The Evolution Of Contemporary Rights Of Liberalism

As early as the16th and17th century, the conception of liberal rights had alreadyemerged from the classical liberalism. The theory of natural rights, represented byHobbes and Locke, is the source and foundation of liberal rights theory in contemporary.Rights had been replaced by utility and once disappeared with the prosperity ofutilitarianism in the19th century. Until the20th century, the liberal thinkers representedby Rawls, Nozick and Dworkin discussed the issue of rights and justice, which madethe rights return to the core position of liberal rights theory. The classical liberal rightstheory revived and developed contemporarily.Locke found the source of natural rights from the tradition of natural law in themiddle ages. He established the natural rights theory on the basis of rationality, natureand scripture, which is behind the natural law. And he put the state of nature as thetheoretical premise and starting point of the natural rights, and presented the thought ofman’s natural rights, reflecting that people naturally own the rights of life, liberty andproperty, and has rights to execute the natural rights and to revolt against thegovernment. The fundamental purpose of Locke’s theory of natural rights is to meet theinternal and external societal needs of people, which are the systematic expressions ofnatural rights in the period of enlightenment that lay the solid foundations for thesubsequent development of liberal rights theory. Rights have been taken to people’s field of vision by Rawls, he inherited theessence of classic liberalism including the opinions of natural rights theory and socialcontract theory from demonstration subject to demonstration methods. His idea of rightsbased on the critique to the utilitarianism, Rawls designed his celebrated justiceprinciples which was begin with the hypothesis of "original position" from theperspective of intuitionism, in which liberties rights was given a priority status, andrights was given top priority over all the other social values again. At the same time,Rawls paid more attention to the economic inequality, and claimed that the social andeconomic inequality should be in favor of the least benefit-owners’ interests, whichembodied the protection of the rights of the vulnerable group in the society. However,the distributive justice thought of Rawls which takes "equal welfare" as the core hadbeen criticized from all sides. Rawls expected to establish a mutual cooperation andwell-ordered "social union of social unions" in order to realize the justice of a society.Rawls’rights theory is called “the basis of rights theory” or “the priority of rightstheory”, which was based on Kantism and embodied the renaissance and developmentof the classical liberalism natural rights theory in contemporary. Rawls deserve theleader of the liberalism rights theory.Nozick constructed the theory of rights’ qualification on the basis of the criticismof Rawls’s rights theory with "distributive justice" as its core, which is also called rightstheory of justice in holdings. Nozick held that the liberalism and Egalitarianismrepresented by Rawls failed to pay respect to individual liberty and rights. Morespecifically, they only attached importance to the distribution of social wealth withoutconsidering the historical sources of social wealth. In light of this, Nozick put forwardrights theory of Moral Side Constraints based on the new illustration of Locke’s theState of Nature, and by safeguarding the sacred and inviolable personal rights, hebrought up the entitlement theory of rights, namely the principle of justice in holdings--individuals acquire legitimate ownership of property through a principle ofjustice in acquisition, a principle of justice in transfer, and a principle of rectification ofinjustice. Based on the illustration of self-ownership, Nozick set forth that the core ofrights is the principle of consent, meaning to safeguard rights through the principle ofindemnity, and placed his rights theory on the foundation of free action theory andeventually achieved the purpose of making rights that people consider each other asself-choosing individual in an organic unity of diversity. Nozick not only made rights asthe core concept of liberalism by embodying rights supreme significance, but also laidliberalism on the foundation of rights theory. In view of this, Nozick’s rights theoryfeatures as right supremacy with extreme liberalism, reflecting the return to the naturalrights theory of classical liberalism and surpass of liberalism rights theory.Dworkin, as the defender of contemporary liberalism, re-examined the issues ofrights and raised the concept of taking rights seriously and dividing the rights intobackground rights and institutional rights, concrete rights and abstract rights on thebasis of criticizing the utilitarianism of utilitarian and the legal positivism. The essenceof Dworkin’s rights theory lies in requiring the government to concern and respectpeople’s rights equally, and treating rights as the personal political trumps. Dworkininherited the thought of revolving against the government from Locke, the natural rightstheorist of classic liberalism. Dworkin constructed his rights theory on the basis ofpeople’s dignity and equality, and raised a new ideology of rights found on the equalityof resources and politics in respond to the idea of equal welfare represented by Rawls.His rights theory aims to make up the flaw of market economy with the equality ofresources and developed as a risk-sharing society in the economic field. And in the fieldof politics, his theory aims to improve the representative democracy with the equality ofpolitics, constructing a democratic society of constitutionality. His theory aims torealize the protection of rights of the minority both in economic and political aspects. Dworkin’s rights theory is an inheritance of the natural rights theory of classicalliberalism as well as institutionalized development and improvement in contemporaryof the rights ideology of liberalism.In conclusion, the rights ideology of contemporary liberalism drew ideologicalresource from natural rights theory of classical liberalism and got developed from thetheoretical dialogues and debates of other contemporary rights theorists. From Rawls’sconcern to the least–benefit owners’ rights to Nozick’s defense on individual’s holyrights, and to Dworkin’s protection on rights of the minority, the ideologists’ solicitudefor people’s rights has been embodied invariably. From distributive justice to justice inholdings, and finally to the equality of resources and politics, which all reflected theideologists’ theoretical supposition in realizing their solicitude of rights. However, as tothe essential transform from theory to institution, it was finally realized by Dworkin.