Great Ideas of Philosophy

3. Slavery is commonplace in all of recorded history and often predicated on the belief that some personsor tribes or religious groups or races are simply inferior to their enslaving masters.E. The closest we come to a discussion of universal individual rights is in some of the precepts of the ancientCynics.1. Diogenes (412–323 B.C.) was a leader of this radically “democratic” school of philosophy, opposed toclass hierarchies and even slavery.2. Here, too, however, notions of universal brotherhood did not capture the sense of “rights” as such, butsomething more akin to a naturalism that requires social and political life to be stripped of what ismerely artificial and self-serving.II. Perhaps the most significant development in conceptions of justice was that introduced by the early churchfathers, especially by St. Augustine in his discussion of conscience and freedom of the will.A. Justice on this account is obedience to God’s law, which may place a person in adversarial relationshipswith others and with the state.B. Augustine is also important for his comments on slavery. He sees in slavery only the lust for domination,which condemns the master, but Augustine does not offer any political argument for abolition.C. John Locke, regarded as the prophet of American liberty, in the preamble to the Constitution for Carolinain 1669, made express provision for the keeping of “leet-men,” holdover serfs of medieval Europe, orslaves.D. I know of no anti-slavery treatise based on the universal principle of human rights before the 17 th century,when the Quakers protested the importation of slaves from Africa.III. There are earlier treatises on “human rights” apart from the issue of slavery and its abolition.A. The Magna Carta of 1215, signed by King John at Runnymede, affirms the rights of the Church against theCrown and grants individuals free exercise of their religious convictions.1. The document neither affirms universal rights nor focuses on the individual as the bearer of suchrights.2. It lays the foundation for principles that will become more sharply defined in the Reformation andthereafter, as to the limits on royal prerogatives and clerical authority.B. By the 18 th century, the secular version of this conception of justice requires rule by right reason over andagainst any rule based on no more than revelation or tradition.IV. Out of the religious wars between Christians and Muslims would come a most significant teaching on the rightsof man—Francisco de Vittoria’s (1480–1546) De Indis and his De Jure Belli Relectiones.A. Vittoria insists that God’s laws apply to the children of God and would preserve them from torture andtorment. The religious ignorance or waywardness of a people cannot justify inhumane acts toward them,even during war.B. Vittoria also proposes the idea of a “just war,” beyond the ancient concept of “might makes right.”1. Christian theological virtues also must be adhered to, including the stipulation that “mercy is theperfection of justice.”2. Justice now is measured against motives, and the motives must be faithful to Christian values.C. In the context of Christian teaching, the two most significant writers on the subject of the just war were St.Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas.1. Augustine made clear that, at the personal level, only self-defense can justify the use of lethal force. Atthe level of nation-states, however, there is a larger purpose served: the preservation of peace. Thisview specifically rules out as permissible motives or justifications for war “the passion for inflictingharm, the cruel thirst for vengeance… the lust of power.”2. With Thomas Aquinas, we see the full development of a theory of just war in an attempt to remove theinconsistency that results in what he offers as the sole justifications for war. For a war to be just, threethings are necessary.3. The authority of a sovereign by whose command the war is to be waged.4. A just cause, namely, that those who are attacked should be attacked because they deserve it onaccount of some fault.30©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership