[Avodah] Rights in halakhah

[Zev Sero]

Micha Berger wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 02:38:42PM -0500, Zev Sero wrote:
> : What else does the right to life mean?  Someone has to "give" you life?
> 
> If I cared about implication, then I would say that rights and duties
> are equivalent. What's my right to life but everyone else's duty not to
> kill me?

That's exactly what I wrote about two messages ago.  A negative right
is the same thing as a prohibition on all other people; a positive right
is the same thing as an obligation on all other people.  Prohibiting
people from doing things such as killing you or locking you up or
stealing your stuff does not turn them into slaves; obligating them to
do things like work for you or give your their stuff makes them slaves.
And there's a natural limit to the things you can prohibit people from
doing to you; there's no limit to the things you can demand people do
for you or give you.

 
> My whole point is what is considered primary, how the legal theory
> influences the culture of the people who fall under it.

And this is what I've not been getting about your theory for as long
as you've been propounding it.  This distinction you're drawing doesn't
seem to make sense.  There is no "primary"; they're the same thing.


> ... with one set of exceptions - charity. Charity can be a duty. But
> the second you define a corresponding right, it's not longer charity
> since it's no longer giving beyond what you owe the other.

Exactly.  Because if it were a right it would be a positive right,
which natural law theory doesn't recognise as a possibility.
If charity is a duty then one must ask "*to whom*".  If it's a duty
you owe the poor, then you are their slave.  But a more sensible
answer is that it's a duty you owe to yourself, or to God, to be a
better person by cultivating good midos such as charity.


> And within
> the law as terms of a beris, there is no charity, only tzedaqah --
> from the word tzedaq.

Agreed.  Because the bris creates a right/duty where none existed
beforehand.



> : Who?  Hashem?! ...
> 
> Actually, they are G-d given rights. Or, as Jefferson put it "endowed by
> their Creator with certain unalienable Rights".

He created the right; how can it be a right against Him kiveyachol?!


-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
zev at sero.name                 eventually run out of other people’s money
                                                     - Margaret Thatcher