Affiliation:
1. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München , Germany
Abstract
AbstractThis chapter distinguishes between two understandings of moral rights: rights as inviolability and rights as control. The former designate constraints on others’ conduct grounded in our ultimate moral status. The latter refer to our power normatively to control others’ conduct: by demanding certain behaviour or permitting it. The chapter argues that while rights as inviolability can exist independently of socially constructed norms, rights as control include such norms among their existence conditions. By exercising our rights as control, we change our mutual accountability relations: i.e., we make certain actions obligatory or permissible “at will”. Such changes in mutual accountability are effective only if they are publicly accessible. In turn, publicity requires that there be power-conferring socially constructed norms determining what (i.e., which words/gestures, pronounced by whom, etc.) counts as demanding or permitting in any given context. After considering objections, the chapter concludes by bringing the agency-respect framework to bear on the moral normativity of power-conferring norms, and by distinguishing between two understandings of “wronging”, which parallel the two understandings of rights discussed.
Publisher
Oxford University PressOxford