ALTERATIONS TO THE RIGHTS OF OTHERS;
CONSEQUENT OBLIGATIONS AND
MODIFICATIONS OF MUTUAL RIGHTS
Chapter 6
The origin of the right to predominance
1995. A consequence of the infraction of others rights is subordination and jural predominance. Human beings are naturally equal but can, through their evil activity, subject themselves to others and give others the right to exercise a certain predominance over them.
1996. This truth is clear to anyone who considers the origin of human dignity. Human beings are ordered to truth and virtue; it is this relationship which constitutes their dignity. Truth and virtue are sublime objects to which they can aspire and which they can also renounce. If they renounce them, they renounce their dignity, and thus degrade themselves;(572) any respect which remains due to them on earth lies solely in the possibility they have of reforming and redirecting themselves to their sublime destination.
1997. We can see therefore that if someone, in offending truth and virtue, also offends his fellows, they acquire the right to punish him in their own defence and in retribution for the harm done. As we have seen, by punishing the offender, they cause pain and loss only in the name of, and as ministers of punitive justice. But anyone who punishes is in a predominant position relative to the person punished.
1998. When therefore we put into act not only the right to defence together with its four functions of simple defence, prevention, exemplary repression and guarantee, but also the right to restitution together with its functions of revendication and compensation (and the others we have listed), we attribute to ourselves a real predominance over anyone who has acted unjustly and harmfully. Our right endures as long as the title endures through which these rights are exercised. And the title can endure a long time, especially when it is a question of guarantee against the guilty.
1999. This is the only source of true SUBORDINATION and PREDOMINANCE among human beings.
Notes
(572) St. Thomas Aquinas expresses this principle excellently: `Through sin, human beings forsook the order of reason and lost their human dignity by which they are naturally free and EXIST FOR THEIR OWN SAKE. They fell in some way to the level of animal servitude and turned aside from themselves in so far as they became useful to others' (S.T., II-II, q. 64, art. 2, ad 3).