Nonsense upon Stilts

'Natural rights is simple nonsense,' declared Jeremy Bentham: 'natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense – nonsense upon stilts.' He was right: rights are not 'natural', they are prescribed, i.e. created, by human societies (those human societies that like the idea). The notion of 'natural rights' is simply a carry-over from 'natural theology'. Unfortunately, the general idea of rights has proved highly seductive, at the expense of its proper concomitant, duties. Most rights would be better framed as duties: our duties towards our fellow humans – or, indeed, animals, who are now seen as having 'rights' of their own. But it gets worse: trees now have 'rights' too. Believe it or not, there exists a Universal Declaration of Tree Rights – it seems you don't even need a pulse or a central nervous system to have rights now. Mercifully, the Declaration does not confer 'legal personhood' on trees, which must surely mean that these 'rights' are not legal but 'natural'. They are…