¹ I assume that those who drafted the Declaration were following the rule according to which the pronoun “he” and its cognates are read as gender-neutral when the context permits. I follow the same rule in the present paper to conform to this volume's style guidelines. The Universal Declaration was adopted on December 10, 1948, by the General Assembly of the United Nations. It is reprinted, for example, in Melden, A. I., Human Rights (Belmont: Wadsworth, 1970), pp. 143–49.Google Scholar

² Nozick, Robert expresses a libertarian view in his Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).Google Scholar

³ Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 7 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 64–65.

⁴ A Rawlsian might propose that if there is a group of people who do not enjoy an adequate standard of living, such a group should be regarded as the worst-off group in society for purposes of applying the difference principle. But the principle still would not license the members of this group to complain that they personally were being treated unjustly. They could complain, at best, like anyone else, of injustice in the basic structure of the society.

⁵ Self-respect is in this way an important “mediating concept” in Gregory Kavka's argument that the handicapped have a right to work. See his “Disability and the Right to Work” in this volume.

⁶ See Dworkin, Ronald, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), pp. xi Google Scholar, 91–92, 188–92. See also Wasserstrom, Richard, “Rights, Human Rights, and Racial Discrimination,” ed. David, Lyons, Rights (Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1977), pp. 46–57.Google Scholar

⁷ See David Lyons's introduction to ed. Lyons, Rights, pp. 1–4. Joel Feinberg uses the idea of a claim in explaining the idea of a right in his “The Nature and Value of Rights,” ed. Lyons, Rights, pp. 78–91, at pp. 84–85. Wasserstrom speaks of rights as entitlements in his “Rights, Human Rights, and Racial Discrimination,” p. 48.

⁸ Feinberg relates respect for rights to respect for persons in his “The Nature and Value of Rights,” p. 87. See also Thomas E. Hill, Jr., “Servility and Self-Respect,” Rights, pp. 111–24. Steve Munzer suggested the importance of self-esteem. See also Sachs, David, “How to Distinguish Self-Respect from Self-Esteem,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 10 (1981), pp. 346–60.Google Scholar

⁹ Sumner, L. W., The Moral Foundation of Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 47. Robert Nozick distinguished between goals and side constraints and argued that rights should be taken as constraints. But he allowed that rights could be treated as goals in a kind of “utilitarianism of rights.” He thought it would be a moral mistake to view rights this way, not a conceptual mistake. See his Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 28–33.

¹¹ There are many other examples from among the rights affirmed in the Universal Declaration. The following presuppose at least the existence of a functioning legal system and the commitment of resources sufficient for their enforcement or implementation: the right not to be subjected to torture (article 5); the right to “equal protection before the law” (article 7); “the right to freedom of movement and residence” (article 13); “the right to a nationality” (article 15); “the right to marry and to found a family” (article 16); “the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion” (article 18); the right “not to be held in slavery or servitude” (article 4). And consider the “right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which [one] has had all the guarantees necessary for [one's] defence” (article 11). This is largely a procedural due-process right, but it entails that accused persons have a right to certain affirmative guarantees, including presumably the right to counsel, which would be a right to share in a scarce resource. Similarly, “the right to the protection of the law” against interference with “privacy, family, home or correspondence” (article 12) is a right not to be interfered with combined with a right to affirmative protection on the part of the state. Consider finally “the right to take part in the government of [one's] country, directly or through freely chosen representatives” (article 21).

¹² The argument is sketched by Waldron, Jeremy in his introduction to ed. Waldron, , Theories of Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 11.Google Scholar

¹³ See ibid., p. 9; Sumner, The Moral Foundation of Rights, pp. 42–46; Hart, H. L. A., Essays on Bentham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982)Google Scholar, ch. 7.

¹⁴ Sumner, The Moral Foundation of Rights, p. 46.

¹⁵ As Hart realized, for example, in proposing the account. See his Essays on Bentham, ch. 7. See also Waldron in Theories of Rights, p. 9, n. 21.

¹⁶ I discuss the reason-giving force of needs in my “Reason and Needs,” a paper I presented to the Bowling Green State University Conference “Value, Welfare, and Morality” on April 20–22, 1990. The present essay presents some modifications in my ideas about needs.

¹⁷ I have addressed some of these issues in the following papers: “Collective Actions and Secondary Actions,” American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 16, no. 3 (July 1979), pp. 177–86; “Hobbes on Artificial Persons and Collective Actions,” The Philosophical Review, vol. 89, no. 4 (October 1980), pp. 579–606; “Do Nations Have the Right of Self-Determination?”, ed. French, Stanley G., Philosophers Look at Canadian Confederation (Montreal: Canadian Philosophical Association, 1979), pp. 71–95 Google Scholar; “What Collectives Are: Agency, Individualism and Legal Theory,” Dialogue, vol. 23, no. 2 (June 1984), pp. 249–69; “The Concept of Society,” Dialogue, forthcoming.

¹⁸ See Peffer, Rodney, “A Defense of Rights to Well-Being,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 8 (1978), pp. 65–87 Google Scholar, at p. 71.

¹⁹ Ibid.

²⁰ The Universal Declaration called on “all peoples and all nations” to promote “respect” for the rights listed in the Universal Declaration and, “by teaching and education” and “progressive measures,” to secure their “universal and effective recognition and observance.” Effective recognition would amount to different things in different cases. For example, no one country would be considered obligated by the proposed right to a nationality to permit unconditional immigration and citizenship to anyone who asked for it (article 15). And no one country could ensure by itself the putative right “to seek, receive and impart information… regardless of frontiers” (article 19). But in the other cases, each country would be considered obligated under the Declaration to initiate measures to secure the observance of the rights within its borders in whatever way would be appropriate and effective.

²¹ See my “The Concept of Society.”

²² My suspicion should not occasion concern or surprise. We are accustomed to dealing with abstract formulations of rights. We speak, for instance, of the right to freedom of speech, but there is room for a great deal of controversy even among people who agree on an abstract formulation of this right. There are political issues here, as well as jurisprudential and philosophical issues, and it is doubtful that all of them can be resolved by arguments from philosophical first principles.

²³ Suppose a society introduces a lottery in which the prize is a fund of resources sufficient to guarantee an adequate standard of living. Only one person in the society can win the prize, but everyone is given a ticket. There is a sense in which everyone is enabled by this system to achieve an adequate standard of living, but not a relevant sense, for it is not possible in this system for every person to enjoy an adequate standard. The losers can all complain of having been treated unjustly (assuming the society is in favorable circumstances). Even the winner can complain of having been treated unjustly, for it is only by chance that he enjoys an adequate standard of living. To have the opportunity in the relevant sense implies being in a position to bring it about that one enjoys an adequate standard of living, and no one under the lottery system has the power to bring this about. A society in favorable circumstances must enable every citizen to achieve an adequate standard of living in the sense that it must both provide each person with the opportunity to enjoy an adequate standard of living and also make it possible that every person enjoys an adequate standard of living (subject to the qualifications mentioned in the text).

²⁴ Jean Hampton and the editor of this volume helped me to see different interpretations of the duty.

²⁵ Arneson, Richard J., “Liberalism, Distributive Subjectivism, and Equal Opportunity for Welfare,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 19 (1990), pp. 158–94.Google Scholar Dworkin, Ronald, “What is Equality? Part 1: Equality of Welfare” and “What is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Resources,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 10 (1981), pp. 185–246 Google Scholar and pp. 283–345. Braybrooke, David, Meeting Needs (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 143–50Google Scholar, 293–301.

²⁶ John Rawls, A Theory of Justice. I should mention that Rawls intends to set aside the problem of costly needs as a “difficult complication.” He claims only to deal with “the fundamental case” of a society in which “no one suffers from unusual needs “ and “all citizens are fully cooperating members… over the course of a complete life.” It is nevertheless worth pointing out the implications of the difference principle for cases in which there are people with costly needs. See Rawls, John, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory: The Dewey Lectures 1980,” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 77 (1980), p. 546.Google Scholar

²⁷ Virginia Held makes essentially the same point in her Rights and Goods: Justifying Social Action (New York: The Free Press, 1984), p. 187.

²⁸ Amartya Sen discusses “variable conversion rates of primary goods into achievements “ in his “Justice: Means versus Freedoms,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 19 (1990), pp. 118. The issue here is variable conversion rates of primary goods into the satisfaction of needs. On this issue, see also Sen, Amartya, The Standard of Living, ed. Geoffrey, Hawthorn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁹ Virginia Held proposes a similar reading of the right in her Rights and Goods, pp. 184–85.

³⁰ Richard Arneson denies that it is possible to justify “discriminating in the treatment of physical handicaps and other expensive preferences.” See his “Liberalism, Distributive Subjectivism, and Equal Opportunity for Welfare,” p. 194. I claim that the fact that handicaps are deprivations of what we need is what justifies treating them differently from unfulfilled preferences.

³¹ See Amartya Sen, The Standard of Living.

³² Ibid., pp. 8, 11. Sen comments on p. 11: “The battered slave, the broken unemployed, the hopeless destitute, the tamed housewife, may have the courage to desire little, but the fulfillment of those disciplined desires is not a sign of great success.”

³³ Richard Arneson proposes to answer Sen's objection by invoking hypothetical desires. He also proposes to invoke considerations about the conditions under which desires are formed to avoid the worry about conditioning. But I submit we already know enough about a person who is “poor, exploited, overworked and ill” to know that he does not have a standard of living adequate for his health and well-being. We do not have to inquire into the conditions under which his desires were formed. See Arneson's “Liberalism, Distributive Subjectivism, and Equal Opportunity for Welfare,” pp. 163, 167–70.

³⁴ Sen, The Standard of Living, p. 14, quoting Pigou, A. C., The Economics of Welfare (London: Macmillan, 1952), p. 759.Google Scholar

³⁵ Ibid., pp. 15–16.

³⁶ Ibid., p. 16.

³⁷ There are discussions of the distinction in many places. For a particularly good discussion, see Thomson, Garrett, Needs (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987), pp. 1–10.Google Scholar Occasional needs could also be called “instrumental needs,” but this term may be misleading, since basic needs are also instrumental to achieving one's goals.

³⁸ The term comes from Braybrooke, David, Meeting Needs (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁹ There are complications that would need to be addressed in a full treatment of the issue. Suppose, for example, that the culture of one's society views a kind of housing as contemptible, although housing of this kind would be adequate to satisfy anyone's need for shelter. If so, housing of this kind might be inadequate to sustain a sense of self-respect, and so a case could be made for enabling everyone to have better or different housing than is strictly needed to provide adequate shelter. But differences in psychology can lead to unwelcome complications. Suppose, for example, that a person's self-esteem comes to depend on his having much fancier housing than most other people. He should not be viewed as having an entitlement to the fancier housing. For, assuming that there are other routes to self-esteem, he should be expected to look for another route, and his case should not be assimilated to a case of costly needs.

⁴⁰ Richard Arneson says, however, “The conviction that mere preferences are analytically distinguishable from true human needs may prove to be illusory.” See Arneson, “Liberalism, Distributive Subjectivism, and Equal Opportunity for Welfare,” p. 191. The distinction is discussed by several authors, including Braybrooke, Meeting Needs; Wiggins, David, “Claims of Need,” in his Needs, Values, Truth (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), pp. 1–57 Google Scholar; Garrett Thomson, Needs, pp. 98–107.

⁴¹ John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 62, 90–95.

⁴² The list is adapted from David Braybrooke, Meeting Needs, p. 36.

⁴³ David Wiggins, “Claims of Need,” p. 15, also p. 10. See also Feinberg, Joel, Social Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1973), p. 111 Google Scholar; Stampe, D. W., “Need,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 66 (1988), p. 135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁴ Garrett Thomson, Needs, p. 8.

⁴⁵ I do not believe it is a conceptual truth that a person has a right not to be harmed. But even if this is a conceptual truth, it would not follow from the line I am exploring in the text that a person has a right not to be deprived of a matter of basic need. For the argument in the text suggests that it is a conceptual truth that deprivation of a matter of basic need creates a risk of harm, but to create a risk of harm is not necessarily to cause a harm. More important, the right against the state to be enabled to meet one's basic needs would not follow from the right not to be harmed, even if depriving a person of a matter of basic need invariably caused harm. For a state that fails to enable a person to meet his needs has not necessarily deprived the person of a matter of basic need.

⁴⁶ Braybrooke, Meeting Needs, pp. 31, 48.

⁴⁷ I developed this idea in somewhat more detail in “Reason and Needs.”

⁴⁸ Virginia Held stresses this point in Rights and Goods, pp. 184–87.

⁴⁹ Mark Ravizza and Richard Arneson urged me to confront these worries.

⁵⁰ I will not attempt to explore Hobbesian contractarian arguments, but Gregory Kavka uses a form of Hobbesian argument to argue for the right of disabled persons to work, which may perhaps be viewed as a corollary of The Right, in “Disability and the Right to Work.” It should be noted, however, that Kavka's conception of the constraints on such arguments differs significantly from the conceptions of other contractarians, such as Jan Narveson and David Gauthier. See Narveson, The Libertarian Idea (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989)Google Scholar, and Gauthier, David, Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).Google Scholar I discuss what I take to be fundamental problems with Hobbesian arguments of the sort used by Gauthier in my “Contractarianism and Moral Skepticism,” ed. Peter, Vallentyne, Contractarianism and Rational Choice: Essays on Gauthier (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

⁵¹ John Rawls, A Theory of Justice. Rawls's argument has been widely criticized in the literature. Here, for the sake of argument, I do not question his basic assumptions except (mainly) the assumption that the parties to the original position would be concerned with their command over the primary goods of income, wealth, power, authority, and self-respect. I claim they would be reasonable to be concerned about their ability to meet their basic needs.

⁵² This argument depends crucially, however, on the claim that those in the original position would choose on the basis of the “maximin” choice rule, which is of course controversial. Rawls explains and gives the rationale for maximin in A Theory of Justice, pp. 152ff. Kavka's Rawlsian and Hobbesian contractarian arguments assume that the contractors are risk-averse and would at least tend to insure against worst outcomes. See his “Disability and the Right to Work.”

⁵³ This view is sketched by Waldron in ed. Waldron, Theories of Rights, pp. 9–10, 12–14. Waldron credits the theory to Maccormick, D. N., “Rights in Legislation,” ed. Hacker, P. M. S. and Raz, J., Law, Morality and Society: Essays in Honour of H. L. A. Hart (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 192ff.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ He might feel demeaned, of course, because of his psychology. But if there is The Right, then a (normative) judgment that he is less worthy, or that he has demeaned himself, would not be warranted. As I said before, in designing institutions to implement The Right, the state ought to take into account the likely psychological effects of various institutions and aim to enhance people's self-respect, since people have a need for self-respect.

⁵⁵ Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 167–74. I cannot attempt to deal fully with Nozick's objection here.

⁵⁶ Ibid., ch. 2.