Over at Ethika Politika, Mattias Caro asks this in response to the discussion in my On the Square column discussion about inalienable rights:
An interesting question arises if Professor Rogers has inadvertently created a problem: if certain rights are inalienable then would it not be immoral for a person to renounce those rights, such as, say a monk who swears poverty (renouncing the right to property) or even to obey always a rule or superior (renouncing the right of liberty), or even a martyr who willingly gives himself up to a just cause (renouncing life). Seems that the argument he is constructing does not necessarily fit anecdotally with the Western tradition.
Good questions, but I “think” the response is straightforward. Starting with the last example first, the case of the martyr: In the theory of the Declaration, life is an inalienable right because God has endowed us with that right. So, too, in Locke, a person cannot commit suicide because God owns us rather than we ourselves.
What that means is that our lives are at God’s disposal even though they are not at our own disposal. God authorizes martyrdom in certain cases, as he authorizes sacrificing our lives to save others, or allows us to kill attackers to save innocents. We can give our lives away for God’s purposes, but not for our own purposes. I’d think that a version of the same answer can apply to the question about the liberty of monks.
Further, while I don’t know anything about the theology of promise in Catholic orders, I’d assume that a Superior cannot command a member to commit an ungodly act. So promising a Superior obedience to a command that is sinful would seem to me to be the alienation of something that is inalienable.
June 5th, 2012 | 7:16 pm
Quite honestly, I don’t think that the 18th century political views regarding the proper limits of autonomy take account of Christian understandings of sacrifice, love, and one’s relationship to God.
Did John Locke ever think through whether the vows of obedience and poverty a sister in a monastery makes to her abbess is legitimate within his political philosophy? Or whether it is a good thing to lay down one’s life for a friend? I kind of doubt it.
These political theories seem necessarily limited to a narrower horizon. They are really assertions about the proper limits of government, rather than metaphysical truth claims.
June 5th, 2012 | 8:46 pm
Ah, but if we are not at liberty to swear binding oaths is not that an alienation of our liberty?
June 5th, 2012 | 11:49 pm
Just a thought. Liberty and license, at least for John Locke are different. You do not have a right to do whatever you will.
June 6th, 2012 | 8:17 am
I agree Mary. I think the response to Caro’s objection needs to be more fully developed. (And I don’t think the question of sinful commands from a monk’s Superior matters. A Superior’s commands might all be morally acceptable, but if one has sworn to obey them, one has still alienated his liberty, no?)
If we have a pass to alienate our unalienable rights for religious reasons, can we do it for other reasons? What about indentured servitude? Military service?
June 6th, 2012 | 11:50 am
I think the answer to the “problem” raised by Caro is quite simple. Renouncing property is not the same thing as renouncing the right to property. I may have the right to own property, and yet choose not to exercise that right, just as I may have a right to speak and yet choose to remain silent. A man may have the right to marry and yet choose to forgo marriage.
I may also bind myself by a vow to perpetual silence, or perpetual celibacy, or poverty. Those are vows never to exercise certain natural rights. As long as the vows are freely made, my rights have not been alienated.
I may have a right to do something and also a right not to do that thing — including the right to decide never to do it.
The supposed “problem” is illusory.
June 6th, 2012 | 12:34 pm
Stephen, I don’t think I understand your position. It would seem to undercut Mr. Rogers’ original point about what it means for a right to be inalienable. His assertion was that we are not free to surrender certain rights. It isn’t that they shouldn’t be taken from us, it’s that we shouldn’t give them away.
If one binds himself by a vow of obedience or poverty, it seems that one has indeed surrendered the right to liberty or property. If not, can we really say that one has “bound himself” by his vow?
To take your example of celibacy, a man has a right to marry, and can choose not to exercise that right. As you say, choosing not to exercise it does not eradicate the right. If the man remains a bachelor until he’s 50, he still retains the right to marry. He can marry at 51, or continue on as a bachelor, as he chooses. I think, though, that if he takes a vow of celibacy, that’s the equivalent of renouncing his right to marriage. It is not the same thing as merely choosing not to exercise his right to marry.
And does it matter, really, if the vow is undertaken voluntarily? According to Mr. Rogers, it certainly does not, precisely because certain rights cannot be voluntarily surrendered.
June 6th, 2012 | 2:09 pm
Stephen M Barr & Tom
Precisely the difference between simple and solemn vows is that solemn vows operate “in rem.” A simple vow of perfect and perpetual chastity renders marriage illicit; solemn profession renders it void.
Similarly, in France, until 1789, a solemn vow of poverty meant that a person could not acquire title to property, by inheritance, or inter vivos and this was true of the law in most Catholic countries. Hence, religious were said to be “civiliter mortuus,” dead for civil purposes.
In England, one of the earliest examples of a trust was when one Ricardus Le Muliner gave a house and garden to Oxford town council “ad opus fratrum” [to the use of the (Franciscan) friars] whose rule forbade them to own property. The pious testator hoped to avoid the prohibition, by vesting the legal title in the council, with a mere moral obligation to let the friars use it.
So these do appear to be cases of the relinquishment of the right itself.
June 7th, 2012 | 2:06 pm
Dear Tom,
One must ask: Is it ever morally permissible to promise not to do something? Clearly, if it something that I have no moral right to do in any case, then such a promise is superfluous. (Why promise not to steal, when I am already bound by the moral law not to steal.)
If I can promise not to do something that otherwise it would be moral for me to do, then
I am allowed to bind myself not to exercise certain rights.
This seems to me obvious.
The “right to life” is a different sort of thing than, say, the right to property. My property rights mean that you cannot take my property. I can, however, decide to give you my property, in which case it ceases to be my property. That is not an “alienation” of of my property rights, but an exercise of them. If it was my property, it was mine to give away.
Life is different. You cannot kill me, but neither can I authorize you to kill me.
It is kind of misleading to say that I have a “right to my life” in the same sense that I have a right to property or to speech or to marriage.
I have a right to speak or not to speak, to possess my property or to give it away, to marry or not to marry. I do not, however, have a right to live or not to live. My “right to life” is better understood as an obligation on everyone (including myself) not to kill me.
It seems, then, that the word “right” is used in two ways. (a) There are rights (such as the right not to be murdered, not to be raped, etc) which are really better thought of as prohibitions (not to murder, not to rape, etc.) (b) There are rights to do or not to do certain things (speak, marry, have property).
I suppose one could think of type (a) “rights” as “inalienable”. But that seems a somewhat backwards way to speak about moral prohibitions.
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