Food For Thought - 13 - Natural Rights (moral, inalienable), Legal Rights, Ethics, Morality

Natural rights - are those that are not dependent on the laws or customs of any particular culture or government & so are universal, fundamental & inalienable (they cannot be repealed by human laws, though one can forfeit their enjoyment through one's actions, such as by violating someone else's rights). Natural law is the law of natural rights.

Legal rights - are those bestowed onto a person by a given legal system (they can be modified, repealed, & restrained by human laws). The concept of positive law is related to the concept of legal rights.

3 Natural Rights According to Locke
1) Life - everyone is entitled to live once they are created
2) Liberty - everyone is entitled to do anything they want to so long as it doesn't conflict with the 1st right
3) Estate - everyone is entitled to own all they create or gain through gift or trade so long as it doesn't conflict with the 1st, 2 rights
----- John Locke

Ethics & morality values imbibed into life by the individual act as indicators. One’s the judgmental capacity of good from bad, right from wrong, legal from illegal, ethical and unethical all act as guidelines to one’s life and help him in leading a good or bad life depending on the choices he makes.

Ethics:
Firstly refers to well-founded standards of right & wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues.

Morality:
Refers to the set of standards that enable people to live cooperatively in groups. It's what societies determine to be “right” & “acceptable.” Sometimes, acting in a moral manner means individuals must sacrifice their own short-term interests to benefit society.

"If there are such things as rights at all, then, there must be a right to life & liberty, or, to put it more properly to free life."
---- T. H. Green

"For wherever any invasion is made upon Unalienable Rights, there must arise either a perfect, or external Right to Resistance ... "
---- Francis Hutcheson