(Return to main path )

I want to say something here because I think that Griffin may be on to something. I'm not sure that he is exactly right in specifying what it is about human beings that gives them intrinsic value, but I agree that we need to specify whatever that is in order to develop a theory of human rights.

There is something about people that functions as the basis of our judgment about their value. What is it?

• Griffin believes that the source of value is personhood, which he understand as our capacity to define and live a good life.
  
  
• Another possibility is our capacity to create. I'm thinking here of our capacity to produce a monument such as the Taj Mahal, a piece of literature like Hamlet, a vaccine to prevent polio, or a theory like quantum mechanics. These are things that no other species can comprehend, let alone produce.
  
  
• Yet another possibility is our capacity to love and to develop personal relationships and social institutions that are based on love.

I'm not sure which of these best describes the quality that we value most in human beings. But whatever that quality is, it is the basis of our judgment that people have intrinsic value and should have strong moral rights. In other words, it is the quality that we hope to protect and foster by means of moral or human rights.