Gewirth’s theory of human rights has made a major contribution to philosophy. In this edited collection, contributors from a broad range of disciplines discuss the theoretical and practical application of Gewirthian theory to current world issues. Case studies highlight mental health, the LGBT community, intellectual disabilities, global economic inequality, and market instability to provide a truly interdisciplinary study. This important contribution to human rights scholarship provides a platform for further discussion of Gewirthian theory. It will be of interest to those (...) researching moral, legal, and political philosophy, as well as policy makers, social workers, and medical staff. (shrink)

In this paper I intend to present two concepts of courage, with the purpose of introducing two different ways in which the classical virtue of courage may serve goals of personal achievement and goals of collective flourishing respectively. The two forms of courage that I will distinguish are the courage of creativity and the courage of conviction, respectively. The courage of creativity is the ability to confront the fear of failure, this ability being directed by the agent's will to achieve, (...) while the courage of conviction is the ability to confront the fear of personal transience, this ability being directed by the agent's sense of moral responsibility. While not necessarily being a moral virtue, courage in the first of its two forms constitutes an important component of the agent's capacity for self-fulfilment. In its other form it enables the agent to confront the fears of meaninglessness and of being a social outcast, involving her in a quest for objectivity and in doing the right thing rather than giving in to conventions. (shrink)

This book describes what it means to have a normative identity and critically evaluates this kind of identity from the point of view of rational agency.

Justice is often viewed in terms of seeing to it that right-holders are provided with the goods that they are entitled to. Less attention is given to the other dimension of justice, namely, that of duty-holders. If persons are assigned more duties, or more burdensome duties, than fairness requires, then they are victims of injustice just as much as persons whose rights are left unfulfilled. In this essay, I will argue for certain limits to the duty to assist people in (...) need. My argument does not intend to show that we have no positive duties, but rather that these duties, whether they are of an interpersonal or a global, institutional kind, should be guided by an idea of fairness that pertains to the relations between duty-holders as well as between them and right-holders. I will discuss structural differences between negative and positive duties, as well as formulate a Principle of Contributive Fairness. (shrink)

Combining in-depth analysis with strikingly apt examples of the role that courage plays in the life of human beings, this major contribution to moral philosophy argues that courage is necessary to personal achievement as well as to the common good of a civic community. Bauhn insists that courage is necessary for reinforcing people's understanding of themselves as autonomous agents, which is in turn necessary for countering widespread feelings of alienation and depression. He defines courage as the ability to confront fear, (...) but crucially distinguishes a variety of fears that give rise to different types of courage. (shrink)