Rights

The notion of 'Right' is familiar in American life--The Bill of Rights, the Right to Bear Arms, the Right to Free Speech, Human Rights, the Right to Remain Silent, even the Right to Party. But it is difficult to glean from these a univocal sense of 'Right'. There have been two main theories of Right, neither of which stem from Plato or Aristotle, for whom it was apparently nothing meaningful at all. The first, which can be called the In-Itself concept, holds that a 'Right' is something that is innately endowed to every creature, usually Humans, but sometimes Animals in general. The second rejects the sufficiency of the In-Itself version, arguing that a 'Right' is something that is intrinsically related to its being recognized, so it construes a 'Right' as a context-bound social construct. While the U. S. founding documents at times vaguely allude to the first type, the Rights that the Constitution presents are plainly of the second type, namely, it implicitly defines a 'Right' as 'An action, the interference with which is illegal.'--e. g. having the 'Right' to Free Speech means that there exists a law that forbids the suppression of speech. So, U. S. 'Rights' are first and foremost context-bound, specifically a function of the Laws, leaving other notions, e. g. Human Rights, the Right to Shelter, etc. vacuous in the absence of Laws that would create them. Now, Phronetic Axiology attaches to Conduct, which means receiving something has no normative standing. On the other hand, in a Phronetocracy, e. g. all subsistence needs are to be accommodated, but any imperative to do so derives from the idionomic motivation of Leadership, not from an in-itself demand by the needy.