The best thing about training for a marathon: lots and lots of time for thinking.

This is something I wrote up for a colleague after a discussion on the significance of natural rights.

Simone Weil claims that on a desert island with no possibility of anyone coming around, a man still has obligations, though he has no rights.

My colleague and I seemed to agree that rights still exist on that desert island, but he claimed that they lack significance. I was at that time unable to formulate fully my thoughts, but I had an intuition that there was something missing.

I now have a definition of natural rights which supports my contention that, leaving obligations aside for now, on a desert island a man has significant rights.

Natural rights are claims to an object or state of affairs that contain or entail responsibilities.

Responsibilities are distinct from duties or obligations in that the imply a truly free choice in their assumption (as opposed to their execution). Duties and obligations can be responsibilities, but not all responsibilities can be duties or obligations. Duties and obligations derive their compulsive power from external sources. Responsibilities, as distinct from duties or obligations, derive their compulsive power from the free choice of the individual. For example, a mother has a duty or obligation insofar as she has stepped into the role of motherhood to protect her children. A mother may assume the responsibility of loving her children. The duty to protect derives its compulsive power from the role of motherhood; the responsibility to love derives its compulsive power from the commitment of the individual. The individual mother may in fact discharge her duty as an accident of fulfilling her responsibility. If the individual mother chooses not to assume the responsibility of loving her children, she is still bound to protect her children because she is a mother, i.e. she at the very least owes her children protection.

Natural rights contain responsibilities of this character and it is these responsibilities that supply their significance even in a vacuum of polity. While I do see that natural rights derive much of their significance from their practical application in properly ordering a body politic, I contend that they have an inherent significance in properly ordering the soul (or character) of an individual towards that individual’s ultimate end. Of course in a world suddenly devoid of others, the practical application will cease and the significance supplied thereof will evaporate. In that devoid world, however, the inherent significance of natural rights (and their entailed responsibilities) on the formation and flourishing of the human soul will remain.

Take, for example, the natural right to life. On a lonesome island, the practical significance of that right no longer applies since it is an impossibility that I take another’s life or that another takes mine. But on that lonesome island, recognizing the natural right to life and reflecting on its responsibilities is a good in itself in that is enables me to gain ground towards my end as a flourishing human being. Recognizing the natural right to life, I think, might entail recognizing that I exist and feel poignantly the compulsion to continue existing, that all of this is utterly independent of any specific contingencies of spatial or temporal location, and finally that there can be no relief from this right without the extermination of my identity. The responsibilities contained in this right, I think, are to flourish in my existence as much as I am able, to seek an understanding of the causes and purposes of my right, and to give just gratitude for whatever causes and assists my existence. This right and its pursuant responsibilities have significance despite the lack of society.

As an aside, I think this conviction of mine ultimately rests on the metaphysical premise that the “I” and the “Thou” are distinct but interdependent ontological categories.

I am glad I’ve worked this out for myself–and if you’ve stuck with me thus far, please do let me know of any lacunas in my reasoning.