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What's Wrong with Rights?
Are natural rights 'nonsense on stilts', as Jeremy Bentham memorably put it? Must the very notion of a right be individualistic, subverting the common good? Should the right against torture be absolute, even though the heavens fall? Are human rights universal or merely expressions of Western neo-imperial arrogance? Are rights ethically fundamental, proudly impervious to changing circumstances? Should judges strive to extend the reach of rights from civil Hamburg to anarchical Basra? Should judicial oligarchies, rather than legislatures, decide controversial ethical issues by inventing novel rights? Ought human rights advocates learn greater sympathy for the dilemmas facing those burdened with government?
These are the questions that What's Wrong with Rights? addresses. In doing so, it draws upon resources in intellectual history, legal philosophy, moral philosophy, moral theology, human rights literature, and the judgments of courts. It ranges from debates about property in medieval Christendom, through Confucian rights-scepticism, to contemporary discussions about the remedy for global hunger and the justification of killing. And it straddles assisted dying in Canada, the military occupation of Iraq, and genocide in Rwanda.
What's Wrong with Rights? concludes that much contemporary rights-talk obscures the importance of fostering civic virtue, corrodes military effectiveness, subverts the democratic legitimacy of law, proliferates publicly onerous rights, and undermines their authority and credibility. The solution to these problems lies in the abandonment of rights-fundamentalism and the recovery of a richer public discourse about ethics, one that includes talk about the duty and virtue of rights-holders.
These are the questions that What's Wrong with Rights? addresses. In doing so, it draws upon resources in intellectual history, legal philosophy, moral philosophy, moral theology, human rights literature, and the judgments of courts. It ranges from debates about property in medieval Christendom, through Confucian rights-scepticism, to contemporary discussions about the remedy for global hunger and the justification of killing. And it straddles assisted dying in Canada, the military occupation of Iraq, and genocide in Rwanda.
What's Wrong with Rights? concludes that much contemporary rights-talk obscures the importance of fostering civic virtue, corrodes military effectiveness, subverts the democratic legitimacy of law, proliferates publicly onerous rights, and undermines their authority and credibility. The solution to these problems lies in the abandonment of rights-fundamentalism and the recovery of a richer public discourse about ethics, one that includes talk about the duty and virtue of rights-holders.
376 pages, Hardcover
First published November 25, 2020
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About the author
Nigel Biggar
31 books58 followersNigel Biggar CBE is Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Pusey House, Oxford. He holds a B.A. in Modern History from Oxford and a Ph.D. in Christian Theology & Ethics from the University of Chicago. He was appointed C.B.E. “for services to Higher Education” in the 2021 Queen’s Birthday Honours list. His most recent books are Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (2023), What’s Wrong with Rights? (2020), In Defence of War (2013), and Between Kin and Cosmopolis: An Ethic of the Nation (2014). In the press he has written articles for the Financial Times, the (London) Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Spectator, the (Glasgow} Herald, the Irish Times, Standpoint, The Critic, The Article, Unherd and Quillette. He served on the Committee on Ethical Issues in Medicine at the Royal College of Physicians (London) from 2000 to 2014, the Royal Society’s Working Group on People and the Planet from 2010 to 2012, and the Pontifical Academy for Life from 2017 to 2022. He now chairs the board of trustees of the Free Speech Union.
He has lectured at the Royal College of Defence Studies, London; the UK Defence Academy, Shrivenham; the Führungsakademie der Bundeswehr, Hamburg; the US Military Academy, West Point; and the National Defense University, Washington, DC. His hobbies include visiting battlefields. In 1973 he drove from Scotland via Iran and Afghanistan to India. And in 2015 and 2017 he trekked across the mountains of central Crete in the footsteps of Patrick Leigh-Fermor and his comrades, when they abducted General Kreipe in April-May 1944.
He has lectured at the Royal College of Defence Studies, London; the UK Defence Academy, Shrivenham; the Führungsakademie der Bundeswehr, Hamburg; the US Military Academy, West Point; and the National Defense University, Washington, DC. His hobbies include visiting battlefields. In 1973 he drove from Scotland via Iran and Afghanistan to India. And in 2015 and 2017 he trekked across the mountains of central Crete in the footsteps of Patrick Leigh-Fermor and his comrades, when they abducted General Kreipe in April-May 1944.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 11, 2021
I agree with the author generally about wrongheadedness of right-fundamentalism, because the secular world view has successfully dismantled the moral foundations of laws and rights, but still trying to keep the carcass of the classical natural rights alive with help of abstract human value talks that are totally and purely subjective.
But I was not comfortable with some of the examples that Nigel mentions in several places throughout the book. Nigel puts a lot of trust on the military leadership of countiries like UK and trusts that their investigations into alleged war crimes committed by their own regiments are reliable.
Although he tries to avoid eurocentrism in this research he still commits some typical eurocentrist mistakes, the possible contribution of non-european cultures to areas like war laws, human rights is neglected and not dealt with comprehensivly.
But I believe that the book is an important step in the right directions and the right-fundamentalism should be criticized. So I recommend the book to readers.
But I was not comfortable with some of the examples that Nigel mentions in several places throughout the book. Nigel puts a lot of trust on the military leadership of countiries like UK and trusts that their investigations into alleged war crimes committed by their own regiments are reliable.
Although he tries to avoid eurocentrism in this research he still commits some typical eurocentrist mistakes, the possible contribution of non-european cultures to areas like war laws, human rights is neglected and not dealt with comprehensivly.
But I believe that the book is an important step in the right directions and the right-fundamentalism should be criticized. So I recommend the book to readers.
September 18, 2021
The title suggests a rather more controversial take than is actually the case with the contents. Biggar spends the bulk of the book analysing historical and contemporary discussions of rights, and whether they can be considered absolute and universal. Siding particularly with the thought of Onora O'Neill, and further back in time, Edmund Burke, he argues cogently for rights being based on law and contingencies rather than abstract absolutes. In many ways this is the "common sense" position which a moment's thought ought to occur to anyone who recognises that life is complex, although it brings with it the question of what status rights can have in societies where discrimination is legalised (Nazi Germany) or where anarchy is such that there can be no rights-enforcers (Rwanda).
The final three chapters look at two specific instances of rights absolutism - the ECHR's judgements on the actions of British soldiers in Iraq and the Carter v. Canada in which the Canadian court, in a bizarre Lewis Carroll-esque twisting of logic managed to declare that the right to life also implied the right to assisted suicide. The latter example illustrates well the dangers of an unfettered and arrogant judiciary, but the extreme nature of the example, I felt, detracted from the wider discussion of how legitimate legal interpretations of courts can operate in the nebulous world of rights discourse.
The last chapter, the weakest in the book, sees Bigger taking pot shots at three notable human rights lawyers by taking extracts from their writings, all of which on their own demonstrate a cavalier disregard for parliament and politics, but being no more than gobbets of thought leaves the reader wondering just how fair Biggar is being here.
Overall a very helpful discussion.
The final three chapters look at two specific instances of rights absolutism - the ECHR's judgements on the actions of British soldiers in Iraq and the Carter v. Canada in which the Canadian court, in a bizarre Lewis Carroll-esque twisting of logic managed to declare that the right to life also implied the right to assisted suicide. The latter example illustrates well the dangers of an unfettered and arrogant judiciary, but the extreme nature of the example, I felt, detracted from the wider discussion of how legitimate legal interpretations of courts can operate in the nebulous world of rights discourse.
The last chapter, the weakest in the book, sees Bigger taking pot shots at three notable human rights lawyers by taking extracts from their writings, all of which on their own demonstrate a cavalier disregard for parliament and politics, but being no more than gobbets of thought leaves the reader wondering just how fair Biggar is being here.
Overall a very helpful discussion.
November 29, 2023
A good summary of the current debate on human rights (2020). Although he criticizes the concept of "natural rights" because he considers it misleading, he agrees with the idea of "human (legal) rights", which secure some basic human goods (but, nevertheless, they have limits and are not absolute).
Really interesting in pointing out the weak points of nowadays interpretations and developments of human rights theories.
Really interesting in pointing out the weak points of nowadays interpretations and developments of human rights theories.
December 10, 2025
“In a nutshell, therefore, my answer to the question, ‘Are there natural rights?’, is this. There is natural right or law or morality, that is, a set of moral principles that are given in and with the nature of reality, specifically the nature of human flourishing. There are also positively legal rights that are, or would be, justified by natural morality. But there are no natural rights" (131).
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews