The Status of Rights

Abstract

It is a truth about the history of our moral life that human beings possessed rights long before they generally came to realize they did. Rights existed long before they became elements in our moral discourse, providing the powerful reason they now do for persons conducting themselves in one way rather than another. It is also instructive to keep in mind that rights and the conceptual world in which they are so firmly embedded are a peculiarly modern Western phenomenon. As players on this moral stage they have come to have a special fascination for modern analytic philosophers. Among the questions that have been raised about them are these: What does it mean to have a right? What does talk of rights add to talk of duties and talk of the right thing to do? What are the various kinds of rights? What is presupposed about human beings and their relationships with one another when rights are said to be possessed? What does it mean to say, and is it true to say, that some rights are absolute, inalienable, natural? By virtue of what features is one a possessor of a right? What status, and is it a special one, do rights have in moral argumentation? Much has been written on these topics by contemporary philosophers, but no one to my knowledge has devoted more attention to the general topic than A. I. Melden. For him rights, and the richly textured relationships they presuppose among persons, have a place of central importance in morality. Despite all the attention given rights by philosophers, they have not-Melden claims in Rights and Persons,' his latest book-adequately recognized their unique status. Inevitable confusion has resulted, and sophisticated theorists have been blinded to the realities of our moral life through their failure to pay attention to certain facts about the moral concepts we employ. Melden's work is rich, insightful, subtle, and sensitive to the complexities of the subject. He abhors the unqualified generalization and painstakingly paints pictures that are filled with detail and in which chiaroscuro is a dominant theme. I came away from a reading of this work stimulated and instructed but also troubled, much less sure of my grasp of the conceptual landscape upon which rights appear than I once felt my-