Talk:Inalienable right

Because of their length, the previous discussions on this page have been archived. If further archiving is needed, see Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page.

Previous discussions:

• Archive 1 (2 Sept 2005 and 11 Nov 2005):

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Origins section

• What is the source for claiming that inalienable rights are derived from freeborn rights (as claimed by John Lilburne)? It seems like the description given here ("rights that every human being is born with") sounds more like "natural rights" or "human rights". --JW1805 20:43, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

• In what work of John Locke does he reference inalienable rights? The term is not used in the 2nd Treatise.--JW1805 20:45, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

• JW1805: Locke doesn't use the term "unalienable," but he's clear: "Man being born, as has been proved, with a title to perfect freedom and an uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of Nature, equally with any other man, or number of men in the world, hath by nature a power not only to preserve his property- that is, his life, liberty, and estate, against the injuries and attempts of other men, but to judge of and punish the breaches of that law in others, as he is persuaded the offence deserves, even with death itself, in crimes where the heinousness of the fact, in his opinion, requires it." --Getaaron 15:03, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Criticism Section Cleanup

At this point, the only statements not sourced in comments appear to be the theological claims: that no major religion asserts inalienable rights (which in any case probably needs qualification; rights coeternal with God are inalienable enough for me) and that it may be questioned that religion-based inallenable rights are binding on non-believers. This is a link to Jonathan Wallace which should be added to the text. Septentrionalis 05:18, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

It is notoriously difficult to prove that someone didn't say something. Rather than requiring some proof along the lines of someone having gone through the holy texts of every major world religion in order to make sure that none of them contains references to inalienable rights, wouldn't it make more sense to place the burden of proof on the affirmative claim and make the article say something like "However, no quotes are provided from the holy texts of any religion in support of this claim." [that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights] -- Nikodemos (f.k.a. Mihnea) 10:00, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I have no objection to that in principle, if that is what those "Critics, however, argue ..." After we have a citation to the critics who argue that, we will be better able to tell exactly what they are arguing. Certainly we ought not to argue on their behalf. Tom Harrison ^Talk 15:00, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Recent edits by User:Doctor Nicetan were reverted without comment by User:Carbonite, presumably because of the conclusion that User:Doctor Nicetan is a sockpuppet of User:Zephram Stark. But on the merits, I prefer [[User:Doctor Nicetan]'s version because it more clearly attributes the sources of the various "criticisms" --FRS 18:56, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Jonathan Wallace?

Maybe I'm overlooking something, but it's not clear to me that Jonathan Wallace is greatly more qualified than me or anyone else to be cited for his opinion on natural rights. Is he in fact a notable scholar? Not being snarky, I ask to know. Tom Harrison ^Talk 20:13, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, here is what he says about himself: [1]. He's also the co-author of at least one book available at Amazon.com [2] (There are several other titles authored by a Jonathon Wallace but I'm not sure they're his) --FRS 21:06, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Citation needed?

I regard the recent request for a citation of the text of the Declaration (which is in aNy case quoted immediately above) as displaying a certain frivolity. I have supplied a link anyway. But I trust this will not recur. Septentrionalis 20:51, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I actually meant to request a citation for "Critics, however, argue that use of the word "Creator" signifies..." I would like to know exactly who argues this. I bracketed the request with a comment to date the request, so if nothing is forthcoming in a week or two the statement can be removed as uncited. Sorry if that was unclear. Tom Harrison ^Talk 21:12, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

• I sort of think a citation is unnecessary on this. "Creator" seems to obviously imply some sort of God-like being. I don't think there is any dispute about this (Jefferson was clearly using concepts from Deism in the DoI). --JW1805 (Talk) 22:35, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

"Critics, however, argue..." I don't think they do. I don't think any notable critic of inalienable rights has made that argument. I could be wrong, but if I am the article will be all the better for being able to say, "David Hume, in his big important book, argued..." I think this paragraph is just an editor's (entirely reasonable) supposition about what a hypothetical critic might have argued. There's no need to rush; If nobody finds a citation in a few weeks, we can comment it out. If and when we get a cite, we can restore it. Tom Harrison ^Talk 01:04, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Additionally, why is a citation required for "since none of the major religions of the world assert the existence of inalienable rights"? Is a reference needed to proove a negative? Couldn't it just stand unless someone has a counterexample? Divinus 03:22, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Recent revert

I shoudl explain more fully than edit summary allows.

1. "However, during the period of classical liberalism, it is better described as inheritant right because most enlightenment thinkers, while endorsing the right to life, liberty and estate, advocated use of death penalty or other punishment in defence of natural right. Still the concept of natural right." This is vague, but in any case writers such as Locke, while endorsing the death penalty, explicitly denied that citizens lost their right to life, saying that the one area in which they retained the right to evade the power of the sovereign was here. Thus, the state has the right to apply the death penalty, but the citizen in trying to evade it breaks positive but not natural law.
2. The changing of "inalienable" to natural" in a number of places is at best confusing, as the article is on inalienable rights, not merely natural rights. Moreover, Bentham explictly sattes, not merely that the notion of natural rights is nonesense, but that "natural and imprescriptible rights is rhetorical nonsense, — nonsense on stilts". --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 08:54, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I guess in this case, it is much better to use "natural right" given that locke didn't use the word "inalienable". Asserting that it is what he meant is an POV. It isn't confusing, it is iluminating when the clarification is made in historical context. I also clarify that almost all the enlightenment thinkers considered the death penalty to be justified, Kant went as far as stating that retribution against violation of natural right is inherent requirement of natural right. Plus, Locke ensorse rebellion against tyranny, i.e. arbitaraly killing. He didn't endorse someone rebelling against death penalty imposed in response to murder. FWBOarticle 11:16, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Classical Liberal capitalization

While copyediting this article, I noticed that the phrase "classical liberal" is capitalized in some places and not in others. Not being an expert on philosophy, I didn't correct it either way. Which way is correct? In other words, is "classical liberals" an established name of a group of philosophers? If so, then the phrase probably needs to be capitalized.

natural/inalienable

Natural rights and inalienable rights are the same thing, yet they there are two different articles. What do we do? RJII 02:18, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

The claim that they are the same thing is one POV, although quite common. It is perfectly coherent to hold, as Hobbes does, that there are natural rights, but they can be alienated. We leave the articles alone, and sort the contents. Septentrionalis 02:35, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

You don't have me convinced of that. This source says that Hobbes supports "inalienable rights." [3] RJII 02:38, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

As your source actually says, this is an inconsistency in Hobbes. "His ascription of apparently inalienable rights -- what he calls the “true liberties of subjects” -- seems incompatible with his defense of absolute sovereignty." These true liberties of a subject are in any case not the same as, being much more limited than, the rights of a state of nature. Septentrionalis 21:51, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, maybe you're right then. All inalienable rights are natural rights, but not all natural rights are inalienable. RJII 02:00, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Natural right - the right to breathe (well this may not actually be a natural right, but assume it is). This could be alienable - you may be placed in a gas chamber as a form of lawful execution. Or you may have your air polluted by someone and have no legal remedy. Exile 14:51, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

No, because to alienate a right is to transfer it to another. Your killer does not acquire your life. —Tamfang 18:49, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

inalienable does not mean the right cannot be denied, it means it cannot be transferred to another. If I sell you this chair I'm sitting on, I alienate to you my rights in it. (Latin aliẽnum 'of another'.) But I cannot transfer my liberties; if you deprive me of them, you do not thereby gain more such rights. It should be clear that not all natural rights are inalienable: your natural rights in the property that you have legitimately acquired can be alienated by sale or gift, though they are derivative of your inalienable right to participate in economic activity.

It is argued that the State, through taxation or eminent domain, makes more effective use of your property than you could yourself, but such an argument applies only to goods that are alienable by nature. (There may be other arguments for denying liberties.) This, as I understand it, is the historic relevance of the term. HTH. —Tamfang 18:49, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Liberty can be divided into four types : natural, personal, civil and political. The first two are inalienable, the latter two are government granted. Natural liberty is absolute freedom, limited only by the laws of nature. It is exercised upon one's private property or upon unclaimed property (anywhere else would be a trespass). Personal liberty is the right of locomotion, the freedom to travel upon public roads and waterways; limited only by the requirement to not infringe another's right to travel. Civil liberty is the permission from government to do that which would otherwise be a trespass, a tort or not allowed by law. A license to practice medicine is an example of a civil liberty (inflict injury without criminal liability). Political liberty is the permission to vote and hold office. In countries with socialist / communist governments that abolish private property rights, natural and personal liberty do not exist. Permission (license) is required for most activities and actions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jetgraphics (talk • contribs) 20:17, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

That definition of civil liberty seems to me to belong to privilege or license; the phrase is most often applied to the freedoms of speech/press/religion. —Tamfang 07:15, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Can't fix this page, need some help

I tried to take useless text from the page (some <ref>'s appearing on the page) and now I can't see past the second section!

UNAlienable & INalienable are *MUCH* more distinct than this piece articulates!

This article is abhorrent and offensive to me beyond description.

I am restraining myself from doing a full rewrite to describe INalienable only, then creating a new article to cover UNAlienable, because I would prefer to hear some agreement from someone else with a deeper understanding of this issue than the current/previous article editors, before jumping in and getting myself banned by those misinformed, in a knee-jerk reaction to seeing their article wiped out.

Please understand, this distinction is of the utmost importance to a great many of us. To not fully recognize it (by separating them into two distinct articles) is akin to including patently blasphemous text in an article about a particular religion. It is unthinkable, unnecessary and unacceptable.

I am not trying to cause an uproar, I am just extremely disturbed by this. I await further discussion and will check back for it. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.241.198.109 (talk) 06:17, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I am very eager to read a comprehensive explanation of the distinction between inalienability and unalienability. Linguistically, I have read conflicting descriptions. One source states simply that the two prefixes ('un-' and 'in-') are absolutely identical in meaning. If the question ever arises of which form to use in any particular circumstance, it should be decided purely on the basis of whether the word it's being applied to is Germanic (un-) or Latin (in-) in origin.

Another argument seems to talk about an 'unalienable' thing as being a thing that, under no possible logical construct, could ever be transferred in ownership from one person to another. An 'inalienable' thing, on the other hand, is described as a thing that is logically consistent with transferability, but only if the transfer happens with the knowledge and consent of the person from whom the thing is being taken. I'd be quite interested to read up on the origins of the alleged difference in meaning between the two forms.

Which distinction (Germanic/Latin, or transferable/nontransferable) has the most support? Goosnarrggh (talk) 13:57, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

It is the latter distinction that is important here. I'm afraid I don't have anything for you to read, as I do not own my own computer and therefore have no collection of bookmarked material handy. Since you are aware of the existence of the particular distinction I raised, I trust you have a reasonable starting point for locating the background materials you seek. I was very pleased to read how rarely well-informed on this subject you already are.

At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I believe there has been a historical effort to replace unalienable with inalienable, due to the distinction you described, which was once more widely understood. Those who wished to convince us that the two words are one and the same have obviously been successful, as this is now commonly understood to be the case. If it were the case, and if inalienable were merely a modernized spelling of unalienable, the former having taken on the full and unaltered meaning of the latter, that would be perfectly acceptable. In common understanding and informal usage this may be the case, but there is a small minority of people, among whom I count myself, who continue to recognize these as distinct words with distinct meanings, and we fear that one day the merging of the two will come back to haunt us.

Interestingly, unalienable was at once time pronounced un-uhLEEN-able, the implication being that no power holds or can hold a lien on such rights. I don't go so far as to pronounce it that way in practice, to avoid receiving odd stares. Thankfully, unalienable is still considered acceptable, as an "outdated" spelling of inalienable. At some point I fear that unalienable will fall out of use altogether and become unaccepted, at which time the merging of the words will be complete, and then all case law which cites unalienable will be said to have meant inalienable, and we will be in a world of trouble.

Sadly, many (most? all?) U.S. state constitutions use inalienable. But I believe it was no mistake that Jefferson chose to use unalienable in the Declaration of Independence (despite efforts to make us believe otherwise, as seen on the wall of the Jefferson Memorial and elsewhere). Both words existed at that time, and, as you said, inalienable is the Latinized prefix. Jefferson was schooled in Latin, would have been aware of the origins, would most likely have preferred the Latinized prefix, and yet he chose the Germanic, for very good reason.

Since my above post, I've dug a little deeper in search of previous discussion on the subject here at Wikipedia, to see if the distinction I desire had previously existed but been intentionally made indistinct, for whatever reason, and have found that editors who have raised this issue in the past have ended up banned for their trouble. I'm not keen on meeting the same fate, so, although I find it intolerable that I should have to be fearful of such a thing, I am, and would ask anyone who agrees with me on the need for such a distinction to please let it be known here, so I have some level of agreement before delving into the process alone. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.241.198.109 (talk) 06:07, 20 December 2007 (UTC)