Proti utilitarismu za spravedlnost a přirozená práva. Perspektiva klasického právního realismu
| Title in English | Against Utilitarianism for Justice and Natural Rights. The Perspective of Classical Juridical Realism |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Právník |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
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| Keywords | human rights; justice; natural law theory; natural rights; the common good; utilitarianism |
| Description | In this paper, I continue my polemics with Martin Hapla’s pragmatic utilitarianism while taking the argument further by outlining the classical tradition’s view of the phenomenon of natural (human) rights. In the first part, I highlight the main points of disagreement. I consider the utilitarian project to be inappropriately reductionist. It arbitrarily elevates the maximization of one good at the expense of other goods. It is questionable why utility should have primacy over other values. Moreover, utilitarians fail to show that, in most cases, we care about hedonistic good consequences. The utilitarian approach is simply unable to achieve the same results with fewer assumptions. We are more certain of the truth of the paradigmatic norms of justice than of the utilitarian principle itself. The notion of justice is important for moral action as well as for juridical domain, which is the focus of the second part of this paper. According to classical juridical realism, the juridical domain concerns the attribution of things to individuals. People must be given what is due them; it must be respected that a person has a right to the thing apportioned to them. The article culminates in an analysis of the natural rights. I start from the premise that man is a person. Therefore, things related to this fact should belong to him. The persuasiveness of classical juridical realism derives from its taking into account the complexity of juridical relations. |
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