Can you give yourself your own evil and your own good and hang your own will over yourself as a law? Nietzsche
A recent commercial on television tells us that we "have a right to chicken done right." Of course this is just advertising hyperbole but it is interesting that the ad would reflect some ethical notion and that this moral notion would be couched in the language of 'right'.* Philosophers too have had a recent penchant for the language of rights when dealing with moral subjects particularly when dealing with what is called "applied ethics." This aspect of moral philosophy is concerned with questions dealing with the correctness of behaviour with respect to such things as health care (e.g. biomedical ethics), the environment (environmental ethics), non-human members of the moral community (e.g. animal rights), and so on. In virtually all discussions in these fields there is a preoccupation with the question of rights: patient's rights, rights of fetae, human rights, rights to one's own body, and so on. In these discussions there is a strong move away from a primary concern with what obligations a moral individual has toward whatever other members of