looking for

Natural Law and Natural rights: the autonomous of individual


Natural Law theory led to natural rights theory, and the chief exponent of that theory is John Locke. John Locke argued that “all individuals were endowed by nature with the inherent rights to life, liberty and property which were their own and could not be removed or abrogated by state”. From the Locke’s point of view of natural rights he emphasized on two areas-
 Firstly, the individual is an autonomous being capable of exercising choice and
Secondly, the legitimacy of government depend not only the will of people but also upon the willingness and ability to protect those individuals natural rights.
Rousseau, on the other hand, declared that natural law conferred in alienable sovereignty on the citizens of the state as a whole. Thus, whatever rights were derived from natural law dwelt within the people as a collectivity and could be identified by reference to the general will.
Kant theory based on non-empirical natural law and natural rights tradition suggested that the absolute of moral good, which is identifiable in the exercise of virtuous, will by all rational individuals, to which he calls ‘Categorical imperative’. This operated at three levels:

First, it specifies universal acts of duty on all individuals;
          Second, it provides systematic rules for deterring these duties, and
          Finally, it specifies the relationship between freedom and duties.