The Case against the Marriage of Natural Law and Natural Rights, by Tracey Rowland:

p. 83 Oliver O’Donovan adds to this bill of indictment that there is a political problem with the language of rights, a conceptual problem with the language of rights, and an historical problem with the language of rights. The political problem is summarised by his statement: ‘Burke’s critique of abstract human rights as formalistic impositions corresponding to no living social ties continues to give shape to one side in the struggle.’51 The conceptual problem is that the language of rights (plural) appears to be in conflict with the language of right (singular). The historical problem is that the concept of rights is not found in the ancient world – ‘phantom “rights” spring up liberally across pages translated from Hebrew, Greek and Latin, corresponding to no plural noun in the original’.52

Oliver O’Donovan further claims that the language of rights was promoted ‘precisely to challenge our moral intuitions, intending to educate us out of them’. Thus, ‘at the root of the disagreement over the language of rights is a question of moral ontology. Multiple rights express a plural ontology of difference, the difference between each right-bearer and every other, instead of a unitary ontology of human likeness.’53 Human rights, in other words, are not based on an understanding of universal human nature.54

51 Oliver O’Donovan, ‘The Language of Rights and Conceptual History’ (2009) 37(2) Journal of Religious Ethics 193, at

194.

52 Ibid., 197.

53 Ibid., 202.

54 Ibid., 204.