rights" = the right to not have certain things happen to you, aka freedoms. Eg freedom from being assaulted.
"Positive rights" = the right to do/have stuff.
In the case of enslavement, the negative right - to be free from being forced to work, owned, etc is a much more important right than the positive right to own property.
At what point was owning slaves a human right? It could be a legal right, yes. But I am eager to see which fucked up, inbred, mouth breathing country thought making owning a slave a human right would be a good idea.
So you are trying to argue that slavery is a RIGHT? This looks like and argument of guilt by association. Authoritarian is seen as bad, by giving the abolishment of slavery the label of "authoritarian" gives of the idea that you want to associate it with being bad.
If having a law that restricts oneβs ability to do something is βauthoritarianβ then any law is authoritarian, because laws, by definition, determine what behaviour is and isnβt allowed within a society. On that note, morality determines legality, not the other way around.
Slavery means that, if you're rich enough, you should be allowed to revoke the rights of others. This is refutable at so many levels. If someone were to "willingly" agree to give up their rights, then just you're just taking advantage of someone who was born in an unfavourable position and have no other choice other than to accept (and maybe not starve) or starve.