As the Joseph Thomas said, I'm in the process of writing a book called What's Wrong with Rights.

I should add that there's a question mark at the end of that title.

What's wrong with rights? It is a question.

So what that means is that what I'm going to give you this afternoon, there's good news and there's bad news.

The good news is what I'm giving you is work in progress. That means that you can help shape what I'm thinking, because I haven't

finished thinking yet. The bad news is that because I've had my face very close to the trees

in recent weeks, I might be giving you more detail

than you really want or need.

I apologise for that, but I'm in the process of trying to stand back and make sense of

what I've been reading.

So what we are focusing on this afternoon is the issue of natural rights.

And let me make clear that our issue is not primarily about positive legal rights.

Positive legal rights are those that are granted under a particular legal system in a given civil society.

Natural rights are outside of a legal system. are pre-social or extra social and it's that they exist prior to social institutions in a primitive state of nature

or apart from them in a state of anarchy or war at least that that's how I understand them, and I'm focusing on those.

In some discussion, the two are confused, and it's not helpful.

So my concern is unambiguously with natural rights.

Why am I concerned?

I'm concerned because there is a consistent tradition of criticism of natural rights talk,

which runs at least from the late 18th century to the 21st. At the beginning of this tradition stands Edmund Burke, and shortly

afterwards comes Jeremy Bentham, who famously declared, natural rights is simple nonsense, natural and imprescriptible rights,

rhetorical nonsense, said natural rights nonsense upon stilts.

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