This chapter considers possible moral grounds for recognizing and realizing economic and social rights (ESRs) as human rights. It begins by suggesting that ESRs fall into three families: (1) welfareoriented ESRs, which protect adequate income, education, health, and safe and healthful working conditions; (2) freedom-oriented ESRs, which prohibit slavery, ensure free choice of employment, and protect workers’ freedoms to organize and strike: and (3) fairness-oriented ESRs, which require nondiscrimination and equal opportunity in the workplace along with fair remuneration for one’s (...) work. To accommodate the normative diversity found in these three families, the chapter suggests a pluralistic justicatory framework that appeals to three kinds of moral reasons: human welfare, freedom, and fairness. A final section considers the possibility of subsuming all three of these approaches to justication under the idea of human dignity or the associated idea of equal respect for persons. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Intervention and Human Rights.

This revised and extended edition explains and defends the conception of human rights found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and subsequent human rights treaties. Combining philosophical, legal, and political approaches, Nickel addresses questions about what human rights are, what their content should be, and whether and how they can be justified. Chapters: 1. The Contemporary Idea of Human Rights; 2. Human Rights as Rights; 3. Making Sense of Human Rights; 4. Starting Points for Justifying Human Rights; (...) 5. A Framework for Justifying Specific Rights; 6. The List Question; 7. Due Process Rights and Terrorist Emergencies; 8. Economic Liberties as Fundamental Freedoms; 9. Social Rights as Human Rights; 10. Minority Rights; 11. Eight Responses to the Relativist; 12. The Good Sense in Human Rights. (shrink)

This fully revised and extended edition of James Nickel's classic study explains and defends the conception of human rights found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and subsequent human rights treaties. Combining philosophical, legal, and political approaches, Nickel addresses questions about what human rights are, what their content should be, and whether and how they can be justified.

Linkage arguments, which defend a controversial right by showing that it is indispensable or highly useful to an uncontroversial right, are sometimes used to defend the right to health care. This article evaluates such arguments when used to defend RHC. Three common errors in using linkage arguments are neglecting levels of implementation, expanding the scope of the supported right beyond its uncontroversial domain, and giving too much credit to the supporting right for outcomes in its area. A familiar linkage argument (...) for RHC focuses on its contributions to the right to life. Among the problems with this argument are that it requires a positive conception of the right to life that is not uncontroversial and that it only justifies the subset of RHC that seeks to prevent loss of life. A linkage argument for RHC with better prospects claims that a well-realized right to health care enhances the realization of a number of uncontroversial rights. (shrink)

I defend economic and social rights as human rights, and as a feasible approach to addressing world poverty. I propose a modest conception of economic and social rights that includes rights to subsistence, basic health care and basic education. The second part of the paper defends these three rights. I begin by sketching a pluralistic justificatory framework that starts with abstract norms pertaining to life, leading a life, avoiding severely cruel treatment, and avoiding severe unfairness. I argue that economic and (...) social rights are not excessively burdensome on their addressees and that they are feasible worldwide in the appropriate sense. Severe poverty violates economic and social rights, and accordingly generates high-priority duties of many parties to work towards its elimination. (shrink)

In his recent book, Liberalism, Community and Culture, Will Kymlicka defends collective rights for some minority groups—and particularly for indigenous peoples in North America—by trying to show that secure cultural belonging is of great value, and rights to protection and autonomy for minorities, including some collective rights, are justified by the special disadvantages some minorities face in enjoying secure cultural membership. Kymlicka defends these claims from within a liberal perspective that draws heavily on Rawls and Dworkin and that denies that (...) groups are independent sources of moral claims. In this paper I am mainly concerned with how to defend the first of these claims, which I shall call the “Value Thesis.” One reason for being interested in the justification of the Value Thesis is that some version of it is a key part of most arguments for minority and collective rights. Another reason is that the Value Thesis is important to communitarians who frequently base their claims about the importance of community on the value of belonging. (shrink)

I defend economic and social rights as human rights, and as a feasible approach to addressing world poverty. I propose a modest conception of economic and social rights that includes rights to subsistence, basic health care and basic education. The second part of the paper defends these three rights. I begin by sketching a pluralistic justificatory framework that starts with abstract norms pertaining to life, leading a life, avoiding severely cruel treatment, and avoiding severe unfairness. I argue that economic and (...) social rights are not excessively burdensome on their addressees and that they are feasible worldwide in the appropriate sense. Severe poverty violates economic and social rights, and accordingly generates high-priority duties of many parties to work towards its elimination. (shrink)

This is an excellent collection of critical essays on Michael Walzer’s Spheres of Justice. David Miller provides a comprehensive and lucid introduction to Walzer’s views on justice, and Walzer offers a brief—perhaps too brief—response to his critics. Contributors are drawn from philosophy, political science, and sociology, and include Judith Andre, Richard Arneson, Brian Barry, Joseph Carens, Jon Elster, Amy Gutmann, David Miller, Susan Moller Okin, Michael Rustin, Adam Swift, and Jeremy Waldron.

The United States has never been culturally or religiously homogeneous, but its diversity has greatly increased over the last century. Although the U.S. was first a multicultural nation through conquest and enslavement, its present diversity is due equally to immigration. In this paper I try to explain the difference it makes for one area of thought and policy – equal opportunity – if we incorporate cultural and religious pluralism into our national self-image. Formulating and implementing a policy of equal opportunity (...) is more difficult in diverse, pluralistic countries than it is in homogeneous ones. My focus is cultural and religious diversity in the United States, but my conclusions will apply to many other countries – including ones whose pluralism is found more in religion than in culture. (shrink)

This article is a critical review of work on the concept of rights, Including the concept of human rights, From 1963 to 1978. Our focus is mainly on issues of the analysis of rights and human rights. We do not deal with the closely related issues bearing on the normative foundations of moral and human rights. Nor have we attempted much in the way of historical treatment of our topic. Section I surveys general characterizations of rights. In section ii, We (...) discuss treatments of the defeasibility of rights with special attention to the notion of a prima facie right. Section iii takes up attempts to give an account of human rights. Section iv provides a brief conclusion. A bibliography listing what we take to be the most important works in this area, Including everything cited, Concludes our essay. (shrink)

Congress recently decided that undocumented aliens are ineligible for medical benefits under the 1966 Medicaid Act, overruling a judicial decision that would have required the federal government to reimburse states partially for the costs of providing free care. Is providing such care simply a matter of prudence and charity? Or do illegal aliens have strong moral claims to medical care that generate duties for hospitals and government agencies?

Like people born shortly after World War II, the international human rights movement recently had its sixty-fifth birthday. This could mean that retirement is at hand and that death will come in a few decades. After all, the formulations of human rights that activists, lawyers, and politicians use today mostly derive from the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the world in 1948 was very different from our world today: the cold war was about to break out, communism was (...) a strong and optimistic political force in an expansionist phase, and Western Europe was still recovering from the war. The struggle against entrenched racism and sexism had only just begun, decolonization was in its early stages, and Asia was still poor . Labor unions were strong in the industrialized world, and the movement of women into work outside the home and farm was in its early stages. Farming was less technological and usually on a smaller scale, the environmental movement had not yet flowered, and human-caused climate change was present but unrecognized. Personal computers and social networking were decades away, and Earth's human population was well under three billion. (shrink)

This article is about relations of support and conflict within systems of fundamental legal rights—and the arguments for and against rights that those relations make possible. Justificatory linkage arguments defend controversial rights by claiming that they provide very useful support to the realisation of well-accepted rights. This article analyses such arguments in detail and discusses their structures, uses and pitfalls. It then shows that linkage arguments can be used not just to defend rights, but also to attack them. When rights (...) conflict—whether severely or weakly, logically or practically—negative linkage arguments attacking them can be based on the trouble they make for other rights. Many examples of conflicts of rights are provided. Negative linkage arguments provide reasons for rejecting, repealing or trimming the criticised right. Such arguments are already in regular use, but their c. (shrink)

Enthusiasts of the idea of globalization often view international human rights institutions as part of an emerging global governance regime. They claim that these institutions illustrate how state sovereignty is being diminished. This paper looks at the international system for thepromotion and protection of human rights aspart of normative globalization. It arguesthat this system does not constitute a systemof global governance, although in some areas itcomes close.

Building upon the scholarship of Michael Polanyi, William Poteat has dedicated himself to offering an alternative model to the Cartesian dichotomy of mind and matter that has dominated Western thought for centuries. These essays, collected by James Nickell and James Stines, cover a wide range of subjects, from Poteat's analysis of the epistemological crisis brought on by the Cartesian program to his first attempts at formulating an alternative to the mind-body dichotomy. These essays relentlessly diagnose the present situation (...) of Western thought by making explicit the philosophical presuppositions to which it is committed. They include theological affirmations, reflections on epistemology, conceptual analyses, as well as dialogues with other writers in the field of cultural criticism and linguistic theory such as George Steiner, Noam Chomsky, and Walker Percy. Most significant is Poteat's bold affirmation of the primacy of persons and his analysis and critique of our cultural misconstructions of human awareness. _The Primacy of Persons and the Language of Culture_ provides an excellent introduction to the scholarship of William Poteat. It should be of particular interest to scholars of philosophy and theology, as well as others who share Poteat's deep concern for the state of human culture. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------- The above was already on the database - below was copied from the web William Poteat has dedicated himself to offering an alternative model to the Cartesian dichotomy of mind and matter that has dominated Western thought for centuries. These essays further diagnose the present situation of Western thought by making explicit the philosophical presuppositions to which it is committed. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Vance Conception of Economic and Social Rights Justifying Economic and Social Rights Implementing Economic and Social Rights The Widespread Acceptance of Economic and Social Rights Note References.

Charles Taylor's well-known essay, “Atomism”, criticizes libertarian theories of rights like Nozick's that make individual rights independent of any duties to belong to, support, or obey the law in the society in which those rights are to be enjoyed. Taylor argues that if one grounds rights to important liberties on the human capacity for autonomy, this commits one to the view that the development of autonomy in oneself and others is morally obligatory. Further, Taylor argues that most people cannot develop (...) autonomy in the absence of a certain sort of social and political environment. Hence, if it is morally obligatory to try to develop autonomy in oneself and others, it is also obligatory to belong to, support, and give obedience to those institutions which create the environment in which autonomy can be developed. (shrink)

This book revolutionizes the prevailing understanding and teaching of math. This book is a must for all upper-level Christian school curricula and for college students and adults interested in math or related fields of science and religion. It will serve as a solid refutation for the claim, often made in court, that mathematics is one subject which cannot be taught from a distinctively biblical perspective. - Back cover.

This article criticizes an attempt by j. Brenton stearns to refute naturalism as an account of evaluative language ("a refutation of axiological naturalism," journal of value inquiry, I, No.2 (fall, 1967)). Stearns argued that if the goodness of a thing were, As naturalism claims, Equivalent to its possession of certain non-Evaluative properties, Then two things could differ from one another solely with respect to their goodness. And since this is impossible, Stearns concludes that naturalism is false. This argument is criticized (...) by logical analogy. It is argued that if this argument shows that a naturalistic account of "good" is false, Then it equally shows that a naturalistic account of "large" or "primary color" is false. (shrink)