It is my view that one essential difference between persons and other creatures is to be found in the structure of a person's will. Besides wanting and choosing and being moved to do this or that, men may also want to have certain desires and motives. They are capable of wanting to be different, in their preferences and purposes, from what they are. Many animals appear to have the capacity for what I shall call "first-order desires" or "desires of the (...) first order," which are simply desires to do or not to do one thing or another. No animal other than man, however, appears to have the capacity for reflective self-evaluation that is manifested in the formation of second-order desires. (shrink)

By ‘Liberalism’ or ‘a liberal-democratic theory of justice’ I understand the thesis that a modern, affluent society is just only if it respects and enforces certain rights. Among these are rights to free speech, the liberty to make one's own self-regarding choices, privacy, due process of law, participation in society's political decision-making, and private property in personal posessions. By a ‘justification’ of these core rights of liberalism I understand a moral theory from which they are derivable. A moral theory which (...) justifies the core rights will, ipso facto, condemn slavery, totalitarianism, and other social arrangements incompatible with a liberal-democratic constitution. What shape that moral theory should have is a matter of some dispute. According to philosophers like Ronald Dworkin it must be ‘rights-based.’ The core rights of liberalism in his view are derivable from the fundamental human right to ‘equal respect and consideration.’ A widely held alternative view is that the core rights are simply social rules the existence of which promotes human welfare. (shrink)