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Are There Inalienable Rights?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

John O. Nelson
John O. Nelson
Affiliation:
University of Colorado
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Extract

In the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights a quite large number of things are said to be ‘human rights’ and though in that Declaration the term ‘inalienable’ is not used to describe the rights in question it has been so used by commentators—at least with respect to some of the rights enumerated. I shall forgo asking the prior question as to whether any such thing as a human right exists and ask simply whether any such thing as an inalienable right exists. My intention will be to show that it does not.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 64 , Issue 250 , October 1989 , pp. 519 - 524
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1989

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References

1 Nickel, James, ‘Are Human Rights Utopian?’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 11, No. 3 (Summer 1982).Google Scholar

2 Nickel, , op. cit., 251.Google Scholar

3 Ibid., also 258. Nickel considers what he calls ‘the right not to be tortured’ an especially convincing case of an inalienable right.

4 Nickel, , op. cit., 251.Google Scholar

5 I have supported this contention in some detail in, ‘Philosophical Non-sense’, Metaphilosophy 5, No. 3 (07 1972), 238–243.Google Scholar

6 Moorehead, Alan, Darwin and the Beagle (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 99.Google Scholar

7 See, for instance, Golding's, Martin P. searching discussion in ‘Justice and Rights: A Study in Relationship’, in justice and Health Care, (ed.) Shelp, D.. (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1981), 23–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar