Obligations and Rights

[Nick_A]

T.S. Eliot wrote in the preface to Simone Weil's "The Need for Roots:"   "This is one of those books which ought to be studied by the young before their leisure has been lost and their capacity for thought destroyed; books the effect of which, we can only hope, will become apparent in the attitude of mind of another generation."  

The Progressive agenda will do whatever it can to suppress this book and others like it.  This is why I'm posting this basic idea here.  Perhaps some college students writing papers on political philosophy would appreciate exploring it.

Simone asserts that rights can only be assured by the mutual acceptance of obligations.  This mutual acceptance can only be sustained through the help of grace that initiates from above.  Obviously then, the continuance of a free society requires the essential religious influence. Secularism only leads to the struggle for prestige acquired through power and force.

The progressive agenda seeks to substitute the concept of "entitlement" for what Simone describes as "obligations."

I invite all university students to keep the idea alive where you study.  Let others awaken to this normally hidden perspective for the sake of their understanding. Anyhow, consider Simone's words:

The notion of obligations comes before that of rights, which is subordinate and relative to the former. A right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds, the effective exercise of a right springing not from the individual who possesses it, but from other men who consider themselves as being under a certain obligation towards him. Recognition of an obligation makes it effectual. An obligation which goes unrecognized by anybody loses none of the full force of its existence. A right which goes unrecognized by anybody is not worth very much.

It makes nonsense to say that men have, on the one hand, rights, and on the other hand, obligations. Such words only express differences in point of view. The actual relationship between the two is as between object and subject. A man, considered in isolation, only has duties, amongst which are certain duties towards himself. Other men, seen from his point of view, only have rights. He, in his turn, has rights, when seen from the point of view of other men, who recognize that they have obligations towards him. A man left alone in the universe would have no rights whatever, but he would have obligations….”  Simone Weil, The Need for Roots*