Can Every Right Be Renounced?

Question

I am currently reading about Euthanasia (I already asked a question in this context here) and in one article the author makes the following argument:

[...] the right to life is one of the most fundamental moral principles we have. Still, we are able to renounce our rights.

Is it valid to generally assume that every right can be renounced and to use this as a premise?

The Article:
Greif, Adam (2019). The Morality of Euthanasia. Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 26 (4):612–634.

Answer 1

General answer

If the question is whether it is unconditionally true that every right can be renounced, the obvious answer has to be no.

This is justified by the fact that eg. suicide and assisted suicide are against the law in many countries, indicating the implicit premise that you cannot renounce the right to live.

More pointedly, it is commonly assumed and explicitly expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that we talk about the

recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family.

Inalienable means exactly cannot be renounced.

But...

The former part is rather technical and, in some sense, wrong.

Firstly, you can certainly renounce every right. The question is whether you will seize to be a bearer of that right in a legal (or moral) sense for everyone else.

Secondly, all the free choice campaigns for self-determined death argue for a weighing of rights, ie. the acknowledgement that the autonomy/dignity is to be held in higher esteem than the life. But that does not mean that they ever wanted to renounce their right to live, ie. give it free to everyone's disposal. They want to keep control of their lives, ie. enact their right to live as they see fit.

Conclusion

The argument is very libertarian, but of questionable quality. It misses the core idea behind self-determined death, which is to enact the right in dignity instead of making it an unbearable obligation. We also have to question the effectiveness of such a renouncing: Does the person really want to give personal rights to everyone's disposal? And will they seize to be bearer of these rights simply because they say so? Last but not least, the argument does stand in stark contrast to the core idea of inalienable human rights, which even countries with questionable human rights protection do acknowledge.

Fun fact

A German federal court decided in 1981 that (completely nude) live peep shows cannot be allowed even if the persons would do these shows of their own volition. The court argued that they would completely objectify themselves and thereby renounce their own dignity. That they could not, since it is inalienable. The consequence is that this kind of objectification of humans is to be categorically forbidden (BVerwGE 64, 274 ff.).

Answer 2

You have a point there. This is a comparison of such problem against another similar one, which has evolved more in order to draw some conclusions.

Consider that all systems of regulation (laws, morals, ethics, religion, gang rules, etc.) have the purpose of improving the survival probabilities of the group. Rules, including law, are commonly said to help keeping peace, establishing standards, maintaining order, resolving disputes, protecting liberties and rights, improving social interaction, etc., but those are just intermediary expressions of our last goal: survival. Why do we want order? Why do we want peace and not a civil war? Because as members, we want the group to continue existing and perhaps, growing.

Upon such consideration, human's tendency to survival along history has probably embedded into the kollektives Unbewusstes the notion that living is not a right but an obligation. That's why we stigmatize all things related to death: crime, suicide, illness.

It is important to remark at this point that the option is subjective (some might say that living is an obligation due to religion, others might say that we should promote and assist massive suicidal events in order to reduce world population, etc.). So, let's just consider what is happening around the globe.

Compulsory voting is a similar case, which has evolved for better in most countries. A consequence of it is that people's freedom of speech is violated, forbidding the freedom of not to speech, and moreover converting such freedom into an obligation of speech. A handicapped or sick person, who might incur into risks and large economic expenses due to the obligation to go voting, are just excluded from the decision. They are forced to do so, risking fines and even prison. Such obligation clearly violates the main goal of law.

Compulsory voting has advantages (more people gets better informed in political matters)[1]. And in order to profit of such advantages, excluded people would be considered and provided of resources and the proper conditions to vote. Only in such case, the right might be turned into an obligation. But apparently, in case of voting that's not the common case. AFAIK the tendency is to avoid the obligation and keep the right.

In case of euthanasia, the law, in practice, treats the right to live as an obligation to live, a sort of compulsory survival. The main argument is not a prohibition of suicide per se (suicide tends to be decriminalized) [2], but mostly the issues related to assisting the suicidal (helping a suicidal might be consider to be murder). Decisions are largely influenced by social audiences and political profit. E.g. when a voters majority is religious, chances are for suicide to be forbidden.

Statistics regarding legislation around the world, perhaps explained by the previous discussion of both situations, compulsory vote, and compulsory survival, show that the tendency is to respect the right and avoid turning it into an obligation.

[1] https://www.idea.int/data-tools/data/voter-turnout/compulsory-voting

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_legislation

Answer 3

To clarify the context of your question, let's first make a distinction between euthanasia and assisted suicide (the later can be seen as part of the former, but let's try to be clear)

Assisted suicide consists in someone requiring another person, usually a medical professional, to end their life. The person dying consents freely to their death, and therefore their right to live can't be considered violated. As mentioned in the comments, the right to live is not an obligation to live, just like my right to vote for party X is not an obligation to vote for party X.

Euthanasia, on the other hand, does not always presuppose the consent of the subject. They could be in a comma, or unable to give informed consent because of disabilities or trauma. Assuming the consent was not given in writing beforehand, here the decision of the executant, or the person legally responsible for the subject like a next of kin, clearly violates the right of the subject to live. If the procedure is legal, the subject's right to live was limited at the publication of the law, and it is a political science issue to determine if they gave this right up (democracy) or were stripped of it (dictature).

The answer to your question depends on the concept or rights considered. For example some people believe God or Nature gives people rights they can't by themselves decide to give up. It would be interesting if someone supporting this view could publish an answer.

I am personnaly of the more materialist approach, it is to say that a person's right are defined by the laws applied in their country. People in North Korea might have the desire, or prerogative to speak their mind freely, but they don't have the right (of course, that does not mean we can't be sympathetic to their predicament and think they are justified in wanting this right. It is simply a fact that they don't have it).This also implies that any right is only worth the social structures that guarantee its use (the right to vote is of little use if the counting process is rigged).

In that case, the right to live is practically defined by the outlawing of murder and manslaughter, along with a police force that can enforce the law. If the law includes dispositions for assisted suicide then someone can freely renounce their right to live.

Yet, even in the materialist approach there exist what is called inalienable rights, which are rights a citizen can't renounce even if they want to. For example in my country, not only is slavery illegal, but as a citizen I can't choose to wave this right away by selling myself.Even if I were to sign a contract stating "I hereby sell myself to Mr. B in exchange of $1000000 to my kids, and accept any harsh treatment he will see fit in the future", if would not be valid or bounding, and any harsh treatment by Mr B would remain punishable under the law.

So under this view it could be said that in countries where assisted suicide is not explicitly authorized, or countries were unassisted suicide is forbidden (if any), people can't renounce their right to live.

Answer 4

Is it valid to generally assume that every right can be renounced and to use this as a premise?

Logically, yes. The main difference between an obligation an a right is that an obligation implies coercion (which might be the pop justification: "yes, you have the right, and better yet, you have the obligation!"). It is completely illogical to coerce for rights. As soon as it implies coercion, it ends being a right. A right implies the option to choose.

From a logical standpoint, it is not the right that allows coercion. It is the obligation that is said to be a right, which is wrong. This is the fallacy:

In this case, the obligation of living is falsely justified with the human right to life.