Ethics, Freedom, and Human Rights: A Comprehensive Look
Minimum Aurea Ethics Rules
Despite the diversity of the essential theories of ethics, some principles have remained constant throughout history and are still relevant today.
- First, ethics presupposes freedom and responsibility. Humans, in the normal use of their faculties, perform actions that can be indifferent, good, or bad. In that sense, it is said that “every person is a child of their actions.”
- Second, many cultures throughout history have coincided with the general truth of this precept, called the Golden Rule: “Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you.”
The application of this rule reveals the ethical wrongness of lying, theft, fraud, assault, rape, and murder. Perhaps in certain circumstances, a person is not entirely clear about the harm they do to others, but all are well aware of the harm that is being done to them. It is difficult to know what is good and bad; when one is a victim, it becomes fairly clear.
Freedom and Responsibility
We want to be free; we cannot conceive of a life without freedom. To defend freedom, men have fought throughout history. Freedom, in its social dimension, is specified in freedoms essential for a successful life: conscience, expression, information, education, assembly, transportation, labor, and business.
The dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy defines freedom as the inherent power that man has to work in one way or another and not to act, so he is accountable. Freedom is a hallmark of being human. Animals are not free. Animals are born preprogrammed. They are determined by their genetic blueprint. Human beings are not born subject to certain structures of behavior. They are not limited by their instincts.
Fundamental Freedom: The human being is constitutively free, as he is intelligent and has a dignity that makes him an end in himself. It is not that human beings have freedom or freedoms, but that man is free. This is fundamental freedom and inner freedom. Inner freedom is the foundation of human rights.
Positive and Negative Freedom
Positive freedom is the ability to decide between the different possibilities that are offered in a particular situation. This ability to make decisions about anything does not extend beyond the acting subject. This kind of freedom is also called free will.
“That no one prevents me from doing what I want” refers to the exteriority of the subject. It consists in the absence of external constraints that impede action. This kind of freedom is called negative freedom. It is also called freedom of action. It is manifested in the political, civic, and social aspects of human beings. It is characteristic of democratic countries in which there is freedom of association, religion, and expression.
Freedom, Responsibility, and Ethics
Ethical principles are necessarily true but are subject to the choice of freedom. Without freedom, there can be no ethics. And the ethics of freedom is also the ethic of responsibility. If we are free to own our actions, we must hold ourselves accountable for their consequences, whether favorable or unfavorable. There is no doubt about the responsibility of others: whoever does something must pay for it. But it is not reasonable to doubt one’s own responsibility, which often consists in the courage not to hide in anonymity, in the mass. To face it is a sign of maturity and personality.
Human Rights
A human right is something that belongs to a person by virtue of being. Something that a person is born with, hence the name also of natural rights, that is, natural by birth. As a personal right, it is attached to the person throughout his life and is inalienable; it does not have an expiration date.
Human rights, so important in social and political life, are first and foremost of an ethical nature. Although their reasoning varies according to different ethical doctrines, there is general agreement on the essentials:
- Right to life, personal integrity, not to be tortured, and to die in peace.
- Right to freedom of thought, expression, conscience, religion, etc.
- Right to property and what you get through work.
- Economic and social rights: to education, work, to strike, to health care and social security, and to rest.
The list of human rights is an open list. Its content has been expanded over the past two centuries. Today we consider completely unfair what once seemed normal. For example, that women could not vote. Currently, in many countries, women are still discriminated against.
Human Rights: Grounded
The main answers that have occurred throughout history can be summarized in two: natural law and historicism.
- Natural Law is based on the existence of personal rights and limitations that derive from human nature itself, the same for all men. By nature, we understand not only the biological but also the rational and free. The existence of natural rights would be verifiable in some of these forms: a) intuition, b) reasoning, c) as an immediate consequence of God’s creation of human nature with equal rights and duties.
- Historicism claims that human rights are a historical and cultural construct, something that human beings have agreed upon because it is useful to sort out living together. The content of these rights is not absolute but relative to the times and cultures.