Revisiting the Interest Theory of Rights: Discussion of The Morality of Freedom

Abstract

Rights play a central role in contemporary moral and political discourse. And yet despite the ubiquity of rights claims, considerable theoretical disagreement remains regarding the nature of rights. What exactly does it mean to say that someone has a right? In The Morality of Freedom and related work, Joseph Raz articulates what has become one of the most prominent answers to this question. On Raz’s interest theory of rights, “‘X has a right’ if and only if X can have rights, and, other things being equal, an aspect of X’s well-being (his interest) is a sufficient reason for holding some other person(s) to be under a duty” (p. 166).1 To this it has been objected that having an interest that grounds a duty is neither necessary nor sufficient for having a right. Although I am skeptical about the interest theory of rights, I am going to argue that this objection, at least as it is often pressed, is not completely successful. And in doing so I point toward questions to which both critics and proponents of the theory might productively shift their focus.