The Journal of Human Rights

The Journal of Human Rights

Right to Life, a Divine Right or a Human Right?

Document Type : Research Article

Author
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Mofid University, Qom, Iran.
Abstract
Undoubtedly, the right to life is the most important of all rights. Regarding this point, the fundamental question is, who has the authority to make laws and take action resulting in humans being killed? In response to this question, in this paper, I aim to defend the thesis that only God has the (moral/legal/religious) authority to make and issue the laws surrounding life and death. So, it is rational to believe that the right to life is restrictively a Divine right and not a human right. The paper is organized as follows: after introducing some elementary points and definitions, two arguments in favor of the above thesis will be formulated. In the first argument, by laying out some thought experiments, it is shown that human laws concerning civilians’ life are paradoxical and implausible. The second argument is based on exploring the origin of the right to life. In the last part of the paper, some implications and advantages of the favored thesis will be stated in brief.  
Keywords
Subjects

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