[lit-ideas] Re: Paying taxes for months on end
- From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 19:58:33 -0700
I wrote:
... if there is a right to life, then there must also be a right to
the preservation and maintenance of life, for a right to something that
one has no right to preserve is no right at all: It is like having 'the
right' to Alpha Centauri, or the wind.
Phil replied:
The analogy doesn't seem quite right. As Robert himself notes, the
right to life can't be one of possessing life since it presupposes life,
so the analogy can't be to a right to Alpha Centauri or the wind.
RP: The analogy was unintended. The fanciful supposition that one might
have a right to such things was meant to illustrate something about
rights, viz., that if they are never enforceable they are not rights
at all.
Phil:
The reference to 'maintenance of life' strikes me as being an
interpretation that moves beyond mere preservation.
RP: Indeed it does. When I’m drowning, it’s mere life I want; when I
want an operation that would prevent me from losing my sight and
hearing, it’s something more. Of course, sight and hearing may not be
that big a deal for
non-Alphas.
Phil: Why couldn't the right to life be nothing more than security from
having one's life and property taken by another?
RP; It could be, but the Founders were, I believe, thinking beyond
Hobbes. There ‘s no reason one must positively leap to such an
interpretation, especially as the other two rights mentioned in the
Preamble are so closely allied to a richer notion of how ‘life’ should
be understood.
Phil: I am also wary of positive rights. If there is the right to
maintenance of life, how does one decide that a government has satisfied
this condition?
RP: Through arbitration, negotiation, precedent, and looking at clear
cases, e.g. the care of premature babies. That you don’t know a priori
what some endeavour’s limits are doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be
undertaken (or that it has no limits).
Phil: I see two obvious problems. First, one of extension. If the
maintenance of life involves health and welfare, does every or any
sickness or death represent a failing of the government?
RP: Do you really want to ask this? First of all, how could the
maintenance of life not involve health and welfare? Often being restored
to health and being restored to life are the same thing. The answer to
the last part of the question is, of course not. This is a world of
contingency, not the world of Forms.
Phil: There seems to be no boundary to what could be understood
as maintaining life.
RP: No a priori boundary, perhaps. But at the margins we try to make our
negotiations as fine-grained as we can, and sometimes we are forced
either stipulate, or to give up trying. The problem of when and where an
activity stops is no more a problem in this case than it is elsewhere.
There is no special problem here. (I’ll bet Phil knows this.)
Phil: …Does the government fail in its duty if it allows people to
smoke? Does the duty of government to maintain life supersede the
wishes and responsibility
of individuals?
RP: If one seriously believes the right to life is inalienable, yes. And
if it is known that ‘secondhand smoke’ harms children who must live with
parents who smoke, again, yes. J. S. Mill, that hero of liberty, would,
I think, agree. One’s freedom to act ends when one’s acts palpably harm
others.
Phil: These, however, are practical issues.
RP: Sorry, I saw them as philosophical issues.
Phil: It seems to me that the more fundamental question is whether
people have a right to demand of government positive goods. I don't
see how such a right can be given (if individuals do not have a right
to maintenance of life, how can the government grant such a right?)…
RP: My argument, which seems to have failed, is that such a right
derives immediately from the right to life, which is said to be (as are
liberty and the pursuit of happiness) inalienable. If I have a right to
life, but no right to be treated for a life-threatening illness, the
claim that I have a right to life—even to ‘mere life’—is a joke.
Phil: [Nor do I see] how such a right can be satisfied (maintenance of
life can't be articulated except against a background of particular
goods, which would conflict with the notion of an inalienable right).
RP: I don’t follow this. Sorry.
I thank Phil for having replied so thoughtfully.
Robert Paul
Reed College
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