preview

The Rights Of The Man And The Right Of Law

Decent Essays

Min Ji Park
POLI 110C
Midterm #2
Prompt 2
The Rights of the Man and The Right of law Even if both Mill and Marx starts from the acknowledgement that the rights have legal groundings, two men focus on different aspects, and evaluate them differently: Mill thinks that the rights of the man increase the social cohesion through rights directly affecting the social utility, while Marx thinks that the rights of the man alienates one from another to undoubtedly make an individual into a self-centered individual who is distanced from the population. Mill, on the Utilitarianism, thinks that the rights need to be protected, not only because the law protects the legal rights, but also because those promote the general utility. Without the rights, Mill argues, there would be neither legal nor moral protection of one from the surrounding world; in other words, the human beings need either legal or moral protection of the rights for an overall convenience and security. For example, the right and a sense of justice that is attached to the right give a person a reason to seek penalty of the ones that harmed him/her; in conjunction with the existing legal system, the individual who has been wronged can seek the punishment (Mill, 129) and inflict pain upon the individual who ‘brought injustice’ to oneself. (In addition, through the protection of the rights, one can achieve the “animal desire (Mill, 36)”, which may also add to the utility/pleasure.) As a result, the government, or the legal

Get Access