Questions: Rights and Duties

Question 1

A philosopher argues: 'Everyone has a right to healthcare.' According to the correlative theory of rights, what does this claim entail?

• A. Healthcare is good and important, but rights claims are purely aspirational expressions of values
• B. Someone — the state, employers, or taxpayers — has an active duty to provide or fund healthcare
• C. Individuals have a duty to maintain their own health so as not to burden the system
• D. Healthcare is a privilege that societies may extend but are never obligated to provide

Answer: (B)

The correlative theory holds that asserting a right necessarily assigns a corresponding duty to others. A right to healthcare is a positive right — a right to receive something — which means some identifiable party must have an active duty to provide it. This is precisely why positive rights are politically contentious: the duty-bearer (state, employers, taxpayers) must actively provide resources. Option A treats rights as mere aspirations, ignoring the duty-assigning force of rights language.

Question 2

A libertarian and a welfare liberal disagree about whether people have a right to education. The most fundamental source of their disagreement is likely:

• A. Whether education is valuable enough to qualify as a right at all
• B. The distinction between negative and positive rights, and whether positive rights can be legitimate
• C. Whether rights are better grounded in natural rights theory or contractarian theory
• D. Whether rights should track rational nature or divine command

Answer: (B)

The negative/positive distinction is the structural fault line in this debate. Libertarians recognize robust negative rights (non-interference) but resist positive rights because they require extracting resources from others, potentially violating their negative rights to property and liberty. Welfare liberals insist that meaningful freedom requires positive rights — non-interference is hollow without the resources to act. Options C and D address grounding theories, which are secondary to this structural disagreement about what kinds of rights can exist.

Question 3

The right to free speech is a positive right because it requires the government to actively protect and facilitate speech.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

Free speech is paradigmatically a negative right — a right against interference. The corresponding duty is a duty of non-interference: the state must not censor, silence, or punish speech. Positive rights, by contrast, require someone to actively provide something — healthcare, education, a minimum income. Governments do sometimes take positive steps to protect speech, but the right itself is negative: what it demands at minimum is that the government stay out of the way.

Question 4

Rights and duties are merely two names for the same underlying moral relationship, describing it from different vantage points.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

This is the correlative theory's central claim. My right not to be harmed is your duty not to harm me; your right to privacy is my duty to respect it. The relationship is the same moral fact described from two perspectives. This is not trivial — it means that whenever you assert a right, you are simultaneously assigning a duty, and you must be able to specify who bears that duty and what it demands. Rights without identifiable duty-bearers are at best aspirational, at worst incoherent.

Question 5

What is the practical significance of distinguishing between negative and positive rights in political philosophy? Give an example of a conflict they can generate.

Model answer: Negative rights require only forbearance (others must refrain from acting), while positive rights require active provision (others must do something, typically provide resources). This generates conflicts: a positive right to housing imposes a duty on taxpayers whose negative right to property is partially overridden to fund it. The distinction determines what a government minimally owes its citizens and where the burden of justification falls for state action or inaction.

The stakes are high because the distinction shapes nearly every major policy debate. Universal healthcare, minimum income guarantees, and public education all depend on recognizing positive rights, which requires overriding some negative rights through taxation. Libertarian frameworks that prioritize negative rights view this as inherently problematic. Neither view is obviously correct, but clarity about which type of right is at stake sharpens the argument considerably.