Primacy of Rights

Charles Taylor, a philosopher opposed to the “Primacy of Rights” theories, describes such theories as those which place individual rights above those of society. In other words, he would disagree that the rights of man as an individual supercede the rights of man as a member of a society. Taylor believes that these theories are part of a larger heading that has become known as “Atomism,” which he believes characterizes all doctrines pertaining to and based upon the social contract theories of the seventeenth century. This paper will outline Taylor’s strategy for arguing against these primacy-of-rights theories, taking into account the importance of the thesis that “man is a social animal.”
Taylor begins his argument against primacy-of-rights by defining it as he sees it. He says that “theories which assert the primacy of rights are those which take as the fundamental, or at least a fundamental, principle of their political theory the ascription of certain rights t...