A right is a claim to respect, protection, or enablement of an essential condition of life, grounded in the ontological dignity of the person. It follows immediately from personhood and is therefore not conferred by human positing, but is recognizable in the nature of the person herself. Fundamental rights are non-negotiable rights grounded in dignity; property is a right subject to social obligation. A right always corresponds to an obligation on the part of other persons.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: Entity; subordinate concepts: Fundamental right, Property
Property
Property is legitimate insofar as it serves personal flourishing and the common good. It is not an absolute right, but is subject to social obligation. Property provides the person with the material foundation for actualizing the dimensions of her personhood, but it may not be set against the common good and the dignity of other persons. Distributive justice demands that property be ordered so that every person has access to the necessary resources.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: Right
Law
Law is a normative order that regulates the common life of persons. Thomas von Aquin determines it as an ordinance of reason for the common good. A distinction is drawn between natural law — grounded in the dignity of the person — and positive law, posited by human authority. As a communal being, every human person is subject to a normative order that is to be measured against personhood.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: Entity; subordinate concepts: Natural law, Positive law
Fundamental Right
A fundamental right is a non-negotiable right of every person, grounded in ontological dignity. Fundamental rights are each grounded in a particular essential characteristic of the person and can therefore neither be conferred nor withdrawn by positive law. Legitimate authority protects fundamental rights, whereas illegitimate authority violates them. Among the fundamental rights are the right to life, the right to freedom, and the right to community.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: Right; subordinate concepts: Right to life, Right to freedom, Right to community, Right to freedom of conscience, Right to privacy, Right to education
Positive Law
Positive law is law posited by human authorities. It can either accord with or contradict natural law. Augustine formulates the principle: Lex iniusta non est lex — a positive law that contradicts natural law is morally invalid. Positive law stands in a disjunctive relation to natural law, which is grounded in the ontological dignity of the person and does not arise through human positing.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: Law; Mutually exclusive with: Natural law
Right to Education
The right to education is a fundamental right of the person, grounded in her rationality as an essential characteristic (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 318 ff.).
Because the person is by her essence a rational being, the ability to develop her intellectual faculties belongs to her unfolding. Education is not merely the transmission of knowledge, but the fostering of the whole person in her rational, moral, and cultural dimensions.
The right to education follows immediately from the dignity of the person. Whoever denies a person access to education prevents her from unfolding an essential dimension of her personhood. This right belongs to the human rights that do not depend on state grant, but are grounded in the nature of the person herself. Society has the duty to create structures that effectively protect this right.
Right to Freedom
The right to freedom is a fundamental right grounded in the essential characteristic of free will. It is anchored in the ontological dignity of the person and is therefore non-negotiable. Freedom belongs to the Second Dimension of personhood — the dimension of rational awareness and free will. Legitimate authority protects this right, whereas illegitimate authority violates it.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: Fundamental right
Right to Community
The right to community is a fundamental right grounded in the capacity for love and in the relationality of the person. The person is essentially ordered toward community — the I–Thou relation and the communio personarum belong to her personhood. This right protects every person’s claim to live in relation and community, and obliges the political community to create the conditions for successful coexistence.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: Fundamental right
Right to Freedom of Conscience
The right to freedom of conscience is a fundamental right of the person. It protects the inner judgment of conscience concerning the moral quality of one’s own actions and is grounded in two essential features of the person: her rationality and her capacity for truth.
Conscience is the “organ” of the Third Dimension of personhood: in it the person becomes aware of her moral being. Because the person is a rational being, open toward truth, she has the right — and the duty — to follow what she recognizes as true and good.
Freedom of conscience is not a right to arbitrariness. It presupposes that there is an objective moral reality that can be known. Precisely because the human being is capable of the cognition of the good, he may not be compelled to act against his conscience. The Personalistic Norm demands that the person be respected in this inner freedom.
Ontological classification:
- Superordinate class: Fundamental right
- is grounded in: Rationality, Capacity for truth
- protects: Conscience
Right to Life
The right to life is a fundamental right grounded in the First Dimension of personhood — spiritual being. All human beings exist as persons from the fusion of the gametes. This right is the most fundamental of all fundamental rights, since without life no actualization of the further dimensions is possible. It protects personhood in its most basic reality and applies without distinction to every human person — from the embryo to the dying.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: Fundamental right
Right to Privacy
The right to privacy is grounded in the self-I of the person — in being Someone and not Something. The person possesses an interiority that belongs to her alone and that may not be disclosed without her consent. This interiority is not an accident, but an essential characteristic of personhood: only a being that has a self — an I that relates to itself — can have a sphere of the private.
The right to privacy belongs to the fundamental rights that are founded in natural law. It is not conferred by the state, but given to the person by virtue of her dignity. It protects the innermost space of personal life — thoughts, feelings, conscience, intimate relationships — from unauthorized access by others. The person is not a transparent object that could be fully grasped from without, but a subject with an inalienable depth.
In self-reflection the person becomes aware of her interiority: she knows that she has thoughts accessible only to her, sensations that only she experiences, and decisions that ripen within her interior. This inner world is not merely private in the sense of “accidentally not public,” but essentially private — it belongs to the essence of what it means to be a Someone.
Modern technology poses new challenges to the right to privacy. Digital surveillance, data collection, algorithmic profiling, and social media intrude into the interiority of the person in ways that are historically without parallel. From the standpoint of personal ontology, every form of total surveillance is a grave violation of dignity. It treats the person as Something — as a fully transparent object. The person, however, is a Someone, whose interiority must remain inalienable.
Ontological classification
- Superordinate concept: Fundamental right
- is grounded in: Self-I
Ontological relations:
- is subclass of: Fundamental right
- is grounded in: Self-I
Legal Norm
A legal norm is a norm posited by the state. It can either accord with the Personalistic Norm or contradict it. Person-conforming norms accord with the Personalistic Norm; person-violating norms contradict it and are morally illegitimate, even if they are legally valid. The distinction points to the basic problem of the relation between positive law and natural law: not everything that is law is also right in the person-ontological sense.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: Entity; subordinate concepts: Person-conforming norm, Person-violating norm
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae I-II, qq. 90–97. (Law, natural law, and positive law)
- Reinach, A.: Die apriorischen Grundlagen des bürgerlichen Rechtes (1913) (German). (A priori structures of law)