What's Wrong with Rights?

Should the right against torture be absolute, even though the heavens fall? Are human rights universal or merely expressions of Western neo-imperial arrogance? 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.

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.”

Nigel Biggar is Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral theology at the University of Oxford, Faculty of Theory and Religion. He is the director of the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life. From 1990 to 1999, Biggar served as Chaplain and Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford University. He then held the position of Professor of Theology and Ethics at the UNiversity of Leeds. from 1999 to 2004. From 2004, he served as Professor of Theology and Ethics at Trinity College Dublin until 2007. From 2007 until his retirement in 2022, he held the position of Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2021 Birthday Honours for services to higher education.

Research Seminar Series

• Martin Loughlin (London School of Economics): Against Constitutionalism
• Michael Freeden (University of Oxford): Concealed Silences and Inaudible Voices in Political Thinking
• John Wyatt (Faraday Institute Cambridge): Right To Die?

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MCC students can get credit for active participation at the event, but only if they read the compulsory reading and prepare three questions for the Q&A section of the research seminar.

Venue: Hunyadi János Hall (1113 Budapest, Tas vezér Street 3-7.)

Date: 09 November 2023, 6.00pm