Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  • Cited by 57
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
January 2010
Print publication year:
2004
Online ISBN:
9780511610936

Book description

Rights come in various types - human, moral, civil, political and legal - and claims about who has a right, and to what, are often contested. What are rights? Are they timeless and universal, or merely conventional? How are they related to other morally significant values, such as well-being, autonomy, and community? Can animals have rights? Or fetuses? Do we have a right to do as we please so long as we do not harm others? This is the only accessible and readable introduction to the history, logic, moral implications, and political tendencies of the idea of rights. It is organized chronologically and discusses important events, such as the French Revolution. As an undergraduate text it is well-suited to introductions to political philosophy, moral philosophy, and ethics. It could also be used in courses on political theory in departments of political science and government, and in courses on legal theory in law schools.

Reviews

'The book is also a model text for students. The style is accessible and engaging, the analysis and arguments are sophisticated, and the text itself is clearly written and uncluttered by notes.'

Source: Journal of Utilities

'This book will be of interest to persons working in legal theory and in political philosophy in universities and colleges.'

Source: Journal of Utilities

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
×

Contents

Bibliographical Notes
References
Austin, John. [1832] 1995. The Province of Jurisprudence Determined. Ed. Wilfred E. Rumble. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Beitz, Charles R. 1999. Political Theory and International Relations. Rev. ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press
Bentham, Jeremy. 1843. Anarchical Fallacies. In vol. II, The Works of Jeremy Bentham. Ed. John Bowring. Edinburgh: William Tait
Bentham, Jeremy 1970. Of Laws in General. Ed. H. L. A. Hart. London: Athlone Press
Bentham, Jeremy [1789] 1996. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. Eds. J. H. Burns and H. L. A. Hart. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Berlin, Isaiah. 1969. Four Essays on Liberty. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Brownlie, Ian, ed. 1992. Basic Documents of Human Rights. 3d. ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Buchanan, Allen. 2003. Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Burke, Edmund. [1790] 1971. Reflections on the Revolution in France. London: Dent
Butler, Joseph. [1736] 1950. Five Sermons. New York: Liberal Arts Press
Clarke, Samuel. 1705. A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion. Excerpted in D. D Raphael, ed. 1991. British Moralists 1650–1800. Vol. 1. Indianapolis: Hackett
Constant, Benjamin. 1820. The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns. In Benjamin Constant, Political Writings. Trans. Bianamaria Fontana. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1988)
Davis, David Brion. 1966. The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture. New York: Oxford University Press
Dewey, John. 1927. The Public and Its Problems. Denver: Swallow
Dover, Kenneth. 1974. Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle. Berkeley: University of California Press
Dworkin, Ronald. 1981. Is There a Right to Pornography?Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 1: 177–212 (adapted and collected in Waldron 1984)
Dworkin, Ronald 2000. Sovereign Virtue. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Edmundson, William A. 1998. Three Anarchical Fallacies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Feinberg, Joel. 1973. Social Philosophy. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall
Finnis, John. 1980. Natural Law and Natural Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Foot, Phillipa. 1978. The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect. In Phillipa Foot, Virtues and Vices. Oxford: Basil Blackwell
Fukuyama, Francis. 2002. Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Gauthier, David. 1986. Morals By Agreement. New York: Oxford University Press
Geuss, Raymond. 2001. History and Illusion in Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Glendon, Mary Ann. 1991. Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse. New York: Free Press
Godwin, William. [1793] 1976. Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. Ed. Isaac Kranmick. Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin
Golding, Martin. 1984. The Primacy of Welfare Rights. Social Philosophy & Policy 1: 119–36
Grotius, Hugo. [1646] 1925. De Jure Belli Ac Pacis Libri Tres. Vol. 2. Trans. Francis W. Kelsey. Oxford: Clarendon Press. [Vol. 2: English translation. Vol. 1: Latin original]
Hacker, P. M. S. 1973. Sanction Theories of Duty. In Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence (Second Series). Ed. A. W. B. Simpson. 131–70. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Hamburger, Joseph. 1999. John Stuart Mill on Liberty and Control. Princeton: Princeton University Press
Hardin, Russell. 1968. The Tragedy of the Commons. Science 162: 1243–48
Harsanyi, John. 1977. Morality and the Theory of Rational Behaviour. Reprinted in Sen and William 1982
Hart, H. L. A. 1955. Are There any Natural Rights?Philosophical Review 44: 175–91
Hart, H. L. A. 1982. Essays on Bentham: Studies in Jurisprudence and Political Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Hazlitt, William. [1825] 1964. The Spirit of the Age. London: Everyman
Hohfeld, Wesley Newcomb. [1919] 1964. Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning. Ed. Walter Wheeler Cook. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press
Hobbes, Thomas. [1651] 1996. Leviathan. Ed. Richard Tuck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Hume David. [1789] 1967. A Treatise of Human Nature. Ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Ignatieff, Michael. 1999. Human Rights: The Midlife Crisis. The New York Review of Books. May 20, 1999
Ignatieff, Michael 2001. Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry. Princeton: Princeton University Press
Ingram, Attracta. 1994. A Political Theory of Rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Jacobs, Lesley A. 1993. Rights and Deprivation. Oxford: Clarendon Press
John Paul II, Pope. 1995. Crossing the Threshold of Hope. New York: Knopf
Kagan, Shelly. 1989. The Limits of Morality. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Kagan, Shelly 1994. Defending Options. Ethics 104: 333–51
Kamm, Frances M. 1992–94. Morality, Morality. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Kant, Immanuel. [1785] 2002. Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. [Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten]. Trans. Allen W. Wood. New Haven: Yale University Press. Citations in the text are to Immanuel Kants Schriften. Ausgabe der königlichen preussichen Akademie der Wissenschaften [AK]. 1902-. Berlin: de Gruyter. The translations are my own
Kass, Leon R. 2002. Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity. New York: Encounter
Kramer, Matthew H., N. E. Simmonds, and Hillel Steiner. 1998. A Debate Over Rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Kramer, Matthew H., ed. 2001. Rights, Wrongs and Responsibilities. Basingstoke, Hampshire, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan
Kuehn, Manfred. 2001. Kant: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Kurzweil, Ray. 1999. The Age of Spiritual Machines. New York: Penguin
Lacey, Michael J. and Knud Haakonssen, eds. 1991. A Culture of Rights. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center and Cambridge University Press
Locke, John. [1690] 1952. The Second Treatise of Government. Ed. Thomas P. Peardon. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill
Lyons, David. 1970. The Correlativity of Rights and Duties. Nôus 4: 45–57
MacCallum, Gerald., Jr. 1972. Negative and Positive Freedom. In Peter Laslett W, G. Runciman, and Quentin Skinner, eds. Philosophy, Politics, and Society: Fourth Series. pp. 174–93. Oxford: Basil Blackwell
MacCormick, D. N. 1977. Rights in Legislation. In P. M. S. Hacker and J. Raz, eds. Law, Morality, and Society: Essays in Honor of H. L. A. Hart. Oxford: Clarendon Press
MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1981. After Virtue. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press
Martin, Rex. 1993. A System of Rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Martin, Rex, and Nickel, James W.. 1980. Recent Work on the Concept of Rights. American Philosophical Quarterly 17: 165–180
Mauss, Marcel. 1990. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Trans. W. D. Hall. New York: W. W. Norton
Marx, Karl. 1844. On the Jewish Question. Excerpted in Waldron 1987
Mill, John Stuart. [1838] 1962. Essay on Bentham. In Mary Warnock, ed. John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism. Glasgow: William Collins
Mill, John Stuart [1859] 1956. On Liberty. Ed. Currin V. Shields. New York: Liberal Arts
Mill, John Stuart [1861] 1957. Utilitarianism. Ed. Oskar Piest. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill
Miller, Fred D., Jr. 1995. Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle's Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Moravec, Hans. 1990. Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence. New York: Oxford University Press
Nickel, James W. 1987. Making Sense of Human Rights: Philosophical Reflections on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press
Nozick, Robert, 1974. Anarchy, State and Utopia. New York: Basic Books
Oppenheim, Felix. 1961. Dimensions of Freedom. New York: St. Martin's Press
Paine, Thomas. [1791] 1994. The Rights of Man. New York: Random House
Paley, William. [1786] 1811. The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy. Vol 1. London: J. Faulder et al
Parfit, Derek. 1984. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Perry, Michael J. 1998. The Idea of Human Rights: Four Inquiries. New York: Oxford University Press
Philp, Mark. 1986. Godwin's Political Justice. Ithaca: Cornell University Press
Pufendorf, Samuel. [1673] 1991. On the Duty of Man and Citizen. [De Officio Hominis et Civis]. Ed. James Tully; Trans. Michael Silverthorne. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Pufendorf, Samuel [1672] 1934. De Jure Naturae et Gentium. Trans. C. H. Oldfather and W. A. Oldfather. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Rainbolt, George. 1993. Rights as Normative Constraints on Others. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53: 93–112
Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Rawls, John 1993. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press
Rawls, John 2001. The Law of Peoples. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Raz, Joseph. 1986. The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Raz, Joseph 1999. Practical Reason and Norms. 2d. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Regan, Tom. 1983. The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press
Rossiter, Clinton, ed. [1788] 1999. The Federalist Papers. New York: Mentor
Ryan, Alan. 1974. J. S. Mill. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
Sandel, Michael. 1989. Moral Argument and Liberal Toleration: Abortion and Homosexuality. California Law Review 77: 521
Scanlon, T. M. 1982. Contractualism and Utilitarianism. In Sen and Williams 1982
Scanlon, T. M. 1998. What We Owe to Each Other. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Schama, Simon. 1990. Citizens. New York: Random House
Schmidtz, David. 1991. The Limits of Government: An Essay on the Public Goods Argument. Boulder, CO: Westview Press
Schneewind, J. B. 1998. The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Schwartz, Warren F., ed. 1995. Justice in Immigration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. New York: Knopf
Sen, Amartya and Bernard Williams, eds. 1982. Utilitarianism and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press and Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme
Shue, Henry. 1996. Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy. 2d ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press
Sidgwick, Henry. [1874] 1981. The Methods of Ethics. Indianapolis: Hackett
Singer, Peter. 1972. Famine, Affluence and Morality. Philosophy and Public Affairs 1: 229–43
Singer, Peter 1975. Animal Liberation. New York: Random House
Skinner, Quentin. 1978. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Smart, J. J. C. and Bernard Williams. 1973. Utilitarianism: For and Against. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Spector, Horatio. 1992. Autonomy and Rights: The Moral Foundations of Liberalism. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Steiner, Hillel. 1994. An Essay on Rights. Oxford: Basil Blackwell
Stone, Geoffrey R., Louis M. Seidman, Cass R. Sunstein, and Mark V. Tushnet, eds. 2002. Constitutional Law. Gaithersburg, MD: Aspen
Sumner, L. W. 1989. The Moral Foundation of Rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Thaler, Richard H., Daniel Kahneman, and Jack L. Knetsch. 1990. Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem. Journal of Political Economy. December. 1325–48
Thomson, Judith Jarvis. 1990. The Realm of Rights. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Tuck, Richard. 1979. Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Unger, Peter. 1996. Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of Innocence. New York: Oxford University Press
Unger, Roberto. 1987. False Necessity: Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Waldron, Jeremy. 1981. A Right to Do Wrong. Ethics 92: 21–39
Waldron, Jeremy 1987. Nonsense Upon Stilts: Bentham, Burke, and Marx on the Rights of Man. London: Methuen
Waldron, Jeremy 1988. The Right to Private Property. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Waldron, Jeremy 1993. Liberal Rights: Collected Papers 1981–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Waldron, Jeremy 1994. Kagan on Requirements: Mill on Sanctions. Ethics 104: 310–24
Waldron, Jeremy, ed. 1984. Theories of Rights. New York: Oxford University Press
Wellman, Carl. 1995. Real Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Wellman, Carl 1998. The Proliferation of Rights: Moral Progress or Empty Rhetoric? Boulder, CO: Westview Press (with bibliographical essay)
White, Morton. 1978. The Philosophy of the American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press
Wollstonecraft, Mary. [1790] 1996. A Vindication of the Rights of Men. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books
Wollstonecraft, Mary [1792] 1992. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.