Wolterstorff on the Goods to Which We Have Rights 2.1

We might begin by developing a theory of the good and move from there to the sorts of goods to which we have rights. Wolterstorff does not. Instead, he merely notes that under any understanding “the good” is that which deserves approbation. Wolterstorff proceeds to consider competing conceptions of the good life to determine which, if any can support a theory of rights. After all, if a conception of the good life can’t support a theory of rights, it cannot be adequate whatever other values it may offer.

There are, according to Wolterstorff, three widely deployed conceptions of the good life in the West: the experientially satisfying life (the view of modern utilitarianism or welfare economics), the happy life (one that is well lived, eudemonism), and the flourishing life (one that is well lived and goes well). Which of these, if any, can provide the means by which we identify the goods to which we can be said to have a right?

Wolterstorff cites an example of a good to which he believes there is an unquestionable right for which utilitarianism cannot account: the right not to have one’s reputation maligned even if in none of my states of affairs does such an act have a negative impact. In other words, “no [experiential] harm-no foul.” Wolterstorff believes this account self-evidently incoherent: We have an inherent right not to be maligned even if the wrong never comes to our attention. I don’t find Wolterstorff’s criticism of utilitarianism to be as penetrating as other critiques but we certainly agree that welfare maximization cannot account for inherent rights.

Eudemonism has a much longer pedigree and thus Wolterstorff spends a lengthy chapter establishing why eudemonism—in its pristine, Stoic form—cannot properly account for human life, much less human rights. A life of apatheia (the goals of Stoics like Seneca), an emotional indifference to the events of one’s life, and a life consisting of the pursuit of one’s virtue, cannot ground a theory of rights. “Rights” require us to acknowledge that at least some states of affairs external to ourselves demand a response. A life of apatheia, by contrast, finds excellence in using any and all events as opportunities for development of virtue and by not permitting them to disturb one’s tranquility beyond, perhaps, acknowledging that some states of affairs should be preferred to others. Wolterstorff then pulls out Augustine and accurately, in my opinion, shows how the leading Christian thinker of antiquity came eventually to conclude that emotional disturbance in the face of various states of affairs was part of the created human condition. There are, at least in this pre-consummate world, events that are wrong and which thus should disturb our tranquility; apatheia is not a virtue. (Two other books I’ve read while in India support Wolterstorff’s evaluation of Augustine at this point: Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought (YUP 2003) and Alan Jacobs, Original Sin (HarperOne 2008).) Contra the Stoics, there are wrongs and if there are wrongs, there must be rights. Bare eudemonism also thus fails to provide a platform of an account for rights.