Question

Are human rights based on nature? Looking to what the enlighment theoriests such as John locke, Hobbes and Rousseau thought about his question

I am kind of struggling with this question!

Answer 1

Natural state, in political theory, human being's actual or hypothetical condition, before or without political association. Many social contract theorists, such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, relied on this notion to investigate the limits and justification of political authority, or even the validity of human society itself, as in the case of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Visions of the state of nature vary sharply among thinkers, although most equate them with the absence of control by the state.

For Hobbes, the state of nature is characterized by the "battle of every man against every other," a persistent and violent situation of rivalry in which every person has a natural right to everything, regardless of others ' interests. Life in the state of nature is "solitary, bad, cruel, brutal, and short," as Hobbes famously says. The only rules that exist in the state of nature (the laws of nature) are not covenants formed between people but concepts based on self-preservation.

Adopting an extreme position against the Aristotelian teaching of political naturalism, Hobbes maintained that the exercise of one's natural liberty leads directly to unceasing conflict and unremitting fear, inasmuch as nature confers on each individual the right to possess everything and imposes no limitation on one's freedom to enjoy this right. Unalloyed nature gives rise to a state of chaos and war and, as a result, a "nasty, cruel, and short" life whose avoidance leads human beings to allow a single sovereign ruler to maintain peace.

Locke maintains that no natural basis—ni paternity, nor descent—justifies one person's submission to another. Rather, in their natural condition, all people are considered to be sufficiently reasonable, as well as free and equal, to be able to govern themselves according to a basic knowledge of moral (human) law, and thus to respect the rights of others in general. Like Hobbes, Locke insists that a state of war does not reflect the condition of perfect natural liberty. In the state of nature, human beings may enjoy unimpeded rights to the acquisition of private property, the possession of which is claimed by the admixture of their labor