‘Nature’, then, and cognate terms s

‘Nature’, then, and cognate terms such as ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ are not very helpful, as was argued in Chapter 2 above. Now we can add that the more specific appeal to natural rights is open to the same kinds of objection. We may regard some rights as being of universal significance and we may choose to emphasize their fundamental and universal status by calling them ‘natural’, as if given by God, by nature, or by life itself, but calling them ‘natural’ cannot serve as a substitute for reasoning to establish them as rights in the first place.
But it is not simply talk of ‘natural’ rights that is suspect. There are objections to talking in terms of rights at all, whether ‘natural’ rights, ‘human’ rights, ‘universal’ rights, ‘the rights of man’, or any other kind of right, as distinct from in terms of principles of morality. I must stress that my objection here is not, as some people’s would be, to the idea of there being some universal moral truths, nor is it even to the idea that all humans may be said to have certain rights in virtue of being human (although I think that there are fewer such rights and that they are less specific than is commonly supposed). It would not actually misrepresent my position to say, for example, that I believe in human rights to freedom and well-being, for this can be taken to mean belief that the principles of freedom and well-being are applicable to all. My point is that there has to be independent reasoning and argument to lead us to recognize that these are important moral values, and then, if we wish, we can say that we have established that they are human rights. But we cannot treat the assertion that they are human rights as an argument in itself. It plainly isn’t. However, there are several other objections to conducting moral debate in terms of rights besides this fact that to assert a right as human, natural, or anything else is not in itself to provide any reason for accepting the moral value in question. To these we now turn.
To talk in terms of rights, to depict morality as a set of rights, whether possessed by us all, or by some sub-group such as homosexuals, women, children, or blacks, brings with it a lot of dangerous and unnecessary confusion. For a variety of reasons it undermines the notion of responsibility and the outward-looking nature, one might almost say generosity of spirit, that are at the heart of morality. Morality is not just a matter of living by a code, still less by a code of rights: it involves recognizing responsibilities and duties too, and living by a code in a certain kind of spirit, most significantly out of concern for fundamental principles rather than adherence to specific rules.