Individual - Group and Rights: c/o Bond (1996)

INDIVIDUAL

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     INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

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GROUP

"What this means is that it is necessary, or perceived as necessary, for each individual to protect his or her interests against the incursion of others, and the same for each group. Now this would not be possible if each individual did not have his or her own private or personal interests, and if each group did not have its own group interests, and that is undeniably true. Both individuals and groups are undeniably separate and different. Nevertheless, there is a common human interest in individuals and groups being decent to one another and respecting one another, and it would be better for every individual and every group if fear and adversarial competition could be eliminated. It is only because these things can never be completely eliminated, that universal solidarity can never be achieved, that we need the protection of rights, which, as has already been said (p.202 above), are always rights against. ...

SOCIETY - COMMUNITY SOCIAL JUSTICE sense of - SOLIDARITY

Rights are always adversarial, and provide deontic moral grounds for preventing actions or inactions that are contrary to the interests of the person or group whose rights they are. They are needed because such a danger will always continue to exist. This does not mean, of course, that universal solidarity, however unachievable, is not the ideal, for the closer we can get to it the better the interests of all individuals and all groups are served." pp.202-203.

Bond, E.J. (1996). Ethics and Human Well-Being: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell. p.202-203.