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Non‐Individualism,Rights, and Practical Reason |
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| Authors: | GEORGE PAVLAKOS |
| Affiliation: | 1. University of Antwerp Faculty of Law Venusstraat 23 B‐2000 Antwerpen Belgium E‐mail: Georgios.Pavlakos@ua.ac.be;2. University of Glasgow The School of Law 5–9 Stair Building The Square Glasgow, G12 8QQ Scotland, United Kingdom E‐mail: G.Pavlakos@law.gla.ac.uk;3. Funding for this paper was generously provided by the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung. The paper has benefited from comments on a number of public occasions: the Multidisciplinary Conference on “Individuals vs Communities,” organised in July 2006 by the Utrecht Network Summer School in Human Rights in Ripatransone (Ascoli Piceno, Italy);4. and a three‐day seminar on Normativity organised in July 2006 by the Forum of Law and Philosophy at the chair of Legal Theory and Public Law, University of Kiel, Germany. Finally, a one‐day conference on Normativity, hosted by the University of Birmingham on behalf of the Forum of Law and Philosophy. The author is greatly indebted to the organisers and participants of the above events. In addition, I would like to thank Sean Coyle, Carsten Heidemann, Stefano Bertea, Claire Grant and Koen de Feyter for having read and commented on the paper. |
| Abstract: | Abstract. The paper looks at an impasse with respect to the role of rights as reasons for action which afflicts contemporary legal and political debates. Adopting a meta‐ethical approach, it moves on to argue that the impasse arises from a philosophical confusion surrounding the role of rights as normative reasons. In dispelling the confusion, an account of reasons is put forward that attempts to capture their normativity by relating them to a reflexive public practice. Two key outcomes are identified as a result of this explication: first, that normative practices are instances of rule‐following; and second, that agents partaking of normative practices possess absolute value (i.e., acquire the status of persons). In light of this explication, rights acquire the status of the most general reasons that purport to guarantee the content of personhood by specifying and safeguarding conditions which enable agents to participate in public practices of universalisation. |
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