Rights and Reason

by Wellman, Carl; May, Larry; Parson, Kate; Stiff, Jennifer; Friedman, Marilyn

• ISBN13: 9780792361985
• ISBN10: 0792361989
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-07-01
• Publisher: Kluwer Academic Pub

Summary

This is the most important collection of essays on rights theory to appear in the last decade. Most essays are published here for the first time. The collection honors the eminent rights theorist, Carl Wellman, on the occasion of his retirement. Stimulated by Wellman's extensive writings on rights, the newly written essays here address such topics as the grounding of rights, the universality of rights, conflict among legal rights, the nature of political rights, the care-based presuppositions of rights, the misuse of rights talk, the connection between rights and religion, and the rights of cultural minorities, as well as related issues concerning the foundations of morality and the nature of justice. Contributors include: Alice Erh-Soon Tay , Joel Feinberg , James Griffin , P.M.S. Hacker , Virginia Held , Hermann Klenner , Neil MacCormick , Rex Martin , Diana Meyers , Gerald Postema , Joseph Raz , L. Wayne Sumner , G.H. Von Wright , and Jeremy Waldron , with an introduction by Christopher Wellman . Aimed at researchers, scholars, graduate students and advanced undergraduates in the fields of philosophy, law, human rights and political theory.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(6)
Christopher Wellman
Criteria and the Egocentric Predicament Revisited	7	(16)
P. M. S. Hacker
Rights, Interests, and Free Speech	23	(22)
L. W. Sumner
Votes as Powers	45	(20)
Jeremy Waldron
Rights and the Presumption of Care	65	(14)
Virginia Held
On the Universality of Moral Justification	79	(26)
Gerald J. Postema
Rights in Conflict	105	(16)
James Griffin
Human Rights and Wrongs	121	(18)
Alice Erh-Soon Tay
Wrongs and Duties	139	(18)
Neil MacCormick
Cultural Diversity: Rights, Goals, and Competing Values	157	(20)
Diana Tietjens Meyers
Right-Based Moralities	177	(20)
Joseph Raz
The Essential Indeterminacy of Rawls's Difference Principle	197	(24)
Rex Martin
Justice and Personal Desert	221	(30)
Joel Feinberg
In Defence of Psychology	251	(12)
Georg Henrik von Wright
Religion and Right in Marx	263	(8)
Hermann Klenner
Name Index	271