Are There Any Conflicts of Rights?
This paper argues that a putative conflict between negative rights (to non-interference) and positive rights (to socio-economics goods) is not a genuine conflict. The thought that they might conflict presupposes, I argue, that the two rights are valid. This is the first assumption of my argument. Th...
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
Published: |
[2015]
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In: |
Ethical theory and moral practice
Year: 2015, Volume: 18, Issue: 4, Pages: 677-690 |
IxTheo Classification: | NCC Social ethics NCD Political ethics VA Philosophy |
Further subjects: | B
Non-interference
B Redistribution B positive rights B Conflicts of rights B Enforceable duties |
Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
Summary: | This paper argues that a putative conflict between negative rights (to non-interference) and positive rights (to socio-economics goods) is not a genuine conflict. The thought that they might conflict presupposes, I argue, that the two rights are valid. This is the first assumption of my argument. The second is that general rights impose duties on everyone, not just the party who faces a conflict of correlative duties. These two assumptions yield the conclusion that positive rights impose enforceable duties on the holder of the negative right; no right is thus infringed if this duty is enforced so no conflict occurs. If this is correct, it means that we can include welfare or socio-economic rights in a set of general rights without generating conflicts with negative rights to non-interference; this might clear some space for arguments that favour egalitarian redistribution although it does not show that general positive rights do exist. |
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ISSN: | 1572-8447 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s10677-015-9596-2 |