The Curious Persistence of Rights Talk in the "Age of Interpretation"

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is, not to describe the conception of rights espoused by any particular social group, but to explore the intellectual basis or lack of it for rights consciousness per se. Other contributors to the collection have made abundantly clear the proclivity of Americans to talk in terms of rights. What may not yet be clear is that such talk implies something highly controversial: the existence of an objective moral order accessible to reason. To be conscious of a right is at least tacitly to lay claim to a kind of knowledge that is not merely personal and subjective but impersonal and objective. When say that have a night to do somethingwhether it is to exercise dominion over a possession, to enjoy equal employment opportunities, or to express controversial opinions in public am not merely saying that want to do it and hope that others will let me; am saying that they to let me, have a to let me, and will be guilty of an injustice, a transgression against established moral standards, if they fail to do so.' Does the objective (or at least intersubjective) moral order implied by words such as ought and duty really exist? Can there be any intellectually respectable justification for the claim I have a right? Or is rights talk nothing more than a fancy cloak for the interests of individuals and groups? My own view is that rights talk, for all its liabilities, refers to something real (what will call rational conventions) and is a valuable cultural practice, one we to encourage. That is the viewpoint this essay is meant to advance, and have not hesitated to press my case with a good deal of polemical intensity. may as well confess from the outset, however, that beneath the polemical surface of my text the reader will find a darker current of ambivalence and anxiety, for the plain truth is that no one at present can offer any entirely satisfactory justification for the idea