Posted on 02/16/2002 4:38:09 PM PST by cornelis
Who says we don't?
I think free will is self evident. -- Nothing, save force, can shut up a unhappy baby. The baby grows up realizing this fact, but soon learns that cooperation satisfies its needs better than cries & threats. This leads, with maturity & reason, to the concept of equal, unalienable rights for all.
You want to believe that God put free will into creatures? -- Fine with me. -- But don't insist that rights/free will don't exist without such a belief.
Hey, Huck....what about it...we take him out back and tell him some of us have to work for a living?
Representation. Representation. Representation. I say it three times as an incantation when thinking of going much beyond the first two chapters in The New Science....
Today, flipping channels I finally found what is faster than the speed of light. James Carville can spew more lies in 60 seconds of blather than any philospher can modify by analysis in a thousand years.
Cornelis....I'm gunnin' for you now.
Or, to put it another way:
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet
Aristotle
I keyed this post in from my copy.
I agree that the notion of rights shifted at some point, so that when Jefferson spoke of unalienable rights he did not mean political rights. Thus, natural law, which to Aristotle was an impossibility because the polis could skew the system of (political) rights at will, can reflect the objective reality of natural rights.
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