Someone please define "inalienable" (*I know what it's SUPPOSED to mean") and the origin thereof......(JL? wondering about everything supposedly sane Julie Krueger ========Original Message======== Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: Paying taxes for months on end Date: 5/26/05 11:02:09 A.M. Central Daylight Time From: _phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx) To: _lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) Sent on: Robert Paul is right when he notes that not knowing "a priori what some endeavourâ??s limits are doesnâ??t mean that it shouldnâ??t be undertaken (or that it has no limits)." However, my concern is not with limit cases but with the mere application or instantiation of the right to life as maintenance of life. It seems to me that the cases given by others on this list, for example that of the pregnant, poor, single mom, have all been limit cases. In these cases, the relevant concern is not maintenance of life per say but the need for the same. While we would like the government to step in and support such a woman, we feel no such thing when Melinda Gates, Bill Gates' wife, has her child. It would seem odd to insist that Melinda has a right to government support because we would want to say that she doesn't need it. And the same could be said for many people. It makes sense to have workplace standards of safety but it doesn't make sense to regulate homes for standards of safety. It couldn't be that health and welfare concerns don't apply in the home but rather that places of employment are the sorts of places where there is a need for safety standards. Here again, the workplace is a limit case that appears to need government intervention regarding health and welfare. However, a right, and certainly an inalienable right, is not conditional. It seems that there is a problem with the application of this right to maintenance of life in that in particular cases, the right doesn't seem appropriate. What makes it problematic is that the application of the right seems to depend on need but rights cannot be contingent. If I have a right to education, I have that right whether I can afford education or not. If I have a right to health, then I have that right whether I can afford it or not. And if the government has a duty to act on these rights, ideally, all health and education should be free. Yet, resources are limited so the temptation is to say that those who can afford to pay for education and health should. But wealthy people have those rights as much as poor people. So, as I see it, it returns to the matter of need. But rights don't apply to needs. It seems to me that there is a fundamental contradiction in building a case for a right to maintenance of life with reference to a contingent need. (This was what I was aiming at when I brought up the problem of the extent and intrusiveness of a right to maintenance of life in that such issues ought to be irrelevant in light of the nature of an inalienable right.) But, as I said before, this is a practical, though still philosophical, issue because it addresses particular cases. In my opinion, all talk of rights is nonsensical but I can make some sense of a right to life where that right is protection of life and property from another. What gives it a degree of sense is an idea of the conditions under which such a right is satisfied. A government is fulfilling its duty when it protects its borders from invaders, enforces a set of laws that punish those who do steal and injure, and establishes a policing force to prevent theft and injury. The satisfaction lies in its universality (i.e. it applies to all of the citizenry) and establishment of criteria (i.e. rule of law). But under what conditions does the government satisfy its duty to the right of maintenance of life? In Canada we have universal health care which aims to satisfy the condition of universality. The problem lies in the criteria for determining its application. At one point, and here others from Ontario can correct me, it was possible to get breast augmentation for free. When this became public knowledge, there was an outcry because many people felt that getting a boob job was not a matter of maintenance of life. But why not? How could this issue be settled without, at some point, referring to particular goods? And here is the problem: what counts as satisfying the right to maintenance of life cannot be articulated with reference to particular goods. That is, the universality of inalienable rights is inimical to the particularity of goods but I don't know of any way to articulate a satisfactory account of health and welfare without reference to goods. Anything beyond the most minimal account of life as survival strikes me as involving the language of goods. For this reason, I would argue that the right to life ought to be understood as minimally as possible. Again, this does not mean that government shouldn't help those who need help, but this should not be understood according to the discourse of rights. Sincerely, Phil Enns Toronto, ON ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html