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Rights and Utilitarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Jan Narveson
Jan Narveson*
Affiliation:
University of Waterloo
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Extract

Few questions about utilitarianism have been more vexed than that of its relation to rights (and its associated notion, Justice). It is commonplace to hold that there are nonutilitarian rights, rights not founded on considerations of utility. And it is even thought that the very notion of rights is inherently incapable of being significantly employed within the utilitarian framework. In the present paper, I wish to consider both of these matters. I propose to give reasons—mostly not really new—for rejecting the stronger, conceptual claim; and on the former, substantial question, I want to argue that the utilitarian at least has a respectable way of handling the vocabulary of rights, even a useful one. Further, I shall argue that what the utilitarian—in particular, J. S. Mill—has to say about rights is quite plausible, though I shall conclude with a question about how illuminating it is.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 5: New Essays on John Stuart Mill and Utilitarianism , 1979 , pp. 137 - 160
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1979

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References

1 Cf. Mill, Utilitarianism, Ch. 5: “We do not call anything wrong, unless we mean to imply that a person ought to be punished in some way or other for doing it; … “(Everyman edition of Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government, p. 45.)

2 Thus, continuation of the same sentence quoted in note 1: “… if not by law, by the opinion of his fellow-creatures; if not by opinion, by the reproaches of his own conscience.”

3 Bracketed numbers attached to quotations from Mill all refer to pages in the Everyman edition cited above.

4 Sidgwick, Henry, The Methods of Ethics, 7th edn., (Macmillan, London, 1907), p. 382.Google Scholar

5 Brown, D. G., “Mill on Liberty and Morality”, Philosophical Review, 81 (1972), 133-58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Op. cit., pp. 142-6.

7 In New Essays on Contract Theory, ed. Nielsen, Kai and Shiner, Roger A., Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Suppl. Vol. Ill (1977), 121-35.Google Scholar

8 Bracketed numbers in this Section refer to pages in the volume cited in the text.

9 The ideas in this paper may be compared with some developed in my book, Morality and Utility (Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1967), especially Chs. VI-VIII, and in “Utilitarianism, Group Action, and Coordination”, Nous, 10 (1976), 173-94.