Are Natural Rights Really Natural

Superior Essays
Are Natural Rights Really Natural?
Natural rights are defined as “The fundamental human rights based on the universal human laws, as opposed to those based on man-made positive law.” In other words, natural rights are those rights which are not dependant on the cultural or legal factors of a particular region. In fact they are universal in nature are identical throughout the globe. According to the United States Declaration of Independence "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" are three examples of such “unallieable rights” that are provided to all human beings by their creator, and which governments are created to protect. This raises an important question for all of us. Do we really practice happiness as a natural right?
The famous writer C.S. Lewis wrote “I don’t think it is obvious that people have the unlimited right to happiness”. This is an excrept from his last published essay ‘We Have No Right to Happiness’ which appeared in The Saturday Evening Post in 1963. In this essay Lewis mainly focuses on how our ‘developed’ societies have mistaken
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In this article the authors shed light on how various cultures believe that people should be averse to happiness. Some of the reasons for this aversion as stated by the authors are that various cultures believe that “being happy makes it more likely that bad things will happen to you, being happy makes you a worse person, expressing happiness is bad for you, and pursuing happiness is bad for you and others.” All these beliefs are supported by distinct evidences from various cultures. This article basically serves the purpose to oppose and rather disagree with the Western world’s obsession with personal happiness. Rather, this article provides even more support to C.S. Lewis’s claim that “We Have No Right To

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