Seneca on human rights in De beneficiis 3
Abstract
The paper discusses Seneca’s phrase ‘human rights’ (ius humanum) in On Benefits 3 and relates the passage to recent debates about human rights in Stoicism and ancient philosophy. I argue that the Latin phrase refers either to rights or to a law conferring rights. The difference between the passage and a common expectation for human rights lies in the kind of relation between right and duty. In Seneca’s passage the right does not in itself have a correlative duty on the part of other people, and yet it does, if exercised through benefactions, create a duty in others. By contrast, the relation between right and duty is usually expected to be unconditional.
Citation
Long , A G 2021 , ' Seneca on human rights in De beneficiis 3 ' , Apeiron , vol. 54 , no. 2 , pp. 189-201 . https://doi.org/10.1515/apeiron-2019-0019
Publication
Apeiron
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0003-6390Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter Inc., Boston/Berlin. This work has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies or with permission. Permission for further reuse of this content should be sought from the publisher or the rights holder. This is the author created accepted manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1515/apeiron-2019-0019.
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