Why read Basic Rights?

Book cover of Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy

Book description

An expanded and updated edition of a classic work on human rights and global justice

Since its original publication, Basic Rights has proven increasingly influential to those working in political philosophy, human rights, global justice, and the ethics of international relations and foreign policy, particularly in debates regarding foreign policy's…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Basic Rights as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Lucia M. Rafanelli

Author

This book questions orthodoxies that need questioning. Shue argues that rights to the goods one needs to survive (like food, potable water, and clean air) are just as morally urgent and just as important to protect as rights to bodily security.

He offers a bold defense of the moral imperative to ensure everyone in the world has their most important rights, including rights to subsistence goods, protected. This, in turn, has significant implications for US foreign policy. It shows the status quo—in which states like the US retain massive amounts of wealth, safeguarding their own citizens’ pursuit of…

From Lucia's list on The best political theory books on what makes a just world.