We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Contending views of social justice often confront each other over claims about basic rights. In this paper I will begin with a familiar dispute of this kind, the crux of which proves to be the distribution of economic benefits and burdens. I will argue that it is is indeed illuminating to consider basic rights, and important in particular to examine an especially fundamental set of rights, namely, those that attach to the moral relationships that define the moral community. The blocking of these rights is a moral concern in itself and also often underlies more obvious social and economic inequalities. By considering this set of rights, we can uncover an unsuspected kind of justice which makes moral demands independently of a concern for distributive justice.
There is a longstanding and influential tradition of claiming that the duties of justice are solely “negative” duties. On this view the concerns of justice are concerns about “negative rights” of an especially basic kind, usually subsumed under the heading of “individual freedom.” Justice consists in our “not interfering with” these basic negative rights.
1 Narveson, JanThe Libertarian Idea (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988), 59Google Scholar.
2 Narveson, The Libertarian Idea, 7Google Scholar.
3 Hospers, JohnLibertarianism (Los Angeles: Nash Publishing, 1971), 5Google Scholar.
4 Hospers, Libertarianism, 58Google Scholar.
5 Locke, JohnSecond Treatise of Government, sections 6 & 7, from Two Treatises of Government, ed. & intro. Laslett, Peter 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.
6 Machan, Tibor R.Individuals and Their Rights (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1988), 101Google Scholar.
7 John Locke, First Treatise of Government, section 42, from Two Treatises of Government.
8 Machan, Individuals, 138Google Scholar.
9 Nozick, RobertAnarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974)Google Scholar.
10 Barry, Brian ‘Review of Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia,’ Political Theory 3 (1975): 332CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Nielsen, KaiEquality and Liberty (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1985), 93Google Scholar.
12 Rawls, JohnA Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971 ), 533Google Scholar.
13 Rawls, Justice, 532Google Scholar.
14 Rawls, Justice, 532Google Scholar.
15 Rawls, Justice, 538-39Google Scholar.
16 Young, Iris MarionJustice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), chap. 1Google Scholar.
17 It can be found, for example, in Rawls, Justice, 9Google Scholar; Miller, DavidSocial Justice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 19Google Scholar; Barry, BrianTheories of Justice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 355Google Scholar; and others.
18 Harvey, J. ‘Oppression, Moral Abandonment, and the Role of Protest,’ Journal of Social Philosophy 27 (1996): 156-71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19 Harvey, J. ‘Forgiving as an Obligation of the Moral Life,’ International Journal of Moral and Social Studies 8 (1993): 211-22Google Scholar.
20 Rawls, Justice, 337Google Scholar.
21 Rawls, Justice, 337Google Scholar.
22 Vlastos, Gregory ‘Justice and Equality,’ in Social Justice, ed. Brandt, Richard (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1962), 45Google Scholar.
23 Vlastos, ‘Justice and Equality,’ 47Google Scholar.
24 Vlastos, ‘Justice and Equality,’ 47Google Scholar.
25 Darwall, Stephen ‘Two Kinds of Respect,’ Ethics 88 (1977): 36–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26 Vlastos, ‘Justice and Equality,’ 48Google Scholar.
27 Pojman, Louis ‘On Equal Human Worth: A Critique of Contemporary Egalitarianism,’ in Equality: Selected Readings, ed. Pojman, Louis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 295Google Scholar.
28 Pojman, ‘On Equal Human Worth,’ 296Google Scholar.
29 Pojman, ‘On Equal Human Worth,’ 296Google Scholar.
30 Pojman, ‘On Equal Human Worth,’ 292Google Scholar.
31 Pojman, ‘On Equal Human Worth,’ 292-94Google Scholar.
32 Pojman, ‘On Equal Human Worth,’ 294Google Scholar.
33 Barry, Theories of Justice, 354-55Google Scholar.
