Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

COURSE DETAILS:

Selected Topics: Natural Rights

Important note regarding enrollment: All seats are reserved for philosophy graduate students. Philosophy honours students can access enrollment into this course by contacting the Philosophy Advisor (philcomm@sfu.ca). Enrollments from graduate students in other departments will be considered only upon submission of the Graduate Course Add Form, and with instructor's permission. All such enrollments will be done in or after the first week of classes.

The concept of a natural right was first incorporated into analytic philosophy during the C17th. There it flourished for a while, before suffering near-philosophical death at the hands of various impartial moral theories including Kantianism, utilitarianism, and Marxism, along with their contemporary refinements. The concept of a natural right managed to scrape along under the term “human rights”. But it has recently enjoyed revived influence: sometimes in surprising places. The UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, for example, purports to describe the “inherent rights” of the planet’s indigenous peoples. The “inherent rights of peoples” are a variety of natural rights. They incorporate the twin ideas that, (a) agents possess moral claims which may be enforced by violence, and (b) whose justification is neither derived from political institutions, nor from impartial moral principles (like the categorical imperative, the principle of utility, principles agreed to behind the Rawlsian “veil of ignorance”, etc.). In that way, the “inherent rights of peoples” resemble claims made about each person’s right to their body (in reproductive ethics) or to their personal information (in the ethics of privacy).

The course content reflects 4 objectives,

(1) To pinpoint how theories in the C17th, which first integrated the concept of a natural right, broke sharply from Scholastic moral philosophy

(2) To evaluate the cogency of Kant’s (still influential) assault on natural rights

(3) To evaluate contemporary critiques of natural or human rights

(4) To explore the idea of partiality in ethics which is isomorphic with the partiality implicit in the natural rights of persons and peoples

The readings will be weighted towards (3) and (4). However, since we will read some historical texts in pursuing (1) and (2), this course may be taken in satisfaction of either the History stream or the Value stream breadth requirements.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

Successful completion of this course will satisfy EITHER the “History" stream distribution requirement OR the “Value Theory” distribution requirement toward the MA degree for philosophy graduate students, but not both.

The general aim of the course is for students to learn how to:

• Identify a thesis and its supporting arguments in philosophical materials and other relevant sources
• Engage with those arguments in respectful discussion with peers
• Construct written arguments and to anticipate replies to those arguments
• Conduct independent research
• Gain insight into the historical and the conceptual foundations of natural rights

Grading

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

Timbits!

REQUIRED READING:

REQUIRED READING NOTES: