Commentary by Henry Shue:

Two suggestions are proposed: distinguising provision of therapy and provision of support for asylum; and distinguishing inquiry before acceptance as client and trust after acceptance as client.

Global Consequentialism and the Morality and Laws of War

Rights-based and consequentialist approaches to ethics are often seen as being diametrically opposed to one another. This is entirely understandable, since to say that X has a (moral) right to Y is in part to assert that there are (moral) reasons to provide X with Y even if doing so foreseeably will not lead to better consequences. However, a ‘global’ form of consequentialism raises the possibility of some sort of reconciliation: it could be that the best framework for the regulation of international affairs (say) is one that employs a notion of rights, but if so, that (according to global consequentialism) is the case because regulating international affairs in that manner tends, as a matter of empirical fact, to lead to better consequences. By way of case study, this chapter applies these ideas to a recent dispute about the morality and laws of war, between Jeff McMahan and Henry Shue.

Human Rights in Light of the Foregoing

This chapter discusses the implications of the argument of this book for our understanding of human rights. On one common conception human rights are conceived of as moral rights, on another as legal or more broadly institutional rights. Within either conception, they may be conceived of as demand-rights. The argument of this book implies that if they are then conceived of as moral rights existing independently of human commitments, their possibility is moot. If they are conceived of as institutional rights, they are, as such, normatively inert. The outcome of the discussion is this: the way to gain the standing to demand actions to which one is understood to have a human right on either conception is by way of an appropriate joint commitment. Human rights theorists whose work is discussed include Henry Shue, Alan Buchanan, and Charles Beitz.

Os direitos básicos como direitos humanos em Henry Shue

O presente artigo apresenta e discute a teoria de Henry Shue sobre os direitos básicos. Para o autor, os direitos básicos à segurança, subsistência e liberdade são essenciais para o aproveitamento efetivo dos demais direitos. A fundamentação substantivada da teoria de Shue considera os direitos humanos como meios para garantir as condições mínimas necessárias para as respectivas formas de vida. Shue afirma que a falha em reconhecer um direito mínimo a subsistência se encontra na falsa dicotomia defendida por algumas concepções entre direitos positivos e negativos. Por exemplo, a posição libertária defende que os direitos sociais não seriam direitos genuínos porque impõem aos outros deveres positivos. O presente artigo pretende defender que um direito humano básico impõe deveres positivos, bem como, deveres negativos. Se os direitos humanos geram deveres positivos, precisamos saber quais são as pessoas e/ou instituições responsáveis por esses deveres. Pretende-se mostrar que a proposta de Shue apresenta uma resposta para essas questões e uma contribuição para a defesa do reconhecimento e implementação da prática dos direitos sociais.

The Problem with Yuppie Ethics

How much personal partiality do agent-centred prerogatives allow? If there are limits on what morality may demand of us, then how much does it permit? For a view Henry Shue has termed ‘yuppie ethics’, the answer to both questions is a great deal. It holds that rich people are morally permitted to spend large amounts of money on themselves, even when this means leaving those living in extreme poverty unaided. Against this view, I demonstrate that personal permissions are limited in certain ways: their strength must be continuous with the reasons put forward to explain their presence inside morality to begin with. Typically, these reasons include non-alienation and the preservation of personal integrity. However, when personal costs do not result in alienation or violate integrity, they are things that morality can routinely demand of us. Yuppie ethics therefore runs afoul of what I call the ‘continuity constraint’.