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![]() Normativists such as Dworkin and Perry argue that descriptivists need evaluation. This controversy between normativists and descriptivists will be called “the methodological problem” in legal theory. For normativists, descriptivists got it wrong and vice versa. Legal philosophers share the same phenomenology of legal practice. By considering more closely what the terms of rights theories entail, I show that not all theories of rights presuppose a rejection of a teleological ordering of human life.Ībstract. Part of MacIntyre’s project was to show that rights and certain other theories in modern ethics fail on their own terms. My plan is to describe MacIntyre’s arguments at length, propose counterarguments against each of them, and show what parts of his virtue ethics account must be altered once his premise rejecting rights is removed. My conclusion is based on evidence drawn from other virtue ethics philosophers such as Elizabeth Anscombe, from medieval historians who consider the topic of rights such as Brian Tierney, and from a new field in political science called Deliberative Democracy. His claim that rights are inimical to virtue ethics is therefore not justified. Briefly, these are my counterarguments: first, it can be argued that rights exist as relations connected with the virtue of justice second, it is historically the case that the modern senses of the term “rights” emerged in milieu of 12th century canon law, not the milieu of social strife involved in the 14th century property debate which MacIntyre assumed was their origin and third, the claim that governing institutions of modern nations are wholly dominated by interest groups which allow for no deliberation about the common good is not borne out by the latest empirical political science research. My thesis is that MacIntyre’s arguments against rights are susceptible to counterarguments. Taken together, MacIntyre’s philosophical, historical, and empirical arguments constitute a strong critique of rights discourse in contemporary society. And third, MacIntyre argues on the basis of empirical observations of current-day politics that the use of rights language disrupts deliberation about the common good. Second, MacIntyre argues on the basis of historical evidence that rights are survival terms. First, MacIntyre offers philosophical arguments to show that rights simply do not exist. ![]() On my interpretation, MacIntyre makes three main arguments to justify the claim that rights are inimical to virtue ethics. This dissertation considers whether Alasdair MacIntyre’s reasons for rejecting rights terms are cogent.
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