- these actions are not punished by the law because, while immoral according to many, they do not cause injury to the rights of others.
Adam Smith further emphasizes the centrality of property rights. For Smith, the ownership and acquisition of private property is an essential right that contributes to and maintains individual well-being. Individuals who do not own property are individuals with no real say in their own affairs, and no voice in their government. Smith cites the case of the plebeians in the Roman Empire as an example of a class of people who were purposely kept from ownership of the land as a means of keeping power in the hands of the patricians.
He also makes reference to the slaves of his own day, and to residents of nations where a king may, at his own discretion, dispose of his subjects' property, as examples of conditions under which individuals are not free because they do not control the means of gaining wealth that would afford them genuine control over their own affairs.
Smith holds up the England of his own day as an example of a country which guarantees to all subjects the right to conduct trade, and to accumulate wealth as they see fit - factors that he believes relate to England's impartial administration of justice and general fairness in terms of individual rights and liberties - "the rights of the meanest British subject respectable to the greatest, and which, by securing to every man the fruits of his own industry, gives the greatest and most effectual encouragement to every sort of industry."
Men and women who exercise control over their own physical well-being can demand a form of social intercourse, a style of government that protects these rights and other rights as well. The representative institutions of England contribute both to the personal welfare of the nation's citizens, and to their ability to enjoy the fruits of their labors as they see fit. Again, individual liberty exists alongside the larger society. Conflict is avoided as long as the rights of each person are respected.
The German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, took these ideas one logical step further by postulating the idea of maxims universally applicable to all persons and in all cases. Kant states that one should always act according to maxims that are true even insofar as they applicable to everyone, and not to oneself alone. A maxim that works only when applied to oneself does not possess the force of moral law rather it reflects only selfish interests. By designing the maxim to fit all situations one preserves one's own rights without prejudicing the rights of others - if it is true for you, it must be true for everyone else. As Kant describes it in the Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals,
On the hypothesis, however, that the will of an intelligence is free, its autonomy, as the essential formal condition of its determination, is a necessary consequence. Moreover, this freedom of will is not merely quite possible as a hypothesis (not involving any contradiction to the principle of physical necessity in the connection of the phenomena of the sensible world) as speculative philosophy can show; but further, a rational being who is conscious of a causality through reason, that is to say, of a will (distinct from desires), must of necessity make it practically, that is, in idea, the condition of all his voluntary actions
The actions of individuals must be rational, and if they are rational they must recognize that fairness is universal. All people have a right to be happy, and to pursue the means to making themselves satisfied and contented. To impose laws that protect or further the happiness of some at the expense of others, or to deny that happiness to certain groups or individuals is to deny the inherently rational nature of those other beings - we are all human beings and we all have rights.
Thus Kant completes the journey from group to individual that was begun by Rousseau. Kant's philosophy provides a moral grounding for the ideas of individual rights that are fleshed out in increasingly economic terms by Locke and Smith. For Smith, economic freedom guaranteed political freedom and natural rights. For Locke, economic freedom was a consequence of the natural right to pursue one's own dreams and welfare. The forms...
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