ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the concept of rights, including the concept of human rights, from 1963 to 1978. It presents general characterizations of rights and discusses treatments of the defeasibility of rights with special attention to the notion of a prima facie right. In Feinberg's theory a right always has two principal elements: a valid claim-to something and a valid claim-against someone. Rights, according to H. J. McCloskey, are best "explained positively as entitlements to do, have, enjoy, or have done, and not negatively as something against others, or as something one ought to have". McCloskey particularly wants to deny that a right can be equated with a particular set of duties or claims-against. Both Feinberg and McCloskey characterize rights by focusing on the kind of normative element–a valid claim or an entitlement, respectively–that all rights allegedly contain. In classifying human rights as moral rights one may wish to distinguish between actual and critical moralities.
