Philosophy - Rights and Freedoms
THE BASIS of SOCIAL RIGHTS and OBLIGATIONS
Human rights do not come from divine origin or any supposed "natural" source of rights. Human rights derive strictly from the logical understanding that each of is an autonomous being and that none of us ought to affect other autonomous beings without justification. Numerous justifications do exist for affecting the freedoms of others, but in all cases, the basis of those justifications relates to protecting us from each other (Russell 1992). Maximizing the health, welfare, and happiness of the greatest number of people requires rules that prevent one person from harming others. Because excessive regulation conflicts with individual happiness, any other basis for restrictions on our behavior is much harder to justify.
The principal moral obligation of every person is simply not to do anything that causes pain, discomfort, or unwanted consequences to any other person. Apart from that single obligation, we all have the moral right to do virtually anything we wish. If that seems inconsistent with many aspects of modern life, that is mainly because government imposes certain rules that have the same effect on our choices as moral obligations.
However, in principle, the rules and laws of society merely ensure our freedom from unwanted behavior of others. In many cases, in fact, the particular rules themselves are purely arbitrary, such as the simple rules of the road about stopping on a red signal and going on a green signal because the reverse rule would be just as good. The purpose of the rules of the road are simply to protect us from accidents. Likewise, acquiring a drivers' license as a condition of driving is intended to ensure that anybody who drives a heavy vehicle capable of maiming and killing is competent to do so without exposing others to risks.
Other rules of society are much harder to justify because they regulate conduct that affects nobody else. For example, prohibiting driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs have a legitimate purpose of protecting others. On the other hand, prohibitions about what someone does exclusively in the privacy of his home without affecting others is unjustified from any objective perspective.
References
Russell, B. (1992) the Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell. (Edited by Egner & Denonn). London: Routledge
