The Moral Foundation of Rights

While rights are indispensable to our moral and political thinking, they are also mysterious and controversial. What is a moral right? What kinds of creatures are capable of having rights? Which rights do they have? As long as these questions remain unanswered, rights will remain vulnerable to sceptical doubts. This study aims to provide the moral foundation necessary to dispel these doubts. The author constructs a coherent concept of a moral right and a workable substantive theory of rights. The former arises from the author's analysis of moral rights as morally justified conventional rights, while the necessary framework for this is supplied by a consequentialist moral theory.