INTRODUCTION

In this essay, I offer a defense of the most prominent component of the anticonsequentialism articulated in Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia. This component is Nozick's affirmation of moral side constraints and the moral rights that are correlative to these side constraints. It is because of these side constraints and rights that the imposition by persons or groups of certain sacrifices upon others is morally impermissible even if the imposition of those sacrifices yields some (putatively) best outcome. These side constraints and rights prohibit persons and groups from advancing even the most alluring ends by means of imposing certain costs upon other individuals. Indeed, Nozick's opening sentence in Anarchy, State, and Utopia states, “Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights).” Yet it is a common and fair comment about Nozick's seminal work that it provides little in the way of sustained justification for this opening statement. This essay provides one strand of that missing justification.

In order to introduce my argument, I need to situate it within the broad debate in moral theory between consequentialists and anticonsequentialists. More than that, I need to draw attention to a common progression within anticonsequentialist argumentation and to an important proposal that this progression should be halted at a point that is halfway between full consequentialism and full anticonsequentialism. More specifically, the proposal is that the progression of anticonsequentialist argumentation should be halted before it arrives at the anticonsequentialist component most prominent in Nozick, namely, the affirmation of moral side constraints and correlative moral rights.