Wolterstorff on Rights Grounded in Respect of Worth 3.1.1

First, Wolterstorff reviews: freedom rights are structured in terms of being free from restraint by others to doing the life good of x. Benefit rights, in turn, are structured as the right to some other’s doing me the life good of y (or refraining from doing the life evil of z). Being deprived of x or y (or getting stuck with z) is not a wrong unless that deprivation (or provision) was due to the action of some other person; (in)justice is inherently social. Unless lack of x or y or getting z can be traced to the agency of the correct sort of entity, my rights have not been impaired.

Second, Wolterstorff reminds: he is searching only for an account of primary, moral rights. Not rectifying rights; not legal rights (although it seems to me that an account of primary moral rights might lead us to include certain rectifying and legal rights among them). And Wolterstorff also notes that this discussion pertains to benefit rights, not freedom rights.

Finally, Wolterstorff progresses: How do rights work? Here we get to some good stuff through the critique of the inconsistent. For, let’s say, a utilitarian, rights serve a “boosting” function. If the label “right” is assigned to my relationship to some life good the utilitarian moral calculus would up the moral ante of my entitlement to that good. So, all things being, equal (i.e., if the sum of the life goods and life evils my experience of that good would entail for me and others is the same) then I get that good (or, more precisely, any agent who denies me that good has wronged me). In fact, the utilitarian would say, the net of life evils over life goods would need to be pretty darn high for an agent to be justified to deny that good to me. But here’s the rub: justified at some point the agent would be. How to weigh the individual and collective life goods and evils, how to compare the sums so calculated, and at what point to decide enough is too much—that my right to a life good is so outweighed as so justify its deprivation—is is hard for most utilitarians to say (unless, of course, you’re Richard Posner in connection with breach of contract and then it’s payment to me of the market value at which such rights generally trade).

The problem with the “rights-as-booster” approach is that it undercuts the very notion of rights. Remember: no one has a right to any of the goods against which we’re weighing my right to x; they’re just nice to have. Thus, if my “right” to life-good x can at some point be overridden by enough goods of enough others, then it is not wrong to deprive me of x. And if it’s not wrong to deprive me of x I never had a right to x in the first place. The idea of rights-as-booster is incoherent.