Table of Contents

Introduction and Metaethical Remarks Rights: What They Are Claims, Privileges, and Powers Duties Ought Enforcing Claims Value Tradeoffs The Trolley Problem Rights: Which They Are Trespass and First Property Harm Distress and Harm Liberty Giving One's Word Second Property Ceasing To Have a Right Index

Promotional Information

This book isn't only about rights; it is also about thinking about rights. Thomson works her way through to a comprehensive account of what our rights are (and aren't: she is wonderfully resistant to rights extravaganzas). She also shows us, with elegance and wit, how to do this sort of work: what a philosophical argument is, how one shapes an argument and makes it stick, and why the enterprise is so engaging. -- Michael Walzer, The Institute for Advanced Study A great book. It offers a sustained account of rights and will be the standard work on rights. Thomson's book is more straightforward and much less speculative than, for example, Rawls or Dworkin. Thomson has a very distinctive, attractive voice. The text has a real personality. This is where future work on rights must start. -- Gilbert Harman, Princeton University The book presents and defends a systematic normative ethical theory built on the structure of a rights theory. Thomson is at home in these subjects, and her discussion here is masterful. She has few equals at the deft and imaginative manipulation of generalizations and counterexamples. -- Joel Feinberg, University of Arizona What I like most about this work is Thomson's faithfulness to nuance and detail in aid of clarifying what can accurately be said about her cases at the most general level. In this connection, her discussions of the relation between compensation and the residue of rights, the question of the 'absoluteness' of rights, and alleged moral dilemmas are especially good examples of how she cuts through the many confusions that have surrounded these topics by razor-sharp treatment of cases. -- Stephen L. Darwall, University of Michigan

About the Author

Judith Jarvis Thomson is Professor of Philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Reviews

Thomson argues forcefully that rights form a basic part of morality, then sets forward the main rights that people have. Her method proceeds by the ingenious examples for which she is famous, and her cases depend on appeals to moral judgments that she deems obvious. Some philosophers attack this approach on the ground that common-sense beliefs are not enough for a proper theory, but Thomson mounts a sharp counterattack. After defending her philosophical method, she applies it to a careful definition of rights that refines the standard analysis of philosopher Wesley Hohfeld. She challenges the view that the aim of morality is to maximize value, the principal doctrine of those who reject rights. Thomson places great stress on First Property, each person's ownership of his or her own body. Second Property--ownership of things besides one's body--she maintains is largely the artifact of a society's legal system. This gracefully written book excels in pene trating analysis. Highly recommended.--David Gordon, Bowling Green State Univ., Ohio

Thomson offers a painstaking analysis of rights... [She] then works from...the right to bodily integrity...to establish the contours of rights to liberty, rights arising out of promises, and more general property rights... This is a wonderful, deep, and engaging book. It surely deserves to become, as it surely will become, the origin of much more important discussion of ideas about rights. -- Mark Tushnet * Review of Politics *
This book isn't only about rights; it is also about thinking about rights. Thomson works her way through to a comprehensive account of what our rights are (and aren't: she is wonderfully resistant to rights extravaganzas). She also shows us, with elegance and wit, how to do this sort of work: what a philosophical argument is, how one shapes an argument and makes it stick, and why the enterprise is so engaging. -- Michael Walzer, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
A great book. It offers a sustained account of rights and will be the standard work on rights. Thomson's book is more straightforward and much less speculative than, for example, Rawls or Dworkin. Thomson has a very distinctive, attractive voice. The text has a real personality. This is where future work on rights must start. -- Gilbert Harman, Princeton University
What I like most about this work is Thomson's faithfulness to nuance and detail in aid of clarifying what can accurately be said about her cases at the most general level. In this connection, her discussions of the relation between compensation and the residue of rights, the question of the 'absoluteness' of rights, and alleged moral dilemmas are especially good examples of how she cuts through the many confusions that have surrounded these topics by razor-sharp treatment of cases. -- Stephen L. Darwall, University of Michigan
The book presents and defends a systematic normative ethical theory built on the structure of a rights theory. Thomson is at home in these subjects, and her discussion here is masterful. She has few equals at the deft and imaginative manipulation of generalizations and counterexamples. -- Joel Feinberg, University of Arizona