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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2010
1 Marquis, Don, “Why Abortion Is Immoral,” in The Problem of Abortion, edited by Feinberg, Joel and Dwyer, Susan (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1997), pp. 24–39.Google Scholar
2 For examples of rule- (or principle-) based moral theories, see Donogan, Alan, The Theory of Morality (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Fried, Charles, Right and Wrong (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gert, Bernard, Morality: Its Nature and Justification (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).Google Scholar
3 Thomson, Judith Jarvis, The Realm of Rights (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), esp. pp. 134–37.Google Scholar
4 It does seem likely that there is a point at which suffering is worse than death. Torture in addition to death might be worse than torture alone, but it might ot be worse than some greater amount of torture.
5 Epicurus, “Letter to Menoeceus,” in The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers, translated by Bailey, C. (New York: The Modern Library, 1940), pp. 30–31.Google Scholar
6 Of course, there are contingent things about death that might make it a bad hing. Most deaths involve suffering on the part of the deceased's family and friends, for example. But our focus here is on the badness of death where the scope is restricted to the person who dies.
7 For Larry Temkin's critical evaluation of the Slogan see his “Harmful Goods, Harmless Bads,” in Value, Welfare and Morality, edited by Frey, R. G. and Morris, Christopher (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, or his Inequality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).Google Scholar
8 Nagel, Thomas, “Death,” in Language, Metaphysics and Death, edited by Donnelly, John (Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 1994), pp. 21–29.Google Scholar
9 Nagel's account can be found in his “Death” (ibid.). Feldman's account is in Chapters 8 and 9 of his Confrontations with the Reaper: A Philosophical Study of the Nature and Value of Death (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992)Google Scholar. The Nagel/Feldman deprivation views are critically discussed in Chapters 1 -4 of Kamm's, FrancesMorality I Mortality: Death and Whom to Save from It (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).Google Scholar
10 One might try to locate the badness in the sadness I would feel were I to find out. But it seems to me that this gets the order of explanation backwards. I would feel sad because something bad had happened. It is not my being sad that makes it a bad thing.
11 Again, consider some examples: (a) I show up for a scheduled root canal only to have the dentist say that my x-ray was confused with that of another patient. I am free to go on with my day without the root canal. There has been no positive experience but I am benefited because I am relieved of what would likely be a bad one. (b) A very boring neighbour has spent the evening at my house subjecting me to endless photos of his recent vacation. He leaves. Unbeknownst to me, he had been planning to go home to get more photos which I would have politely sat through. However, once home he would become entranced by something on television and he does not return. I am better off because, once again, I am saved from a bad experience.
12 Marquis, “Why Abortion is Immoral,” p. 29.
13 It is frequently claimed that a majority of Americans believe in the afterlife. DeSpelder, Lynne Ann and Strickland, Albert Lee, in The Last Dance: Encountering Death and Dying (Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing, 1996), quote a 1990 study claiming 78 percent of Americans believe in heaven and 60 percent believe in hell (pp. 572–73).Google Scholar
14 For an exploration of this and other advantages of rights theories, see my “Reconciling Feminist Ethics and Feminist Politics on the Issue of Rights,” The Journal of Social Philosophy, 30, 2 (Summer 1999): 260–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
15 Thomson, The Realm of Rights.
16 Ibid., p. 154
17 This deliberately leaves aside two distributive issues relating to rights and their strength which I take to be of crucial importance. The first issue is whether any benefit to others, no matter how small, counts toward overriding a right. For example, could enough headaches add up to sufficient pain and suffering to justify infringing the right not to be killed? The second issue is whether any one person among the group of those who will benefit from the right's infringement need have at stake as much or more as the right bearer. Judith Thomson and I answer these questions in different ways but I put aside these questions now so that our attention may remain focused on the Harm View, i.e., the view that a right's strength depends on how much a right bearer will be harmed by the infringement of their right. For the details of Thomson's view, see The Realm of Rights; for mine, see “Thresholds for Rights,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 33, 2 (Summer 1995): 143–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18 Could a right have negative strength? If it did would the negative strength of the right generate an obligation to infringe it? These are interesting and difficult questions which I note only to set aside for the purposes of this paper.
19 Elsewhere I defend the view that harm is one of the factors on which the strength of rights depends, but I leave open the possibility that there may be other such factors and suggest autonomy as one such other factor. See my “How Is the Strength of a Right Determined?: Assessing the Harm View,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 32, 4 (October 1995): 383–92.Google Scholar
20 Here is another objection to Marquis's view which is helped by the addition of autonomy: Some might object that on Marquis's unrevised view it is worse to kill a fetus than it is to kill a twenty year old. After all, the fetus is being deprived of more life. The addition of autonomy as a wrong-making factor will have the result that this conclusion does not follow. Because the twenty year old has autonomy, there will be a wrong-making factor present in his killing that is not present in the killing of the fetus. The revised view will also have the result that it is worse to kill the twenty year old than a two year old. Some may find this problematic, but I find that this result accords with my intuitions about the relative wrongness of killings. Thanks to Peter Vallentyne for raising this objection to Marquis's view and for subsequent discussion of this point.
21 Williams, Bernard, “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality,” in Language, Metaphysics and Death, edited by Donnelly, John (Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 1994).Google Scholar
22 One need not think of this choice in terms of suicide or euthanasia. Consider the relevant parallels from the abortion debate. Suppose that after some period of years of one's life span, say the first 100, one had choice to have one's life continue or not. Continued life would require tugging on one's left ear lobe three times on the first day of every new year. A failure to perform this act resulted in a natural death sometime during that year. Thus, one could choose not to continue living without making the choice for suicide, assisted or not. Would this be an improvement on our current lot?