Introduction
The need for a justified and rationalized system of authority has been sought after since the time of the ancient Greeks to even our modern society today. Within Anarchical Fallacies, Jeremy Bentham argues that “Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible [i.e. inalienable] rights, rhetorical nonsense,—nonsense upon stilts. ”Bentham will eventually conclude not only that these ideas are meaningless, but also quite dangerous. John Stuart Mill continues this mode of thought commenting on the types of dangers within the principles of utility stating that happiness is the end of all means. In The Philosophy of Human Rights by Patrick Hayden, he summarizes John Locke’s beliefs on natural law and its fundamental …show more content…
That is “a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man” (72). Here he describes a state of equality in which animals of the same species and rank, people included, are born with the same advantages and faculties. That they/we are to exist free from subordination or subjection. The only exception pertains to a lord and master of them all who declares, based on his will, “an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty” (72); God. However, Locke forms a distinction between this state of liberty and a state of license. Though we have the freedom to enact our will everyone within the state of Nature is subjected to its laws where “The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it” …show more content…
The law of Nature being rooted in a supernatural power changes the perspective in which its laws and the consequences of these laws are viewed. Where “men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker; all the servants of one sovereign Master, sent into the world by His order and about His business; they are His property, whose workmanship they are made to last during His, not one another’s pleasure” (73). This impacts the way in which we should conduct our actions. As a workmanship of a wise maker we are no longer self-entitled to act upon our will but the will of how we were intended to live, as servants of “one sovereign Master” (73). As servants then, our actions should not be for our pleasure or even the pleasure of one another but for His