Positive and Negative Rights

Rights and duties: remember those terms from civics class? Rights are what all citizens are entitled to; and duties are obligations of the citizens to the country. Additionally, rights are enforceable, i.e., a citizen could file a case if deprived of his rights. But duties were just obligations, good to do’s, not mandatory and thus not enforceable.

That last aspect is a very important distinction; and Ayn Rand gave a great example of that difference. She said that the framers of the American constitution included the “right to pursuit of happiness”, but not the “right to happiness” itself.

Philosopher John Searle made a great point on the topic of rights that had never occurred to me, the sub-categorization of rights as either positive rights or negative rights:

“If you look at the logical structure of rights, every right implies an obligation on someone else’s part…(For example) My right to free speech means I have a right to exercise my free speech without being interfered with. And that means that other people are under an obligation not to interfere with me.”

Searle terms the rights that are associated with a complementary “obligation not to interfere” as instances of negative rights. Other examples include right to freedom of religion and the right to freedom of association. Searle says he has no problems with such negative rights.

Positive rights, on the other hand, are not so simple. They require money or contributions from the rest of society, either directly or via taxes. For example:

“A (universal) right to adequate housing in a way that would impose an obligation on every other human being to provide that housing.”

Searle terms such positive rights nonsensical.

How I wish they had given such nuanced treatment to such thought provoking topics during my school days. Wonder how they teach it nowadays…