1975/01/01 by H. J. MCCLOSKEY, H. J. McCloskey · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Political Philosophy and Ethics #Political Theology and Sovereignty #International Law and Human Rights
paper · doi:10.1093/mind/lxxxiv.1.403
Although the issues with which this paper is concerned are of the greatest importance, the paper itself is a modest one which represents an attempt to bring together strands in contemporary Western thought about respect for human life. I am concerned with the basis of the right to life, whether all human beings possess it, and why, what the right involves and enjoins, what constitutes lack of respect for it, what are its limits, how, in what ways and to what degrees it is a prima facie or conditional right. The theme of the paper is an examination of the right to life with reference to the rationale of contemporary humanist thought on the matter. My thesis is that the right to life is a right possessed by persons and by certain potential persons, that its ground is and must be found in the nature of man, in man's autonomy, that it is not merely a negative right as Locke and so many since him have seen it as being, a right not to be killed, but a right to receive aids and facilities to protect and preserve one's life against dangers, humanly and naturally created, and that, being a right of recipience, it is a prima facie or conditional right, a right, the claims of which must on occasion be subordinate to the claims of other rights and values. What I am concerned to oppose is the view that all human beings possess the right to life, an absolute, inviolable, inalienable right to life at that.