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Rights are legal or moral entitlements or permissions. Rights are of vital importance in theories of justice and deontological ethics. The contemporary notion of rights is universalist and egalitarian. Equal rights are granted to all people. By contrast, most historical notions of rights were authoritarian and hierarchical, with different people being granted different rights, and some having more rights than others. For instance, the rights of a father to be respected by his son did not indicate a duty upon the father to return that respect, and the divine right of kings to hold absolute power over their subjects did not leave room for many rights to be granted to the subjects themselves. Conversely, modern conceptions of rights often emphasize liberty as among the most important of rights, though conceptions of liberty (e.g. positive vs negative) frequently differ. The specific enumeration of rights accorded to people has historically differed greatly across space and time, and in many cases, the view of rights held by one group can come into sharp and bitter conflict with the view of rights held by another group. (For instance, compare Manifest destiny with Trail of Tears.) At present the question of who has what rights is normally addressed by the constitutions of the respective nations (in the case of legal rights) or a particular philosophical theory (in the case of natural rights). There are numerous different theoretical distinctions in accordance with which rights may be classified.
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