Thread by @corymassimino

Strong disagreements over the term "right" seem often riddled with miscommunication and misunderstanding. Fewer terms are subject to as much variation in meaning. You have moral rights, legal rights, natural rights, property rights, de jure rights, de facto rights, etc. etc.

In the sense that seems most common to political philosophy, which is a "morally enforceable claim" I think it makes sense to be a kind of monist and try to formulate compossible claims to free action rooted in both naturalistic and constructivist aspects of human society.

On this view I think there is really just a single right shared by all rational agents and which is compossibly realizable between them: the right not to be coerced i.e. the right to one's own sphere of justified free action that extends as far as their own autonomy.

But I don't think justice can be just about rights claims in this narrow sense. Justice is about what we owe each other in whole. Plenty of harms involve no physical interference in another's justified sphere of free action, such as verbal/mental abuse, spying, objectifying, etc.

This is what makes systems of domination which aren't reducible to purely physical force (patriarchy, white supremacy) matters of justice. And fwiw statism is also not reducible to physical force since it, by definition, depends on emergent social narratives for legitimization.

All systems of domination depend not on physical force alone but also on *power* over others who acquiesce only out of lack of human needs, both biological (food, water shelter, etc.) and mental (interpersonal relationships, mental well-being, informed decision-making, etc.).

So on this view, things like healthcare, housing, etc. are absolutely human rights. They are integral to human flourishing because they are necessary to exercising one's autonomy and, by extension, to not being subjected to relationships of hierarchical power.

But I don't think any of the positive goods necessary for human flourishing are rights in the same sense as the right not to be coerced. I think the constitutive role autonomy plays in human flourishing generates a duty to always engage with others via reason not force.

Lucky for me I also think the positive goods necessary for human flourishing are WAY more effectively created by peaceful cooperation and exchange than by coercion.