Philosophy of rights, moral philosophy, and the philosophy of harm.

This thesis will concern whether the dead hold rights. On the one hand, it is intuitive that rights are reserved for the living. It seems odd that someone who has passed, and cannot be materially affected, can nonetheless hold rights. And human rights doctrines, for example, reinforce this by conferring rights only on the living. Yet, we often speak of duties owed to the dead, and feel we would wrong the dead were we to violate those duties. We regard deathbed promises and the wills of the deceased with paramount importance. I will argue that posthumous rights exist. This has the potential to drastically alter the way in which we deal with dead bodies-with the rituals, traditions, and liturgy regarding posthumous respect, and the death process itself.