Moral Philosophy: Ethics, Deontology and Natural Law

by Joseph Rickaby

2. Every intellectual being has the attribute of reflex consciousness. It may turn its regard in upon itself, and call itself me, and its powers and activities mine. It certainly has the physical ability of acting for self, and using its powers consciously for its own ends. Does this physical ability represent also a moral power? Is the agent justified in exercising it? and are his fellows under a moral obligation of justice to leave him free to exercise it? (Ethics, c. vi., s. i., nn. 5, 6, p. 111.) We have seen that morality consists in acting up to one's own intellectual or rational nature. Since then the calling oneself me, and one's power mine, and the using those powers for purposes which one's reason approves, is the distinguishing feature of an intellectual, or rational, and personal being, that being is morally warranted so to act. He calls himself his own, and his powers his own, and they are his own by the very fact of his calling them so by a natural act. And, as justice is to give to another his own, others are bound in justice to leave him free to dispose of himself and his powers, at least within certain limits. But this would be for man a barren freedom, were he not empowered to lay hold of and make his own some things, nay many things, outside of himself, for man is not self-sufficient, but has many natural necessities, and many psychical cravings to boot. Therefore man's right of preference extends, not only to his own actions, but also to external things, which he may make his own to act upon.

3. Rights are either connatural or acquired. Connatural rights spring from the very being of a man, as he is a person. Such are the rights to life, to honour, to personal liberty—that is, freedom to go where you will—to civil liberty—that is, not being a slave—also the rights to marry and to acquire property. Acquired rights spring from some deed of man, annexing something to his personality. Such are the rights to property, duly entered upon, to reputation, to the political franchise, and all rights that come by contract. Acquired rights may descend to heirs.

4. Rights again are alienable and inalienable, which division does not coincide with the preceding. Those rights are inalienable, shorn of which a man cannot work out his last end. Some rights are thus permanently and universally inalienable, as the right to life: others are so occasionally and for particular persons.

5. The correlative of right is duty: so that, wherever one man has a right, his neighbours have a duty in justice to leave him free to exercise the same. But the converse is not true, that wherever one man has a duty towards another, that other has a right to its performance, for there are duties of charity, which do not impart a corresponding right, but only a claim. Duties that correspond to rights are called by English moralists perfect duties. Duties answering to claims only they call imperfect.

6. Of duties, some are positive, which bind always, not for always, as the duty of adoring God. We are always bound to adore, we are not bound to be always adoring. Other duties are negative, and bind always, for always, as the duties of sobriety and chastity. The former class of duties we may more easily be excused from, because they can be deferred, and it is at times morally impossible to take them up. But negative duty, as Mr. Gladstone has finely said, "rises with us in the morning, and goes to rest with us at night: it is the shadow that follows us wheresoever we go, and only leaves us when we leave the light of life."

7. Only a person has rights, as appears by the definition of a right. Again, only persons have duties, for they only have free will. No one has duties without rights, and no man has rights without duties. Infants and idiots, in whom the use of reason is impeded, having notwithstanding rights, are said to have duties also radically. Hence it is wrong to make an idiot commit what is in him a material breach of some negative duty, as of temperance. Positive duties he is excused from.

8. Some have taught that all human rights are consequences of duties; a man having first a duty to perform, and then a right to the means necessary to its performance. But this doctrine appears more pious than probable. For, first, the type and example of sovereign right, God, has no duties. (Ethics, c. vi., s. ii., n. 4, p. 130.) Then again, a man may have a right conjoined with a duty—not of justice, of course, but of some other virtue, as of religion—not to use that right. But if rights were consequent upon duties, the right would cease in such a case; and to pretend to exercise it would be a sin against justice, which it is not.

SECTION II.—Of the so-called Rights of Animals.

1. Brute beasts, not having understanding and therefore not being persons, cannot have any rights. The conclusion is clear. They are not autocentric. They are of the number of things, which are another's: they are chattels, or cattle. We have no duties to them,—not of justice, as is shown; not of religion, unless we are to worship them, like the Egyptians of old; not of fidelity, for they are incapable of accepting a promise. The only question can be of charity. Have we duties of charity to the lower animals? Charity is an extension of the love of ourselves to beings like ourselves, in view of our common nature and our common destiny to happiness in God. (c. iv., nn. 1, 2, p. 239.) It is not for the present treatise to prove, but to assume, that our nature is not common to brute beasts but immeasurably above theirs, higher indeed above them than we are below the angels. Man alone speaks, man alone hopes to contemplate for ever, if not—in the natural order—the Face of his Father in Heaven, at least the reflected brightness of that Divine Face. (Ethics, c. ii., s. iv., nn. 3, 4.) We have then no duties of charity, nor duties of any kind, to the lower animals, as neither to stocks and stones.

2. Still we have duties about stones, not to fling them through our neighbour's windows; and we have duties about brute beasts. We must not harm them, when they are our neighbour's property. We must not break out into paroxysms of rage and impatience in dealing with them. It is a miserable way of showing off human pre-eminence, to torture poor brutes in malevolent glee at their pain and helplessness. Such wanton cruelty is especially deplorable, because it disposes the perpetrators to be cruel also to men. As St. Thomas says (1a 2æ, q. 102, art. 6, ad 8):