Rights and Their Limits: In Theory, Cases, and Pandemics

by F.M. Kamm

Overview

In this volume, F.M. Kamm explores how theories as well as hypothetical and practical cases help us understand rights and their limits. The book begins by considering moral status and its relation to having rights (including whether non-human animals have rights and what rights future persons have). The author then considers whether rights are grounded in duties to oneself, which duties are correlative to rights, and whether neuroscientific and psychological studies can help determine what rights we have. Kamm next investigates the contours of the right not to be harmed by considering critiques of deontological distinctions, the costs that must be undertaken to avoid harming, and a proposal for permissibly harming someone (that allows for resisting the harm) in the Trolley Problem. Additional chapters cover possible implications of the Trolley Problem for such practical issues as correctly programming self-driving cars, providing medical treatments, and enacting redistributive economic policy. Kamm concludes the book by comparing the use of case-based judgments about extreme cases in moral versus aesthetic theory, and by exploring the significance of the right not to be harmed for morally correct policies in the extreme cases of torture and a pandemic. Where pertinent, Kamm considers the views of Derek Parfit, Tom Regan, Christine Korsgaard, Shelly Kagan, Ronald Dworkin, Amartya Sen, Allan Gibbard, Joshua Greene, Arthur Danto, and Judith Thomson, among others.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780197567753
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	09/09/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	911 KB

About the Author

F.M. Kamm is the Henry Rutgers University Professor of Philosophy and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University. Over the course of a distinguished career focused on normative ethical theory and practical ethics, Kamm has published many articles and nine books, including: Morality, Mortality vols. 1 and 2; Intricate Ethics; Bioethical Prescriptions; The Trolley Problem Mysteries (the Berkeley Tanner Lectures 2013); and Almost Over: Aging, Dying, Dead. Kamm has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEH, the centers for ethics at Harvard and Princeton, the Center for Advanced Study at Stanford, and the Department of Clinical Bioethics at the NIH. In addition to serving on the editorial boards of Philosophy & Public Affairs, Legal Theory, and the Journal of Moral Philosophy, Kamm has served as a consultant to the World Health Organization and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Table of Contents

Introduction and Acknowledgements Part I: Rights by Theory and Cases 1. Moral Status, Rights, and Parfit's No-Difference View 2. Rights That Ethical Responsibility Cannot Justify 3. What "Must" Be Done to Answer Practical Questions? 4. Rights and Their Related Duties 5. Intuitions, the Veil of Ignorance, and Strains of Commitment Part II: Rights and the Trolley Problem 6. Neuroscience, Psychology and Moral Reasoning 7. The Irrelevance of Deontological Distinctions? 8. Duties That Become Supererogatory or Forbidden 9. Nonconsequentialism in Light of the Trolley Problem 10. The Use and Abuse of the Trolley Problem: Self Driving Cars, Medical Treatments, and the Distribution of Harm 11. The Trolley Problem and Economic Policy Part III: Rights and Extreme Cases 12. Thought Experiments: Art and Ethics 13. The Torture Puzzle 14. Rights and Aggregation in a Pandemic 15. Harms, Wrongs, and Meaning in a Pandemic Appendix 1: Claiming and Waiving Rights Appendix 2: The Moral Rights and Status of Animals: Comparing Some Arguments

Editorial Reviews

"Clearly written chapters are grounded in the research literature and attentive to current events." — Choice

"Rights and Their Limits is a book of expansive scope and high density of ideas and arguments. It makes notable contributions to questions about the methodology of moral philosophy, as well as progress in substantive normative theorizing in the deontological tradition [...] This is the most up-to-date take on nonconsequentialist morality from one of its most careful defenders [...] readers may find valuable arguments on topics of interest to them in chapters which are each readable on their own. [...] [T]he bravura exercise in trolleyology in chapter 9 is, if nothing else, the ultimate test of the limits of the controversial, influential method of moral theorizing that finds in Kamm its most dedicated practitioner." — Ethics

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