Rights, Benefits and Interests

Abstract

Our discussion of rights as claims or entitlements, or as defences or liberties, has taken us some distance, but we have still quite a way to go, if only to consider still other elements that conceptually form part of rights. Our next question will chiefly be this: if rights are claims to something, what, very generally, can this something be? As one can claim many things — to live, or to be safe, or to marry, or to ply one’s trade — it is clear that what a person is claiming (we assume, for the present, always against another individual) will comprise some benefit or advantage or, more broadly, an interest he wishes to realise. Of course not every personal benefit one wants or claims qualifies automatically as a right. But a right, so we shall now argue, must contain at least an element of benefit to be a right at all. To make a claim to something means that the claimant seeks something he deems beneficial or of interest to himself: only so can its denial to him constitute a ground for complaint. For, normally, one only complains because one has been deprived of some benefit; if a particular benefit were not missed one would have no grievance. One cannot complain if one finds oneself better instead of worse off. For greater clarity we shall first discuss benefits, later interests.