Natural Rights Justifications

To what Inquisitor wrote, I would add the following:

Douglas Rasmussen’s “A Groundwork for Rights: Man’s Natural End” in JLS - argues that man’s natural end is the proper foundation for rights and that human action must be understood in light of an ultimate end.

Roderick Long’s Reason and Value: Aristotle versus Rand in which he critiques Rand on some things and puts forth Aristotle as a better alternative.

Long’s “Slavery Contracts and Inalienable Rights” - in my dissertation, I’m extending his argument against slavery contracts to the state.

Long’s “Why Does Justice Have Good Consequences?” - demonstrates the praxeological instability of rule-consequentialism, among other things.

And to plug myself, the working draft of one of the chapters of my dissertation on Aristotelian libertarianism. In this chapter I attempt to synthesize the differing accounts of rights provided by Ramussen/Den Uyl and Long.

I favor the burgeoning tradition of Aristotelian liberalism/libertarianism which can provide an integrated theory of virtue ethics and natural rights that allows for a robust but highly individualized conception of the good while protecting the absolute liberty of the individual.

For more on Aristotle himself, and the roots of liberalism in his thought, I recommend Fred D. Miller, Jr.'s Nature, Justice and Rights in Aristotle’s Politics and Roderick Long’s amendment to it, “Aristotle’s Conception of Freedom” (Review of Metaphysics 49 (1996), pp. 775-802; also see his website, it’s been reprinted in an anthology too). There’s a lot of other good stuff by Long online and off too, both on Aristotle and aspects of Aristotelian libertarianism.