The word exist has an everyday meaning, a quotidian meaning. But exist also has a
special and precise meaning, especially when the discussion has to do with the ontology
of rights.  Thomas Aquinas had a natural law view of right; and the natural rights view of
rights is a very important philosophical and juridical tradition.  On the other hand, Jean
Jacques Rousseau held that rights rest on convention and consent. These are two
distinctively different ontologies of rights.  Some will give expression to rights as a kind of
platonic and eternal endowment. Others will give expression to rights as a kind of historical
and contingent process.

The specialized meaning of exist is "to stand out". By specialized meaning, I mean the
philosophical and ontological meaning of a word.  When one asserts that rights exist
even before they are recognized, even before they are enjoyed, then the discussion
promptly becomes a discussion of the etiology and ontology of rights, and this will involve
a discussion of the etymology of the word exist. The etymon of a word is important if we
are to understand the philosophical history of a word's usage.





Solipsism can neither be proved nor disproved, and therefore, there is some truth to
solipsism.  There is a long history of ontology in the long story of philosophy. Cartesian
scepticism is a very significant moment in the long history of philosophical ontology.
George Berkeley may have given expression to a kind of ontology that would allow for
rights to be eternal, even if they are not always recognized or enjoyed. In Berkeley's
scheme, an undiscovered planet exists because it stands out in the mind of God even
before it ever came to exist in the minds of human beings.  And so, to employ Berkeley's
system, or logic, one could say that an undiscovered or unrecognized right exists,
because such a right stands out in the mind of God, before such a right comes to
exist in the minds of human beings.





"Knowledge is the only elegance."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson