  The basis of Rosmini’s teaching on human rights is a consequence of his moral theory, of which he gives a careful synthesis in a preface to The Philosophy of Right. If each person is morally obliged to recognise in practice what is known for what it is known to be, every other human being will be recognised as essentially on a par with the knowing person, and will have to be acknowledged as such. But because each person is obliged to act in accordance with moral propriety, every person is obliged to respect this obligation in the other on pain of violating the moral law itself. Granted this principle as foundation, and ‘right’ as a relationship between one person and others by which a person has a claim to what is his own, Rosmini maintains that ‘person’ is subsistent right. In other words, all rights are founded on that to which persons have a claim in so far as they are acting morally or are at least not acting immorally. Such activity cannot be the object of attack on the part of others without violation of persons as ends. ‘Right’, as he says, ‘is a moral governance or authority to act, or: right is a faculty to do what we please, protected by the moral law which obliges others to respect that faculty’ (ER, vol. 1, 237).