Horacio Spector Value Pluralism and the Two （霍雷肖Spector价值多元化和两个）.pdf

RMM Vol. 0, Perspectives in Moral Science, ed. by M. Baurmann B. Lahno, 2009, 355–371 http://www.rmm-journal.de/ Horacio Spector Value Pluralism and the Two Concepts of Rights* Abstract: Philosophers and legal theorists still disagree about the correct analysis of ‘rights’, both moral and legal. The ‘Will Theory’ and the ‘Interest Theory’—the two main views—can each account for various features of rights, but neither of them is totally satisfactory. The controversy has now been running for decades and seems irresolvable. I will con- tend in this paper that the discussion of ‘value pluralism’ in the Berlinian tradition can illuminate the debate over the concept of rights. Philosophers and legal theorists still disagree about the correct analysis of ‘rights’, both moral and legal. The ‘Will Theory’ and the ‘Interest Theory’—the two main views—can each account for various features of rights, but neither of them is totally satisfactory. The controversy has now been running for decades and seems irresolvable.1 I will contend in this paper that the discussion of ‘value pluralism’ in the Berlinian tradition can illuminate the debate over the concept of rights. Value pluralism says that there is a plurality of conflicting and incommensu- rable universal values (Crowder 2002, 45). Values are said to be incommensu- rable “when they raise radically distinct considerations such that there seems, prima facie, to be no reason to rank one ahead of another in all or most cases” (Crowder 2002, 53). This is the conception of incommensurability Isaiah Berlin embraced. Because it does not include a time variable, I call it ‘synchronic value pluralism’. It centrally claims that there is no general procedure to rank ab- stract values in such a way so as to allow the resolution of practical conflic