How does natural rights relate to enlightenment thinking?

Answer 1

The Age of Enlightenment was obsessed with man's capacity for reason, as such it used Aristotle's definition of human's as rational beings. Having defined human beings according to this one mental capacity, Enlightenment thinkers reasoned that each individual's reason is exactly the same (or else it would not be reason). One person's reason should not impinge upon the reason of others. This is where the idea of natural rights came from, the equality of reason. However, they did not think that all men were as equally capable of reason, and therefore, from the beginning of the idea of natural rights came conditions upon which these natural and inalienable rights would be relinquished. Criminality became codified as a lack of reason, empires justified their expansion at the expense of native peoples because these people had not sufficiently developed thier reasoning capacities. Further, the expansion of the empires would spread reason to these "backwards people". Only then would they have these so-called natural rights. Natural rights are a direct result of the tyranny of elitist thinkers obsessed with reason, and really only served to limit the powers of Divine right rulers, and not to grant such rights to the unwashed masses.