Chapter Five - The Neapolitan School of Natural Law and the Historical Origins of the Rights of Man

Summary

After the general idea of virtue, I know no higher principle than that of right; or rather these two ideas are united in one. The idea of right is simply that of virtue introduced into the political world. It was the idea of right which enabled men to define anarchy and tyranny; and which taught them how to be independent without arrogance and to obey without servility. The man who submits to violence is debased by his compliance; but when he submits to that right of authority which he acknowledges in a fellow-creature, he rises in some measure above the person who gives the command. There are no great men without virtue; and there are no great nations – it may almost be added, there would be no society – without respect for right; for what is a union of rational and intelligent beings who are held together only by the bond of force?

A. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835)

The central place occupied by human rights in Filangieri's constitutional and political thought certainly represents a fundamental vantage point from which to approach the Scienza della legislazione. Though largely unexplored by scholars, this was the avenue of interpretation Filangieri himself gave, with reference to the American colonists’ exercise of their right to resist and thus the legitimacy of their revolution, when explaining his comprehensive thoughts on the matter, underlining the amplitude and absolute importance of the questions involved:

Are colonials perhaps not members of society like the inhabitants of the metropoles are? Are they perhaps not sons of the same mother, brothers of the same family, citizens of the same fatherland, subjects of the same empire? Should they perhaps not have common rights and prerogatives, and among these rights is perhaps that of property and the liberty of disposing of that which is theirs not the most precious one? […]