There Is No Such Thing as a Positive Right
If there were there would be no rights at all
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There are two different ways people talk about rights, and many different terms used to describe them. On one side there are natural rights, liberty rights, and negative rights; on the other there are positive rights and claim rights. Often people just use the term “rights” on its own, which gets confusing when they really mean different things.
My argument is that if one cares about preserving the recognition of natural rights, then one must do away with the concept of positive rights, for they are mutually exclusive. Consequently, when one uses the term “rights” on its own, it will be clear what is meant.
What are natural rights: Natural rights are inherent to humans because of our capacity for reason and free will. In order to be free to exercise our reason, we must not be denied life, be limited in speech/thought, or be demeaned by theft, etc. Thus, natural rights are a recognition that humans have liberty, and that liberty must not be taken away. “Liberty rights” comes from this recognition, as does “negative rights” because of how they negate someone else’s will to violate them.
What are so-called positive rights: Positive rights, on the other hand, come from what someone deserves, or supposedly deserves, to be granted, and thus has a claim to. Rather than being inherent, they are earned or agreed to or needed, and they are a positive requirement that someone else act in such a way as to fulfill them.
These differences make the two systems of rights incommensurable. Where the former is always present and inalienable, the latter may or may not be possessed given different situations. The word “rights” can’t mean anything on its own if it can be thought of in fundamentally opposite ways. Take this case for example:
“Hospitals do not say to patients they place on life-saving equipment, ‘‘It’s our respirator, we’re paying for the electricity that keeps it going, and we reserve the liberty-right to disconnect you at will.’’ No doubt the hospital owns the respirator and pays for the electricity, but a patient who is placed on the respirator has a claim-right to continued use of it, as you have a claim-right to continued use of my house if I have given you an indefinite lease on it” (Thomson 504).
The word “right” can be cut out of the quote completely and it will still mean the same thing:
“Hospitals do not say to patients they place on life-saving equipment, ‘‘It’s our respirator, we’re paying for the electricity that keeps it going, and we reserve the liberty to disconnect you at will.’’ No doubt the hospital owns the respirator and pays for the electricity, but a patient who is placed on the respirator has a claim to continued use of it, as you have a claim to continued use of my house if I have given you an indefinite lease on it.”
Alternatively, “right” could be used the way I propose, purely in the natural sense, and the quote would continue to mean the same thing:
“Hospitals do not say to patients they place on life-saving equipment, ‘‘It’s our respirator, we’re paying for the electricity that keeps it going, and we reserve the right to disconnect you at will.’’ No doubt the hospital owns the respirator and pays for the electricity, but a patient who is placed on the respirator has a claim to continued use of it, as you have a claim to continued use of my house if I have given you an indefinite lease on it.”
But “right” cannot be used purely in the positive sense because it is incompatible with liberty/natural rights. The patient in the quote doesn’t have a right to someone else’s respirator or house, they have a claim to it, but only because they previously entered into an agreement with the owners of those goods, and the owners have a duty to honor agreements. Words like “claims” and “duties” work perfectly well to describe so-called positive rights arrived at by contract, so there is no need to force the word “rights” where it doesn’t apply.
This is what happens when those who think it would be good for everyone to have free healthcare say “healthcare is a human right.” Healthcare isn’t a natural right, it isn’t something everyone already has due to our nature that must not be taken away, rather it is a good that could possibly be granted, or not granted. To say healthcare is a right is an attempt to apply the importance of natural rights where it doesn’t make sense to, and it thereby ends up violating people’s natural rights by assuming claims where no contract was agreed to.
Doctors, for example, would be forced to work to supply someone’s supposed “right” to healthcare, at whatever price the government wants to pay them, in whatever field the government decides, and when the government thinks it is important. Patents would be forced to pay for other people’s care, while their own may be rationed, and they’d be denied the freedom to look for care somewhere else.
These issues demonstrate that a so-called “positive right” to healthcare is no right at all, and in fact violates the rights people actually do have. “Positive rights” overall, even in the most coherent cases where people have entered into agreements with each other, erase the meaning of the term “rights” and thereby threaten the recognition of natural rights. And ultimately there is no need for the term as other terms such as “claim” and “duty” can more effectively take its place.
Works Cited:
- Thomson, Judith Jarvis. “Physician‐Assisted Suicide: Two Moral Arguments.” Ethics, vol. 109, no. 3, The University of Chicago Press, 1999, pp. 497–518, https://doi.org/10.1086/233919.
