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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Dr. Mortimer J. Adler's 

Six Great Ideas

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Why are we entitled to a limited freedom to do as we wish? 
Why do we have a right to it? The second question is: Why are 
we entitled to political liberty? Who has a right to it—every 
human being or only some? 

Answering these questions requires us to discover the basis 
of entitlements that take the form of natural rights—rights we 
can demand that a just society should secure for us because 
they are rights inherent in our human nature, unalienable in 
the sense that a legal deprivation of them must be justified by 
special considerations. 

Our understanding of the things that are really good for a 
human being because they fulfill needs that are inherent in 
human nature provides us with the basis we are looking for. 

We are under the moral obligation to pursue happiness, 
which means trying to make good human lives for ourselves by 
seeking whatever, corresponding to our natural needs, is really 
good for us. We have a right to whatever we need to lead good 
human lives. 

Our natural needs provide the basis not only for distinguish- 
ing between real and merely apparent goods, but also for dis- 
tinguishing between the real goods to which we have a natural 
right and the apparent goods to which we do not have a 
natural right, but to the acquirement of which we may be priv- 
ileged on condition that our seeking them does not interfere 
with anyone else's acquirement of real goods. 

Real goods are those to which we have a natural right, not 
merely a privileged possession. We cannot fulfill our moral ob- 
ligation to pursue happiness by making a good life for our- 
selves unless we can make a rightful claim upon society to 
confer on us the real goods that we need for a good life. Some 
of these are not entirely within our own power to acquire, be- 
cause they are, in part at least, goods of fortune, bestowed by 
beneficent external circumstances. 

Thomas Jefferson's too brief and, therefore, too elliptical 
statement of this truth in the Declaration of Independence 
yields its full significance only when rephrased and expanded. 
We are endowed with certain unalienable rights, he wrote, and 
we are all equally endowed with them because we are by nature 
equal. Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- 
ness, which are secured only by just governments and just 
laws. 

The unalienable and natural right to life consists in our enti- 
tlement to all the economic goods that we need to sustain life, 
for without life we cannot live well. Beyond the economic goods 
indispensable to sustaining life itself are economic goods that 
we need to live well, above the level of mere subsistence, such 
as ample time for the pursuits of leisure. 

Other things that we need to live well, not mentioned in the 
Declaration, are health and knowledge. We need them as much 
as we need a moderate possession of wealth in the form of 
economic goods, not just to live but to live well. To some extent 
these goods are within our power to obtain for ourselves; but
to the extent that they are not entirely within our power to 
obtain, we have a right to the help that organized society can 
provide for obtaining them. That help comes in the form of 
whatever may be instrumental in obtaining them, such as 
schooling in the case of knowledge and a healthful environment 
in the case of health.