Two Grades of Non-Consequentialism
Ralph Wedgwood
University of Southern California
[email protected]
Abstract
In this paper, I explore how to accommodate non-consequentialist constraints with a broadly valuebased conception of reasons for action. It turns out that there are two grades of non-consequentialist
constraints. The first grade involves attaching ethical importance to such distinctions as the
doing/allowing distinction, and the distinction between intended and unintended consequences that is
central to the Doctrine of Double Effect. However, at least within the value-based framework, this
first grade is insufficient to explain rights, which ground weighty reasons against infringing those
rights that need not be outweighed even when infringing those rights is necessary for preventing a
larger number of people from having their rights infringed in the same way. Such rights form a second
grade of non-consequentialist constraints: within the value-based framework, this second grade is best
explained in terms of the intrinsically relational values and disvalues of interpersonal interactions and
relationships.
1
Introduction
As I shall understand the term here, to say that there are “non-consequentialist constraints” is to say
that there are cases in which some ways of maximizing the good are wrong. (I shall explore in more
detail what it means to speak of “maximizing the good” later on.) Many theorists who believe in such
non-consequentialist constraints seek to develop a “deontological” ethical theory—that is, a theory in
which the right is taken to be “prior to” the good. In effect, a deontological theory is a set of
principles, about which sorts of conduct are right and which are wrong, which are claimed to be
independent of any theses about the good—or at least about any sort of “agent-neutral” or
“impersonal” good (that is, any sort of good of the kind that consequentialists are generally interested
in).
In this discussion, I am not interested in exploring such deontological ethical theories. On the
contrary, I shall assume a framework that is characterized by the following two theses:
a. Whenever it is wrong for an agent to act in a certain way, that fact is explained by the reasons for
and against the courses of action available to the agent at the relevant time.
b. All reasons for and against courses of action are grounded in values, and the relevant values
always include agent-neutral or impersonal values.
Many philosophers are inclined to think that this sort of framework inevitably entails a kind of
consequentialism. As I have explained elsewhere (see especially Wedgwood 2009), this is a mistake.
On this point, I follow several recent writers who have suggested that, if all reasons for action are
grounded in values, then the difference between consequentialist and non-consequentialist moral
theories must concern the precise way in which these reasons are grounded in values. For example,
Philip Pettit (1991, 231) has suggested that the difference is this: consequentialists interpret all the
2
reasons for action that are grounded in a given value as reasons to promote that value, while nonconsequentialists interpret at least some of these reasons as reasons to honour that value.1
More precisely, consequentialists work with a notion of the total consequence of an act, and claim
that, if a value grounds a reason in favour of the act, this reason depends purely on the degree to
which this value is exemplified by the act’s total consequence. According to non-consequentialists, on
the other hand, the act itself may exemplify a value (where the degree to which the act itself
exemplifies the value need not be determined purely by the value of the act’s total consequence), and
the reason in favour of the act that is grounded in this value depends on the degree to which the value
is exemplified by the act itself. (This way of understanding the difference between consequentialism
and non-consequentialism is equivalent to Pettit’s suggestion, at least given the assumption that to
“promote” a value is to act in such a way that the act’s total consequence exemplifies the value, and to
“honour” a value is to act in such a way that one’s act itself exemplifies this value.)
Within such a value-based framework, then, the important point is that, for non-consequentialists, the
value of an act is not fixed purely by the value of its total consequence, but by something more
specific about the act itself; and the weight of the reasons in favour of each of the available acts
depends on the degrees to which these values are instantiated by these acts themselves. For example,
some non-consequentialists might say that the right act is not necessarily the act that has the best total
consequence, but the act that is in itself intrinsically the best act. Thus, an agent who cared about
doing the best act at the present time would not care merely about what happens, impersonally
considered, in the world as a whole, but about what she is doing at the present time. As Derek Parfit
would put it, this theory would not simply “give her the aim” that the world as a whole be as good a
place as possible—an aim that has nothing special to do with the way in which the agent acts at the
present time; it would give her the aim that what she does at the present time be as good as possible.2
The latter aim is in a sense both agent- and time-relative: it is a different aim for each agent and time.
My goal in this essay is to explore what an ethical theory that recognizes non-consequentialist
constraints will be like when it is developed within a value-based framework of this kind.
There are two ideas about such non-consequentialist constraints that are common among moral
philosophers.
i.
The first idea is that the most plausible versions of non-consequentialism attach ethical
significance, not just to the total consequence of each available act, but also to the way in which
the act has each of its ethically significant consequences.
Thus, for example, many adherents of this first idea ascribe ethical significance to the distinction
between doing and allowing—that is, between actively causing a consequence to come about and
merely allowing the consequence to come about. Many adherents of this idea also ascribe ethical
significance to the distinction that is marked by the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE), between
executing an intention for a consequence to come about, and acting in a way that has that consequence
Another approach that bases reasons for action on values or “goods” but rejects consequentialism is
that of John Finnis (1980, 120), who claims that, in addition to reasons to “promote” the basic goods, there are
also other, stronger reasons not to perform any “act which in itself simply (or primarily) damages a basic good”.
1
2
See the discussion of the difference between consequentialist and non-consequentialist moral theories
in Parfit (1984, 27).
3
without any such intention.3 To fix ideas, I shall assume in what follows that the most plausible
version of this first idea ascribes ethical significance to both of these two distinctions. This
assumption is not crucial for my core arguments: in principle my arguments could be adapted to
accommodate different versions of this first idea. But making this assumption for the sake of
argument will give us a more concrete conception of the issues at hand.
ii.
The second idea concerns rights. According to this idea, the most plausible versions of nonconsequentialism imply that persons—and possibly other entities as well—have rights; and
these rights are assumed to ground weighty reasons against treating these right-holders in ways
that count as violating or infringing their rights.
According to this second idea, then, rights ground particularly weighty reasons—reasons that are not
outweighed just because violating these rights would make the world a better place in terms of agentneutral value. For example, this idea implies that, if people have a right not to be tortured, then you
should not torture an innocent person even if torturing that person is the only way for you to
maximize the good—that is, to make the world as a whole as good a place as you possibly can.
Indeed, many would claim that you should not torture one innocent person even if your torturing that
person is the only way for you to prevent five innocent people from being tortured in the same way.4
The terminology of “rights” can in fact be used in many ways. On one expansive way of using the
term, “rights” include all moral claims that individuals may have on other agents whatsoever; on a
second rather less expansive interpretation, “rights” are restricted to claims of this sort that are legally
enforceable. I shall not use the term in either of these ways. I shall use the term specifically for
whatever it is that grounds reasons for action of the type that I have just described. That is, it is part of
what I mean by “rights” that if people have any rights, then these rights ground reasons against
treating them in certain ways, reasons that are so weighty that they are not outweighed merely by the
fact that treating someone in one of these ways is the only way to maximize the good—indeed, in
many cases, these reasons are not outweighed even by the fact that treating someone in one of these
ways is the only way to prevent a larger number of people from being treated in the same way.
The main question that I shall investigate in this discussion is the relationship between these two
common non-consequentialist ideas, within the value-based framework that I am considering here.
2. Consequentialism vs. Non-consequentialism within the Value-based Framework
First, I shall say a bit more to clarify the kind of theoretical framework within which I am working.
The core of this framework, as I stated above, consists of two theses: (a) rightness and wrongness are
determined by reasons; and (b) reasons depend on values.
3
Not all non-consequentialists accept that both of these distinctions (that is, both the doing /allowing
distinction and the intending / not intending distinction) are ethically significant. For example, Judith Thomson
(2008) defends the significance of the doing / allowing distinction, but strenuously denies the significance of the
intending / not intending distinction. Other non-consequentialists like Alec Walen (2014) reject both distinctions
in favour of new principles of their own; for further comments on Walen’s view, see note 18 below.
4
This feature of rights seems to have first been noticed by Nozick (1974, 29); it was explored in some
detail by Scheffler (2003, Chapter 4).
4
Thus, according to the first thesis (a), the truths about what an agent should do, as well as the truths
about what it is wrong for the agent to do, are all determined by the reasons for and against the
available courses of action.5 So, within this framework, if maximizing the good is sometimes wrong,
this is because, even if a course of action maximizes the good, there can still be weighty reasons
against that course of action—reasons that sometimes outweigh all countervailing reasons in favour of
that course of action.
According to this second thesis (b), all reasons for action, and all reasons against action, are grounded
in the values (or disvalues) that are exemplified by the available courses of action.6 More specifically,
all the reasons for action that we shall consider here are grounded in agent-neutral or impersonal
values. For example, as we shall see, the property of being an admirable thing to do is in the relevant
sense an agent-neutral and impersonal value; and it seems plausible that the fact that an act that is
available to you would be an admirable thing to do counts as a reason in favour of the act in question.
My goal in this paper, as I have said, is to understand how non-consequentialist constraints could be
explained within a framework of this sort. So far, I have only given a rough statement of how I
understand the idea of a “non-consequentialist constraint” in ethical theory. I now need to give a more
precise and detailed account of what such constraints involve.
As I shall use the term, a “consequence” of an act is a state of affairs that would obtain if the act were
to be done, and might not obtain if the act were not done, and the “total consequence” of an act is the
conjunction of all the act’s consequences.7
To say that a value is “agent-neutral” or “impersonal” is to say that the value does not evaluate any
agent or person any differently from any other—neither the agent whose acts are in question nor any
other particular person. The rough intuitive idea is that, if a value is agent-neutral and impersonal in
this way, and one state of affairs S1 is better in terms of this value than a second state of affairs S2,
then the first state of affairs S1 is not just better for you or better for me than the second S2—the first
5
This conception of the relationship between reasons and the truth about what we ought to do is widely
accepted; for an especially illuminating account of reasons of this sort, see Broome (2004). As I have argued
elsewhere (Wedgwood 2013), “wrongness” means something different from the mere idea of “what one should
not do, all things considered”: it is possible in principle for it to be true that one should φ even though it would
not be wrong not to φ. According to the first thesis (a), both of these two different kinds of facts—facts about
what one should do. all things considered, and facts about what it is wrong for one to do—are determined by the
reasons for and against the available courses of action.
6
For one of the most distinguished representatives of this view of reasons, see Raz (1999).
7
What of cases of overdetermination? For example, suppose that you and I both put a dose of poison in
Gertrude’s drink; suppose that she would die just as quickly from one dose of poison as from two. Is her death a
consequence of my act? In fact, these cases are sensitive to the details of the correct theory of counterfactual
conditionals. For example, according to the theory that was proposed by David Lewis (1981), it will matter
which of us put the poison in first. If I put the poison in first, then it is true that Gertrude might not have died if I
had acted differently, but it is not true that she might not have died if you had acted differently—so her death is
a consequence of my act but not of yours; if we added our doses of poison simultaneously, her death is a
consequence of each of our acts. A more refined version of consequentialism might say that the value of an act
A is fixed by the weighted sum of the value of each possible world W in which the act A is done, weighted by
the conditional objective chance of that world W, conditional on the assumption that the act A is done—i.e.,
∑W V(W) Ch(W | A); the relevant sort of “chance” must here be thought of as relativized in some appropriate way
to the practical situation of the relevant agent at the relevant time. For the purposes of this paper, however, I
shall ignore this complication, and operate with the simple definition of consequences by means of
counterfactual conditionals.
5
state of affairs S1 makes the world as a whole a better place (from a neutral standpoint that attaches
no special weight to any particular person) than the second state of affairs S2.
According to consequentialist theories, then, as I shall interpret them, it is the way in which the total
consequences of the available acts compare with respect to the relevant agent-neutral impersonal
values that determines which acts are right and which are wrong.8 Clearly, different consequentialist
theories could differ in many ways. For example, different theories could obviously appeal to
different values. In principle, different consequentialist theories could also give different accounts of
how the facts about the rightness and wrongness of acts are determined by the way in which the total
consequences of the available acts compare with respect to the relevant values. To keep things simple,
however, I shall consider only maximizing versions of consequentialism.
According to such maximizing versions of consequentialism, there is an agent-neutral impersonal
value such that it is always right for the agent to do an act whose total consequence is at least as good
(in terms of this value) as the total consequence of every available alternative. In this sense,
consequentialist theories claim that maximizing the good (where the “good” is understood in this
distinctively consequentialist way) is always right. Theories that recognize non-consequentialist
constraints reject this claim. According to these non-consequentialist theories, maximizing the good
(in this sense) is sometimes wrong. These non-consequentialist theories need not imply that there are
any cases in which all ways of maximizing the good are wrong—only that there are at least some
cases in which some ways of maximizing the good are wrong. Even if these non-consequentialist
theories only imply this weaker claim, that is enough to make them incompatible with
consequentialism.
3. Statues vs. Persons
As I outlined in the introductory section, many of the ethical theories that recognize such nonconsequentialist constraints appeal to one or the other of two ideas. One of these ideas—the second
idea that I listed above—is the idea of rights, while the other idea—the first idea that I listed above—
attaches ethical significance, not just to the total consequences of each available act, but also to the
way in which the act has each of its significant consequences. As I explained above, in order to work
with a more concrete conception of the issues, I shall assume that the most plausible version of this
first idea attaches ethical significance to both the doing / allowing distinction and the intending / not
intending distinction that is so important to the DDE.
The main point that I shall argue for in this section is that these two non-consequentialist ideas are
distinct. We cannot explain the second idea—the idea of rights—purely in terms of the first idea—the
idea that is illustrated by such principles as the doing / allowing distinction, or the DDE. I shall argue
for this point by exploring some ethical views that exemplify the first idea, but do not involve any
appeal to rights. As I shall explain later on, this point reveals that there are really two grades of nonconsequentialist constraints in ethical theory.
Some philosophers use the term “consequentialist” so that even theories according to which the value
that right acts must maximize is an agent- and time-relative value count as consequentialist. I shall not use the
terminology in this way: I shall call a theory consequentialist only if it implies that the rightness and wrongness
of acts is determined by the agent-neutral impersonal value of their total consequences.
8
6
My primary goal in this paper, however, is to understand how to accommodate such nonconsequentialist constraints within a value-based framework. As I explained in the introductory
section (invoking the suggestions of philosophers like Philip Pettit), a value-based framework can
accommodate such non-consequentialist constraints if it takes a certain kind of view of the way in
which reasons are grounded in facts about values. Specifically, the value-based framework needs to
allow that, when a value grounds a reason in favour of an act, the strength of the reason may depend,
not on the degree to which the act’s total consequence exemplifies the value, but on the degree to
which the act itself exemplifies the value. The value-based framework can accommodate nonconsequentialist constraints if it incorporates an appropriate view of what it is for acts to exemplify
such values.
In principle, there is more than one way in which a view of the values of acts would allow a valuebased framework to accommodate non-consequentialist constraints. As I have said, I am assuming
here (just to fix ideas) that the most plausible version of the first non-consequentialist idea attaches
ethical significance to both the doing / allowing distinction and the intending / not intending
distinction that is so important to the DDE. Within a value-based framework, there is a natural
conception of the value of acts that can explain this assumption.9
According to this conception of the value of acts, the degree to which an act exemplifies one of the
relevant values does not depend merely on the degree to which the relevant agent-neutral value is
instantiated by the act’s total consequence. It depends both on the degree to which each of the act’s
consequences instantiates the value and on what I have called the agent’s degree of agential
involvement in bringing about that consequence. According to this conception, there are two main
dimensions of an agent’s agential involvement in a given consequence of an act.
i.
First, there is the causal dimension of agential involvement. For example, one is more agentially
involved in a consequence of an act if one actively brings about that consequence than if one
merely allows it to happen.
ii. Secondly, there is the intentional dimension of agential involvement. For example, one is also
more agentially involved if that consequence is part of what one intended in acting than if it is
not.
In principle, there could be many different gradations along both of these dimensions. For example,
perhaps one also has a higher degree of agential involvement (along the intentional dimension) if one
knowingly brings about a certain consequence than if one inadvertently brings about that consequence,
or if one should have known that one’s act would probably bring about that consequence than if it
could not have been predicted that it would have that consequence. But to keep things simple, I shall
ignore these gradations of agential involvement here. I shall proceed on the simplifying assumption
that there are just two different degrees of agential involvement on each dimension: doing vs.
allowing on the causal dimension, and intending vs. not intending on the intentional dimension.
In general, the significance of agential involvement, according to this conception, is that it affects the
way in which the value of an act’s consequence contributes to the value of the act itself. If one of an
act’s consequences is bad (in comparison to the parallel consequences of the available alternative
acts), then the act itself is also bad in a corresponding way. However, the degree to which this act is
bad depends not just on the badness of this consequence, but also on the degree to which the agent is
9
For my earlier presentations of this idea, see especially Wedgwood (2009 and 2011).
7
agentially involved in this consequence; the higher the agent’s degree of agential involvement in this
bad consequence, the worse the act itself is.
For present purposes, then, we shall assume that the best way for a value-based framework to
accommodate our first non-consequentialist idea is by agreeing with this conception that the value of
an act—and so also the strength of the reason in favour of the act—depends both on the relevant
values that are instantiated by each of the act’s significant consequences, and on the degree to which
in performing the act the agent is agentially involved in each of those consequences.
For the purpose of revealing the difference between our two non-consequentialist ideas, it will help if
we make certain assumptions about which sorts of values of consequences are relevant. In particular,
it will help if we assume that these kinds of values include ecological or cultural values, which can be
instantiated by states of affairs quite independently of any direct effects on the interests of any beings
that can plausibly be regarded as rights-holders.
For example, perhaps it is intrinsically bad for a biological species to go extinct, even if no individual
members of that species are worse off as a result. For instance, consider the human species. Perhaps it
is intrinsically better for the human species to continue for many generations into the future, rather
than to come to the end with the present generation, even if somehow the present generation would be
significantly better off if it were the last human generation than if it were followed by many
subsequent generations. On many views of the matter, in this case the existence of these future
generations is not better for anyone than their non-existence—since all generations that exist in both
states of affairs are as well off or better off in the state of affairs in which those future generations
never exist, and according to many views, non-existence is not worse than existence for those future
generations themselves. On these views, if it is better for the human species to continue for many
generations into the future, even though no individual person is better off because of the human
species’ surviving into the future, the value of the species’ survival would be independent of any
direct effects on the interests of any individual persons. In that case, this value would be a cultural or
ecological value of the relevant kind.
To take another example, consider G. E. Moore’s view of the value of beauty.10 According to Moore,
it is intrinsically better, other things equal, if the world contains more beauty—if beauty is more
widely dispersed across space and time—than if the world contains less beauty. It is of course much
better if this beauty is perceived and enjoyed by persons who are capable of enjoying it than if it is
never perceived, but even if it never perceived or enjoyed, its bare existence has some value. This
view supports the conclusion that it is better if beautiful things last longer rather than being destroyed
and replaced by chaos or ugliness. According to this view, the value of beauty is also independent of
any direct effects on the interests of persons in the same way.
Just to give them a label, we could call values of this kind “interest-independent” values. It is
undeniably controversial to assume that there are interest-independent values of this kind. Fortunately,
my arguments will not depend on this assumption’s being true. My arguments could be adapted so
that they do not depend on this assumption. However, this assumption will make it easier for me to
explain the point that I wish to make here.
We can start to grasp this point by noting that the people who believe in such interest-independent
values rarely take the consequentialist view that the appropriate way for us to respond to these values
10
See Moore (1903, Chapter 6).
8
is simply by promoting them, or maximizing the exemplification of these values in the world as a
whole. On the contrary, many of these people hold that (as Pettit would put it) the appropriate way for
us to respond to these values is by respecting or honouring them. For example, at least, other things
equal, there are stronger reasons for us to refrain from deliberately or actively causing a species of
living things to go extinct than to refrain from unintentionally allowing a species to go extinct as a
result of purely natural causes. According to these people, it is crucially important to make sure that
we human beings do not, through our actions, make species go extinct, but less important to save
species from going extinct through the inevitable processes of natural selection. The role of our
agential involvement in these species’ going extinct seems crucial to explaining how good or bad
these acts are, in these people’s view.
Similarly, many of these people would think that we have stronger reasons to refrain from wanton
vandalism—that is, from acts that destroy beautiful things for frivolous or malicious reasons—than to
conserve each and every beautiful thing from the degradation that inevitably results from the
operation of the laws of nature. So, again, these people do not take the simple consequentialist view
that the appropriate way for us to respond to the value of beauty is by promoting beauty or
maximizing its exemplification in the world as a whole. There are stronger reasons for us to refrain
from deliberately or actively destroying beautiful things than from unintentionally allowing them to
be destroyed by natural processes, even if the impersonal agent-neutral values of the consequences are
exactly the same.11
Here is a case to illustrate this point more concretely. Suppose that you and I arrive on a distant
planet, the original inhabitants of which have long since died out. We find some stunningly beautiful
ancient statues, of extraordinary cultural and historical significance. There are three options open to
me: (a) I could wantonly destroy these statues, for the sheer fun of doing so; (b) I could allow you to
wantonly destroy these statues in the same way; or (c) I could save the statues from your attempt to
destroy them, at a terrible cost to myself. Exactly parallel options are open to you: (aʹ) you could
wantonly destroy the statues; (bʹ) you could allow me to wantonly destroy the statues; or (cʹ) you
could save the statues from my attempt to destroy them at a terrible cost to yourself.
Moreover, let us suppose, in this situation, the following counterfactuals are true: if I were to destroy
the statues, you would allow me to do so; and if I were to allow you to destroy the statues, you would
destroy the statues. So the only difference between the total consequence of (a) my destroying the
statues and the total consequence of (b) my allowing you to destroy the statues is that you and I have
switched places; otherwise the two consequences are exactly the same. So the agent-neutral value of
the two consequences must also be exactly the same. According to consequentialism, then, the two
acts (a) and (b) cannot differ in their ethical status.
11
Does this view imply that I have more reason to prevent an arsonist from wilfully destroying a
beautiful building than to save an equally beautiful building from a wildfire? No. First, the view only implies
that the act of a person’s actively destroying such a building is an intrinsically worse act than the act of the
person’s merely allowing the building to be destroyed in a wildfire; it implies nothing about whether the state of
affairs of the building’s being destroyed by a wildfire is better or worse than its being deliberately destroyed by
an arsonist. Secondly, according to the conception that is being assumed here, the reasons that I have in favour
of various courses of action do not depend purely on the intrinsic value of the consequences of those courses of
action. These reasons depend on other factors as well: I have already articulated the assumption that they depend
on the degree of agential involvement that I have in the various consequences of those acts; I will propose later
that they also depend on the relationships that those acts would put me into with other agents.
9
However, many theorists would think that these two acts differ significantly in their ethical status.
According to these theorists, my allowing you to destroy the statues could be permissible (given that
the only way in which I could save the statues is to do so at a terrible cost to myself), while my
destroying the statues myself would be wrong or impermissible.12 So these theorists believe that there
is a difference in ethical status between these acts even though the agent-neutral value of their total
consequences is the same. In this way, these theorists are committed to rejecting the general idea of
consequentialism.13 Furthermore, we may assume that, in this case, both the act of my destroying the
statues and the act of my allowing you to destroy the statues would have total consequences that are at
least as good, in terms of the relevant values, as every alternative act: that is, both of these acts
maximize the good. Nonetheless, the theorists in question hold that one of these two acts is wrong: in
other words, these theorists are committed to recognizing non-consequentialist constraints—that is,
cases in which some ways of maximizing the good are wrong.
At the same time, these cases involving statues do not seem to involve anything like rights. We can
see this by comparing two different cases, which differ only in that one of these cases involves
statues, while the other involves persons. Specifically, in the first of these two cases, when we land on
the distant planet, you set out to destroy five of these ancient statues. In this case, I can either
(a) allow you to destroy these five statues, or else (b) by destroying a sixth statue (of equal beauty and
historical significance to each of those five statues), I can prevent you from destroying the five
statues. In the second of the two cases, we come across a group of completely innocent people, and
you set out to kill five of these innocent people. In this second case, I can either (c) allow you to kill
these five people, or else (d) by killing a sixth completely innocent person, I can prevent you from
killing those five people.
Most philosophers who believe in non-consequentialist constraints would think that there is a
significant difference between these two cases. In the first case, option (b) seems to be permissible;
that is, it seems permissible for me to destroy the sixth statue in order to prevent you from destroying
the five other statues. In the second case, on the other hand, the corresponding option (d) does not
seem permissible; that is, it seems impermissible for me to kill the sixth innocent person, even if
doing so is the only way in which anyone can prevent you from killing the five other innocent people.
What explains this difference? What is so special about people? This is the question that I shall
investigate in the rest of this paper.
4. Agential Involvement in Good and Bad Consequences
The main point illustrated by the previous section is that the values involved in this case of the statues
seem not to ground strong reasons to refrain from harming one of these statues when doing so is the
only available way to save a larger number of statues from comparable harm. But we might wonder:
12
For example, it seems likely that Foot (1978) would draw this conclusion about cases of this sort. In
general, these cases are structurally analogous to the ones that have been discussed by Brown (2011); like
Brown’s cases, they are more easily interpreted as cases in which some ways of maximizing the good are wrong
than as cases in which all ways of maximizing the good are wrong.
13
This verdict on the case is incompatible even with the weak version of consequentialism according to
which the ethical status of each act supervenes on the way in which the impersonal value of the act’s total
consequence compares with the value of each alternative act’s total conequence. (This weaker version allows for
consequentialism to take a satisficing form as well as an optimizing or maximizing form.)
10
is this point really compatible with the non-consequentialist idea that the value of an act that affects
these cultural and ecological values depends not just on the value of the act’s consequences but also
on the degree of agential involvement that the agent has in each of those consequences?
As I shall explain in this section, this point is compatible with this non-consequentialist idea. This is
because, when you destroy the sixth statue in order to save the five, you have a high degree of agential
involvement not only in the bad consequence of the act (the destruction of the sixth statue) but also in
the act’s good consequence (the saving of the five other statues). It is true that you deliberately and
actively destroy the sixth statue; but it is also equally true that you deliberately and actively save the
other five statues. So this high degree of agential involvement magnifies both the reason against the
act that is grounded in the act’s bad consequence and the reason in favour of the act that is grounded
in the act’s good consequence. In this way, it seems that the reason against the act does not outweigh
the reason in favour of the act; and as a result the act seems to be on balance permissible.
Some philosophers might be tempted to suggest that there is an asymmetry between degrees of
agential involvement in bringing about good consequences and degrees of agential involvement in
bringing about bad consequences. Perhaps a high degree of agential involvement in bringing about a
bad consequence magnifies or strengthens the reason against the act, but a high degree of
involvement in a good consequence does not strengthen the reason in favour of the act?
In fact, however, it is not clear that the difference between the consequences that we call “good” and
those that we call “bad” can really bear the weight that this suggestion requires. Arguably, reasons for
action are not fundamentally reasons in favour of an act absolutely or simpliciter, but reasons in
favour of one act rather than some of its alternatives—where any feature in respect of which the act is
better than those alternatives is a reason in favour of the act rather than those alternatives.14
Fundamentally, then, reasons do not require any such classification of acts (or their consequences) as
“good” or “bad”: all that they require is a comparison between better or worse; no fundamental nonarbitrary dividing line between “good” and “bad” acts (or consequences) is required.
In general, the way in which we classify consequences as “good” and “bad” seems to be quite
sensitive to our prior expectations. If we expected things to turn out very well, then even a
consequence that falls very slightly short of what we had expected is liable to be called “bad”; if we
had expected disaster, a consequence in which things turn out better than expected is likely to be
called “good”. But these expectations vary widely between different conversational contexts; it seem
doubtful whether they can make a difference to the underlying facts about the strength of the relevant
reasons for action. Thus, it seems plausible that the ethical significance of agential involvement is the
same for both the consequences that we label “good” and those that we label “bad”. For these reasons,
the suggestion under consideration does not seem promising.
Moreover, it seems intuitively plausible that there is something more admirable about actively and
deliberately saving a beautiful statue rather than merely allowing it to be saved by others; and the fact
that the act is admirable in this way seems to be a reason in favour of the act. So, it is not implausible
to see higher degrees of agential involvement as magnifying or strengthening the reasons in favour of
acts that have (comparatively) good consequences as well as strengthening the reasons against acts
that have (comparatively) bad consequences.
14
For an argument in favour of this point, see especially Snedegar (2013).
11
Thus, if we wish to explain why it is impermissible to kill the sixth innocent person in order to save
the five other innocent people, we cannot just appeal to the first of the two non-consequentialist ideas
that I am concerned with here, concerning the significance of the agent’s agential involvement in each
of the consequences of their act. We will have to appeal to something more like the idea that the way
in which it is permissible to treat these innocent people is constrained by these people’s rights.
But what are rights? Why do they go beyond the first grade of non-consequentialism that we have
investigated so far? What new element do they introduce?
5. The Moral Value of Relationships
The fundamental difference between the case involving statues and the case involving people is that
the latter case involves interpersonal interactions. It is plausible that these interpersonal interactions
themselves exemplify a distinctive sort of value—in particular, a kind of value, which we might call
“moral value”, which is essentially interpersonal and relational in character. Within the value-based
framework that I am assuming, it seems promising to explain the distinctive features of rights in terms
of the way in which these interpersonal interactions exemplify this kind of value.15
In fact, however, to get a fully general theory, I shall have to evaluate not just interpersonal
interactions of this sort but also cases of non-interaction between two or more persons. So I propose
to use the following more general terminology. Whenever I act in a way that has consequences for the
needs, interests, or purposes of another person, I put myself into a certain sort of relation to that
person. Just to give it a label, I shall call the state of affairs consisting in my standing in this sort of
relation to another person a “relationship”. (This is a much more general way of understanding the
term “relationship” than what is common in ordinary English, but it is useful to have a term, and no
other term seems so convenient.)
It seems that relationships can be compared and ranked in terms of a distinctively moral sort of value:
for example, relationships characterized by mutual concern and respect are morally better than
relationships characterized by manipulation or cruelty. The proposal that I shall articulate here
attempts to explain moral reasons for action in terms of how such relationships compare with each
other in terms of moral values of this sort.
When your act affects the interests of another person, your act creates a relationship between you and
that other person; and the moral value of this relationship can be compared with the moral value of the
relationships that the available alternative acts would create between you and that other person (or
between you and some similarly situated person). In general, there is a moral reason in favour of an
act that creates a morally better relationship rather than an act that creates a morally worse
relationship; and, other things equal, the bigger the difference in moral value between the
relationships that are created by two available acts, the stronger the reason in favour of the act that
creates the better relationship.
It will not be necessary for our present purposes to give a full account of this sort of moral value. But
to fix ideas, it may be useful to comment briefly on some of its features. One important aspect of this
15
In giving a central role of this sort to the values and disvalues that are exemplified by interpersonal
interactions, I have been inspired by some of the central ideas of Scanlon (1998)—although I shall avoid
explaining these distinctively interpersonal values in terms of any sort of “contractualism”; I have also been
influenced here by the doctoral thesis of my former Oxford student Michael Gibb (2012).
12
sort of value is that the moral value of a relationship seems to be sensitive to the other reasons for
action that the agents involved in the relationship have. (We could perhaps call those other reasons for
action the “pre-moral reasons”.) Morally good relationships are in a way “rational”: such relationships
in various ways help the agents who are involved in them to respond appropriately to those “premoral” reasons, while the morally worse relationships will in various ways worsen the agents’
position with respect to those pre-moral reasons.
The second important aspect of this value is that the moral value of a relationship seems to be
sensitive to whether the agents’ interaction is conditioned by mutual consent. When each of the
people in the relationship acts as they do partly because of the mutual consent of all the parties
involved, their interaction has, at least to some extent, the character of cooperation. Through mutual
consent, these people are—however briefly—acting together on a joint plan of action. When two
people cooperate with each other, they are equally agents of their interaction; in the absence of such
consent or cooperation, at least one of the people involved is not an agent of the interaction, but a
victim or patient. The morally best interactions, then, come as close as possible to meeting the
following two conditions: first, they take the form of equal cooperation between the parties involved;
secondly, they are rational, in the sense of doing as well as possible at helping the parties in question
to respond appropriately to the “pre-moral” reasons that they have. Morally worse interactions fall
short of this ideal either in lacking the character of cooperation (in cases in which it was possible for
the parties in question to cooperate), or in failing to count as rational in this sense.
For present purposes, this rough characterization of the relevant moral value will have to suffice.
Corresponding to this value, there is a notion of the morally relevant interests of agents. Plausibly,
these morally relevant interests include not just the agent’s interest in well-being or happiness, but
also her interests in her effectiveness as a rational agent, and in her position as a free and equal
member of a community of agents.16 Again, I cannot give a full account of these morally relevant
interests here; I shall just have to hope that this brief sketch is enough to enable my readers to cotton
onto the idea. I shall use this conception of the moral value of relationships, and of the morally
relevant interests of agents, in order to explain the significance of rights
6. Exploitation, Victimization, and Rights
I propose that there is something distinctive about the kind of relationship that you might have with
me that would count as your violating one of my rights. My goal in this section is to try to
characterize this distinctive kind of relationship.
One distinctive feature of any case in which you violate my rights is that you act in a way that makes
me worse off, with respect to the morally relevant interests that I have just described, in relation to the
relevant baseline of comparison. Normally, the relevant baseline will just be the situation in which
you and I do not interact at all. In some cases, other baselines will be relevant,17 but I shall simply set
16
In this way, I can agree with Scanlon (1975) that our morally relevant interests form a special class,
different from the interests that would be appealed to by any account of “utility” or “well-being”.
17
For example, suppose that you and I both apply for a fellowship, which is awarded to me and not to
you; suppose that, if the fellowship hadn’t been awarded to me, it would have been awarded to you. So, if you
and I had not interacted at all, then that would have been because I hadn’t applied for the fellowship—in which
case you would have been awarded the fellowship. Still, it is not clear that I have in the relevant way “made you
worse off” with respect to your morally relevant interests. This seems to be because the relevant baseline of
comparison must be a situation in which things proceed “normally”, and the situation in which you get the
13
such cases aside here. As I shall put it, when you act in this way, one of the consequences of your act
has “adversely affected” my morally relevant interests.
My aim here is to distinguish, among the cases in which some consequence of your act adversely
affects my morally relevant interests, between those cases in which you violate or infringe one of my
rights and the cases in which you do not infringe any of my rights. Given the conception of the value
of acts that was proposed in §3, it is natural to interpret this distinction as consisting in a difference in
the degree of agential involvement.18 On this interpretation, the crucial difference is between (i) cases
where you have only a minimal degree of agential involvement in the consequence of your act that
affects my morally relevant interests, and (ii) cases in which you have a higher-than-minimal degree
of agential involvement in the consequence that adversely affects these interests.
As I mentioned above in §3, I am making a simplifying assumption here, to the effect that the only
relevant degrees of agential involvement are: (a) doing vs. allowing (on the causal dimension of
agential involvement), and (b) intending vs. not intending (on the intentional dimension). Given this
simplifying assumption, we may regard the cases where you have a higher-than-minimal degree of
involvement in the consequence that adversely affects my interests (that is, cases of kind (ii)) as
belonging to either or both of the following two categories: (a) cases in which you have the active
“doing” relation to this consequence (as opposed to the passive “allowing” relation to this
consequence); and (b) cases in which you intend this consequence, or some closely related
consequence that concerns me (as opposed to not intending any such consequence).
As I shall use the term, I shall say that whenever you treat me in (a) the first of these two ways, you
have at least to some degree “victimized” me: you have actively caused this adverse effect on my
interests (as opposed to merely passively allowing this effect on my interests), Similarly, I shall say
that whenever you treat me in (b) the second of these two ways, you have “exploited” me, by acting
with an intention to bring about a consequence that concerns me, and is closely related to a
consequence that adversely affects my interests in the relevant way.
The main proposal that I wish to make in this section has two parts. First, relationships that involve
victimization or exploitation of these kinds have a special kind of awfulness: these relationships have
a greater degree of badness than can be explained purely by the extent to which the victim’s morally
relevant interests are adversely affected. The second part of my main proposal is that it is precisely
when I victimize or exploit you in one of these ways that I count as violating (or infringing) your
rights.
The sense in which victimizing and exploitative relationships are “awful” is not that such
relationships are uniquely bad. If I deliberately punch you in the stomach, just for my own
amusement, I have both victimized and exploited you. On the other hand, if I allow you to suffer years
of excruciating torture, even though it would cost me virtually nothing to save you, I have treated you
with appalling callousness, but I have neither victimized nor exploited you. Nonetheless, the second
fellowship seems not to be one in which things are in the relevant sense proceeding “normally”. Unfortunately, I
do not have the space to explore the kind of “normality” that defines the relevant baseline of comparison here.
18
Other interpretations are possible. For example, someone influenced by Walen (2014) might interpret
the distinction as depending on whether the agent affects the patient’s interests by violating a “non-restricting
claim” or a “restricting claim” instead. In fact, I am inclined to favour the more traditional interpretation in
terms of the doing / allowing distinction and the intending / not-intending distinction. But considerations of
space do not permit me to explain why I prefer my interpretation over such alternatives here.
14
relationship—callously allowing you to suffer excruciating torture—seems morally worse than the
first—punching you in the stomach just for fun. According to my proposal, victimizing and
exploitative relationships are awful only in the sense that they are bad to a significantly greater degree
than can be explained purely by the extent to which the victim’s interests are affected.
I have formulated my proposal by saying that victimizing and exploitative relationships have a special
kind of awfulness or badness. Strictly speaking, however, my proposal can be made compatible with
the idea that there is no fundamental dividing line between good and bad—only the comparative
relation of better and worse, and the notion of the degree to which one item is better or worse than
another.19 The heart of the proposal, then, is this: compared to a relationship R0 in which you avoid
adversely affecting my morally relevant interests (without adversely affecting your own interests
either), the degree to which an alternative relationship Rx in which you do adversely affect my
interests to degree x is morally inferior to R0 depends on whether or not Rx is exploitative or
victimizing. If Rx is exploitative or victimizing, then the degree to which Rx is worse than R0 will be
greater than if Rx is not exploitative or victimizing in this way.
With admittedly excessive and artificial precision, we could represent this point as follows. Let Rxy be
a relationship in which you adversely affect my interests to a certain extent x, and in which your
degree of agential involvement in this effect on my interests is y. Then if Rxy involves your having a
minimal degree of agential involvement in this effect on my interests, the degree to which Rxy is worse
than R0 is just x. But if Rxy involves your having a higher-than-minimal degree of agential involvement
in this effect on my interests, the degree to which Rxy is worse than R0 is an exponential function of x.
Let us represent every degree to which a consequence can have an adverse effect on my interests by a
real number x (where x > 1, and the worse this effect on my interests is, the greater this number x will
be); and let us represent every higher-than-minimal degree of agential involvement in a consequence
by a real number y such that for every x > 1, yx > x (where the higher the agent’s degree of agential
involvement, the higher this number y will be). Then, we can say that the degree to which Rxy is worse
than R0 is precisely yx.
Why is it that exploitative and victimizing relationships are awful in this special way? I cannot
explore this question in the depth that it deserves; but it seems plausible to me that the explanation of
why these relationships are awful in this way has something to do with the following considerations.
When you put yourself into a relationship of this kind with others, you are subordinating their agency
to your own. Indeed, in a sense, you are no longer treating them as if they were intelligent agents
whose will has a special authority over their own lives at all. On the contrary, if you exploit them,
then some of the intentions with which you are acting directly concern them, and you are in effect
using them as tools for your own purposes; and if you victimize them, then even if your intentions do
not directly concern them, you are riding roughshod over them, as if they were worthless things
without any powers of practical reasoning that you need to consult or take account of. Instead of
cooperatively fitting your agency together with theirs, so that you can both be agents of your
collective interactions, you deploy your agential capacities in a way that undermines or subverts their
capacities.20
19
For a defence of the idea that “goodness is reducible to betterness”, see Broome (1999).
20
In most respects, the sort of value-based theory that I am outlining here is profoundly different from
Kant’s. Nonetheless, this sort of explanation of the special awfulness of exploitative and victimizing
15
As I have conceded, some relationships that do not involve victimization or exploitation can also be
bad. If you have a minimal degree of agential involvement in a consequence that adversely affects my
interests, your relationship with me will be bad to some degree. The difference is just that, in these
cases, this relationship’s degree of badness is explained purely by its adverse effects on my interests;
it lacks the additional awfulness that we find in cases of exploitation and victimization. It seems
plausible to me that the explanation of this lies in the fact that if you merely unintentionally allow me
to suffer harm, you are not in a direct way the agent of the harm that befalls me. In many ways (if not
in all ways), your relation to the harm that I have suffered is similar to the relation that you would
have had to that harm if you had been so far away that you had no opportunity of preventing that
harm. My suffering the harm is not in the same way an expression of your agency. So, in
unintentionally allowing me to suffer harm, you are not in the same way subordinating my agency to
yours. Perhaps, if the harm in question is one that you would have saved yourself from, it can be said
that you are failing to love me as you love yourself. But your failure to love me as you love yourself is
not the same as your treating me in a way that positively subordinates my agency to yours. So it is
only when the harm that you unintentionally fail to prevent is very great that your relationship to those
who are harmed is as awful as the relationship that you have to those whose rights you violate.
These proposals about the value of relationships combine with the previous section’s claims about
reasons in the following way. The strength of our moral reason to perform one act A over another act
B normally depends on the difference in moral value between A and B: the greater the degree to which
A is better than B, the stronger the reason in favour of A. Since exploitation and victimization are
typically so awful, there will typically be a weighty reason against acting in these ways whenever
there are available alternative acts that do not involve putting oneself into such awful relationships
with people.
Admittedly, there are some terrible cases in which there is no act available to you that will not put you
in one of these awful relationships with someone or other. For example, perhaps your plane is going
to crash in a populated region and you cannot help killing some innocent people. In cases of this sort,
it seems that you can only choose the act that will put you in the least awful set of relationships with
other people. (There are clearly many difficult questions about when one set of relationships counts as
more awful than another—but I lack the space to explore these questions here.)
Fortunately, however, most cases are not like this. In most cases, you can avoid putting yourself into
such awful relationships with others. So, in these cases, given the difference in moral value between
the acts that put you into such awful relationships, and the acts that do not, there will be a weighty
reason for avoiding actions that put you into such awful relationships. This reason is so weighty that it
is normally overriding—in the sense that it normally outweighs all countervailing reasons for acting
otherwise, and normally makes it the case that, all things considered, you ought not to put yourself
into such relationships with others. This point can explain why we normally assume that we have a
moral duty to avoid such acts, and that we owe it to others to avoid putting ourselves in such
relationships with them.
When rights are interpreted in this way, rights are not absolute side-constraints. They are simply
weighty reasons not to treat people in these especially awful ways that we would normally regard as
violating their rights. As we have seen, sometimes it is impossible to avoid treating people in these
relationships seems to have an affinity with the obscure but suggestive remarks that Kant (1785) makes about
why we must treat every person’s “humanity … always as an end, and never merely as a means”.
16
awful ways. Moreover, in all cases, these weighty reasons must be weighed against the reasons that
tell in favour of acting otherwise. 21 The conclusion that I am tempted to draw is that there will be
cases in which it is not wrong, all things considered, to violate someone’s rights. Some philosophers
would find it more natural to follow Judith Thomson (1990, 122) in describing such cases as merely
“infringing” rights rather than “violating” rights. However, it seems to me that this is ultimately just a
terminological issue. The important point is to explain why it is normally—but not invariably—the
case that we have overriding reasons not to treat people in these awful ways; and the proposal that I
have made in this section can provide such an explanation.
7. The Solution to the Problem
I can now offer a solution to the problem of why it is so much worse to kill one innocent person in
order to save five innocent persons than to destroy one beautiful statue in order to save five such
statues.
The crucial point is that there is no question of our having a relationship of the kind that I have been
discussing with statues. Statues lack the kind of reasoning and communicative capacities that are
necessary for such relationships. There is, for example, no question of a statue’s giving or refusing its
consent to being destroyed. So statues have no special “morally relevant interests”—such as interests
in being effective agents, and in being free and equal members of a larger community of agents—of
the sort that persons have. Thus, my proposals do not support the conclusion that there is any special
awfulness in actively or intentionally causing harm to statues, as there is in actively or intentionally
bringing about consequences that adversely affect the morally relevant interests of persons.
By contrast, I proposed, relationships between persons exemplify values of a different kind. When one
person acts in a way that has a higher-than-minimal degree of agential involvement (along either the
causal or the intentional dimension) in a consequence that adversely affects another person’s morally
relevant interests, the relationship between these two persons has (as I put it) a kind of awfulness. It is
this difference that enables my proposals to give a solution to this problem.
In the case involving persons rather than statues, let us label the option of allowing five innocent
people to die “LETTING DIE”, and the option of sacrificing a sixth innocent person to save the five
“SAVING BY KILLING”. It seems to me that there are two primary moral reasons for action in this case,
corresponding to one respect in which SAVING BY KILLING is morally preferable to LETTING DIE, and
one respect in which LETTING DIE is better than SAVING BY KILLING.

On the one hand, SAVING BY KILLING is, in one respect, morally better than LETTING DIE,
insofar as SAVING BY KILLING puts you, the agent, into a better relationship to the five:
LETTING DIE puts you into the kind of relationship to the five that involves allowing them to
21
Victor Tadros has objected to me that it is wrong for the agent simply to weigh up the reason for
respecting the patient’s rights against all other reasons that the agent has for acting otherwise. In Tadros’s view,
the way in which these reasons should be weighed needs to be justifiable to the patient, in a way that reflects the
principle that “it is normally wrong to compel a person to serve an end that they have no duty to serve”. In fact, I
could in effect accommodate Tadros’s view by supplementing my own picture with the idea that there is an
additional terrible form of awfulness in any relationship that involves compelling a person “to serve an end that
they have no duty to serve”; if the additional awfulness is sufficiently terrible, this would explain why our
reason not to compel people to serve ends that they have no duty to serve is (as Tadros says) “normally”
overriding. I am not convinced that my picture needs to be supplemented in this way, but it would take us too far
afield to address this question here.
17

die, whereas SAVING BY KILLING involves your having the kind of relationship that involves
saving their lives.
On the other hand, LETTING DIE is, in another respect, morally better than SAVING BY
KILLING, insofar as SAVING BY KILLING puts you into a dramatically worse relationship to
the sixth person: SAVING BY KILLING puts you into the kind of relationship with the sixth
person that involves both exploiting and victimizing him, while in LETTING DIE you leave
him alone.
If, as I have proposed, such exploitative and victimizing relationships have a special awfulness, then
we can understand why the second of these two reasons outweighs the first.
As I said, in this case, there are two “primary” moral reasons, each corresponding to a respect in
which one of the two options is morally better than the other. There is also, however, what we may
call a “secondary” reason. SAVING BY KILLING not only puts you into an awful relationship to the
sixth person: it also involves your putting the five into a certain sort of relationship to the sixth
person; thanks to you, each of them now owes their life to the involuntary sacrifice of the sixth
person. To some degree at least, this tarnishes your relationship to the five. In this way, the reason in
favour of SAVING BY KILLING that is grounded in the beneficial relationship that it would put you into
with the five is significantly weaker than the reason that you would have for saving them if it were
possible to save them by simply sacrificing an item of property or the like. This secondary reason
seems to strengthen the case against sacrificing the sixth person in order to save the five.
According to the framework that I am assuming here, the truth about which acts are right and which
are wrong is determined by the correct weighing of all the reasons for and against the available
alternatives. So, in principle, if there are enough innocent people whom you can save by exploiting or
victimizing me, the reason against exploiting or victimizing me can ultimately be outweighed. For
example, perhaps you could justifiably torture one innocent person to save 50,000 innocents from
being tortured in a similar way—even though you could not justifiably torture one innocent person
just to save five innocents from being tortured.
In the previous section, I suggested that the badness of victimization and exploitation is an
exponential function of the degree to which the victim’s interests are adversely affected. This
suggestion implies the following general claim about these cases: the worse the cost that you impose
on your victim, the larger the number of others whom you are thereby saving from having a similar
cost imposed on them that is required to justify you in imposing this cost on your victim. So, for
example, it might be permissible for you to pinch one person to save just five people from being
pinched in a similar way; and it might be permissible for you to slap one person to save 20 people
from being slapped in a similar way; but it would be impermissible to inflict excruciating torture on
someone just to save 20 people from such excruciating torture—to make it permissible to torture
someone, you would have to be saving many more than 20 other people from suffering comparable
torture. These claims about when reasons against exploiting or victimizing people are outweighed
seem intuitively plausible to me; it is in my judgment one of the advantages of the framework within
which I am working that it can explain why these intuitively plausible claims are true.
18
8. Some Consequences of this Solution
In this picture, there is a crucial difference between violating someone’s rights and merely failing to
give them positive assistance. To violate others’ rights is to put oneself in a relationship with them
that either actively victimizes them or intentionally exploits them; to fail to give them positive
assistance is indeed to stand in a less valuable relationship to them than if one had provided such
assistance, but this relationship of non-beneficence lacks the special awfulness of exploitation or
victimization.
The difference, according to the picture that I have proposed here, depends on the following point.
When one is merely non-beneficent, one has a much lower degree of agential involvement in the
consequences that adversely affect the others’ relevant interests, than when one either actively
victimizes them or intentionally exploits them. My proposal is that this is what explains why the
interpersonal relationship of non-beneficence lacks the special kind of awfulness that we find in the
cases of victimization or exploitation.
This is not to say that there are not many cases where the reason that is grounded in the difference in
value between beneficent and non-beneficent relationships is a decisive and overriding reason. In
Peter Singer’s (1972) famous case of the child who is on the verge of drowning in a pond, the reason
in favour of saving the child clearly outweighs the trivial reasons of self-interest or personal
convenience in favour of not getting one’s feet wet. Any agent who does not save the child in this
case has acted in a seriously wrongful way; in the absence of any excuse, such an agent would
certainly merit blame and censure.
However, non-beneficence in this case is still not akin to active victimization or intentional
exploitation. It is only when the reasons on the other side are clearly weaker than the reasons in favour
of beneficence that non-beneficence is a clear case of wrongdoing. So, it would not be true to say that
the reasons grounded in the value of beneficent relationships are normally overriding in all normal
cases in which such beneficent actions are available. The reason in favour of acting beneficently must
compete with reasons in favour of alternative courses of action—including reasons of self-interest,
and reasons for pursuing personal projects, and the like—and, even in normal cases, the reasons for
beneficence are not guaranteed to outweigh all competing reasons.
The most that one can say is that it is normally the case that a whole life that involves very few
beneficent relationships with others is a life that there are decisive moral reasons not to lead, if it is
possible for one to avoid leading such a life. So, even if it is not true that whenever beneficent actions
are available, one normally has a decisive reason to perform a beneficent action, it is still true that one
normally has a decisive reason to lead a life that involves engaging in a broad range of such
beneficent actions.
It is because of this difference that the traditional view that justice is a perfect obligation, while
charity is an imperfect obligation, is at least not far from the truth.22 At least normally, one has an
overriding moral reason to respect everyone’s rights, if one can, whereas when it comes to acting
beneficently, although one normally has an overriding moral reason to practise beneficence to a
sufficient degree over one’s life as a whole, there are many different equally permissible ways in
which one can choose to do so.
22
Both Kant (1785) and Mill (1871) endorse versions of this traditional view.
19
In the account that I have sketched above, I claimed that there is a special kind of awfulness in
treating people in the ways that count as violating their rights (in the sense that I am using that term,
as I explained at the end of §1 above). My tentative explanation of this special awfulness involved the
idea of degrees of “agential involvement”, since all of these awful ways of treating people involve
some higher-than-minimal degree of agential involvement in some state of affairs that is bad for those
people. This sometimes involves the intentional dimension of agential involvement (if these ways of
treating a person involve intending some consequence that involves that person, and that consequence
is sufficiently closely related to one that adversely affects the person’s relevant interests); and it
sometimes involves the causal dimension of agential involvement (if these ways of treating people
involve actively bringing about a consequence that adversely affects the person’s interests, as opposed
to merely passively allowing such a consequence to come about).
A right not to be actively victimized or intentionally exploited in such ways by other agents is in a
sense a “negative right”, rather than a positive right to deliberate active beneficence. (This is a broader
sense of “negative right” than is found in some discussions, since if you deliberately allow me to die
in order to take advantage of the fact that I have consented to be an organ donor, you have
intentionally exploited me, but many writers would not say that you have violated any of my
“negative rights”.) My approach seems to suggest that all rights whatsoever are negative rights of this
sort. This feature of my approach may seem controversial.
In my defence, I should reiterate that I am using the term “rights” in a rather special sense to refer to
what grounds the kind of moral reason against treating people in certain ways that are not outweighed
by the mere fact that treating people in one of these ways is the only way to maximize the good.
Moreover, I can allow that there are also in a sense derivative rights, which are explained by these
negative rights—which can be called “fundamental” rights by comparison with those derivative
rights—and some of these derivative rights might be positive rights to intentional active beneficence.
For example, in the presence of a suitable sort of institutional or social background, these fundamental
negative rights could explain various derivative positive rights. It seems plausible that one way in
which you could violate my negative rights is by making a promise to me and then betraying me by
breaking the promise. So, once you have actually made me a promise to give me positive assistance of
some kind, the only way in which you can avoid violating this negative right of mine is by giving me
such positive assistance. In this way, in a situation in which you have made a promise of this kind, my
fundamental negative right not to be betrayed by you in this way generates a derivative positive right
to your assistance. I conjecture that it is only in this way that anyone ever has a right (in the sense that
I am concerned with) to positive assistance: there has to have been some past interaction between the
two agents of some kind.
At all events, even if this conjecture is incorrect, the basic picture that I have sketched here seems to
be the best way for a value-based approach to reasons for action to incorporate non-consequentialist
constraints. It seems that we must recognize two grades of such non-consequentialist constraints: (i)
those that are explicable purely by the values of consequences and the agent’s degree of agential
involvement in bringing about those consequences; and (ii) those that require for their explanation the
idea that certain interpersonal relationships have the special kind of awfulness that I have described
here.23
23
An earlier version of this paper was presented at a workshop on Deontology and Criminal Law at
Rutgers University Law School in October 2013. I am very grateful to the members of that audience—and
20
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21
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