What do we mean by inalienable human rights? Is legislation the basis for those rights?

These lectures explore the concept of human nature and how it is the basis for natural law and natural rights philosophy.

Calling upon such diverse resources as the American Declaration of Independence, the Greek tragedy Antigone, Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, and the stirring letter of Martin Luther King from Birmingham Jail, this course considers the argument that a higher law can be invoked to challenge written legislation.

It looks at the history of natural law as the basis for the claim that acts such as slavery, torture, and blackmail are wrong because they violate the rights to which human beings, by their very nature, are entitled.