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Natural Rights & Natural Law

The purpose of this research is to examine the theory of natural rights and natural law as explained by Robert Nozick, juxtaposed against criticisms of that theory as elaborated by Susan Moller Okin and Michael Sandel. The plan of the research will be to set forth Nozick's view of natural rights, and then to discuss alternative responses to the concept on the part of Okin and Sandel.

At the core of Nozick's libertarian conception of natural law and natural rights is an argument toward the rationale for the (minimal) state, which is appropriately constituted to the degree that it incurs an obligation to the citizenry that constitutes it, based on its unique capability and capacity to protect that citizenry from external aggression and from internal anarchy. The overriding obligation of the state is to protect the physical security of individual citizens. With that security presumed, Nozick argues the issue of rights from the standpoint of justly acquired or transferred holdings. This is framed by Nozick as entitlement theory, with entitlements an attribute of the history of actions (i.e., acquisitions and transfers) that have determined the distribution of entitlements or justice. One concept of distributive justice is what Nozick refers to as unhistorical, based as it is on the desired ends of distribution, which are often determined by the authority of the state.

[W]e shall refer to such unhistorical principles . . . as end-result principles or end-state principles.

In contrast to end-result principles of justice, historical principles of justice hold that past circumstances or actions of people can create differential entitlements or differential deserts to things (Nozick 153; emphasis in original).

The process whereby differential entitlements emerge is intelligible but not pattered; that is, "there is no one natural dimension or weighted sum or combination of a small number of natural dimensions that yields the distrib...

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Natural Rights & Natural Law. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 16:58, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1703325.html