This book provides a comprehensive introduction to contemporary thought about rights. It examines what it is to have a right and what is distinctive about political moralities that give a fundamental place to rights. The varied grounds and implications of claiming rights to liberties, socio-economic rights and democratic rights are considered and the book concludes with an examination of the theoretical objections and the practical difficulties that proponents of rights have to confront.
Author(s): Peter Jones
Series: Issues in Political Theory
Publisher: Macmillan
Year: 1994
Language: English
Pages: x,258p
City: Basingstoke
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Forms of Right
Claim-rights
Liberty-rights
Powers
Immunities
2 Benefits, Choices and Titles
Rights as benefits
Rights as choices
Rights as titles
Rights and sanctions
3 The Morality of Rights
Moral rights
Rights and utility
Rights-based theories
Rights and goal-based theories
Social goals and goal-based rights
Who or what has rights?
4 Natural Rights and Human Rights
Natural rights
Human rights
The content of human rights
Human rights and the rights of citizens
Scepticism about human rights
Human rights and ideal rights
5 Justifying Human Rights
Natural law and human rights
Self-evidence
Human rights and human worth
Rights and moral agency
Contract and rights
Self-ownership
Rights and goods
Consequentialism and rights
Monist and pluralist justifications
6 Freedom, Autonomy and Rights
The right to personal liberty
Autonomy
Kantian conceptions of autonomy
Autonomy and human well-being
Neutralism and perfectionism
Rights to specific freedoms
How much freedom?
Rights and obstacles to freedom
7 Socioeconomic Rights
Needs and rights
Human needs and human rights
Human rights or citizens' rights?
Rights and distributive justice
8 Democracy, Groups and Rights
Democratic and non-democratic rights
Three other links
Is there a right to democracy?
Group rights
Popular sovereignty and democratic rights
9 Some Doubts and Difficulties
The status of rights
Conditional rights
Prima facie rights
Rights versus rights
Are there absolute rights?
A right to do wrong?
The limits of a morality of rights
Individualism, egoism and community
Human rights and cultural diversity
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Bibliography
Index
