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Add to FavoritesIt comes as something of a surprise to learn that, while a great many people talk about rights and verge on obsessing about them, very few people actually know what a "right" is. A right - philosophically and legally - is the power to do or not do some act or acts in relation to others. The "correlative" (that is, the other "side" of) a right is a "duty." A duty is the obligation to do or not do some act or acts in relation to others who have rights.
A "natural right" is a right that belongs to a human being simply because someone is human. Each human being is as fully human as every other human being, so each human being has the same natural rights. Traditionally, the natural rights to life, liberty, property, and "pursuit of happiness" (construed as the right to seek the "good" and develop more fully as a human being) are considered the premier natural rights. Other rights, including whatever is derived from custom, tradition, and positive law, are "derived" or "secondary" rights, and must be in conformity with our basic natural rights in order to be considered "just."
Rights are so important that they are what defines something as a "person." Something that has "natural rights" is a "natural person." Something that has rights only because someone passed a law to that effect, or because tradition or custom so defines the thing in those terms, is an "artificial person." In the United States, all human beings are "natural persons" by definition.
The Declaration of Independence, the founding document of the United States (despite recent movements to take away its special status), makes this clear: "ALL men are created equal," meaning all have the same natural rights. Nor are we allowed to play word games with the word "man" or "men" - in context it means every human being. Jefferson, a statesman and politician knew full well that not everyone enjoyed full civil rights, or even any rights at all, but that did not detract from the force of the statement. As it declared in the Constitution, the document based on the Declaration of Independence, we are adjured to work for a "more perfect union," which would not make sense if it had not already been recognized that the new country embodied some serious flaws, as Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers were well aware.
A "person" is thus a member of society. The social order (the common good) is constructed of institutions - rights - so that human beings can live together in peace and mutually beneficial cooperation. The State, a necessary institution (so much so that it is given the status of artificial person with rights delegated to it from the people) is charged with primary (but not sole) responsibility for maintaining the common good (defining the exercise of rights), and policing abuses, that is, stopping and, if necessary, punishing violations of rights.
A violation of a right is an offense, either against an individual or a group, even the whole of the common good if the effect is to disrupt the functioning of the common good in a material manner. As the human person is a "political animal" by nature, as Aristotle pointed out (that is, we naturally gather in groups and consciously structure our institutional environment), a stable social order is ordinarily necessary for our development as human beings. (You can develop as an isolated individual, but this is the exception, not the norm.)
No one can therefore have the right to offend, for an offense strikes at the very root of the social order, the free (if strictly defined and thus limited) exercise of our natural rights.
That being said, does everything that disgusts, irritates, or annoys another individual or group an "offense," technically speaking? Of course not. Many people in our egomaniacal culture believe so; being individualists, they fail to realize that, while another person exercising his or her rights might be "annoying," that's just plain too bad. Your rights are not violated simply because you don't like the fact that so-and-so makes noise, smells bad, lives in a house bigger or smaller than yours, or looks different.
There are times when someone's personal habits are annoying to such a degree that they constitute a public nuisance. Someone throwing a loud party in the middle of the night might be construed as violating another's right to enjoy his or her property or life in peace - if the mores of the local culture recognize such behavior as deviating from acceptable behavior. If, however, it has been accepted and customary on, say, New Year's Eve to shoot firearms and set off fireworks at midnight, then a judge would have to be very foolish to listen to a case in which someone claimed to have suffered an injury because he or she was kept awake at night on New Year's Eve by all that noise.
Similarly, if an ordinance exists that allows people to, for example, use power tools in the daytime, you have no legal recourse, even if your neighbor is running them all day long. By complaining and threatening your neighbor, you would be in the wrong, that is, committing an offense against the peace by attempting to restrict your neighbor's freedom to use his or her property as he or she sees fit within the limits defined by the law.
So, no. Humans do not have the right to offend, strictly speaking. They do have the right to annoy or even inconvenience others in the exercise of their natural and legal rights unless by doing so they cause harm to other individuals, groups, or the common good as a whole.
Learn more about this author, Michael Greaney.
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Yes
The "right" to offend? Calling it a right is presuming we can all go out and kick babies because it's a free country. The "right to offend" phrase isn't clear. I prefer to accept my complete lack of control over other people's minds, other people's customs, and how other people react to the way I live. We're responsible for our actions, but why should we be responsible for everyone else's reactions? If we're living our lives becoming the best people we can be according to the values we've seen work best for us, others can join us in the journeys or get out of our ways. Anything else is thinking too much about other people - holding your toes out in the path of everything that might step on them. Without offense, no exchange of ideas could take place amongst humans. Uncalled for displays of disrespect, such as urinating on soldiers' graves, are not to be confused with offending. Disrespect comes from your own actions; offense comes from other people's reactions. We can't control other people. Therefore, while humans shouldn't disrespect one another, we certainly do have the right to offend. If there is such a right - in terms I like better, we certainly do have the right to live our lives, and if others choose to take offense, to let that be their problem as long as our lives don't put theirs in danger.
Offense can take so many different forms that every human would need 4 years of, maybe we'd call it, "strategic maneuvering school" if we were all denied this "right" to offend. Offense itself is tricky. Abe Lincoln, no doubt, offended southern slaveowners when he uprooted the traditions of their fathers and issued the Emancipation Proclaimation. People can take offense to not being allowed to torture and enslave other people. People can take offense to just about anything they want. Some people are offended by the simplest observations at one another's differences - we'd either have to keep people in different towns according to whatever status provokes the most offensive differences, or else interact as if everybody is exactly the same in every way. Kind of reeks of Harrison Bergeron. Great minds have caused the greatest offense throughout history - not necessarily to anger anyone, but because great minds have missions and purposes in life, and don't care how many toes are out for them to step on.
Have you ever been a parent? If you don't offend your preschooler about 20 times a day, then she's looking at a future full of trouble. Small children are offended at having to wear a jacket when it's cold, brushing their teeth, and taking baths. But smart children accept things that once offended them as necessary adjustments to reality and soon put on their own jackets. Whether I can generalize this or not, I have noticed that the more intelligent someone is, the harder they are to offend, while smaller minds I've known flip out over everything and anything. In most religious traditions, the wisest and holiest people appear to be the least reactive, the least hot-blooded or affected by worldly troubles. Saints, martyrs, and cosmic truth-seekers across humanity aren't offended by their own executors' swords. Jesus Christ hung on a cross asking God to forgive the guys who nailed him there...yet, 2,000 years later, his followers take offense to hearing his name taken in vain. Those who take offense easily often have narrow perspective. Are we responsible for that? I'm not.
While humans are responsible for their own actions, they cannot be given or denied rights based on other people's reactions. If you have no right to offend, you have no right to pursue happiness. We have no right to harm, and we shouldn't disrespect, but we have to live out our own purposes and if we offend anyone in doing so, it is incidental. I personally would worry more about taking offense too easily than I would about offending. Accepting the natural give and take of offense will ultimately do more for us than working against reality by setting up a paradigm of How Things Should Be and forcing everyone to adhere to it in hopes of producing a perfect peaceful world where nobody is ever offended. Until life is perfect for everyone, the most we can do is control what we choose to be offended by. Other people's minds are out of our control. Therefore, we have every right to offend.
Learn more about this author, Kai Deniri.
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