In On Human Rights, James Griffin attempts to clarify what human rights are and what justifies them. Griffin argues that human rights should not simply be accepted as lists found in international documents but must be grounded in a philosophical explanation. His central claim is that human rights exist to protect what he calls “normative agency”—the human capacity to make choices about one’s life and pursue a conception of a worthwhile life.
According to Griffin, because humans are agents capable of evaluating options and directing their lives, they require certain conditions in order to exercise that agency. These conditions generate fundamental human rights. He identifies several high-level rights that protect this capacity, including rights to autonomy, liberty, and material welfare. Autonomy refers to the ability to choose one’s own path in life; liberty ensures freedom from coercion so those choices can be acted upon; and material welfare provides the basic resources necessary for meaningful choice.
Griffin also argues that not every being can hold human rights. He restricts human rights to normative agents, meaning individuals capable of rational self-direction. He then explores how these rights generate duties, asking who must respect and enforce them.
The work concludes by examining how philosophical theories of human rights compare with international human rights documents and how rights such as life, privacy, and political participation should be interpreted and applied in practice. Overall, Griffin presents human rights as protections for the basic conditions required for meaningful human agency.
Overall, Griffin concludes that human rights are best understood as moral protections for the conditions required for individuals to live as self-directing agents capable of shaping their own lives.