Social Problems, Moral Foghorns

Glen Newey at LRB Blog.

"Tackling fiddly social problems with rights-talk can be like trying to undo a knot with boxing gloves on. This all-or-nothing stance tends to get echoed in the justice-based theorising that dominates political philosophy, where either renting oneself for sex is demanded by justice, and hence a right, or proscribed by it, and so the object of a negative duty."