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Moral Theory and Human Rights: Scheffler on Structure and Content

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Marlene Benjamin
Marlene Benjamin
Affiliation:
Stonehill College
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Extract

Human rights claims rely on both utilitarian and deontological perspectives of the moral universe. The persuasiveness of these claims depends on the extent to which they resonate harmoniously with a person's other moral opinions. If these opinions cannot be grounded in a larger structure of ra-tionally defensible moral principles, differences of opinion cannot be satis-factorily resolved. When this happens, action protective of rights —about which there may be not only different but diametrically opposed opinion — will be hard to achieve.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , Spring 1992 , pp. 273 - 294
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1992

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References

Notes

1 Scheffler, Samuel, The Rejection of Consequentialism: A Philosophical Investigation of the Considerations Underlying Rival Moral Conceptions (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982)Google Scholar.

2 Scheffler, Samuel, “Natural Rights, Equality, and the Minimal State,” in Paul, Jeffery, ed., Reading Nozick (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1981), p. 148–68Google Scholar.

3 This point is critical. Scheffler never gives the hybrid a specifiable mathematical mix of utilitarian and deontological principles, say, 49/51, or any other combination. He does rely, as I note in the text, on the notion of some “specified proportion” beyond which an agent is not allowed to give more weight to her own projects over those of impersonal maximizing principles, and this is a problem. Nor does Scheffler claim that the hybrid is something radically new on the philosophical horizon, sprung full-grown like Athena out of Zeus's head. In fact, his Preface remarks on his early infatuation with W. D. Ross's theory. Though he rejects Ross's epistemological intuitionism, and continues to worry about deontological views, that early infatuation is in some form present in his hybrid structure, which echoes Ross's theory in its essentially deontologi-cal structure. Moreover, like Ross, Scheffler finds a way to smuggle the general utilitarian duty of beneficence into his theory. Still, though not the usual sort, it is a deontolog-ical theory.

4 Scheffler, , The Rejection of Consequentialism, p. 4Google Scholar.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid., p. 12.

7 Ibid., p. 11–12.

8 Ibid., p. 94.

9 Ibid., p. 30.

10 Ibid., p. 31.

11 Ibid., p. 32.

12 Kagen, Shelly, “Does Consequentialism Demand Too Much? Recent work on the Limits of Obligation,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 13, 3 (Summer 1984): 239–54Google Scholar.

13 Scheffler, , The Rejection of Consequentialism, p. 6Google Scholar.

14 Ibid., p. 100–1.

15 Ibid., p. 104.

16 Ibid., emphasis added.

17 Ibid., p. 20. Kagen notes the less than clear construction of this crucial passage and suggests what details of the formula probably look like. See Kagen, “Does Consequential-ism Demand Too Much?,” p. 250–51.

18 Ibid., p. 253.

19 Ibid., p. 251. For Scheffler on egoism, see, e.g., The Rejection of Consequentialism, p. 18.

20 Kagen, , “Does Consequentialism Demand Too Much?,” p. 253Google Scholar.

21 See note 15.

22 William Frankena notes that “ethical egoism is in no difficulty if what is to one person's advantage coincides with what is to that of all the others.” However, willing the egoistic maxim as a universal law “is empirically a very dubious assumption, since it postulates a kind of pre-established harmony in the world.” See Frankena, , Ethics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963), p. 17Google Scholar.

23 Kagen, , “Does Consequentialism Demand Too Much?,” p. 253Google Scholar.

24 Scheffler, , The Rejection of Consequentialism, p. 100–1Google Scholar.

25 Ibid., p. 96.

26 Ibid., p. 25.

27 Here, I follow Kagen's lead. See Kagen, , “Does Consequentialism Demand Too Much?,” p. 253Google Scholar.

28 As Alasdair Maclntyre has remarked, in order “to hold that it is morally irrelevant whether a man comes to a given belief by reasoning or in some nonrational way … one would have to hold also that a man's exercise of his rationality is irrelevant to his standing as a moral agent, irrelevant, that is, to deciding whether he is entitled to be called ‘responsible’ and his actions ‘voluntary’ ” (A Short History of Ethics [New York: MacMillan, 1966], p. 27)Google Scholar.

29 See e.g., Scheffler, , The Rejection of Consequentialism, p. 19,Google Scholar 24–25, 102–3, 108–14; and Scheffier, , “Natural Rights,” p. 162Google Scholar.

30 See Scheffier, , The Rejection of Consequentialism, p. 109,Google Scholar wher e he talks about killing, letting die, and the number of deaths involved. Following the advice of one reviewer, I discovered that George W. Harris makes an argument quite similar to mine. See “A Paradoxical Departure From Consequentialism” in the Journal of Philosophy, 86, 2 (February 1989): 90–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Harris argues that there is a paradox in accepting the ACP and rejecting two ACRs, one involving personal promises, the other involving personal relations. He shows that an agent may choose an action that falls within a range acceptable to the ACP which is yet an ACR, thus arguing, as I do —though without reference to Scheffier's work on rights —that some ACRs are admitted into the ACP on the given rationale properly understood.

31 Kagen, , “Does Consequentialism Demand Too Much?,” p. 254.Google Scholar As with the first approach, Kagen may not work this one out as I do.

32 Feinberg, Joel, Social Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), p. 75Google Scholar.

33 For an interesting view on the role played by personal relations, see Gorovitz, Samuel, “Bigotry, Loyalty, and Malnutrition,” in Brown, Peter and Shue, Henry, eds., Food Policy (New York: Free Press, 1979), p. 129–42Google Scholar.

34 Shue, Henry, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), p. ixGoogle Scholar.

35 Feinberg, , Social Philosophy, p. 93.Google Scholar Feinberg is right to say there are problems with counting rationality as the grounds for human worth, just as there are problems in relying on notions of “liability to pain and suffering” to ground respect for persons. But this is only true if we claim these are held to the same degree by all. “Universal”—though still problematic (e.g., are plants liable to pain and suffering?) — is a less demanding condition than is a requirement of some specific degree to which a charactristic is held.

36 Scheffier, , The Rejection of Consequentialism, p. 82Google Scholar.

37 Scheffier, , “Natural Rights,” p. 153Google Scholar.

38 Ibid., p. 154–55.

39 If the argument goes that any alteration —even one that strengthens the formal hybrid structure — results in a different hybrid structure than that which Scheffler constructs, then my suggestions will be viewed as doing something other than what I claim. I am not sure how to respond to this, except to say that I have elsewhere suggeste d what I call a “mixed” formal scheme which avoid s the sorts of problems to which Scheffler's hybrid is vulnerable. In explicating this mixed structure I make allusions to Scheffler, but do not engage, as I do here, in a close reading of his work. I also offer a rationale for the mixed scheme that explictly draws on Mill and Kant.

40 Scheffler, , “Natural Rights,” p. 153–54Google Scholar.

41 Ibid., p. 155 and 168, n. 13.

42 Ibid., p. 160.

43 As H. L. A. Hart has noted, there is, oddly, a distinctly classical utilitarian result in Nozick's anti-utilitarian work, such that it does not matter for either if “few enjoy great happiness and very many very little.” See Hart, , “Between Utility and Rights,” in Ryan, Alan, ed., The Idea of Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 83Google Scholar.

44 Scheffler, , “Natural Rights,” p. 151Google Scholar.

45 It may be asked: what has become of the original hybrid once agent-centred restrictions are introduced? It has been pointed out to me in reviewer comments that “what is left is a mixed deontological theory with a familiar structure (e.g. that of W. D. Ross' moral theory).” Before receiving this comment, I had already suggeste d in another place that a mixed structure, essentially deontological yet also incorporating utilitarian principles of maximization, is the best “housing” structure for rights. I argue there that Kant and Mill offer mutually supportive principles. I call my combination of their principles a mixed structure. Insofar as it incorporates both deontological and utilitarian principles, while being essentially characterized by the former, it is similar to Scheffler's hybrid. The relevant point here is that his hybrid was never claimed (either by Scheffler or by myself) to be anything other than non-consequentialist. It is, however, as he notes, an unfamiliar form of non-consequentialism, as it is also, in part, a maximizing structure. These features continue (and are meant to continue) to characterize his hybrid, even after my suggested method of strengthening his arguments is applied. (See also notes 3 and 37 above.)

46 I would like to thank Richmond Campbell for his careful and very thoughtfifl redrew comments, without which the piece would contain far more flaws than it currently does.