Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association

Volume 84, 2010

Philosophy and Language

The Language of Rights
Towards an Aristotelian-Thomistic Analysis

Alasdair MacIntyre has argued that our contemporary discourse about “rights,” and “natural rights” or “human rights,” is alien to the thought of Aristotle and Aquinas. His worry, it seems, is that our contemporary language of rights is often taken to imply that individuals may possess certain entitlement-conferring properties or powers (typically called “rights”) entirely in isolation from other individuals, and outside the context of any community or common good. In this paper, I accept MacIntyre’s worries about our contemporary language of “rights”; however, I seek to show that some of our contemporary language or discourse about “justice” and “rights” is not altogether misguided, but does—in fact—reflect a properly critical (Aristotelian-Thomistic) understanding of what is meant by “justice” and “rights.”