In the previous installment, we saw that rights and obligations are two sides of the same coin. A moral claim can be expressed in the language of rights (the beneficiary has a right to something: «You have the right to life») or in the language of obligations (the agent has an obligation towards other people: «Thou shalt not kill»). This is the same moral claim expressed in two different ways. Ancient cultures preferred the latter while the modern West prefers the former.
But, as the previous installment claimed, the language we use is important. It shapes our thoughts, our feelings, our worldview. It makes easy to think some ideas and makes difficult to think some other ideas.
So it is the time to analyze the linguistic implications of the language of rights and the language of difficulties.
Is the concept of rights adequate?
For years, I saw rights and obligations as a two ways of expressing a moral claim: two language expressions for the same moral fact. I thought that, since they were logically equivalent, using one or another was a matter of cultural and personal preference. Ancient cultures favored the language of obligations while modern Western culture preferred the language of rights.
So I was surprised when I read the beginning of Simone Weil’s book: «The notion of obligations comes before that of rights, which is subordinate and relative to the former.»
I wondered: «Is she right?» Are obligations preferable to rights?
It turns out that there is more in language that logical representation. A language expression can be logically adequate while being:
a) Not clear. The expression does not make easy to understand its meaning.
b) Not useful: The expression does not produce useful emotions and actions in humans.
Going to the dictionary
Focusing on the clarity, is it the notion of rights clear enough? This is a weird question for Westerners. We take «right» as something self-evident, so clear that it is difficult to explain or give a definition. As I said, it is similar to words like «red» or expressions like «2+2=4», which are clear and obvious, although difficult to explain.
Some years ago, when I started thinking this topic, I thought that a first approximation is to consider rights as a version of freedoms. I have the right to private property because I am free to have private property. But there was something that eluded me. «Rights» had a sense of urgency and normativity that is not present in «freedoms». It is like rights were more important than freedoms, in some way. I am free to eat vanilla ice cream but I don’t have a right to eat vanilla ice cream (all the companies producing it may have broken).
So I decided to go to the dictionary. Merriam-Webster defines «right» as «the power or privilege to which one is justly entitled» and «entitled» as «having a right to certain benefits or privileges». If we remove the circular definition we have the right is «a just power or privilege». «Privilege» is defined as «a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor». So, removing the circular definition, we have that right is «a just power» but this does not capture the notion. I have a just power of treating my wife in a good way but this is not a «right». In addition, if you investigate «just» in the Merrian-Webster, it follows a set of circular definitions.
Let’s change of dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary is not available and the Collins dictionary is circular in its definition of right. The Cambridge English dictionary says that a right is «the fact that a person or animal can expect to be treated in a fair, morally acceptable, or legal way, or to have the things that are necessary for life». But this is the definition of justice, which is much broader than the notion of right.
So I recurred to the authoritative dictionaries in my two native tongues: in Spanish and Catalan. Both dictionaries spill the beans but the IEC Dictionary of the Catalan Language is clearer. According to it, a right is the:
Faculty to demand what is due to us, to do what the law does not defend, to have, demand, use, etc., what the law or the authority establishes in our favor or is allowed to us by whoever can.
Defining the concept of rights
And the IEC Dictionary of the Catalan Language show us the truth: a right is the faculty to demand what is due to us, that is, the obligations other people have to us. My current definition is:
A right is somebody else’s obligation [that benefits me].
It also could be said that «an obligation is somebody else’s right [that benefits him]», since both are logically equivalent. But there is a difference that breaks the symmetry. If you want to define a right in a non-circular form, it is impossible to do it without using the concept of obligation, although you can hide the concept of obligation under the rug with similar language («what is due to you, what other people are bound or tied to do for you», «what should be done to you»).
Since dictionaries did not help with that, I tried to define the concept of rights without recurring to obligations. Every attempt ended up throwing the concept of obligations under the rug. My best shot was:
A right is a freedom one should have.
And the trap is in the word «should». What happens if I don’t have one of my rights? If my right to private property is not guaranteed, it should be guaranteed and every person should not use my property without my permission. That is, every person has the obligation of not using my property without permission. So we are ultimately talking about obligations.
You can’t define rights without the concept of obligations, but you can define obligations without the concept of rights. In fact defining obligations without recurring to rights is the natural thing to do and all the mentioned dictionaries do it this way.
Rights as a dishonest concept
So Simone Weil was right: the concept of obligations is primary and the concept of rights is only a convoluted and dishonest way to speak about obligations. She says:
A right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds, the effective exercise of a right springing not from the individual who possesses it, but from other men who consider themselves as being under a certain obligation towards him.
I would go further: rights (in the modern sense) do not exist, they are only a dishonest way to speak about obligations. It is not strange that almost all civilizations have defined the moral landscape using the language of obligations: it is the clear, honest and right way to do it.
A comparison may be adequate. There have always been a tiny minority of people with gender disphoria: men who considered themselves women and vice versa. The right and honest language to refer to this phenomenon is «gender disphoria» or something similar.
But we can label people with gender disphoria as «trans» and people without gender disphoria as «cis». This, without the rest of the transgender ideology, is not false. It is logically equivalent to using «gender disphoria».
But this is a dishonest way to express the phenomenon: it muddles things, it is a convoluted way to express the situation, which implies that this is an identity issue instead of a medical issue and implies that «cis» and «trans» are two equivalent modalities of being human. You end up with things like «cis-normativity» to refer to the normal and natural functioning of all societies in all ages.
The same way, «rights» is logically equivalent to «obligations» but it is a dishonest way to express the situations which allows all kinds of manipulations, which will be explored in the final installment of these series.
Ancient cultures had «duties» or «obligations» and anything that was not a duty was a freedom. So they had freedoms and obligations (lack of freedom). Day and night. White and black. Left side and right side.
Modern western culture has «freedoms» and «rights» (that is, obligations). So, even if the logical meaning is the same, the rhetorical content is completely different, because right seem like freedom so it seems that there are not obligations for the pampered modern man. Day and day. White and more white. Right side without left side. It is a brilliant maneuver of manipulation.
An example
One of this manipulations is that rights are presented as something that only gives freedom and the obligations they describe are quietly omitted.
So everybody is in favor of rights, because they see it as a form of gaining freedoms without downsides. They don’t see the obligations involved.
The elections in my country ended up in surprise. Although everyone was convinced that the right-wingt parties were going to win, the left-wing parties managed to retain the power. After the elections the same message was repeated once and again by the president to many left-wing politicians.
Here is how Patxi López, an important left-wing politician put it: «We have to form a government that allows us to continue advancing in rights». Pedro Sánchez, the president said this:
The message from the polls has made it clear that those who propose […] going backwards are not the majority and that, therefore, Spain can continue […] advancing in social rights.
Who can oppose «advancing in social rights» if everything looks positive and with no downsides? Rights, as presented by modern Western, are magical: they have no downsides and can be created out of the blue, with no cost involved. The fact that each right brings with it a set of obligations is ignored by everybody. After each new right, the modern Western man is more and more slave: bound to more obligations, but the language of rights conceals this in a brilliant maneuver of manipulation.
But we will explore that in the final installment about rights.