Civil Rights

Civil Rights as Privileges

Etymologically, the word civil derives from the Latin civilis (relating to public law or life), which in turn derives from civis (citizen). In ancient Rome, full citizenship was granted only to privileged classes according to a complex system of rules that relied on the dichotomy between citizen and foreigner (with differential citizenship given to latini and peregrini and next to no rights granted to barbari). Civil rights were the rights that Roman citizens enjoyed by virtue of being a member of Roman society. This concept of citizenship and civil rights was fundamentally challenged by ideas of the European Enlightenment. Soon, civil rights were still held to be reserved for a privileged class but became universal in aspiration. They were attributed not because of membership of one specific state but because of membership in society more generally.

Civil Rights as Universal but Not Natural

The British writer Thomas Paine published his influential Rights of Man in 1791, partially defending some of the claims to universal rights that were made during the French Revolution against its critics, most notably the conservative Edmund Burke. While doing this, Paine contrasted natural rights with the civil rights of man. In his account, the natural rights of man (following a natural law tradition and in the spirit of Enlightenment ideas) are those rights that appertain to man by virtue of being human: rights of mind and all those rights that enable men to act as individuals without infringing the liberty of others. Civil rights, by contrast, are those rights that are bestowed on man as a consequence of his being a member of society. Therefore, civil rights build on a foundation [Page 196]of inalienable natural rights—but are in need of societal institutions to be properly implemented. In this regard, the French Revolution therefore represented a struggle for civil rights. Nevertheless, Paine considered both classes of rights to be universal (for males, at least), which is why his account caused political uproar and led to his persecution in England.

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