ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on what rights are and the nature of rights. Although rights are related to liberties and freedoms, they are not exactly identical to them. The same situation holds—although it is less intuitive or obvious and, indeed, somewhat controversial—that rights are not the same thing as needs. The chapter covers this issue in greater detail, but for now suffice it to say that needing something is not the same thing as having a right to that thing. The notion of a duty connects to rights because of what some philosophers have termed the correlativity thesis, which is as follows: Rights and duties are relative to each other, meaning that they imply each other. One agent's right implies another agent's duty and vice versa. Now, there are two parts to this thesis: every right implies some duty, and every duty implies some right.
