Moral Rights and Political Freedom

Smith here charts a potentially divisive course: she is a philosopher commenting on issues in political science. Although it's possible to accuse her of poaching on someone else's territory, philosophy does have implications for political/social organization and practice. Bearing that in mind, we find several topics investigated. First, the questions of what rights actually do and do not constitute are dealt with, followed by looks at several justifications of why rights are possessed by people. She comes down on the side of a teleological conception of rights and defends her picture of it against charges of teleological stances reducing to consequentialism. Beginning with Chapter 6, the last 50% or so of the book deals with freedom and related issues, namely force. She maintains that freedom and force are precise opposites. And let me put it another way: how do rights operate and how do they (when properly conceived) lead to a condition of freedom? The separate investigations begin with definitional discussions. What is a right? What is freedom? She sees both as being largely negative in nature, rights primarily defending a person from the encroachment of others and freedom being an equivalent to that in political (interpersonal) practice. She argues against competing views of rights and freedom, where some see freedom as a power over others and rights as a license to specific goods or services.