What's Wrong with Rights? | Nigel Biggar

Nigel Biggar discusses the growing complexity of morality and legal rights.
Nigel John Biggar CBE is Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford, author, Anglican priest, and theologian. He also directs the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics and Public Life at Oxford which aims to foster a conversation between Christian theology and other disciplines.
In 2017, Biggar initiated the Oxford project “Ethics and Empire” which aimed to scrutinise a purely negative view of empires and argue that they were morally mixed. Historians and academics widely criticised the project for 'attempting to balance out the violence committed in the name of empire with its supposed benefits.'
Recently, Nigel published What’s Wrong with Rights? arguing that society’s modern rights conversation reduces the importance of fostering civic virtues.
#imperialism #colonisation #oxford
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Nigel Biggar
/ nigelbiggar

[@Sokrabiades]

What if the editors of Charlie Hebdo felt a need to take a maximalist stance to push back against the encroachment of Islamist demand in French society? Isn't their sacrifice proof that some such action needed to be taken? Sometimes one is required to be unpleasant. If there had been no reaction by radical Muslims, then I would agree with the speaker. But, the fact that they were murdered ultimately, on balance, vindicated. In light of their sacrifice, I think you have to suggest an alternative course of action. 'They should have been more polite' (I don't believe this is a mischaracterization) is not a serious position.

[@jayturner3397]

Freedom is the ability to say things others don't like, I paraphrase Orwell

[@randygault4564]

Even the absence of violence would justify the publication, by demonstrating the peacefulness of the insulted.

[@psmorgan2542]

100% agree. His position on Charlie Hebdo is short-sighted, verging on cowardly. If there’s people threatening death for blasphemy it becomes important to blaspheme.

[@SaintNektarios]

What is publishing an offensive cartoon with the intention of mockery and provocation going to solve? It is only going to create more division and animosity. As Nigel Biggar pointed out, the writers had a right to draw the image, but a civil society needs more than mere talk of rights. @5:07 Biggar: "In addition to rights talk we also need duty talk, and we also need virtue talk cause what they were lacking is the virtue of self-restraint and the virtue of charity which says that: speak truths, yes, but don't deliberately provoke, insult or mock other people. Rights are important, but they aren't enough we also need a wider range of moral talk."

[@jamessparkes5492]

The virtue of self restraint?! What like the murderers did in response to an offensive picture? In a liberal society you have a duty to both be offended and to agree to disagree. If you're unable to adhere to those conditions peacefully then you're not fit to be in that society.

[@Sokrabiades]

That's what he was saying, if you'd bother to listen. You said "duty". He said "virtue".

[@jamessparkes5492]

I did listen, he said that "we as a society need to cultivate such values" such values I previously mentioned. The issue I have with what he has said is that western society's have already cultivated it (otherwise we wouldn't be in this predicament) and the problem being that other culture's failure to adopt it. Gas lighting you're own society to accommodate anothers I find a hard pill to swallow.

[@mindfulmw]

Universal rights are not the same as these entitlement rights which have no legal basis.

[@GM-oi4vg]

How are rights universal when they are given by the particular state?

[@goyonman9655]

What are "Universal Right"

[@dianewarner7505]

All rights carry with them responsibility

[@KrunoslavStifter]

No they don't. Duty carries responsibility. Right is a legal term, not a moral one. That is the big lie people were sold to. There is no such thing as inalienable rights, there are only legal rights , granted by the state or increasingly so corruption globalist NGO's. If there was such a thing as inalienable self evident rights, than we would all have got along and no one would need to interfere. We would be like ant colony. A well oiled machine. But obviously even American founders and French Revolutionaries understood this fiction needs roots in reality and their solution was to create administrative state with naive attempt to keep it small. Now you have enormous states linked by global NGO's like UN , EU etc Federal Governments who choose who will get the legal rights or not, based on their usefulness or support to the regime. Before such terms as rights there were duties, and they were not part of liberal tradition. When you speak of responsibilities , the term you are looking for is not rights, but duties. The source from where sense of duty comes from and interpretation of what it means are very different than that of rights. Which is a legal terms , granted by third party. And if state enables it, the state can take it away.

[@brookvalley907]

A right is not a right, if people are afraid to exercise it. The more often material offensive to some people is published, the less offensive the material becomes. The more it is normalized. Offense occurs only in the mind, and the mind adjusts to material it first finds offensive by becoming less offended by it the more it is encountered. So, if you wanted to develop a society that was not offended by speech, you should have offensive speech presented often and widely, until the society no longer found it offensive. If you want to build a strong body, you must insult and provoke it by lifting heavy objects. If you want to build a strong society, you must insult and provoke it by presenting offensive speech.

[@villainousssb533]

Dont agree with Nigel on the Charlie Hebdoe discussion. Not so much that it would be reasonable to refrain from criticising muhammad unnecessarily . But the hypocrisy of treating likewise ideologies in the same manner. Would he be similarly aggrieved if there was similar criticism of buddha, Confucius, Jesus, Joseph Smith, Moses etc. What about our political leaders

[@e.znamini3241]

“Rights and responsibilities are two sides of the same coin.” J.B.P

[@ABO-Destiny]

All these discussions are cropping up because human beings are living inside human created artificial entities called societies which cropped up to protect certain rights of human beings but have sustained itself even when those threats had ceased to become as alarming as before , probably because some people felt vulnerable without those setup and some foresaw renewed threats while some saw these as systems aimed for comfort and accumulation of wealth. So basically human rights are basic necessities which without such artificial systems would still have existed but the people would not have had a chance to point fingers at anyone or any group except their enemies or rights violators for absence or violation of those and would have fought for those on their own, in their own ways, maybe through creation of new artificial systems.

[@edcbabc]

On the CH point - they had the legal right to publish but probably should not have - I wonder how that squares with the views of people like Francis Foster and Konstantin Kisin promulgated on their Triggernometry podcast that comedians have the right and almost a duty to make jokes etc where nothing is sacred and some groups of people will be offended?

[@kayleneemery8217]

I am practicing being nice, so I will refrain from making further comment . Thank you for all that you do John.......

[@cmojo68]

Rights come, not without responsibilities. And no-one has the right to be irresponsible. Virtue is a narcissistic indulgence, having become, as pride, a "deadly sin". Divisive & exclusivist and far from claimed egalitarianism, in nature.

[@CE-yi6yr]

I find this line of reasoning deeply disturbing. This is a virtue signal to blame the victims for the barbarism of the attackers. The victims lacked the necessary woke moral standards to appreciate that not offending French Muslims and giving in to threats and coercion was more important than their freedom of expression. Wrong! As Jordan Peterson suggests free speech has to include the notion that one or more people may object or be offended by your comments. if it is not your intention to be offensive then it is the other parties intellectual and moral failure interpreting it as such.

[@alana8863]

You didn't listen to what he was saying.

[@kafon6368]

The journalists were aware of the consequences with insulting a revered figure of Islam. The forces of secularism should not be defended by any Christian, because that could've just as easily been Christ on their cartoon. Let the universalist humanitarians deal with this themselves.

[@Sokrabiades]

How can you compare Christ and Muhammad unless you are an unbeliever and blasphemer?