Raz

I found it important to recognize that Raz is making a very particular claim in this article: it isn't that rights can't be apart of morality, but that a moral theory can't be based entirely in rights. The quote Mike provides below summarizes this well.

Overall, Raz seems to be arguing that something is missing when we reduce morality to the language of rights. It can only be, as he notes on 198, "morality in the narrow sense." It fails to take account of what Raz calls the "art of life;" it cannot take account of the fact that sometimes we ought to do something even if we aren't obligated to. I feel like Raz doesn't develop this claim all that well, but instead shows how his argument alligns with our moral intuitions. And it does. The advantage of his theory is that it better explains what we mean when we talk about something moral. Of course, he does advance arguments for rejecting a pure rights based theory--most clearly when he discusses collective goods. This argument makes argumentative sense, but isn't quite as appealing as his claim that a rights theory is severely diminished. These arguments are probably less separate than I am treating them to be.

To be honest, I'm not sure I fully understand his argument about why we ought not destroy the painting. I'm also confused about the gay marriage argument on 192/3. At what point has society provided enough acceptable life options under a theory that takes this to be necessary? I also got lost on his description of different collective goods on 188, but I have some understanding of his conclusion on this issue--either that means its not important for our purposes or I didn't actually understand the conclusion.