Immortalist <reanimater_2000 at (no spam) yahoo.com> wrote
[Many theories] of distributive justice ...hold that justice consists
in finding a distributive outcome that conforms to some ideal pattern
of how income and wealth should be distributed. These theories differ
about what that ideal pattern is. Some say that income should
correspond to contribution, others say that it should correspond to
effort or need, and still others say that it should correspond to a
more abstract criterion such as the maximization of average utility
or the distribution specified by Rawls's difference principle. In an
important book published in 1974, Robert Nozick offered a radical
challenge to any such "patterned" theory of justice.
In the real world, of course, it is highly unlikely that any society
would ever achieve a distribution of income that would perfectly
match the ideal pattern stipulated by some philosophical theory of
distributive justice. But, just for the sake of argument, suppose
that some society somewhere did do just that. This society has
achieved a state of perfect justice in distribution, and accordingly
each individual in this society is justly entitled to hold the
income that he or she holds. Now a disturbing thing happens. Michael
Jordan, having retired from professional basketball, offers to play
exhibition basketball for the public in exchange for a $2 admission
fee. Millions of fans are delighted at the chance to see Jordan play
again and consider the admission fee a real bargain. Each of these
fans pays for his admission fee out of his own, on our own view,
just holdings. But the resultant distribution of wealth, involving
the transfer of millions of dollars from the fans to Michael Jordan,
violates the perfect pattern of justice that had been achieved. Must
we then deny that the fans and Jordan had a right to enter into
their mutually satisfying agreement? Must we, in the name of
distributive justice, "forbid capitalist acts between consenting
adults?" Any pattern of distribution, once achieved, is likely to be upset by
acts of individuals with respect to the dispersement of the income
they hold. A harmless gift between lovers would lead from a
distribution satisfying the pattern of justice to a distribution not
satisfying that pattern. Hence, any patterned theory of justice seems
to require an extensive and continuous interference with the liberty
of individuals to do with their income what they like. Liberty upsets
patterns, and any political philosophy that attempts to realize on
earth some ideal pattern of justice will be forced to pervasively
interfere with the liberty of individual persons. Libertarian-ism,
the political philosophy defended by Nozick, rejects any such
interference with individual liberty. It is a political philosophy
based on the consistent and inviolable defense of individual liberty
as the fundamental principle of all political and social life...
...Rights-Based Theories
In the very first sentence of Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert
Nozick says, "Individuals have rights, and there are things no person
or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So strong
and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of
what, if anything, the state and its officials may do." The rights
that Nozick claims here are not rights that are created by any
government or any human agency. In this sense, they are natural
rights, rights that human beings have simply in virtue of their
existence as human beings. Among the rights central to Nozick's view
is the right to liberty, a right to do what one wants with one's life
without interference from government or any other person so long as
one's actions do not interfere with the like liberty of others.
Nozick believes that the right to liberty forms a "side constraint"
on what governments or other people may do. Suppose there is
something the government would like to do that would greatly
increase the total happiness of society as a whole but which
involves violating my right to liberty. In saying that my right to
liberty is a side constraint, No/.ick means that it blocks any such
governmental project. My right to liberty may not be violated even
if doing so would achieve greater overall happiness. Further,
suppose some dictator agrees to release a hundred political
prisoners on the grounds that you capture me and turn me over to him
to be his prisoner. By capturing me and achieving the release of the
hundred political prisoners, you would maximize nonvi-olations of
the right to liberty. But by calling the right to liberty a side
constraint, Nozick means to prohibit even this. My right to liberty
may not be violated even if doing so minimizes total violations of
rights to liberty. My right to liberty is, in a sense, an absolute
right, not violable for any reason. This idea of a strong right to liberty, understood as a negative
right not to be interfered with that belongs to every normal adult
human being and which may not be violated to achieve some other
purpose, is fundamental to libertarian political philosophy. For the
libertarian, this absolute or near-absolute right to liberty is the
cornerstone upon which the edifice of economic, social, and
political institutions must be built. In an essay published in 1974,
"What Libertarianism Is," the libertarian philosopher John Hospers
says, "Every human being has the right to act in accordance with his
own choices, unless those actions infringe on the equal liberty of
other human beings to act in accordance with their choices." In a
later essay with the same title Hospers says that, "The essential
ingredient in all this is freedom from coercion by others. This is
one's basic and inalienable right." The libertarian philosopher Jan
Narveson makes an even stronger claim about the centrality of the
right to liberty, saying that "the only relevant consideration in
political matters is individual liberty." Unlike utilitarianism, which makes the right to liberty a means to
the end of social happiness, libertarianism conceives of the right to
liberty as an independent foundation for political philosophy. It,
not the maximization of happiness nor any other end, is the "bottom
line" for political philosophy. Further, in conceiving of the right
to liberty as inviolable, as a side constraint on all other economic,
social, and political institutions, libertarians raise the
independently grounded right to liberty above all other
considerations. For these reasons, libertarianism is said to be a
"rights-based" theory. In this respect, and in its conception of the
right to liberty as one belonging to human beings by nature and not
by human convention, libertarianism agrees with the older
natural-rights tradition and disagrees with utilitarianism.
This shift away from utilitarianism to rights-based theories was
characteristic of a broad movement in ethics and political philosophy
in the 1960s and 1970s. This shift was largely motivated by imagined
cases that seemed to show that utilitarian principles led to morally
unacceptable conclusions. In chapter 6 we considered the case of the
utilitarian surgeon faced with five patients needing transplants and
one patient whose organs happened to provide the needed matches for
the five needing transplants. Utilitarianism, consistently applied,
would seem to require the surgeon to painlessly kill the one in order
to harvest organs for the five, thereby maximizing the total amount
of happiness in the world, but also grossly violating our sense that
such an action would be a morally unacceptable violation of
individual rights. Faced with a number of such examples, most
philosophers have come to the conclusion that utilitarianism is not
tenable as a fundamental theory of morality, and consequently not
tenable as the foundation for political philosophy. Though
utilitarians have mounted some interesting defenses of their
position, most philosophers have felt that these defenses ultimately
fail and have turned to rights- based theories or mixed theories as
more adequately accounting for our fundamental moral judgments.
As a rights-based theory, libertarianism built upon this shift away
from utilitarianism in ethics and political theory. However,
libertarianism represents only one current within the wider family of
rights-based theories. Rawls's theory of justice, for example, also
lies, broadly speaking, within the family of rights-based theories.
Utilitarianism is often called a teleological or consequentialist
theory. Such theories identify some quality or state of affairs as
what is intrinsically good and then define morally right actions as
those actions that aim at maximization of this good. In the case of
utilitarianism, the good is happiness and right action is action that
maximizes happiness. In contrast, Rawls's theory is a deontological
theory, one that determines the right-ness or wrongness of an action
in terms of the kind of action that it is, and not in terms of the
conduciveness of that action to the maximization of some good. Thus,
for example, according to Rawls's theory, any suppression of liberty
is morally wrong. In this, Rawls too accepts a strong right to
liberty. Other political philosophers have also supported the shift
from utilitarianism to rights-based theories but do not adopt
libertarian positions.
One characteristic of libertarians is that they reject claims to
positive rights. We will examine the implications of this position
more fully below. Here it suffices to note that the shift from
utilitarianism to rights-based theories need not include the
rejection of positive rights. -----------Nor need the rights-based
theorist agree with the libertarian that negative rights always
override other moral and political considerations. For example, the
philosopher Michael Freeden presents a complex theory that includes
negative rights, positive rights, and considerations of utility.
Libertarianism is a particular current within the broader family of
postutilitarian rights-based theories. It is, in a sense, a radical
rights-based theory, one that challenges much of the fabric of law
and practice that has come to govern economic, social, and political
life in developed industrial societies. Having seen how
libertarianism makes the right to liberty the cornerstone of
political philosophy, it is to these radical implications of
libertarian theory that we now turn. The Radical Implications of Libertarian Theory
Libertarians reject all positive rights. At the heart of libertarian
theory is the right to liberty that belongs to every normal adult
human being. Libertarians understand this right as a negative right,
a right not to be interfered with in the conduct of one's life so
long as one does not interfere with others in the free conduct of
their lives. The libertarian understands this noninterference in
terms of the absence of coercion. If I am walking down the street
and a tourist from out of town stops me and asks for directions,
there is a sense in which the tourist has interfered with me. By
stopping me and asking for directions, the tourist interrupts the
flow of my life. But I remain free to ignore this request. If I am
in a hurry, or lost in thought, or just don't want to be bothered, I
am free to go on my way. So far the libertarian has no objection to
the actions of the tourist. But were the tourist to grab me by the
arm and prevent my moving on, or threaten me with a gun and demand
an answer, then the intervention of the tourist takes on a coercive
aspect that aims at removing my freedom. It is such coercive
intervention that the libertarian sees as interfering with my
liberty in a morally objectionable way. Libertarians argue that
positive rights inherently involve such coercive interference with
liberty. To see why this is so, we must briefly consider the
libertarian view of property rights. To have a right of property in or over some thing is to have the
right to use the thing; the right to sell, bequeath, or give away
the thing; and the right to prevent others from using the thing. In
this way, property rights are often said to be bundles of rights
over objects. Now, each of these rights can be understood as
involving a right of liberty with respect to the thing. To say that
I have a right to use the thing is to say that I am free to use the
thing and others may not coercively interfere to prevent me from
using it. In the same way, to say that I have the rights to sell,
bequeath, and give away the thing, is to say that I have a right of
liberty to do these things that prevents others from coercively
interfering in my doing so. And, finally, to say that I have a right
to prevent others from using the thing is to say that the question
of whether or not others may use the thing is one that falls within
the domain of my free choice. You may not take my car without my
consent. Your use of my car is up to me. It is a matter of my free
choice... Modern Political Philosophy by Richard Hudelson
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Political-Philosophy-Explorations/dp/0765600226/
http://tinyurl.com/ModPolitPhlosophy
