RIGHTS: PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS AND PROPOSED SOLUTIONS

Abstract

The author presents in this paper various aspects of his proposal for general theory of rights. This theory takes legal rights as the model for rights in general. Its first purpose addresses to the need of clarifying the rights discourse, both because of theoretical and practical reasons, that is, considering the need of setting out the practical scope of each right. This could be achieved analyzing the language of rights in terms of the fundamental legal categories analyzed by W. N. Hohfeld. The theory also highlights the adversarial nature of rights and the complexity of their internal structure. All these aspects appear too in the case of moral rights, whose singular grounding problems are also addressed. The text ends with some considerations relating to potential rights holders and a special category of rights: human rights.