Do inalienable human rights exist?

The concept of natural law was firstly discussed in ancient Greece, and later developed through ancient Rome, early and medieval Christianity, and the Enlightenment. Finally, it was legally articulated on a broader scale in the 20th century. Contrary to positive law which is prescribed by the legal framework of a particular state, natural law accounts for rights that are universal and inalienable. These rights are not given to an individual by a certain authority, but are engraved in his essence of being human (i.e., by his nature - hence, natural rights). To tackle the central question immediately, it is my opinion that we can only hope the idea of natural rights indeed exists. More precisely, the hope is that our societies will always be based on the presupposition that there are rights so essential to humans that no man, government, or state can take away. Before explaining this thesis, a brief overview of the history of natural rights will be explored.

The idea of the humanity of individuals, which is a sort of a precondition of natural rights, was largely built through the framework of religion; particularly the western Judeo-Christian tradition. It seems that it was too abstract for our ancestors to rationally understand the inherent importance of each individual (hence, almost 2000 years of legally justified slavery), so it was expressed with the metaphor of each individual having a spark of divinity in himself (Christianity explains this as each man being created in the image of God) which later paved the way for its legal formulation. Religion can, in this regard, be viewed as an allegorical wrapping of complex ethical norms which allow people to grasp them fully. Based on such a view, the great German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche prophesied that the so-called death of god will cause the rise of totalitarian states almost 80 years before communism and nazism took place*. The death of god is the term he used for the gradual decay of the traditional Judeo-Christian belief system which happened mainly as a consequence of the rapid development of science which substituted religion as the primary force in the quest for truth. As it turned out, the high hopes put into science disintegrated quickly as although science provided crucial answers in the world of facts, it failed to do so in the world of values. Consequently, Nietzsche argued that the void left in the society's value system will be filled by deifying worldly leaders into God's place. (Once the Kingdom of God is pulled down to our world, however, it inevitably takes the form of utopias). This turned out to be true and it was the cause of some of the worst crimes in human history. Nietzsche saw how important it is for a society to have a religious narrative-like substructure in its ethical foundations. Equally, it was during the Enlightenment that the concept of natural rights was put into practice to challenge the authorities and conclude, for the first time, that the collective (state/kingdom) is here for the individual and not the other way around. Many of the current highly developed states were established on these premises; such is the case in the United States which owes much of its foundational legal documents to the philosophy of John Locke. It is apparent from this overview that it was with the interplay of (Judeo-Christian) religion and (ancient Greek and Enlightenment) rationality that natural rights were developed in theory and put into practice in the west.

Having said that, the discussion will now shift towards explaining the importance of natural rights; for this, one of the darkest periods in history; namely, WWII, or more particularly, the Nuremberg trials will be further examined.

Interestingly, one of the main arguments of the Nazi defense was that it is impossible to hold the accused accountable since they didn’t break any law; in fact, each of their actions was supposedly done by following the law of the German state*. Bear in mind that the satanic Nazi party was democratically elected when they first got to power which makes their case even further. The individuals on trial were arguably doing only what their state legally and legitimately forced them to do. Now, this was, indeed, a strong case for the defense. It was, as a matter of fact, almost impossible to argue against it without referring to something like natural human rights. Consequently, general legal terms such as genocide, and human rights were formally established for the first time in history. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was, thus, assembled in 1948 by the UN. The world knew with all its being that the monstrosities of the Nazi regime were demonic beyond belief, but, before that point, didn't yet clearly articulate the difference between the law of the state and the laws that concern the humanity of each individual which transcend the boundaries of a particular state (in more precise terms, the differentiation between the aforementioned positive and natural law). This fact, therefore, allowed the accused to hide behind the state. From that point on, the legal framework that protects the dignity of each individual was established and it now disallows any authority to, in Kantian terms, use individuals as means to an end, rather than an end in themselves. As already described, natural rights are based on the essence of each person - i.e., on the humanity with which they are born. They include the right to live, the right to property, the right to freedom, human dignity, and many more. In a way, these rights are an integral part of keeping society from degrading itself to the time where it wasn’t primarily here for the prosperity of the individual, but rather the individual as a cog in a wheel of society’s progress. To put it differently, as the historical necessity of the legal formulation of inalienable human rights clearly illustrate, such rights are a prerequisite of a functional society because they offer inherent protection of the individual from any person, group, government, or state that might decide to harras him/her in any way.

That being said, it is vastly important to understand that such abstract but crucial concepts like natural rights won't always be rigidly present in society after they are set. History teaches us that we must continually remind ourselves of their irreplaceability because the complexity behind large-scale societal progress (or regress) maximizes their fragility. Consequently, if/when they break, people are easily used as a means to some self-conceived higher goal such as the infamous "greater good" which was misused numerously throughout history. Natural rights are an end in themselves and must be defended vigorously to maintain human liberty, dignity, and ultimately, safety - in fewer words, to keep the individual in the center of society’s attention. 

*what makes this even more peculiar is that Nietzsche was probably one of the hardest-hitting critics of Christianity of all time, but nevertheless recognized the importance of the idea of God

*the Allies could legally prosecute them for the war crimes that they committed during the war, but all of their horrific crimes before the war, as well as those done within the boundaries of their state, were much harder to legally pinpoint