Abstract

Building on the work of Rousseau, Rawls, and theorists of deliberative democracy, my dissertation makes use of a substantive conception of reason-giving called "mutual justification" to develop and defend four basic rights: privacy, property, welfare, and life. While theories of reciprocity are prominent in the literature of democratic theory, my contribution lies in using reciprocity to reformulate the way theorists think about the fundamental rights essential to a legitimate society. My approach therefore rejects the common belief that individual rights are distinct from or serve to constrain democracy. Furthermore, although theorists like Rousseau have employed reciprocal reason-giving while ignoring the importance of negative rights, I argue that the rights of life and privacy should actually be derived from mutual justification. When these rights, as well as material rights, are thought of in this way, their substance as well as the method of defending them differs from orthodox conceptions