Human Rights and Public Goods: Problems for Health and Beyond (G. Sreenivasan)

Conférence | Talk

Journée mondiale de la philosophie | World Philosophy Day

COVE (Carleton Center on Values and Ethics) Distinguished Speaker 2015

Gopal Sreenivasan

(DukeUniversity)

Gopal Sreenivasan is Crown Professor of Ethics at Duke University.  He has written a number of recent papers on human rights; on the nature of rights generally; and on the relations between justice and health.  He is the author of two books, Emotion and Virtue (forthcoming) and The Limits of Lockean Rights in Property (1995).

Human Rights and Public Goods: Problems for Health and Beyond

In international law and in common opinion, there is clearly a human right to health.  But is there one in morality?  What does this even mean?  My lecture explores some problems for moral human rights that arise from acknowledging the importance to good health systems of pure public goods, like herd immunity against measles or diphtheria.  Evaluation of these problems, as well as of various unsuccessful attempts to solve or evade them, forces us to think hard about what it means to say that something is a (moral) human right.

Thursday, November 19th, 2015

6:00pm
(a reception with refreshments begins at 5:00pm)

Carleton University

Dunton Tower

Room 2017