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Rights and Consequences: It All Depends

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2014

Kai Nielsen
Kai Nielsen
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, The University of Calgary
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Abstract

It is argued that there are no moral or legal rights that may never rightly be overridden no matter what the consequences. There are human rights which are inalienable while still being rightly overrideable in certain circumstances. Even rights-based constructivist accounts of human rights do not provide a grounding for morality that escapes consequentialist critique. But the proper form of consequentialism is a weak form of consequentialism which is distinguished from utilitarian consequentialism.

Résumé

Le présent article soutient qu'il n'y a pas de droit moral ou légal qui de temps à autre ne peut être appelé à céder devant d'autres exigences, peu importe les conséquences. Il existe des droits humains qui sont inaliénables tout en étant sujets à cette possibilité dans certaines circonstances. Même des explications constructivistes des droits humains qui se basent dans les droits ne peuvent soutenir la moralité” de façon à échapper à une critique conséquentialiste. Cependant, la forme convenable du conséquentialisme est plutôt faible et se distingue du conséquentialisme utilitaire.

Type
L'éthique sociale et le discours sur les droits/Social Ethics and Rights Discourse
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , Printemps/spring 1992 , pp. 63 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 1992

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References

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14. Ibid., italics mine. There are situations, truly horrendous situations, where, when we describe them in some detail, they can be seen to involve the doing of things which should never be done. But the doing of such things, some place or other in the world, are reported almost daily in our newspapers. I have in mind such things as the gunning down for no reason of a lot of innocent people in a shopping mall. Such killing in just that situation is unconditionally wrong. But—and this shows how dependent this whole story is on the circumstances—change the circumstances a little and we get a different story. Suppose Hitler had been in the crowd and this was the gunman's only chance to kill him. Then it would not be so obvious that shooting into the crowd would be wrong. (We are supposing that the only way to kill Hitler also involved the killing of others and that these others were innocent persons.) So we see that even in such horrendous situations it all depends. Consequences are always relevant and actions become justifiable or excusable in accordance with them. Some things should—indeed must—never be done, never allowed, where they can be prevented, just because of their truly horrendous consequences.

15. This utilization of G.E. Moore, and Ludwig Wittgenstein as well, is theoretically articulated in my After the Demise of the Tradition, supra, note 8 at 82–110.

16. Where we are actually trying to ascertain what should be done in some fairly determinate circumstances we should point to the irrelevance of desert-island cases. Where the context, as in the present essay, is more theoretical there are situations where this is exactly what we should appeal to. See for a discussion here of the use of desert-island cases Nowell-Smith, P.H., Ethics (Harmondsmith: Pelican, 1954)Google Scholar.

17. I say “inaccurately” because they are not actually second-order claims about our moral talk—and hence genuine meta-claims—but actual very general, philosophically articulated rights-claims themselves. But the label is useful to have a way of briefly referring to these distinct claims. They are much more theoretical than the standard rights-claims.

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19. See references in notes 5 and 10.

20. I shall argue in the final section of this essay that classical utilitarianism significantly differs from what is now commonly regarded as utilitarianism and that the later version does not represent progress. See also references in note 11. Some excellent essays making clear what classical utilitarianism was about are reprinted in Gorovitz, S., ed., Utilitarianism: John Stuart Mill with Critical Essays (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971)Google Scholar.

21. See my Equality and Liberty, supra, note 5, c. 2 and After the Demise of the Tradition, supra, note 8, pt. 2.

22. Something very like that in fact happened to an eighteen year old in a New Y though with a kidney taken out rather than his eyes.

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28. Ibid. at 172.

29. Ibid. at 176.

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid. at 172.

32. Ibid. at 190.

33. Ibid. at 192.

34. Ibid. at 193.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid. at 180.

38. See, for the statement of #2, ibid. at 182.

39. Ibid. at 177–79.

40. Miller, R., Analyzing Marx (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984) at 20–36Google Scholar and Nielsen, K., Marxism and the Moral Point of View (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1989) at 203–15Google Scholar.

41. Classically, Rawls, J., A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971)Google Scholar, Dworkin, Fried, Williams, Philippa Foot, Scanlon, Jon Ekter, and David Gauthier have been the major players here. See note 11; Scheffler, S., The Rejection of Consequentialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; and Foot, P., “Utilitarianism and the Virtues” (1985) 94 Mind at 196–207CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For perceptive but more historically oriented critical reactions to utilitarianism, see Berlin, I., The Crooked Timber of Humanity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991) at 1–19Google Scholar and his Four Essays on Liberty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969)Google Scholar. For a succinct statement of what makes utilitarianism initially attractive together with a similarly succinct account of how it is fatally flawed, see Kymlicka, W., Contemporary Political Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990) at 9–49Google Scholar.

42. This has been all argued by Barry, supra, note 11 at 40–77.

43. Anscombe, supra, note 26; and Donagan, supra, note 26.

44. Barry, supra, note 26 at 73.

45. Anscombe, supra, note 26 at 198. See also her “Who Is Wronged?” (1967) The Oxford Review at 16–17Google Scholar. For an earlier critique on my part of such Absolutism and anticonsequentialism see my Ethics Without God, rev'd. ed. (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1990), c. 6Google Scholar and my “Against Moral Conservatism” (1972) 82 Ethics at 219–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46. Barry, supra, note 26 at 73–74. See Gomberg, P., “Consequentialism and History” (1989) 19:3Canadian Journal of Philosophy at 383–404CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a brilliantly conceived short critique of utilitarianismcoupled with a defense of consequentialism, see Kymlicka, supra, note 41 at 9–49.

47. Moore, G. E., Ethics (London: Oxford University Press, 1912) at 140Google Scholar.

48. Barry, supra, note 26 at 74.

49. Ibid. at 76.

50. Ibid. at 75.

51. Again see the references in notes 11 and 41. I tried very simply to bring out the non-utilitarian side of my consequentialism in Chapters 5 and 9 of my Ethics Without God, supra, note 45.

52. Rawls's work is, of course, familiar. Scanlon's is less so. See his “Contractualism and Utilitarianism” in Sen and Williams, supra, note 11 at 103–28 and his “Rights, Goals and Fairness” in Hampshire, S., ed., Public and Private Morality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978) at 93–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Barry, Brian, see his Theories of Justice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

53. Anscombe, supra, note 26.

54. I have argued the “moral side” of that in my Ethics Without God, supra, note 45 and in my God and the Grounding of Morality, supra, note 5. For the cognitive, cosmological side—a side Anscombe and Donagan and many other traditionalists would take to be vital to really ground the moral side—I argue against that in fairly traditional ways in my Reason and Practice (New York: Harper and Row, 1970) at 152–275Google Scholar. In less traditional ways, getting more to what I believe is the heart of the matter, I cany forward the argument in my Scepticism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973)Google Scholar; Contemporary Critiques of Religion (London: Macmillan, 1973)Google Scholar; An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (London: Macmillan, 1982)Google Scholar; Philosophy and Atheism (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Press, 1985)Google Scholar; and God, Scepticism and Modernity (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press 1989)Google Scholar. See also Mackie, J. L., The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982)Google Scholar and Parsons, K. M., God and the Burden of Proof (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1989)Google Scholar.