Dissertation committee:
Παύλος Σούρλας, Ομότιμος Καθηγητής Νομικής Σχολής Ε.Κ.Π.Α.
Κωνσταντίνος Παπαγεωργίου, Καθηγητής Νομικής Σχολής Ε.Κ.Π.Α.
Βασίλειος Βουτσάκης, Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής Νομικής Σχολής Ε.Κ.Π.Α.
Κωνσταντίνος Ανδρουλιδάκης, Kαθηγητής τμήματος Φιλοσοφικών και Κοινωνικών Σπουδών της Φιλοσοφικής Σχολής του Πανεπιστημίου Κρήτης
Σταυρούλα Τσινόρεμα, Καθηγήτρια τμήματος Φιλοσοφικών και Κοινωνικών Σπουδών της Φιλοσοφικής Σχολής του Πανεπιστημίου Κρήτης
Φίλιππος Βασιλόγιαννης, Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής Νομικής Σχολής Ε.Κ.Π.Α.
Νικόλαος Παπασπύρου, Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής Νομικής Σχολής Ε.Κ.Π.Α.
Summary:
The thesis sets out to ascertain the (im)possibility of tension between rights. The issue is approached through delving into the conceptual triptych of rationality, substantive reasons for action and rights, as well as the intrinsic relations that hold between these normative categories.
The pair of rationality and practical reasons is examined in the first part of the thesis, under the title “Normative consistency”. The formal issue of the coherence of reason’s verdicts is subjected to scrutiny in order for an answer to be provided to the question: “what confers cohesion and integrity to a normative system?”. The pair of substantive reasons and rights and the one of rights and rationality constitute the analytic and the dialectic components of the second part, under the title “Rights”. In this part, I endeavour to shed light on the exact position that rights occupy in a system of practical rules and principles.
The main tenet that underpins every theoretical elaboration of the subject is that normativity is not confined to what can serve as a ceteris paribus sufficient justificatory ground for the endorsement of a propositional attitude in the course of a reason-giving procedure; normativity is already manifested at the deeper level of the constitution of justification. Both rational principles and rights deploy their normative force at this level, hence they bind us in a more profound and radical way than reasons: not by justifying a behavior, but by setting the bounds of its justifiability; the bounds of what can be justified and of what can justify it.
According to the reason-constitutive model of normativity, the categories of rights are not reduced to reasons relations, neither are they sources of substantive reasons of a common or a special kind, as it is widely argued. Accordingly, rights can be regarded neither as rules, nor as practical principles. Instead, we should conceive them as the logical joints that simultaneously cohere and separate the structural elements of reason, persons, establishing the normative domain. This conception of rights underlies the domain, from the moral to the constitutional and the legal order in general, determining the essence of law and its bindingness.
The conclusion I reach is that rights, as the bilateral relations of substantive equality, absolute distinctiveness and stricto sensu dignity between persons, lay the foundations of the normative force of rational principles and practical reasons, of the entire edifice of reason. On this view, rights not only harmonize with the idea of normative consistency, but also constitute its necessary conditions. Hence, the tension between rights is logically and normatively impossible.
Keywords:
rights, practical reasons, rationality, normativity, conflicts of rights, moral dilemmas, proportionality
