[Avodah] Rights in halakhah

[Chanoch (Ken) Bloom]

On Wed, 2010-02-10 at 16:06 -0500, Micha Berger wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 03:49:26PM -0500, Zev Sero wrote:
> : >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...
> 
> But since I don't care about implication, since it's less of an effect
> on culture than how we talk about the principles, we're STILL in
> disagreement.
> 
> :>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.
> 
> There is a difference between a philosophy that says the human condition
> is based on A, therefore B, and one that says the human condition is
> based on B therefore A.
> 
> The different self-images create different people. Even if they create
> the same law.

To phrase that another way.

In many cases, contemporary political parlance has shifted from talking
about negative rights to positive rights. Comparing the US constitution
to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (e.g. Sections 25, 26, and
27) shows the shift in thinking between 1791 and 1948. This shift is a
slippery slope of sorts in the way we've thought about rights,
obligations, and governments.

The obligations-based view of one's conduct towards another person and
the rights-based view of one's conduct with respect to another person
may be duals which can express the exact same legal mandates and
prohibitions, but which lens we consider primary in viewing these
consequences determines the nature of the slippery slope, and the
evolution of how the legal theory changes.

--Ken