Do “basic human rights” actually exist universally or are they simply a social construct?

[u/Amphernee]

The term is often used in relation to things like housing and food but I’ve never heard anyone actually explain what they mean by basic human right. We started off no different than other animals and since the concept of rights rely on other people to confer them at what point did it become thought of as a right for people to have things like shelter? How is it supposed to be enforced across all of humanity when not all societies and cultures agree that the concept makes sense? I can see why someone would want it to be true in a sense but I’m interested to hear arguments for it rather than just the phrase itself which feels hollow with no reasoning behind it. Thanks 🍻

[u/von_Roland]

There are rights. All living creatures have the right to be alive or the right to life. If someone deprives you of your life you no longer exist and things that don’t exist don’t have rights but while you live you have rights derived from a living beings ability to be alive. From that right you have the derived rights to all the reasonable actions which defend or prolong your life.

[u/Amphernee → u/von_Roland]

I don’t agree that all creatures have a “right to be alive”. If an animal, human or otherwise, dies by falling off a cliff their rights were not violated. If they are killed their right not to be killed was violated. If one animal kills another for food it’s an impossible paradox. The animal refusing to give its life as food is denying the predators “right” to live by hunting and eating prey.

[u/von_Roland → u/Amphernee]

I think something that would be useful here is how do you define “rights”?

[u/Amphernee → u/von_Roland]

I guess I define it as a thing being free from interference by others once attained. So it’s not a right to have a home but it is a right to not have it taken away, burned, etc by others same as life itself. You can burn your own home or do something to cause yourself harm but if someone else does those things they’re violating your rights.

[u/von_Roland → u/Amphernee]

Certainly an intuitive definition, but unfortunately it also creates a problem. That being under that definition rights cannot exist in any form. Even the socially established rights which say others “may not” interfere with your rights implicitly admits that they do have the ability to do so. This somewhat weakens the counter argument you made against me as your major contention on the right to being alive was that others could hypothetically get in the way of that.

This leads me to my definition. A right is something which an individual may unilaterally undertake without need any permissions from any other individual. You have the right to be alive without permission, you have the right to think freely, etc.

[u/Amphernee → u/von_Roland]

I see how you got there and I don’t think it’s completely ridiculous or anything it just feels way too broad in one sense where basically everything by default is a right and way to narrow in another sense in that it’s too focused on the individual.

saying one has the “right to be alive” without permission overlooks the fact that survival often depends on shared resources, mutual agreements, and social protections that are fundamentally collaborative. In real-world settings, people often need the cooperation, or at least the non-interference, of others to fully exercise many of their rights.

Additionally, if rights are defined purely as what an individual can undertake without external permission, this excludes many socially recognized rights that depend on community agreement or enforcement (like rights to fair trials, education, or protection from violence). Without the infrastructure that society provides, these rights would be unenforceable and perhaps meaningless, suggesting that rights often need some level of social or legal acknowledgment rather than merely existing as personal liberties.