For some human rights to work each and every person ought to possess a well-defined domain of agency and this domain requires to be defined by the person’s rights, in which he is strongly shielded from external disturbances. Therefore, to respect other people’s rights is to make sure that they may pursue their goals provided they do not violate others people’s rights to pursue their goals. Certainly, for people to come up with and pursue their goals, agents require to be soundly guaranteed that they will be able to make use of definite means and perform specific deeds without being delayed by others. Therefore, right to freedom can only be achieved when there is assured access of opportunities and resources. From this viewpoint, then, the dilemma of a slave signifies a paradigmatic instance of infringement of a person’s right to freedom. Slaves are deprived of a domain of agency strongly secured from other people’s interference. Even if, at times, the master avoids interfering with the slave’s options, such intervention is continuously in theory open to him. The enslaved person’s access to opportunities as well as resources is not guaranteed, but mainly reliant on other people’s will (Laura 579).
Autonomy, Agency, Human Rights and the Role for Nation State
Exercise of autonomy and agency may require extra human rights and creation of a role for nation state in the protection of human rights. Human rights are obtained from the universal rights to freedom, viz. each individual’s inborn right to a domain of agency in which to pursue his or her goals without being delayed by other people. Despite the fact that this right belongs to each and every person by the advantage of his/her nature as a prospective or actual autonomous agent, its weight can only be achieved by state-like institutions. Human rights can, therefore, be conceptualized as those rights that any political authority ought to guarantee to succeed as a guarantor of its people’s inborn right to freedom. That is, to succeed as rationally just and authentic. This approach clarifies why, despite the fact that human rights are natural; they also possess a political dimension, and place restrictions on the behavior of political agents demanding authority, mainly states. When a state ignores them, it partially or completely loses moral privileges, and becomes subject to external as well as internal interferences (Laura 581).
Works Cited
Laura, Valentini.” Human Rights, Freedom, and Political Authority.” Sagepub. Sage
Publications. March 28, 2012. Web. February 2, 2016.
