Ch 7: The Ethics of Rights

Contemporary Theories

Rights: Initial Distinctions

• Rights holders: permission to act, an entitlement• Rights observers: duty or obligation– Negative – refrain from interfering with rights

holder’s exercise of the right (freedom of speech)– Positive – assist in the successful exercise of the right

(housing, education, health care)• Responsibility on the part of the rights holder

about how to exercise the right – right limited by harm to others.

Classifications of Strength

• Absolute rights - cannot be overriden by other types of considerations that do not involve rights – (not to be tortured?)

• Prima Facie rights – at first glance it appears applicable but may be outweighed by considerations

Justification of Rights

• Self-evidence: seem obvious but usually an unhelpful category in settling disputes.

• Divine foundations: natural rights founded in God. A source of claim against the crown and part of the deep structure of the world. Not viable for nontheists and no language of rights in religious traditions.

• Natural law: natural order is fundamentally good (created by God). No basis again for nontheists.

• Human nature: characteristics essential to humans confer rights

Human Nature and Human Rights

Rights conferring properties of humans include• The fact of being born a human being• Rationality, the ability to think• Autonomy, the ability to make free choices• Sentience, the ability to feel and suffer• The ability to be a “self” or person• The ability to have projects and plans

Who has rights?

• Future generations: we think of rights belonging only to existing individuals.

• Animals: do they have rights conferring properties? Sentience, interests, free will, rationality? What rights do animals have?

What rights do we have?Negative Rights:• Liberty: political movements• Life: no one entitled to kill us: capital punishment, abortion,

war, animal rights to life, end of life• Property: • Equality: civil rights Positive Rights• Rights to well-well being: physical security, employment,

goods necessary for subsistence.• Social contract rights: belonging to particular societies at

particular times – rights of persons with disabilities,

The Limits of Rights Talk

• Nonsense on stilts – rights are moral fictions embedded in particular societies, not universal. Are rights basic or just useful for society and result of decisions about how society will be governed.

• Rights emphasize isolated autonomy• Liberty – each person as an island• Privacy • Exclusive emphasis on rights distorts total vision of

moral life.

Role of Rights in Moral Life

• Minimum conditions for the flourishing of a moral community.

• Check against possible abuses of human dignity – the minimum daily requirement in the nutrition metaphor.

• One of several standards of value. What we minimally owe one another.