Philosophy Research Seminar - 'The Claimability of the Human Right to Subsistence'
| Dates: | 10 February 2015 |
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| Times: | 15:00 - 17:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Social Sciences |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, General public |
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| Speaker: | Stephanie Collins |
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Abstract:
The naturalistic conception of human rights takes human rights to exist independently of specific institutional arrangements. The human right to subsistence is often said to be ‘unclaimable’ on the naturalistic conception: independently of specific institutional arrangements, no agent owes subsistence to any claimant in particular, no claimant is wronged by any agent in particular if they lack subsistence, and no claimant may use coercion to demand subsistence from any agent in particular. This paper works through recent attempts to rescue the claimability of the naturalistic human right to subsistence, and concludes that none of them work. Instead, I suggest there is, at best, a claimable subsistence-based naturalistic human right. Each human has a claim on each moral agent (whether individual or collective) that: (i) the claimant receives equitable consideration in the agent’s calculations about which subsistence-furthering measure to take; and (ii) the agent acts with regard to the claimant as that calculation demands. I spell out what this means.
Speaker
Stephanie Collins
Organisation: The University of Manchester
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
1.219
University Place
Manchester
