Work

The grammar of rights and the grammar of needs

Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: The paper is structured into four parts. Firstly I discuss the connection between the concept of injustice and the idea of human or individual rights. The claim is quite trivial: the language of rights has been and is still used as a strategy to demand correctives against injustice. Since this strategy has negative effects, of which concrete examples are given, I suggest a different grammar be adopted, the grammar of needs, which is what societies adopt in their justificatory discourses anyway. This leads into a consideration of how social criticism could start precisely from such discourses and why, under specific circumstances, the grammar of needs could represent a better strategy for this criticism than the language of rights does.
Language: English
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2967548419
FWCI:
Cites: 14
Cited by: 1
Related to: 10