Hello, everyone. I'm Stephen West. This is philosophize this.

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Today's episodes on the political philosophy of Richard Rorody.

I hope you love the show today.

So if you're having a political discussion with someone in the conversation,

took a turn and all of a sudden you guys are talking about human rights.

There's certainly a lot of different angles you could approach that discussion from,

but one of the most common ones might be what philosophical grounding can we give to something like human rights?

I mean, we all think human beings have rights,

but where exactly do those rights come from?

Who or what out there guarantees these rights for people?

Well, a common answer to this question might be that human rights are inherited by birthright.

Simply by virtue of being born, every human being is entitled to certain natural rights or inalienable rights.

Rights that protect the dignity of a human life at such a basic level that to go against them starts to seem like you'd be going against nature.

Now, as far as the philosophical grounding is concerned,

this is an attitude much more common during the beginning of the enlightenment than it is today.

And the two main thinkers that took on this position are often cited to be John Locke and a manual Kant.

When it comes to answering the question of who or what guarantees these human rights,

John Locke goes in the direction of God.

You know, we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights.

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