Why Do I Not Support the “Human Right” Concept?

By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .

Criticisms on “Human Rights”

For criticisms of “universal human rights”, i guess the topic is old. But Wikipedia provides some starting points if you are not already familiar with this

(i don't necessarily agree with the above in particulars… but am just citing well-established philosophies against the universal “human rights” concept) Here's some selected quotes from different parts of Wikipedia:

Philosophers who have criticized the concept of human rights include Jeremy Bentham, Edmund Burke, Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx[citation needed]. A recent critique has been advanced by Charles Blattberg in his essay “The Ironic Tragedy of Human Rights.” Blattberg argues that rights talk, being abstract, demotivates people from upholding the values that rights are meant to assert.[87] In his book After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre claimed the concept that all human beings have certain rights simply by virtue of being human was illogical, stated “the best reason for asserting so bluntly that there are no such rights is indeed of precisely the same type as the best reason which we possess for asserting that there are no witches and the best reason which we possess for asserting that there are no unicorns: every attempt to give good reasons for believing there are such rights has failed.”[88]

The concept of inalienable rights was criticized by Jeremy Bentham and Edmund Burke as groundless. Bentham and Burke, writing in the eighteenth century, claimed that rights arise from the actions of government, or evolve from tradition, and that neither of these can provide anything inalienable. (See Bentham's “Critique of the Doctrine of Inalienable, Natural Rights”, and Burke's “Reflections on the Revolution in France”). Presaging the shift in thinking in the 19th century, Bentham famously dismissed the idea of natural rights as “nonsense on stilts”. By way of contrast to the views of Burke and Bentham, the leading American revolutionary scholar James Wilson condemned Burke's view as “tyranny.”[41]

Master-slave morality is a central theme of Friedrich Nietzsche's works, in particular the first essay of On the Genealogy of Morality. Nietzsche argued that there were two fundamental types of morality: ‘Master morality’ and ‘slave morality'. Master morality weighs actions on a scale of good or bad consequences unlike slave morality which weighs actions on a scale of good or evil intentions.

Why Do I Not Support the “Human Right” Concept?

What right? Right with respect to what? Who gave you the right? God? I don't believe in a god, and in particular, i don't believe The Gods from Abrahamic religions (Islamism, Juadaism, and Christianity with its tens of factions).

When a animal, say, cat, eats a sheep, toy with it under its paw before a jugular bite, does the sheep has a right? Who does the justice? you? When a wasp, lay eggs in a spider's paralyzed body, so her offsprings can eat the spider alive from the inside, does the spider get rights? When the US, wrote universal human rights in its constitution, while importing blacks as slaves from Africa by shiploads, where is the right? When George W Bush, made hundred thousands of Iraq civilians dead, where is the right?

All human animals are born “equal”? How so? Is a natural retard equal to your ability to work? Does he have equal chances? Does he really have equal opportunity? Should he deserve equal earning as you? Do you, give half of your income to those homeless or lazybums you see everyday on street corners?

I believe food is good, pleasure is good, pain and suffering is no good, and i believe that my good and bad to be about the same as other human animals. I believe that if i punch you in the face, you gonna punch back. We want prosperity, and this prosperity can come thru rational, responsible, dealings, same with conflicts.

If George Bush is to kill few hundred thousands of people, or when US Americans eradicated the native Americans out the face of this earth, i prefer the reason given to be “because i like it, i am the king now”, than with believing in human rights, or manifest destiny.

The “human right”, is a moral fiction concocted out of ether much like religion. As a piece of untruth, it spreads woe and disaster, in a indirect way but with far-reaching consequences.

See also: • [Moral nihilism] ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_nihilism ) • [Perspectivism] ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspectivism ).

[2021-05-14 Wikipedia links removed. Because Wikipedia content of sensitive topics are prone to damage by current mob trends. Or, you can check the 2010-10-11 version of Wikipedia when this article is written.]