capitalism

Rights, Theories of 437
The most important and controversial feature about
individual rights is that they override all other moral
claims. If individuals have a right to liberty, then they may
not be physically compelled or coerced to take actions
merely because those actions are morally worthwhile.
Individuals may not be compelled or coerced to engage in
actions that, for example, constitute virtuous behavior, fulfill
their moral obligations to others, achieve the political
common good, or promote the greatest good for the greatest
number. Further, individuals may not be coercively prohibited
from doing what is morally wrong but to which they
have a right. People should be free to choose the morally
wrong course of action provided that it does not entail violation
of the rights of others. Physical compulsion and coercion
may be used only in defense against or in response to
the exercise of physical force or coercion, which is generally
understood to include extortion and fraud.
The central problem faced by contemporary libertarian
theorists is how to justify giving the right to liberty such
fundamental importance. Why is the right to liberty more
important than being virtuous, fulfilling our obligations to
others, achieving the common good, or promoting the
greatest good for the greatest number? The answers to that
question take different forms and provide a way to classify
various theories of individual rights. What follows is a short
summary of the various positions.
Moral skepticism holds that there is no moral knowledge
and, therefore, there is no problem faced by the advocate
of the right to liberty. Because we do not know what
actions are morally worthwhile, we do not have to show
why liberty is more important than these other allegedly
worthwhile actions. Of course, the problem with this approach
is that it is too sweeping. If no one knows what is morally
right or wrong, then one also does not know that people
have a moral right to liberty or that it is wrong to initiate
physical force or coercion.
Intuitionism contends that the right to liberty is a selfevident
moral truth and impossible to reject if one has any
moral insight at all. Yet is that so? What do we say to those
people who have moral insight but do not grasp the right to
liberty as a fundamental truth? That right may indeed have
some kind of basic status, but it certainly seems to be something
that needs to be demonstrated, not merely intuited.
Contractarianism argues that individuals either actually
do, or hypothetically would, agree to respect the liberty of
each other in order to live together, and that that agreement,
which may be explicit or tacit, is the ultimate source of their
right to liberty. Nothing is more ethically basic than social
agreement. The central issue here is, however, whether this
approach is based on what people agree to or to what they
should agree to. If it is the former, what happens to the right
to liberty if people do not agree? What follows if they do
not accord fundamental social importance to the right to
liberty? Would there be no basic right to liberty? If it is the
latter, then why should persons agree to respect each
other’s liberty? What is the basis for that claim? Is social
agreement not ethically basic after all?
Utilitarianism holds that people have the right to liberty
only if that right promotes the greatest good for the greatest
number. Liberty is valuable only because of the good consequences
it produces. Because a society based on the right
to liberty tends to produce the greatest good for the greatest
number, people have that right as a rule. Of course, it may
not be true that protecting an individual’s liberty promotes
general social utility, and when following that rule does not
promote overall utility, then there is no justification for following
it. Utilitarian advocates of rights frankly admit that
possibility, but see no alternative. Their critics believe that
it is precisely in those cases where protecting an individual’s
liberty does not promote the general good that an individual’s
right to liberty is most needed. Such critics claim
that the utilitarian approach cannot capture the nonconsequentialist
character of individual rights.
Deontologism, or duty ethics, holds that an individual’s
right to liberty is not based on producing good consequences
in any sense. Rather, that right is based on the
insight that individual human beings are ends in themselves
and not merely means to the ends of others. Thus, it is
morally wrong to use people for purposes to which they
have not consented. However, one can ask, why are people
ends in themselves? What makes them so, and exactly how
does that require that their liberty be respected? Further,
does their status as ends in themselves require only that
their liberty be respected? Could it not also require the fulfillment
of other moral obligations?
Virtue ethics claims that the aim of life is the human flourishing
of the individual, and the development of an individual’s
moral character is central to that activity. Yet the
dispositions that constitute such character cannot be morally
worthwhile unless they are the result of human choice.
Physical compulsion and coercion deny human choice. Thus,
liberty is necessary for the exercise of individual choice and
the achievement of virtue. Nevertheless, important issues
remain. What happens when people do not choose virtuously?
What happens when people choose courses of action
that are personally and socially destructive? Do people have
a right to choose what is morally wrong? How can an individual’s
right to liberty be based on what is necessary to
choose virtue? Is something more than liberty required to
support the choice of virtue? What if someone’s flourishing
depends on violating someone else’s rights?
However, it has been contended that many of these issues
are the result of failing to see that rights are an irreducible
moral concept. Rights do not exist for the sake of achieving
human flourishing (or virtue), nor are they some ultimate
moral duty. They are not like any other moral concept.
Rather, rights exist for solving a uniquely political/legal
problem. This problem stems from the highly individualized,