Subject: BHA: RE: Flourishing, Aristotle, rights
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 10:20:25 -0500



Hi Ruth,

This is an even more tangential response to one comment within your tangential repsonse.  You wrote:

"In what sense is flourishing a "right"?  "Rights" are weird things.  I don't understand what they are, actually.  And if it's a right, where does it come from?  And does it work, do we think, to simply change the infinitive verb phrase from "to do what I want" to "to freely flourish," but retain the
structure of the liberal conception?  Etc."

I respond:

I think that conceiving "rights" individualistically, as attributes of monads, is a dead-end.  Thinking of "rights" as aspects of social relationships is more productive.  What we have are right-duty relationships, and these relationships are not "added on" externally to autonomous individuals, but are intrinsic to the individuals, constitutive of their being.

Best regards,

Dick        


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