Nickel's Conception Of Rights Essay

Though Rawls intends for his conception of rights to operate globally, Nickel’s conception is more readily compatible with trends of global interaction beyond merely a descriptive sense. Operating with a largely monadic conception of global affairs, Rawls claims that in order to respect decent foreign states’ autonomy, sanctions or other noncombatant forms of coercion are impermissible. Given the global society’s ever-deepening reticulation, allowing nations to engage in problematic (though, not morally depraved) behavior permits infringement upon neighboring states. To illustrate, most well-ordered polities are affected by and contribute to global climate change. Under the Rawlsian conception, no restrictive measures are to be taken against American refusals to implement evidence-based climate policy which not only contribute to the perpetuation of climatic aberrations,

Nickel introduces feasibility as a moderating notion in his conception of rights, allowing for a system—in contrast to Rawls’ understanding of an international minimum— in which states with greater agential capacities afford a greater enumeration of rights to their citizens than citizens of states with diminished agential capacities. Though delimiting arguments for justified claims for rights; by crafting a system variable to a state’s capabilities, Nickel crafts a system in which it is not immediately obvious to what degree rights are to be expressed in a given nation, contrasting with the Rawlsian conception which proposes a singular concrete description for the international minimum. Despite this fluidity, it is possible that Nickel may overcome this unclear practical implementation of rights via a system similar to Rawls’ conception of social shaming in order to solidify the perpetuation of democratic institutions in which other states engaging in the aforementioned sanctioning in order to stimulate social