(The Right to Life has always been misunderstood)
Life is a set of moments that every Human must have the Right to live.
"On one hand, there's 'being alive', and on the other hand, there's 'living one's life'. The question is : which of these two realities is truly meaningful to us?"
There is this fundamental right among all others: the Right to Life. We have always thought we knew how to write this right, believing its purpose was to protect humans from death. However, this page presents what needs to be understood about this Right.
The notion of "life" indeed has two distinct meanings, and the question is: which one should define the Right to Life? The following page argues that the Right to Life has always been ill-defined:
"Wanting someone to live his/her life is to recognise his or her Right to live this life"
This website is about the Will expressed for another person to be here tomorrow and live the moment of life that is yet to come. This moment of life can be very diverse and suggests all the moments of life. Therefore, the question can be broader and not limited to a single moment. It can be asked :
"Do you want this girl to live all her moments of life?"
"Do you want this girl to live her life?"
The answer, once again, is self-evident:
"I certainly do!"
For this purpose, so that she can live her life, she is then recognised as having the Right to live her life!
A much broader Right than the one mentioned earlier is thus identified. This Right encompasses all the Rights to be here tomorrow and to live the moment of life to come. This Right corresponds to the Right to live all the moments of a life or the Right to live one’s life. Therefore, it can be qualified as the 'Right to Life', a designation that aligns with the classic procedure for naming a right: the right to enjoy a benefit, referred to as the 'right to that benefit'.
At the present moment (at t0), this child should be acknowledged as having the Right to live all the moments of his life.
"The notion of "life" in the Right to Life is currently ill-defined"
The Right to live one's life is validated by everyone. Therefore, it is natural to think that this identified Right corresponds to the Right to Life mentioned in the texts on fundamental Rights (such as the European Convention of the Human Rights). However, this is not the case. The current interpretation – by both judges and legislators – of the Right to life does not correspond to the identified right to life.
Currently, the Right to Life admitted does not protect the enjoyment of that entirety which is spread out over time and commonly referred to as "life". Let us explain:
Professor Bertrand Mathieu - a specialist in fundamental rights - in his publication on the Right to Life (Council of Europe Publishing, 2005) writes that this right "is conceived to protect this biological process that conditions the human existence".
This professor reminds us that a right « is conceived to protect », then presents the element protected by this Right, the object of this Right, which is this « biological process which conditions the human existence ». This biological process refers to the various biological activities occurring within our organism (cell development, cell multiplication, cell regeneration, functioning of the heart, lungs and other organs, etc.). It is through this biological process that we exist, day after day. When this biological life ceases to function, we die. The current right to life therefore protects this reality, the biological life, the fact for every Human to be biologically alive, to remain alive.
The "life" protected by this right is therefore different from the one mentioned above. Two definitions of "life" are facing each other. These two definitions, while distinct, are interconnected and to clearly differentiate them, can be used together in the same sentence. The following words are commonly used:
"As long as one is alive, one can live one's life"
"To be alive", as has been said, refers to the biological reality. "To live one's life" refers to a more substantial reality and designates the fact of doing this and doing that, of coming and going, of eating, of working, of travelling, of rejoicing, of having moments of pleasure and sharing, moments of joy, as well as moments of pain and tears, all these moments that characterise... a life. Next to the biological definition, there is the more common definition that corresponds to the life that, by the simple fact of being alive, one lives day after day.
"For as long as one is alive, one can live one's life"; the biological life allows one to enjoy life in its most substantial form. The biological life is the cause, while the other life is the consequence. And actually, it is the cause that is protected in the name of the Right to Life. The current object of this right is the biological reality—the fact of being alive. Conversely, the identified Right to life protects the consequence—the fact for the Humans to live their own lives.
Two notions of "life" face each other, two Rights to life face each other, and inevitably a question arises: which of these two Rights should be retained? Which one should correspond to the right recognised for everyone by all these international texts on Human Rights?
Biological life / to be alive.
Substantial life / to live his or her own's life.
Biological life enables the Human to live his/her life in its substantive form. Because the heart of this boy is beating, he can run in this stadium. However, which life do we truly want to defend? Which life do we really want to protect?
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"A right shall not be defined on the basis of the act it prohibits, but on the basis of the benefit it protects"
# A "right" that theoretically is not a right.
Currently, the Right to Life protects this "biological process" that is applied to Humans. But, what defines a Right? What is the function of a Right? How should a Right be defined?
In the garden that is the world, Humanity enjoys a multitude of benefits. Recognising the value of these benefits, it has been determined that Humans should be afforded the protection to enjoy them. This protection, granted to Humans to ensure their enjoyment of these benefits, is what we call a Right. For instance, recognizing the value of physical integrity, we have established the Right to physical integrity. Similarly, recognizing the value of freedoms such as freedom of movement and expression, we have established the Rights to these fundamental freedoms. In essence, a Right is characterised - defined - by its function of protecting the enjoyment of a specific benefit.
A right arises from the existence of a benefit that requires protection. However, what about biological life? Does it correspond to a benefit whose enjoyment should be protected? While being biologically alive enables us to live our lives, it is not inherently a benefit to be enjoyement. The idea can be illustrated by the analogy of a vase containing water. Without the vase, the water would be scattered and no one would be able to drink it. The vase enables us to enjoy the water, but the vase itself is not the benefit we enjoy. The benefit is the water, and the vase is valuable only because of the water it contains. Similarly, being alive is like the vase: it enables us to enjoy the life we live daily, but the state of being alive is not a benefit in itself. Biological life is merely the container, not the content. Legally, it is the content that holds value. Since the fact of being biologically alive does not correspond to the element on which a Right is formed, there should be no "right to be alive".
Currently, the Right to Life is defined in a way that is incompatible with the definition of a right. Upon examining the origins of rights, the conclusion is therefore the following: the current Right to Life is a mistaken right, a 'right' that should not be acknowledged.
"Because the Human is biologically alive, he can live his own life"; this is the cause and this is the consequence. We have protected the cause (the fact that Humans remain alive) in order to achieve the consequence (so that they can live their lives). However, only the consequence - since it is where enjoyment lies - can be the object of a right. The analysis should therefore have been conducted in the opposite direction. Instead, we should have protected the consequence and from this protection would have followed the obligation to preserve the cause (because Humans have lives to live, they must remain alive)."
Remaining alive means not being killed. The right recognised for Humans to remain alive corresponds to the right to not be killed. However, a right should not be defined by the act it prohibits. It is not a 'right not to be subjected to an act' that should enable the enjoyment of a benefit; rather, it is the right to enjoy a benefit that should result in not being subjected to an act. Because humans have a right to water, the vase must not be broken.
"Is it the right to remain alive that should enable Humans to live their lives ? Or, is it the Human Right to live his/her life that should keep Humans alive?"
The data are linked by a cause-and-consequence relationship : Being alive (cause) > Living one's life (consequence). A question then arises: should the cause or the consequence be protected by the law?
Recognition of the Human right to remain alive (right to the cause)
> so that
the Human can live his/her life (to achieve the consequence).
Recognition of the Human Right to live his/her own life (right to consequence)
> which results in
keeping the Human alive (preservation of the cause).
In order to determine which of these two elements (the cause or the consequence) should be protected by the law, and therefore, in which direction the analysis should proceed, it is necessary to ask which of these two elements holds greater value in our eyes.
It should also be noted that a law that fails to protect individuals in their enjoyment of a benefit is a law that fails to sanction the harm done to individuals in their enjoyment of that benefit.
Isn't it true that an act is considered condemnable because it deprives its victim of the enjoyment of a benefit? Why, for example, are theft and physical assault condemnable? Theft is condemnable because it deprives its victims of the enjoyment of their property, and physical assault is condemnable because it causes physical and psychological harm to its victims, thus infringing upon their ability to enjoy their physical and psychological well-being. Similarly, isn't it when government decisions deprive citizens of the enjoyment of certain freedoms that they are contested and therefore considered condemnable? The gravity of an act, and the reason why it is considered condemnable, lies in the consequences of the act, particularly in the deprivation of enjoyment that it causes.
Since the current Right to Life does not protect a Human in his enjoyment of a benefit, it is not erroneous to conclude that this Right does not sanction the acts prohibited in its name for their condemnable outcome. The famous act sanctioned based on this Right is homicide. Therefore, the author of a homicide would not currently be condemned for what he/she has committed as condemnable! On the path of Knowledge, the discoveries to be made are always much more surprising than one can imagine!
So let us examine this insane deduction more closely.
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# Homicide is not currently sanctioned for the harm it inflicts on others:
"Isn't it because I acknowledge someone else's Right to live his/her life that I refuse to kill him/her?"
It all comes down to this question:
"Why is it grave and condemnable to kill someone?"
The answer to this question is obvious:
"It is serious to kill someone because it deprives that person of living his/her life!"
Homicide is the act of killing someone (Homo/Human -cidere/kill). Homicide is therefore reprehensible because it deprives someone of living his or her life.
This is why committing a homicide is considered condemnable by everyone, because it deprives someone of the opportunity to live his/her life. However, the current Right to Life does not sanction the act of homicide for this reason. Homicide is presently punished not because it deprives someone of living his/her life, but because it ends someone's life, because it kills someone. Currently, under the Right to Life, it is the act itself that is punished, not the consequences of the act. Therefore, the perpetrators of a homicide are not currently condemned for the reprehensible harm they have caused.
It is today understood that the reason why intentional homicide and unintentional homicide are currently sanctioned is not a valid one! It's easy to see why this revelation is quite extraordinary.
Why is killing someone considered wrong? The answer is self-evident. In this answer lies a Human Right. However, when someone is killed, it is not in the name of this Right that Justice will deliver its verdict! Quite astonishing, isn't it? Whoever lifts the curtain is often surprised by what's behind it!
"Homicide is not currently sanctioned for what it commits that is condemnable"
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The question that arises is: How can we explain this law that fails to sanction homicide due to the condemnable fact?
It might be argued that legal science should know why homicide is condemnable, but for practical reasons, it has chosen to penalize the act rather than the consequences, arguing that the two are linked and that without the act, the consequences cannot occur. For example, it's widely known that theft harms people by depriving them of the enjoyment of their property. Isn't this also the case with the act of homicide? It would seem reasonable to think so. However, it remains strange that this consequence of homicide is not explicitly written in any law, court decision, or legal document. The juridical thought seems not to know how homicide harms its victim!
Homicide is considered the most reprehensible of acts. But can we consider an act highly reprehensible without stating why it is so? If this cross placed on a life to be lived is not the reason considered, another reason must be considered instead. The question then becomes more specific: Why does legal science consider homicide a condemnable act? One doesn't need to conduct extensive research to identify the reason legal science has settled on. A term frequently appears in writings about homicide, a term that is supposed to evoke all the drama of this act: "death". Currently, according to legal science, the tragedy of homicide lies in the fact of causing the death of another person!
The current analysis of homicide is therefore very limited. It focuses on the visible reality, on the death (a person falling to the ground, his heart stopping, his breath being cut off, etc.). It fails to perceive the hidden reality, the reality behind this death: all this existence, all this life, which, following this death, will never occur.
"The drama of a homicide does not lie in the death itself ; a reality that is not understood by legal science"
"Death", is a terrifying word. Death, is an imposing reality. From what is apparent, death is indeed not very joyful: a person is alive and suddenly collapses, falls to the ground, and ceases to move. All that remains is an inert, motionless, and pale body on the side of the road. This lifeless body has something terrifying about it. It evokes a certain emotion, a certain horror within us, and it is natural that the legislator has seen in death the tragedy that results from homicide. Because everything stops with death, the law's author stopped at death; that's where he went wrong.
If this livid and lifeless body lying on the ground is indeed striking and mournful, legal science has failed to perceive that the harm done was to be found elsewhere than in this sinister scene before its eyes. It has failed to perceive that the drama of death does not reside in death itself. It has failed to perceive that death, by itself, lacks meaning unless accompanied by its sinister consequences. It has failed to perceive that the gravity of the homicide lies not in what we see of the act - a person dying - but rather in what, because of the act, will no longer be seen: a person living. It has failed to perceive that the true victim of a homicide is not the person who is killed by the act, but rather the person who, due to this act, will not be there tomorrow, living his/her life.
Why does a mother mourn the death of her child? Why does she cry? She doesn't truly lament the fact that her child has died, but rather the fact that, having died, he is not here, in the aftermath of this act, living his life at her side.
The tragedy of this deceased child on the side of the road lies in the fact that, after the incident, she does not come to the park to play.
Oculos habent et non videbunt (We have eyes, but do not see).
The problem was that death acted like a scarecrow. In our minds, it encompassed all the necessary horror to define the tragedy of a homicide. No further examination seemed necessary. With death as the harmful outcome, the legislator could then write the criminalisation of this act, without delving any deeper. The truly condemnable element remained in the shadow of their understanding, and presently, a mother weeps over the absence of her child, victim of a homicide yesterday, but this absence, which brings her to tears, will not be the reason for which Justice condemns the perpetrator of the homicide. Justice must be served with fairness, but Justice has failed to comprehend. Someone has been killed, Themis trembles, without truly grasping the reasons why.
The tragedy of yesterday's act resides in this swing, which, after the incident, remains motionless, with no one on it. The true tragedy of the act lies in the absence of movement, in the extinguished life that should be joyfully expressed on this swing. The violated Right must strive to recognise and convey this reality.
#
The current legal system states that it is wrong to kill someone because it involves killing someone. Therefore, it asserts that committing a homicide is wrong because it is... committing a homicide. The act is currently punished for what it is, and here is the issue because the gravity of the act does not lie in the act itself. Our legal experts, all those individuals wielding the pen of justice, must come to terms with this reality!
To achieve this goal, they will have to go beyond what death shows, to surpass the mere visible and sensory outcome of homicide. To compel them to incorporate this underlying reason – concealed within each of us, source of our tears, but yet absent from legal texts –, it will be necessary to pose to them this crucial question, a question they have never truly pondered, a question they believed they already knew the answer: "Why is it serious to kill someone?". Everything lies within this question. A question that could even take a more explicit form: "With a child having met his/her demise, what has ceased to be for him/her? What will he/she no longer be able to accomplish?".
These are the questions to pose to our jurists, judges, legislators and others, in order to enable them to grasp, with the depth of their intellect and the tip of their pen, the fundamental Right upon which homicide must be sanctioned and its perpetrator condemned.
What legal provisions must be taken today?
Currently, the text incriminating homicide (Articles 221-1 and 221-6 of the french Penal Code/ "to give death/ to cause death") only focuses on the act (giving death to someone) and fails to highlight the result of the act, the condemnable fact (depriving someone of living his/her life). However, a conviction should be pronounced because of a condemnable fact. In order for Justice to convict based on a condemnable fact, the legal text upon which the conviction relies must explicitly reference that condemnable fact. The text should therefore encompass the consequences of the act rather than solely focusing on the act itself. Legislation regarding homicide must be revised to incorporate this critical fact that renders homicide a condemnable act.
This revised incrimination would take the following form: "Any act that results in depriving another person of living his/her life constitutes the offense of attacking another person's life and is punishable by...". Homicide would thus be one of the acts constituting this offence.
The reformulation that emphasizes the consequences of the act should be adopted promptly. Indeed, the same act can have different consequences, and different acts can lead to the same consequences. In the first scenario, should we condemn when there is no condemnable fact? Conversely, in the second scenario, should we fail to condemn when there is a condemnable fact? Certainly not! As mentioned earlier, the law must be written with precision in its duty to uphold Justice.
"Criminalisation should focus on the life that homicide deprives a person of living, rather than solely on the act of causing death itself."
> Recognition of the right of every Human to not be killed, to stay alive.
> Criminalisation of any act that involves killing someone (homicide is this act).
"Any act consisting in killing someone ; the act of killing someone" : the incriminated act is clearly defined in the text of the criminalisation.
The criminalisation focuses on the act itself / The criminalisation stemming from the Right to Life is applied when the act of homicide is identified.
> Recognition of the Right of every Human to live his or her own life.
> Criminalilsation of any act involves depriving someone of living his or her life (homicide is one of these acts).
"Any act that results in depriving someone of living his/her life" : the criminalised act is not precisely defined by the incriminating text.
The criminalisation does not take into account the act/ The implementation of the criminalisation arising from the Right to life is not dependent on the characterisation of a homicide.
"Who is granted the Right to live his/her life?"
Currently, the Right to Life is understood as the "right to be alive".
When facing a little girl, who is alive? The answer: this little girl standing before us. When facing a little girl, who is therefore recognised as having the right to be alive? The answer: this little girl standing before us.
The fact of being alive is a fixed fact. At any given moment, this fact pertains to the Human who currently exists. Consequently, at any given moment, the right to this fact applies solely to the Human who exists at that moment.
With such an understanding of the Right to Life, which pertains to a fixed fact, it was impossible to transcend the present moment and comprehend that the Human to come must also be legally acknowledged.
At the present moment (at t0), the beneficiary of the current Right to Life is the Human who exists at that moment.
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"To recognise the Human Right to this entirety extending into time is to recognise the Human extending into time the Right to this entirety"
The newly identified Right to Life corresponds to the Right to exist in the future and to live all the moments of life to come.
The question is: when facing a girl, who is destined to be in the future and to live all the moments of her life? (Note that we're not asking "who is?" but "who is destined?"). Answer: This girl. More precisely: The one she is destined to become throughout the life she has yet to live.
To protect the Human destined to live this entirety that stretches across time is to protect the Human who, in his/her enjoyment of this entirety, is destined to be throughout time.
With this new understanding of the Right to Life comes a new understanding of who is entitled to that Right. As this redefined Right has a broader scope than its predecessor, so too does its beneficiary.
The newly identified Right to Life is not limited to a specific moment, but extends from that moment to the moments yet to come. And so does its beneficiary.
We needed a deeper understanding of the Right to Life, and from this understanding, a new comprehension of the Human to be protected in its name had to emerge.
A young woman is passing by the square, as usual, and at this moment, in the name of the Right to Life, the person to be protected is the one who would be unable to pass by this square tomorrow if this young woman were killed right now.
At the present moment (at t0), the beneficiary of the new Right to Life is the Human who, at this moment, is destined to exist throughout his/her life.
Life is an unknown yet to come, and even though we know nothing about it, even though it has not yet been realised, more so because we know nothing about it, we say it must be defended and protected.
The Human who is destined to live this life is also an unknown yet to come, and even though we know nothing about him/her, even though he/she is not yet real, we then say he/she must also be protected and defended.
In various cases, the application of this Right depends on the interpretation of this term;
whereas it was this other term that needed to be understood in order to determine whether, in these cases, this Right was applicable.
"It was necessary to understand which life should be protected in the name of the Right to Life in order to comprehend which individual is to be protected in the name of this Right"
As a final assessment, to validate the identified Right to Life in terms of its object and its beneficiary, it is proposed once again to engage human Sensitivity.
For each of the two opposing Rights to Life, this questioning can be articulated in two different ways: either by questioning the reason why one wishes to protect, or by questioning the reason why one wishes to condemn.
The answers to both questions are apparent.
In order to clearly convey to the reader the true Right to Life and its rightful beneficiary, two questions are posed:
Question on what/who is to be protected in the name of this Right:
Who should be protected in the name of the Right to Life?
Or
?
A question about why/for whom there is condemnation in the name of this Right:
What infringement should be condemned in the name of the right to life?
Or
?
There is the vase and there is the sword, and the sword protects the vase not for the vase itself, but for the water it contains, because it's the water that is precious.
- The Right to Life is currently poorly defined because it sanctions homicide based on what it is and not on its consequences. Nevertheless, without a cause, there is no consequence. So, theoretically, if there is an error, what does this error truly matter in practice?
- Except that you know that the same consequence can result from different causes.
