Right without Duty

A right without duty is empty. Every right presupposes a responsibility that arises not from external compulsion but from inner insight. The deepest form of this responsibility is self-commitment. It emerges where a person recognizes their own dignity—not as a socially assigned quality but as a fact of their unearned but real existence.

This self-commitment is not a moral obligation in the sense of an external norm but an act of freedom: a conscious, linguistically expressible “yes” to one’s own existence. In this sense, the oath—as a performative speech act—is the original form of any normative setting. It fills what Hans Kelsen described as the “empty basic norm.” The basic norm of law remains empty until it is concretized through an act of commitment. However, this act cannot be imposed externally. It must be spoken—by an “I” that becomes aware of its own dignity.

John Searle’s speech act theory provides the conceptual framework for this: A “I commit myself” changes the status of reality. It creates a new social reality—a commitment that did not exist before. In this way, being transforms into ought. And this ought is not external but self-given. It is an expression of an inner order derived from the fact of existence.

From this follows: There is a right to self-commitment—a natural right that stems from human dignity. However, this right is not always institutionally recognized. It is not guaranteed. It is not granted. And yet, it exists. It is the right to give meaning to one’s own life—through a spoken, conscious, affirmed “I will.”

Thus, at the beginning of law, there is not the norm, not the state, not society—but the “I,” which commits itself. And in this act lies the first and deepest right: the right to commit oneself—out of respect for one’s own existence.