Rights of Identity

A person’s identity is their sense of who and what they are, of who stands in significant relations to them , and ofwhat is valuable to them . This is inevitably very broad, an im m ediate im plication ofwhich is that the concept ofidentity takenalone cannot do significant norm ative work. In som e cases a person’s identity is bound up with the evilthat they do or wish to do, and cannot thereby give them any right to do it. In othercases very powerfulelem ents ofa person’s identity – such as their attachm ent to loved ones – is certainly related to im portant rights, but it is not entirely clear that one needs the concept ofidentity to explicate or justify these rights; the deep involvem ent of their identity is arguably a byproduct of otherim portant values in these cases (such as love), and those values can do the groundingwork ofthe rights by them selves and m ore sim ply and clearly.

Keywords:

Identity