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CONNATURAL RIGHTS

Chapter 3

44. We can easily note which rights are connatural if we make use of ownership, our principle for determining rights.

45. The new-born baby holds in ownership only himself (his spirit and his body), and the faculties of his spirit and body. His personal activity has not yet extended outside the limits of his body: his person (that is, the supreme principle of his rational activity) has not attached to itself anything outside the restricted limits of his tiny body, except perhaps the air he breathes. The subjects of his rights, therefore, can only be as yet his connatural and innate capacities, faculties or powers over which his personship rules, even in this imperfect state.

46. When we speak of faculties as the subject of right, we include passive as well as active faculties. In fact, if the faculties could not be conceived as subject to some kind of passivity they could not be subjects of various rights. As we know, the moral law protects persons against the attacks of others. These attacks, however, presuppose (sometimes mistakenly) that the person is subject to some evil, that is, capable of suffering.

47. If we wish to specify these connatural rights, we have to distinguish in the baby everything that can merit the appellation personal, one's own. We shall do this briefly, by distinguishing amongst the connatural rights that which is right of its essence, or formal right, and that which is right through participation, or material right.

48. Under this heading, some authors speak of `the right to our own personship', but such language is misplaced. We do not have a right to our own personship. If this were the case, two persons would have to be distinguished, one of whom has the right, the other who constitutes the subject of the right. But the one possessing right is the identical person who is the subject of right.

49. Precision requires that we say `the human person is subsistent human right'. It follows that the person is the essence of right.

50. The essence of anything is always the principle and origin of everything else in the same species. Things belong to the same species because they share the same essence.

51. It follows from our definition of right (`right is a moral-physical activity which cannot be harmed by other persons') that personship is of the essence of right. Of its essence, person has all the elements that form the definition of right. As we said, `The person is an intellective subject in so far it contains a supreme active principle.' (21) This definition clearly coincides with that of right itself.

52. The supreme, active principle, the foundation of person, which is informed by the light of reason, receives the rule of justice. Properly speaking, the principle is the faculty of what is lawful. But because the dignity of the light of reason (ideal being) is infinite, nothing can be superior to the personal principle(22) which of its nature acts on the promptings of a teacher and lord of infinite dignity. Such a principle is naturally supreme; no one has the right to command that which depends upon the commands of the infinite.

If the person is of its nature supreme activity, it is clear that each person has a duty of not harming others, either in thought or by an attempt to offend or subject them through despoiliation of the supremacy bestowed by nature. This is clear if we apply the moral principle already established: `Acknowledge things practically for what they are.' (23) The person, therefore, has in its nature all the constitutive elements of right; consequently, it is subsistent right, the essence of right.

53. Everything included in the human being, but not constituting the supreme principle of its operations, forms part of human nature, but is not properly speaking the human person.

54. Nevertheless, whatever is found within the sphere of human nature is intimately bound to the human person and subordinate to it.

55. I have shown that the different active principles contained in human nature are bound to the human person by means of an intimate connection subordinating them physically and morally to the person. In the Anthropology, I explained the nature of this twofold moral-dynamic connection by which the active principles of human nature are united to the person, and I refer the reader to the appropriate passage.(24)

56. This intimate, dynamic and moral union of the inferior principles with the human person gives rise to the dominion that the person has over these active principles. It has the physical power to command them and also the moral duty because it `must acknowledge in practice the subordination of these principles to itself.' (25)

57. It follows that these principles are proper to the human person, and are rightly called personal because they are grafted as parts into the person itself.

58. Hence seigniory of the human person over human nature delineates the sphere of innate materiated rights.

(21) Cf. AMS, bk. 4.

(22) St. Augustine turns to God with the following words: `And I stood, and was founded in you, IN MY FORM WHICH IS YOUR TRUTH' (Confessions, bk. 11, c. 30).

(23) It is of the utmost importance to note this analysis of the human person, which shows that our share in personal dignity arises from essential being itself. This essential, and hence infinite being communicates itself to us in so far as it is essentially manifestative. It is called ideal, that is, light for this very reason. It follows, therefore, that human dignity is received by us. It comes from outside. Consequently all our rights, strictly speaking, arise not from our own activity but from an extraneous cause, that is, from God. - It may be objected that in receiving both nature and dignity from outside ourselves we cannot be said to possess the quality of `end', but only to tend to a supremely noble end. - From one point of view this is correct (cf. PE, 66-68); from another point of view the human person can be called `end' in so far as it shares in the infinite dignity of being, to which it is ess entially joined. In this sense, offending the person means offending being. It is true that the good which the person finds in adhering to being is subjective, that is, proper to person, but it is nevertheless as noble as being itself. Any attempt to deprive the person of such a good would be an offence against infinite being. From this point of view, the human person itself can be called `end' because the infinite good, in which all human beings participate and in which they are destined to participate ever more fully, can be called `end'.

(24) AMS, 838-850.

(25) The reader is already aware that for us the phrase `in practice' means `efficaciously', that is, not in thought alone, but in fact and as a result of real force.

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