From Wolterstorff’s Until Justice and Peace Embrace
Initial claim:
(P1) Justice is the enjoyment of one’s rights.
Calvin spoke of a “mutual communication” in society: “each is to contribute what he or she can to the enrichment of the common life” (Wolterstorff 78, quoting Calvin, Comm. Harmony of the Evangelists, 1:103).
Discussion of Rights
- Right to protection
- Right to freedom
- Right to participate in government
- Right to sustenance
Classic Liberalism: do your own thing but do not interfere, positively or negatively, with your neighbor.
Sustenance Rights are basic rights–they are necessary for life (82).
Wolterstorff defines “right” as a “morally legitimate claim [to]…the actual enjoyment of a good that is socially guaranteed against ordinary, serious, and remedial threats (82).
- A right places an obligation on others, a responsibility–and that is necessary to what it means to be human.
- A right is the claim to the actual enjoyment of the good in question.
- It is socially guaranteed.
- This means that rights always involve social structures.
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