So what I want to do today is give a kind of a basic kind of presentation of a theory of human rights,

one theory of human rights, among many, that derives principally from Aquinas and Thomas Aquinas and from Aristotle,

and that has a lot of traction in the mainstream Western tradition from the 16th century up into the 20th

century, very prominent in Catholic ethics, but not really per se a religious conception.

What I mean by that is you may think because I'm a Catholic priest and because I'm wearing a habit

that I'll tell you that the basis for human rights is believe in God or transcendent standards

of morality and, well, I do believe in God.

But actually, I'm going to root it in something that doesn't, the pre, you might say, abstract

from the question of God.

It can lead to that question, but actually it's just a basic conception of human rights

that's, I think, universally available. It's rather common-synical, and it's based in a kind of

fundamental theory of what a human being is. So, you know, there are different concepts of human

rights. You have people who are kind of contractualist utilitarians who basically think that human beings are inherently selfish and we need a certain set of protections in place so that we can protect us from one another.

You have other people who have a very strong sense of Kantian rights that's based on autonomy of freedom.

So it's all based on the freedom of the rights of the individuals in view of their own autonomous self-realization.

But Aristotle and specifically the Aquinas, Thomas Aquinas 13th century Dominican, you know, very important philosopher and the

Heelotian in the Western tradition, they argue that rights are based on natural inclinations, based on natural inclinations,

that's to say, orientations of our nature towards what constitutes human flourishing.

So there's certain things that make human beings flourish.

You might give you kind of example of friendship.

And you can derive from those that theory rights of the kinds of things that we need to be able to do to be the kinds of things we are.

So you might say it's a realist concept of rights. It's based in what human beings really are. That's the idea.

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