“A ‘right’ is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context.” (“Man’s Rights”, _The Virtue of Selfishness_, Ayn Rand)
Important concepts in this definition include:
- “Moral principle”
- “Defining and sanctioning”
- “Freedom of action”
- “Social Context”
(1) What is “a moral principle”? – For Rand it is a system of principles to guide your choices in the furtherance and pursuit of your ultimate value -which is your own life. The purpose of morality is to maintain your life. For instance, you need to cultivate patterns and methods of thinking that will correspond the contents of your mind to the nature of reality. This is necessary because reality is what it is, which means you must learn how things work in order to control them, if you want to live. This is “rationality”. You learn what makes plants grow, and then you rearrange the material in the world to more effectively make the edible ones grow -which is farming. You learn which animals are dangerous and aggressive, and then you learn ways to avoid or kill them. You learn what types of wood or stone is strong enough to build structures out of to protect yourself from the elements, and then you arrange them into shelter.
(2) What is “freedom of action”? – Freedom of action means the absence of physical impediments. For instance, if you are traveling in a particular direction, and there is a mountain obstructing your forward progress, that mountain is restricting you from moving further in that direction. If you see a panther down a particular trail, that animal is restricting your freedom of action because it is a threat to your continued survival if you come into close proximity with it. In both cases, you are confronted with some sort of “physical force”. The mountain’s mere presence blocks your forward path, and the panther can maul you, causing injury or death -which is also physical force. With respect to other human beings, they can restrict your freedom of action by the same means: They can physically restrain you or they can threaten to use some sort of physical force similar to the panther.
(3) What is “a social context”? – This means interaction with other human beings, as opposed to interacting with an animal or a mountain. Human beings can use force against you to deprive you of the freedom of action that is necessary to maintain your life. A human can physically take away the crops that you’ve grown, or they can threaten to harm or kill you with a gun or a knife if you don’t give them your food. However, interacting with other human beings also provide you with many benefits. You can trade what you have made for what they have made. A farmer can trade some of the crops he has grown for a song that a musician wrote. A doctor can trade his services for the services of an auto mechanic, and so on, and so on. This allows for the division of labor, which increases every person’s overall material well-being. This social context of trade can only go on if each individual knows that he is secure to keep the values he has produced. He must know that when he parts with his values, he is doing so voluntarily and not because someone has used physical force to deprive him of his values. In other words, he has to have his freedom of action respected, in a social context.
(4) What is “defining and sanctioning”? – There are certain broad categories of values that all human beings need in order to live. There can be many variations and individual peculiarities within those categories, but everyone must satisfy these needs somehow and to some extent, by virtue of their nature as living organisms and as human beings. Everyone needs some sort of protection from the elements. Everyone needs a certain amount of food. Everyone needs to maintain their body within certain metabolic requirements. (We all need a certain amount of oxygen, warmth, atmospheric pressure, etc.) Others have to recognize and respect our desire to live. Others have to recognize and respect the actions necessary to create the material values we need in order to maintain our lives. This is what it means to “sanction” something. The dictionary defines “sanction” in the following ways:
(1) “a formal decree”
(2) “a solemn agreement”
(3) “something that makes an oath binding”
(4) “the detriment, loss of reward, or coercive intervention annexed to a violation of a law as a means of enforcing the law”
(5) “a consideration, principle, or influence (as of conscience) that impels to moral action or determines moral judgment”
(6) “a mechanism of social control for enforcing a society’s standards”
(7) “explicit or official approval, permission, or ratification”
(8) “an economic or military coercive measure adopted usually by several nations in concert for forcing a nation violating international law to desist or yield to adjudication”
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sanction
Most of these definitions involve other’s recognition and agreement that something is “right” or “appropriate”. This is why Ayn Rand said:
“The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational. Any group, any gang, any nation that attempts to negate man’s rights, is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life.” (_Atlas Shrugged_, Ayn Rand, emphasis added.)
A question in my mind at this point is: Where does Ayn Rand’s concept of “the initiation of physical force” come in? Do you need a concept of “initiation of physical force” in order to come up with the concept of “individual rights”?
This question came up in my mind because someone once said to me that Ayn Rand’s concept of “individual rights” and “initiation of physical force” were somewhat “circular”. They implied that Rand was saying “individual rights” were the “absence of the initiation of physical force”, and that “initiation of physical force” was “whatever violates individual rights” -which would seem like circular reasoning.
My best thinking on this topic at this point is this: you logically derive a concept of “individual rights”, which includes a concept of “physical force used to deprive someone of a value”, but NOT necessarily an “initiation of physical force”. I think one more concept is needed to logically derive the idea of “initiation of physical force”. You must mentally subdivide the concept of “use of physical force” into at least two categories of “use of physical force”. On the one hand, there is the “use of physical force” to deprive another person of their life, to rob them, or to enslave them. This can be already understood as part of understanding the concept of individual rights. Another type of “use of physical force” is to stop someone who is using physical force to deprive another person of their life, or to rob them, or to enslave them. The distinction between these two types of physical force is that one must occur before the other can occur. There would be no need to stop someone from depriving another person of their life unless someone is already using physical force to deprive another person of their life. So, the distinction is one of “time” or “causation”. This is why Ayn Rand describes one type of force as an “initiation of physical force”, while the other is “retaliatory force”:
“The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. No man—or group or society or government—has the right to assume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man. Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. The ethical principle involved is simple and clear-cut: it is the difference between murder and self-defense. A holdup man seeks to gain a value, wealth, by killing his victim; the victim does not grow richer by killing a holdup man. The principle is: no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force.” (“The Objectivist Ethics”, _The Virtue of Selfishness_, Ayn Rand)
Furthermore, since people must stop the use of force by others that would deprive them of values by retaliating against anyone who is using force in that manner, that too becomes a “…a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context…”. In other words, the retaliatory use of force becomes an “individual right”. As most Americans would say: you have a “right to self-defense”. That right is “defined and sanctioned” with things like the English Common Law right of self-defense, and the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. (This includes both a right of self-defense from murder, rape and robbery by common criminals, and also a right of self-defense against enslavement by tyrannical government.)
At this point, someone might say: “Okay, I understand why I need to have my right to life respected in order to live, which means I need others to keep from initiating physical force against me, but why should I recognize the rights of others?”
I think, to a large extent, social ostracism would prevent someone from violating individual rights. If other people view you as a rights-violator, they are going to do what they can to avoid you, which means you will have no friends, no lovers, and no business partners. This means you loose the benefits of most trade and social interaction with other human beings. Additionally, others aren’t going to sit by and quietly let you violate their rights. They are going to defend themselves, which means you’re in a state of perpetual armed conflict with the rest of mankind.
Most criminals do not use physical force to this extent, however. They want to live by reason and persuasion with some people, at least some of the time, and they want to keep their rights-violations hidden from the majority of mankind. Essentially, they want the benefits of living in a rights-respecting society most of the time, and they want to be seen by others as rights-respectors. A criminal just wants to “cheat”, sometimes, when they think they can get away with it. This is where I think government comes in. An essential role of government is to prevent the temptation to “cheat” by systematically exposing anyone who does so. (I don’t think this is the only role of government, but it is a role.) We all agree to establish this institution that will help to prevent any temptation to violate rights in any given situation by establishing a known “price” for anyone who gets caught.
