Are There Any Absolute Rights?

Want to read the rest of this paper? Join Essayworld today to view this entire essay and over 50,000 other term papers

the material consideration of rights to the generic features or goods of action. The generic rights are rights to the necessary conditions of action, freedom and well-being, where the latter is defined in terms of the various substantive abilities and conditions needed for action and for successful action in general.
The PGC shows that absolute rights are equally had by all prospective purposive agents, and it also provides in general for the ordering of the rights in cases of moral dilemma in which two rights conflict where priority should be given to the right that is more necessary for action.
He then gives a general formula of a right as follows- ‘A (subject, or right holder) has a right to X (object) against B (respondent of the right) by virtue of Y (justificatory basis of the right).’ Based on PGC, objects of the rights are hierarchically ordered but not the subjects. Gewirth assumes that moral rights are distributed equally amongst all humans. And this basis makes it ...

Get instant access to over 50,000 essays. Write better papers. Get better grades. Already a member? Login

regard to the content of the right and the correlative duty.
The rights considered under Rule Absolutism therefore vary in degrees of specificity. It can be argued that these specifications, however, can either rule out the possibility of absolute rights, since no rights can be absolute if there are exceptions or all rights may be considered equally absolute, as once their specifications are admitted they are entirely valid without any more exceptions. But Gewirth argues that not all specifications invalidate a right. There are three categories of permissible specifications: The first is that the specifications made can only be such that result in a concept that is recognizable to ...

Succeed in your coursework without stepping into a library. Get access to a growing library of notes, book reports, and research papers in 2 minutes or less.

CITE THIS PAGE: