THE NATURALISM OF AUTONOMY

Most youngsters are bound to confront bullying of one sort or another. This is a definite problem and one parents and school personnel need to look out for and address. The victims of bullying are certain to feel something is wrong with such encounters. It brings up a very natural feeling on the part of a victim: I shouldn't be treated in this way. He or she might not have the words, but surely the person will probably feel that he or she has a ''right” not to be so treated. But who is to say that this is correct? From where do rights come?

One of our key founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, claims that liberty, the condition in which a person has rights, is bestowed upon us by God. Such a belief is given the name, natural rights. It is a claim based on a belief that cannot be proven: how do we know that rights come from God or nature? Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration, doesn't even try to prove the claim; he simply states that the condition is self-evident. I just viewed a film clip in which the bishop from South Africa, Desmond Tutu, claims that his freedom comes from God. One can readily ask: if this is true; if it is so obvious, why did it take so much human history to elapse before a political system developed which held this belief as a foundational principle?

Of course, the notion of rights had already made some inroads in the political beliefs of Great Britain, but the American expression was, to date, the most clearly stated advocacy for institutionalizing rights based on constitutional guarantees and a formal legal system. Yes, the history of the development of freedom and rights can be traced to ancient Greece and even further back than that, but as a formal well thought-out institutional system of guarantees, history needed to wait for the American and French Revolutions. Since the ideal of rights was so slow in evolving and since there are so many places in the world that still do not have legal systems that honor the rights of its citizens, more current thought about rights questions how natural they are.

Rights become an issue only when a person is either the subject of indiscriminate punishment from another person or group or faces the choice of whether to do something he or she doesn't want to do in order to avoid an expected punishment at the hands of another party. For example, if a bully begins to punch another kid, this kid has a right not to be treated in such a way. Or, if that bully threatens another kid with physical harm if he doesn't give the bully his pocket change, the victim has a right not to be so threatened. Most cases in life in which questions of rights arise are due to one party exerting coercive power or threatening to exert such power on another person or group. The government resorts to this type of power to secure desired behaviors from its citizens. You might have experienced this while driving your car under a certain speed so as to avoid being ticketed. Not all types of coercive power are illegitimate. In order to define which cases are legitimate or not, the question of rights comes into play. Our nation is currently debating the rights Americans have concerning the ownership of certain types of weapons and the process by which people gain ownership of those and other weapons. Does government have the authority/the power to control that ownership and regulate the purchasing process by which weapons are bought?

Are there other exertions of power in which rights are not an issue? Yes. A person might do something he or she does not want to do for a variety of reasons. All power interactions do not relate to questions of rights. All them, though, occur when an individual does something other than what he or she wants to do because of some other person's or group's influence; this is the exertion of power by the second party over the first. But not all such interactions are examples of coercive power – power that is effective due to an expectation of some punishment. For example, you might want to continue smoking, but you stop because a doctor tells you to stop. While you might stop in order to avoid a punishing disease, the trigger for your decision is due to your belief in the expert opinion of your doctor – a case of expert power. Other forms of power that do not rely on the expectation of a punishment include referent power, reward power, and legitimate power.¹ In each of these other types of power, rights are not involved because the reasons you choose to behave as you do are not based on an expectation of illegitimate uses of coercive power. Are all such cases that emanate from government legitimate? No. And that is the job of the courts to determine if the law and the process by which punishment is to be or has been administered is legitimate according to the standards of our laws including our constitution.

With narrowing the type of situations in which rights become an issue, are we closer to determining from where rights come? I believe so. The academic, Richard Dagger, introduces a more conducive human attribute that one can more readily link to a natural origin.² That is, Dagger introduces the attribute, autonomy. According to this scholar, this state of being is viewed as one in which one can associate a sense of consciousness that one does not necessarily associate with freedom or liberty. Given this notion, I believe that this is more self-evident, since it brings into play decision-making. All this talk of power above assumes that the individual is striving to do what he or she wants to do. Here “wanting” needs a closer look. By highlighting what one wants to do, I mean it in its ultimate sense. That is, it includes times when we seek immediate, long term, gratifying, sacrificing, or any other type of aim or goal. Autonomy is the right to act according to such decisions. It is self-evident that we want to do what we want to do. And autonomy is the state in which one is not prohibited from behaving in ways that emanate from self-governing choices. Only humans go about this process consciously and, therefore, we as humans naturally seek this ability to self-govern our behavior.

Does this preclude a sense of natural rights? It does to a certain extent. It narrows our sense of the natural only to the extent it is seen as an ability to govern ourselves but not to protect, for natural reasons, specific rights. For example, one would question if one has a God given right to free speech: is freedom of speech a natural right or is it a civil right? Civil rights are rights established by civil authority – government. The advantage of naming a right civil as opposed to natural is that civil rights are formulated through reflection and that reflection is of historical analysis. Does it somehow diminish the importance of a right if it is designated as civil as opposed to natural? I suppose many would feel that it does. But in my mind, it does not. Here is a principle which, if accepted, will regulate how we socially and politically interact. It does not depend on a belief in God. It is formulated by a process of reflection and it is placed into law by design. It presupposes that upon reflection we understand the full or near full implications of not honoring the right. It also more readily lends itself to limitations where the exercise of the right interferes with the rights of others. It cannot be dismissed by a new interpretation of religious doctrine or religious text. It is more readily placed on a consequential view of morality: if we don't respect these rights, we can expect the quality of our society to be negatively affected – just look at historical case studies that demonstrate the consequences.

Last, it reflects the act of assenting or consenting. We are all equal in our consent. We are all equal in our need for autonomy – to be our own person. That that need is conscious within us cannot be denied. Even if one chooses a life of obedience, as in a religious life, the person consents to it.

1French, J. R. P., Jr. and Raven, B. (1967). The bases of power. In E. P. Hollander and R. G. Hunt (Eds.) Current perspectives in social psychology (pp. 504-512). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

2Dagger, R. (1997). Civic virtue: Rights, citizenship, and republican liberalism. New York, NY: Oxford.