Natural Rights and Social Contract Theory

Abstract

What unites the philosophers of Natural Truth is their proposition of the same question: What is the origin of society? Also, their approach to the question through the same means of the state of nature and the social contract. In a sense, most thinkers and philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries can be counted as philosophers of the Social Contract and thus philosophers of Natural Truth. Perhaps the prevalence of the concepts of natural rights in parallel with the Social Contract theory and its entrenchment in the classical political literature was more like a setback of the feudal system's political beliefs and its belief in a social hierarchy, inherited privileges and disparity among human beings. From this point, the concept of ‘natural rights’ gained formulation in the context of the emergence and development of the Social Contract Theory.

Natural rights arise from the very nature of the human being. Therefore, it is given that there should be a recognition that all human beings have equal rights as long as they share one nature. The mere fact that a person is a human being is the common denominator among all individuals; therefore, it means that rights on equal basis with all other people. It concerns human beings at every time and place, regardless of their position, gender, religion or identity, or any other emerging features. It is independent of moral specifications and man-made laws. It precedes institutions in the logical sense, not historical, because it is based on human beings' very nature before their involvement in political society. Human nature precedes social and moral transformations, which come as additions to it. However, it does not change it, and it provides a solid cognitive and ontological basis to the concept of truth.