ABSTRACT
This Introduction presents some general features of rights-based ethics and some challenges it faces. In Section 0.2, some common prejudices that may be considered obstacles to a systematic discussion about “rights” in ethics will be discussed. In Section 0.3, the history of (natural) rights will be briefly mentioned. In Section 0.4, it will be systematically discussed in which ways “moral rights” could serve as a resource in normative and applied ethics, thereby also explaining what is meant by “rights-based ethics”. A central theme is the work of Alan Gewirth, who, already in the 1970s, proposed an entire system of ethics based on rights. In Section 0.5, the relevance of a rights-based approach in contexts of applied ethics will be pointed out with an emphasis on bioethics, environmental ethics, and business ethics. In Section 0.6, the research topic of the relationship between risks and rights is introduced. This topic is of central importance for understanding the role of rights in contemporary discussions. Finally Section 0.7 will present the structure of this volume.
