This posting picks-up on a theme – Jefferson’s belief in a
moral sense – that was described and explained in the last posting. If not read, to make fuller sense of what
follows, the reader should look it up. In
this posting, it develops a notion:
people seek to be moral in order to induce a pleasure; being good feels
good. That last posting investigates
this claim and lands up accepting it, but in a nuanced way.
But the point here insists that
Thomas Jefferson believed it and that belief plays an important role in his use
of the term, “unalienable,” in the Declaration
of Independence. As the last posting
ends: “Turns out, how most students are
led to understand this term is not exactly right.”
One of the factors reviewed in the
last posting was reason. That account
described reason as the human faculty that serves to aim moral thought and
action. It calculates. It provides the “means” for what a moral
“drive” might determine an “end” should be.
But as with describing or understanding the moral sense, many competing
desires, many murky facts, many possible rationalizations can be felt or
thought of.
Reason might point a person – using
Jefferson’s language – toward being vicious (it might not), but the moral sense
always points that same person toward being virtuous. That sense can be ill served by reason, but
its unwavering aim – hence making it a drive – is to be good toward others.
Of course, this and other drives are
subject to forces, such as cultural forces, within a given social landscape. And this includes how events and the
particulars of those events are defined or otherwise understood. All of this can be complicated, but it does
provide a useful context for related issues.
And with the above as context, one
can address the notion of rights, a related issue. Often in this blog, this writer has pointed
out that the natural rights view of rights has to do with having the social and
legal prerogative to do what one wishes to do.
Yes, this is constrained by others having the same legal standing, but
this sense of rights opens a vast array of options for individuals to pursue.
With the use of the term, “unalienable,”
in the Declaration of Independence,
one senses a very liberal take on an unfettered life, unfettered and only
subject to one’s self-restraints in most cases.
But the above context hints at a different feel for this quality. And one aspect of this reason to reflect, is
that the whole Lockean notion of rights – the natural rights view – was a
relatively new idea in the late 1700s, at least on these shores.
There had not been much philosophic,
theoretical, or political reflection what exactly this meant. According to Gary Wills, earlier use of the
term, “right,” was reserved to mean “right order.” The sense was that “its earlier use was as a
power exercised in the name of the state.”[1] And ideally – presumably – that was to advance
the interest of the nation or other jurisdiction (like a fiefdom, a city, a
parish, etc.).
The ruler had the necessary powers to
so rule – in accordance with those jurisdictional interests – and he/she administered
it or alienate it to the subjects. That
is, he/she gave the power or benefit to those ruled. To alienate meant to give away, to make alien
from the giver – usually for a given reason.
Jefferson gives his readers a hint at
his meaning by not using the term, property, in his list of unalienable
rights. He writes “life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness,” not “… and property.” They are unalienable not because the fear is
a state might deprive a person of these “rights,” but that the individual cannot give them away.
A person’s life, liberty (to do
good), and happiness are part of his/her nature. The individual has a sense for morality, a
sense that that is not subject to being alienable. Therefore, they are unalienable. In all this, according to Wills, Jefferson
was highly influenced by Francis Hutcheson and this latter writer explains this
distinction, between rights over one’s person and the right to pursue the moral
sense. Wills writes:
Rights arises in, and because of,
society; it is a power over others so long as benevolence or innocence are
directing the powers. The test is public
good.
Hutcheson
then divides rights into perfect and imperfect.
The perfect, as essential to the public good, can be defended even with
private force. The first example he
gives is the right to life. The basis of
the societal bond is benevolence, and no society can undermine its own
fundamental value. Yet security in the
possession of life is not only the basis for all goods one can bestow on others;
it is, more important, the necessary precondition for doing good – no man can be benevolent unless he is first alive…
He
asserts the right of liberty on similar grounds: “As nature has implanted in each man a desire
of his own happiness and many tender affections toward others in some nearer
relations of life, and granted to each one some understanding and active powers,
with a natural right exercise them for the purpose of these natural affections,
it is plain each one has a natural right to exert his powers, according to his
own judgment and inclination, for these purposes, in all such industry, labor,
or amusements as are not hurtful to others in their persons or goods, while no
more public interests necessarily require his labors or require that his
actions should be under the direction of others. This right we call natural liberty.”[2]
Sorry for the overly, philosophic
language; here is this writer’s understanding:
Liberty seems key, but the meaning of it takes on an unaccustomed
turn. The term, natural liberty, today
has been coopted by natural rights advocates, a la an altered Lockean view, by his current devotees.
Under that more recent sense, unalienable
refers to the state not being legally or legitimately able to take away rights. But that according to Jefferson, is
impossible, as impossible as negating any other part of one’s nature. Hence, a better term today for a Jeffersonian
sense of liberty is federal liberty – a liberty that advances a citizenry able
and willing to be federated among its membership.
In securing rights, therefore,
governments do not have the option of taking them away, but they can interfere
with their exercise. They can make it
harder to exercise, they can distort them, they can minimize them, but they are
unalienable; i.e., they cannot be taken away or given up, they are part of
everyone’s nature and is as likely to be taken away as taking away one’s sense
of humor.
And, in turn, this sense of liberty,
while it is unalienable, introduces duties.
Yes, one can pursue self-interest, but the duty is not to arrange such interests
to be contrary to the common good. Because,
as with humor, one’s pleasure in benevolence or doing good toward others is
also part of that nature.
Instead, to varying degrees, the duty
is to advance the common good. Rights are not, according to Hutcheson, to be
treated as a form of property; they are instead to be seen in their correlative
relations to duties. Or, duties are
seeing rights from another perspective.
[1] Gary Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1978/2018), 213.
[2] Ibid., 216-217.
Emphasis in the original.
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