The Justification of Rights by Tara Smith (1995) Ch.2: Moral Rights and Political Freedom

Having clarified what rights are, I can now defend the proposition that individuals possess certain rights. In this chapter, I shall argue that rights to freedom are necessary for human life.

I shall begin by providing a brief overview of the argument, indicating its general character. I shall then present the argument itself, elaborating on each of its five steps. Next, I shall examine more closely the telos that rights are designed to serve, explaining both what "life" means and why it is an appropriate foundation for rights. Finally, I shall address some objections, clarifying the reasoning behind rights in the process.

Overview

This defense of rights draws its conclusion from the fundamental value of human life and from observable facts about the requirements of human survival. In ethicists' parlance, it thus grounds rights in both facts and values.

The account is naturalistic insofar as it relies on certain facts about human nature. Contrary to traditional Natural Rights theory, though, I do not propose that rights are "given." Rights do not exist prior to our appreciating the usefulness of such a concept; they are not independent entities awaiting our discovery. Rather, my contention is that certain unalterable facts about human beings joined with the objective of maintaining our lives warrant the recognition of rights. This defense is thus distinguished from those according to which rights are based solely upon social agreement, historical accident, or a community's prevailing practices. Rights are not contingent constructs. The concept is human-made, to be sure; the reasons for forming and using the concept, though, are not an optional matter of convention. If we do value human life, the need for freedom (which rights protect) is irrevocable. It does not depend on our recognition of that need or our coining of the concept.

Facts about human life cannot by themselves, of course, justify the acceptance of any moral principles. The adoption of an objective is crucial. Mine is unabashedly a conditional argument. If life is a fundamental value, and we seek to have the chance to maintain and advance our lives, then we ought to recognize individual rights as a necessary means of doing so.

Given this aim, the need for rights arises from basic facts about the requirements of survival. Foremost, we confront biological facts. Our environment and physiology present needs that must be satisfied if we are to sustain ourselves. These needs do not depend on local conventions or world views. While specific means of fulfilling these needs may vary somewhat, the needs themselves do not. For the source of these needs is not our culture, but our nature. The need for water and protein does not depend on particular traditions, teachings, or beliefs.¹

Such biological observations by themselves do not generate any moral conclusions. The other factor relevant to the case for rights is the way in which other people may thwart our lives. Individuals frequently prevent others from satisfying their needs. History has provided a bulging catalogue of some people's attempts to dominate others. If individuals are to survive, this sort of impediment also must be overcome. These "social" obstacles are what rights address. Rights are a means of defending against the danger that other people's actions sometimes pose.

The Argument

My contention is that respect for individual rights to freedom of action is a necessary condition for individuals' attainment of their highest good. Each person's own life is that person's ultimate value. it can only be attained, though, when a person is free to rule her own life. If we wish to have the chance to achieve that value, then we must recognize rights.²

The simplest way to proceed is by stating the argument in its entirety and then returning to explain and defend each step. The argument runs as follows:

1. Human life requires productive effort.
2. Productive effort requires reasoned action.
3. Reasoned action is individual and self-authored.
4. Reasoned action requires freedom.
5. Thus if we seek to live in a society in which individuals are to have a chance to maintain their lives, we must recognize individual rights to freedom.

Premise 1.
Human Life Requires Productive Effort

The first premise makes a straightforward factual claim. The survival of human beings is contingent on the fulfillment of certain needs. Human life requires fuel, such as food, water, and oxygen; the body must be protected from external intrusions such as infection or frost-bite; internal processes such as blood circulation and digestion must maintain regular operations. If a person seeks to preserve her life, she must see to it that various needs are met.

The necessary conditions of life do not obtain automatically. The fuel we require does not spontaneously flow into our bodies. Efforts must be initiated to identify sources of nutrition and channel appropriate amounts to our beneficial consumption. While many physiological operations normally proceed without our deliberate oversight, even these can run awry. Crises may erupt (aneurysms, seizures, ruptured appendices) which, if untended, can kill a person. Restoration of healthy functioning often demands active intervention. Similarly, atmospheric anomalies such as drought, storms, or fires sometimes threaten our well-being and must be battled if we are to survive the damages that they inflict.

Given these circumstances, human beings must act to sustain ourselves. Our environment is not stocked exclusively with life-enhancing goods which we conveniently absorb through osmosis. We cannot subsist merely by waiting for our needs to be satisfied. Such passivity would be fatal. Individuals must act to fulfill their needs. We must identify what we need, discover which available resources might meet our needs, determine how they can be made to do so, and then proceed to manipulate those materials accordingly. All of this necessitates productive effort, both intellectual and physical. The maintenance of life requires that individuals produce the goods that are essential to our survival.

The claim that human life requires productive effort does not mean that each individual's life depends solely on her own activity. (If that were the case, children would not survive infancy.) The goods produced by one person may be used to sustain another, whether by voluntary transfer or against the producer's will. The relative numbers of producers and nonproducing consumers is immaterial to the central contention: all human lives depend on someone's productive efforts.

The obvious test of this premise is the image of what would ensue if people did not engage in productive action. Imagine that people were exclusively engaged in comparatively passive behavior, merely "Siting around" or "doing nothing in particular." Or imagine that people engaged in nonproductive activities they kept busy, but did not produce goods to satisfy their needs. (E.g., they spent every waking hour playing chess.) Under either of these scenarios, after a brief passage of time, people would perish. However active they might be, if people did not tend to their needs by producing the goods that their bodies require, they would die. It is as simple as that. The nature of human life demands productivity for its maintenance.³

The premise's truth is unassailable. Given ineradicable facts of human biology and the nature of our environment, any individual wishing to preserve her life faces two options: she can produce what's needed in order to maintain herself or she can consume the products of others' efforts. But these exhaust her alternatives. The ease with which we have come to fulfill many of our needs and the unreflective habit of routinely employing certain materials to do so may obscure these facts, but they do not erase them. People have to eat - literally and metaphorically. The materials required must be obtained somehow.

They are not forthcoming without individuals' productive effort.

Premise 2.
Productive Effort Requires Reasoned Action

Given that we must produce in order to satisfy our needs, we should examine more closely the nature of productive activity. The feature relevant to the case for rights is that production requires reasoned action.

I am using "production" to refer both to the creation of objects that did not previously exist (e.g., stoves, pacemakers, automobiles) and to the deliberate manipulation of pre-existing resources to serve particular ends (purifying water for drinking, burning oil to heat buildings).⁴ Roughly, "productive effort" designates human activity undertaken in order to create some object (encompassing goods, services, procedures or ideas) to serve (directly or indirectly) some constructive purpose. Productive effort is not merely any activity that happens to bring about welcome results. Production is purposeful. It is intended to accomplish an objective. What renders some action productive is not simply its outcome, but also the reason for which it is taken.

Productive effort requires the expenditure of energy; it is an active enterprise. Yet not any action will qualify. When one has an aim, random activity - jogging in place, whistling, reading poetry - cannot be expected to generate the sought results. Two people stranded on a remote island who devoted all their energies to fervent frisbee-tossing would not be long for this world. Only certain kinds of activities can achieve particular objectives, thus only certain kinds of activities can be productive.

To claim that production is active does not mean that it must be physical. In fact, all productive work requires mental effort. The relative doses of physical and intellectual activity will vary depending on what is being produced. The design of satellites and x-ray machines requires substantial intellectual skill. Construction of a brick wall typically consumes considerable physical activity and much less cerebral exertion.

The important thing to realize is that whatever the ratio of mental and physical input for a given good, productive activity always will rely on some degree of mental effort. (Bricks of what material and size? How can I ensure the bricks holding together? Through rain? Why a brick wall?) Production is not like the serendipitous discovery of previously hidden materials; one does not happen upon a microchip in the way that one might uncover a fossil. The mind plays a vital role both in establishing objectives and in devising strategies for achieving them.

In any productive enterprise, a person must determine what she is attempting to accomplish. Goals themselves are not pre-inscribed in our minds. We must decide what we are after. Doing so relies on inferences, however simple or sophisticated. Whether one's purpose is to secure an Ella Fitzgerald recording or a career in heart surgery, mental calculations are pivotal ("I think I'd enjoy that;" "I think I could develop the requisite skill"). Insofar as productive activity is purposeful, it is one's mind that embraces purposes.

Thought is also essential in charting a course for realizing one's objectives. Once a person has adopted a goal, she must design a plan of action for attaining it. The materials around us are not labelled with instructions explaining their possible uses. It is for individuals to discern how to manipulate available resources to suit their purposes. Without the reflective orchestration of one's actions, the flux of activity that a person might engage in is unlikely to achieve her ends. As a general policy for promoting objectives, the vague instruction to "do something" will not prove effective. However modest or ambitious one's aims, meeting them requires thought. Whether the aim is to figure out what one can eat, how to build a hut or an airplane, or how to devise an effective vaccine, the mind's role is indispensable.⁵

Mental contribution per se is not sufficient to direct productive activity. Not all mental activity is rational. All manner of data may occupy our minds. Stray associations, fleeting memories, farfetched wishful thinking or faulty inferences, however, are not the sort of mental oversight that drives successful productive activity. More specifically, production requires reasoned action.

Consider a farmer. Given the aim of gaining the maximum return on her investment, she will not know automatically what crops to plant in which locations, when to plant, when to reap, or how to nurture the crops. This knowledge is not revealed to her by transcendental meditation, divine inspiration, or instinct. Nor will she succeed simply by reading about and mimicking the practices of farmers planting different crops in different soil in a different climate in the 11th century. Rather, she must reason about the specific task before her. She must determine what information might be relevant and deliberately seek it out; she must notice salient similarities and differences between the conditions that she confronts and others; she must employ a painstaking process of trial and error, seek to isolate causal connections, and draw logical inferences about alternative methods in order to determine how best to proceed. The most fertile soil and the most conducive climate in the world will not do her a bit of good until she figures out what they are conducive to and how to make the most of it.

This is not to say that each individual must start from scratch, obtaining all useful information from direct observation. Individuals benefit enormously from knowledge that others have acquired. Yet in doing so, a person cannot lapse into unreflective acceptance of others' claims or rote adoption of others' procedures. A person must use her own judgment in learning, understanding, and applying others' knowledge, remaining alert to differences in her circumstances that might warrant departures from previously successful methods. Only activity that is governed by one's reason can be truly productive.

When we assess an action's rationality, we are judging it on two grounds: the end it seeks and its strategy for attaining its end. Think again of two people stranded on an island. If they wish to survive, then they ought to set about accomplishing certain more limited goals. Securing food and shelter are the most obvious. If, instead of attending to these necessities, these people devoted all their energy to composing stirring melodies or devising sophisticated chess maneuvers, their activity would not be rational. Creating masterpieces of musical and mathematical insight may be intellectually impressive, but given that they would like to live, neglecting the activities that that objective requires renders their behavior irrational.

In addition, even when goals themselves are perfectly rational, people's plans for achieving their goals may be defective. A strategy may be logically flawed because it omits relevant considerations, exaggerates or minimizes the significance of certain factors, misrepresents the relationship between various facts, or fails to take account of differences in context (high altitude, old age, or severe weather). The lesson, again, is that "thinking" is not sufficient to drive productive action. One must think rationally. Subsequently, one must follow through by acting according to one's reasoned conclusions.

This emphasis on the mind's role in productive activity should not be construed to minimize the importance of the action. Rationality is significant because it leads us to take the actions that our survival demands. Premise 2 contends that only certain types of behavior can in fact be productive. In sum, productive effort relies on reasoned action.⁶

Premise 3.
Reasoned Action is Individual and Self-Authored

The claim of the third premise should be temporarily divided into two parts. (They will later be reunited, as the two are ultimately entwined.) The first part, asserting that reasoned action is individual, means that individuals are the only possible originators of such action.⁷ The second part, claiming that reasoned action is self-authored, means that for a particular action to be reasoned, it must be rational for the agent, in the relevant situation, chosen because she regarded it as such.

The first claim is straightforward. It is a feature of the nature of human thought. Thought is an activity that minds can engage in. Nothing else can. Minds are separate, distinguishable entities possessed by individual persons, however. Any thought that ever takes place occurs as an activity of some single mind's effort. There are no collective thought processes because nothing exists that could engage in such activity. No collective mind has ever been found.

Similarly, there are no collective actions. We speak of "collective action" when individuals agree to act in concert, presenting a unified front to some adversary. Yet strictly, this denotes the aggregate of actions chosen by the discrete members of the group. A group can "act" only in the sense that each of its constituents may agree to act in the same manner, or each may agree to have a particular policy conducted by some on their behalf. A group's "action" is no more than the product of its members' actions, Individuals remain the prime movers behind any action taken in their name. (Witness the protests that erupt when a group's leaders take unauthorized action.)

As reason is individual and action is individual, so reasoned action is individual. Only individuals can perform reasoned action because only individuals have the requisite capacity to reason and to act.⁸

The correlative claim that reasoned action is self-authored builds on this individuality. Because all action is individual, when we assess the rationality of an action, we must evaluate its rationality for the agent. That is, an action can fairly be described as reasoned only if the agent takes the action because she considers it rational.

Rationality is not a property inherent to some ideas and not others, such that whoever accepts a given idea can be considered rational (on that subject), and any action that she takes based on that idea can be considered a reasoned action. If a given person has no rational basis for accepting the truth of some idea i (which is in fact true), then it would not be rational for her to accept it. If she has observed no evidence that supports i and knows of no one else who has, if she knows of no qualified experts who accept i, or if she does not understand what i means, then however apparent the truth of i may be to most people, it would not be rational for her to embrace it. This in no way challenges the fact that it is rational for others to accept i (those who have seen the evidence or followed the reasoning behind it).

Ideas cannot be judged rational or irrational as free-floating commodities. For we experience no such unhinged ideas. All thoughts are thought by someone; no thoughts are orphans. Accordingly, "rationality" does not refer to ideas or actions in themselves, but only to ideas as understood and to actions as performed by particular human beings. Whether acceptance of an idea is rational for a given individual depends on why she accepts it. Rationality concerns the way a person treats ideas the basis on which she accepts them and the way in which she relates them to her other knowledge. Designating an action as "reasoned" does not refer simply to the conclusions on which an action was premised, but to the method by which the agent came to accept those conclusions and choose that action.

It may be helpful to address possible misunderstandings of this claim.

The fact that the rationality of an action can only be assessed relative to the particular individual performing that action does not mean that an action's rationality depends wholly on the agent's beliefs. The requirement that reasoned action be self-authored does not retract the requirement that reasoned action be reasoned. Self-authorship is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for reasoned action.

Nor should one presume that the self-authored character of reasoned action precludes the possibility of gaining knowledge from others. The ability to exchange thoughts profitably is compatible with the independence of reasoned action because exposure to others' ideas does not ensure acceptance of those ideas. An individual exercises ultimate control over her mind's activities: whether she will think, what she will think about, how closely she will scrutinize ideas, how much credence and weight she will assign to different ideas. Others' opinions, however vigorously expressed and confidently defended, cannot invade a person's brain and replace its contents. There can be no cognitive equivalent of a coup d'etat.⁹

Consequently, acquaintance with others' beliefs does not jeopardize the self-authored character of one's conclusions. One might be led to discover certain truths by others' suggestions, but since the final verdict must be one's own, independent thought does not require insulation from others' influence. One person's mind cannot be made by others to accept particular conclusions. We cannot impose a set of beliefs on a person as we can pin a nail into a wall. The mind is simply not subject to external determination in that way.¹⁰

Since genuine beliefs cannot be fed into a person, rational beliefs and reasoned action cannot be imposed from without. A person engaging in reasoned action is not like a robot blindly carrying out others' commands (however rationally conceived those commands may be). Nor is a person engaged in reasoned action comparable to a walking calculator, excelling at moment-to-moment problem-solving but lacking a broader purpose that integrates those computations. Recall that rationality is a function of both one's objectives and tactics for achieving them. Whether any isolated action is rational thus depends on the agent's circumstances; it depends on how that action fits into the larger scheme of the agent's life.

My claim, then, is that when we attribute a thought or action to a person, any description of its rationality must also refer to her mental processes. Since ideas are not inherently rational or irrational, reasoned action must be reasoned to the actor. To believe that some action is Valerie's but to assess its rationality by considerations independent of how and why she came to take it would sever agent from action. It would alter the subject under scrutiny, as we would no longer be evaluating her action, but considering a detached, anonymous action.¹¹

Premise 3's claim that reasoned action is individual and self-authored means that reasoned actions are neither the offspring of a mysterious collective ignition nor the mechanical motions of puppets. Reasoned action is a self driven enterprise. The only reasoned actions that can ever be taken must be taken as the result of an individual agent's conscious initiative.

Premise 4.
Reasoned Action Requires Freedom

Together, premises 1 and 2 claim that reasoned action is necessary for human life. Step 3 expands upon the nature of reasoned action. Given the individual and self-authored character of reasoned action, premise 4 posits a condition that must be met if individuals are to be able to engage in such action: they must be free.¹²

Freedom is by no means a sufficient condition for reasoned action. A person may fail to take reasoned action for all sorts of reasons. Some people are better skilled at thinking rationally than others; some will possess more relevant information or experience. Moreover, individuals exert varying levels of effort to act rationally— either to discover reason's prescriptions or to follow through in implementing them.

Attempts to take reasoned action sometimes face external obstacles, as well. Events beyond one's control can defeat the best laid plans. Such impediments range from mundane inconveniences (the library is unexpectedly closed) to catastrophic accidents.

Because the natural events that may frustrate our plans are not the work of moral agents, they could not be overcome by our adherence to particular moral principles. Another sort of external obstacle is relevant to morality, however: those posed by other people. Others' activities may prevent a person from engaging in reasoned action.

In order for a person to be able to take reasoned action, the single condition that must be secured from others is that they respect her freedom. Colloquially, we often say that we should leave a person alone. The reason that we should, I am proposing, is that a person cannot engage in reasoned action when others are using force against her.

Individuals have two basic means by which to thwart another person's reasoned action. One person might block another's actions by the direct application of physical force, either seizing control of her body or disabling her (e.g., by handeuffing, gagging, imprisoning, shooting, poisoning, or stabbing). Clearly, such physical interference constrains a person's capacity to act (rationally or otherwise).

The second means of thwarting reasoned action is by threatening to inflict such force. This has the effect of imposing prohibitive costs on some of the threatened person's options, allowing her to take certain actions only at the price of suffering force. Under appropriate circumstances, issuing threats can be an effective means of crippling a person's ability to act according to her own judgment.¹³ When one person fails to persuade another to act in a desired manner and he would prefer not to actually employ physical force, this second route seems a promising alternative. The threat of force often provides a compelling motive for a person to depart from the course she would have chosen, absent the threat, and to do as the threatener demands.

Either the application or threat of force thus hinders its recipient's ability to engage in reasoned action. Locked in a room, beaten to a pulp, or threatened with such prospects, a person is not in a position to act on the basis of her own reasoned conclusions. Others' obstruction of her freedom redirects the person to do what her attackers demand rather than what she would choose.

Premise 4, then, is fairly straightforward. Perhaps the clearest way to appreciate that reasoned action requires freedom is simply to visualize situations in which a person is not free. Consider some relatively noncontroversial examples of unfreedom, cases in which a person is abducted as a hostage, enslaved, or held up on the street. In the hostage case, when the victim is physically confined, she is literally prevented from acting according to her own judgment, from following her own life-plan. Her reasoned action is thereby rendered impossible. Slavery and holdups, since they rely on threats, are slightly more complicated. In these situations, the victim is told, "Do this, or else." She is forced to act so as to preserve whatever value it is that is threatened by the aggressor (her life, limbs, children, etc.). In order to retain that value, she must do as her attackers demand. Notice that her own conclusions as to what actions to take are cast aside, rendered irrelevant by the immediate danger. To trace exactly how this mars the victim's ability to take reasoned action, consider a more specific case.

Imagine that Valerie has worked to earn money for several months in order to make some significant purchases. She has now saved $2,000. Having weighed the different possible uses of this sum, she has decided that a personal computer would be the most prudent choice. (As a playwright, this would greatly facilitate her work.) So Valerie sets out to buy one. On her way to the computer shop, she is accosted by Outlaw, who demands Valerie's money at gunpoint and threatens to shoot her if it isn't immediately handed over. Obviously, if Valerie complies, she will no longer be able to spend the money in the way she had intended. Her own reasoned conclusion about how to dispose of her savings will be jettisoned.

Suppose, though, that Valerie surrenders her wallet, as most of us would. It is in exactly this way that the aggressor threatening to use force compels his victim to abandon her own rational judgment. Once she encounters Outlaw, Valerie is no longer in a position to proceed according to her own premeditated conclusions. She is no longer able to engage in reasoned action. Outlaw's threat - made credible by the gun - thrusts before Valerie a simple demand: "Do this." Valerie must cast aside the conclusions of her own judgment in order to escape the threatened calamity. The threat to use force thus derails its target's ability to govern her own actions.¹⁴

The point is: when a person is not free, she is not able to live her life as her judgment dictates, but she must yield to others' wishes. Her reason is held hostage. She regains the ability to act according to her own judgment only after she has satisfied her oppressor's demands.

In order to be able to act according to one's own reasoned conclusions, then, a person must be free from others' use or threat of force. To whatever extent one is free, reasoned action is possible; to the extent that one is not free, reasoned action is not possible. ¹⁵

5. Conclusion:
Thus If We Seek To Live in a Society in which Individuals Are To Have a Chance To Maintain Their Lives, We Must Recognize Individual Rights To Freedom

The argument's conclusion is straightforward. Since reasoned action is essential to the productive effort on which a person's life depends, if a person is to maintain her life, it is crucial that she be in a position to take such action. Since reasoned action is necessarily self-authored and cannot be scripted for one person by another, the only path by which a person might take reasoned action is through her own decisions. Individuals will only be able to engage in reasoned action when they are at liberty to choose their actions. Thus if we seek to live in a society in which people have the chance to maintain their lives, we must respect individuals as sovereign over their own actions. We must recognize rights protecting individuals' freedom of action.

As I remarked at the outset, it is the union of a chosen goal with facts concerning how that goal is attainable that provides the foundation for rights. If the factual premises hold and if we do wish individuals to be in a position to achieve their highest value, then we ought to recognize rights. If life actually does require reasoned action and if individuals are the only beings capable of performing such action, then individuals must be in a position to take reasoned action if they are to advance their lives. If, further, a person must be free in order to engage in reasoned action, then we ought to protect freedom. Rights are the means of doing so.

Rights' Telos

The essential case for rights is now complete. To appreciate the strength of the argument, though, we must clearly understand the objective that respect for rights is intended to promote.

Rights serve life. The life at issue is that of a human being doing well. The end envisioned is not the condition of a comatose vegetable. The aim of rights is not to secure people the desperate clinging to minimal subsistence that is typified by a person dependent on artificial contrivances to carry out her vital bodily functions. The end of rights is a good life. To understand why, we must bear in mind that the case for rights hinges on individuals' valuing life and consider why they typically do so.

My proposal is not that life is an intrinsic good that people have an unchosen duty to preserve. We have no natural or preordained obligation to live, regardless of whether we would like to. Rather, life is to be sought if and because an individual chooses it. No more compelling foundation underwrites an obligation to do what the pursuit of life requires. If this choice is the source of the derivative obligation to respect rights, however, then we should take into account why individuals make this choice. This will illuminate what the end to be promoted is.

The explanation is plain enough. Usually, individuals value their lives for the sake of satisfying experiences: pleasures of varying depth and resonance, a sense of the importance of some of their activities, accomplishing goals that they consider valuable. In conducting their lives, individuals are pursuing their ideas of lives that it is enjoyable and/or worthwhile to lead. The desire to have a good life is generally implicit in a person's choice to live.

Individuals do not normally prize biological endurance for its own sake. Most people do not wish to maintain their brainwaves at any cost. Even when people are willing to withstand great pains, living is not valued for these. Rather, these are prices that individuals are sometimes willing to pay in order to reap other benefits. Generally, individuals value their lives insofar as they believe good lives are possible for them.¹⁶

To speak of the "choice to live" is somewhat artificial. I do not mean that all people on some occasion pause, deliberate, and consciously choose to continue their lives. Some people, of course, do. A serious illness, accident, or another's death especially tend to provoke such thoughtful confrontation with one's existence. Usually, the decision is implicit, fueling the countless plans that a person continually formulates (what to do next Wednesday, next weekend, next year) and manifested each morning as she sets to that day's activities.

Whatever the degree of self-consciousness in the choice, the important observation is that a commitment to maintaining one's life is not a decision to embrace some freestanding form, devoid of all contents. To the extent that one values one's future despite uncertainty as to the actual shape it will assume, one does so for its promise, for the possibility of its being filled with worthwhile experiences. In contemplating whether to live, a person does not ponder life as an empty receptacle. One contemplates specific ideas of what life could be like, envisioning concrete experiences. A person can have no life that is not some kind of life, composed of events of one sort or another. Thus this is what one considers in deciding whether to "keep on going." To the extent that individuals choose to maintain their lives, they do so for the sake of having lives of a desirable character.¹⁷

This is why the objective that respect for rights will advance is not sheer biological resilience. As the telos of rights, "life" refers to more than the barren perseverance found in high-tech hospital wards or the slums of Calcutta. Neither offers the sort of life that people aspire to. Since the objective that occasions our tending to its necessary conditions (such as freedom) is a good life, that is the end that recognition of rights will serve. Rights' telos is a happy life, one of flourishing or well-being. It is important to understand that as I use them, "life" and "a good life" are not distinct ambitions, but alternate labels for the same end.¹⁸

No doubt, the claim that rights' justification is grounded in the objective of a good life will invite skepticism. How could rights rest on a value-laden foundation? Not everyone will agree on what a good life is. By tying rights to such a contentious end, aren't I significantly limiting the applicability of my conclusions about rights?

The supposition behind this objection is that value judgments are arbitrary and not subject to objective validation. The designation of a good life is allegedly subjective, hence no objectively binding rights could be derived from this end. I reject that supposition, however. Its refutation is beyond the scope of this work, but three observations should clarify my position and indicate the frailty of the alternative.

• First, the claim that values are objective does not entail that a good life will consist of all the same specific, concrete ingredients for every person (the same interests, hobbies, tastes, etc.). The assessment of whether a life is good is made at a broader level, concerning why a person does what she does and what she gets out of it. It allows for considerable variation in particulars.
• Second, we must realize that any defense of universal moral rights presupposes the objectivity of moral judgments. A commitment to such rights is itself a statement that treating individuals in certain ways is morally mandatory as a matter of fact. If one consistently rejects the possibility of objective moral judgments, one must also dismiss the concept of rights.
• Third, I should reiterate that "life and "a good life" reflect alternative perspectives on the same phenomenon. My reference to a good life is not meant to (and need not) introduce a separate yardstick for qualitative evaluations of life. Such evaluations are not independent of the standard of survival. Ultimately, the same standard measures both quality and quantity of life because the two aspects of life are inseparable.

It is impossible to hold life as the aim of any enterprise (moral, medical, psychological, economic) without relying on certain evaluative judgments concerning that aim. Familiar appeals to "quality of life" have lured us into supposing that we can draw sharp lines between quality and quantity of life, clearly distinguishing the fact of life from those features that make life more or less desirable. In truth, we cannot; the quality-quantity of life distinction is untenable.

Individuals do not face a choice between quality and quantity as different kinds of life. We are not presented with alternate models, one bare, stripped completely of qualitative features, and the other studded with embellishments like a new car already equipped with air conditioning and cruise control. The quality-quantity distinction is misleading because we cannot cleanly sever the two. Some qualitative assessment can be made of any human life. Any level of existence, however meager, is some level, and can thus be characterized in terms of its quality.

If we sought to set aside qualitative considerations and determine simply whether a person had some minimal quantity of life, we would require criteria by which to render such a judgment. How are we to adopt these criteria? A typical basis is provided by reference to needs. In the case of human life, a body needs to maintain certain operations if it is to continue functioning.

"The plot thickens, however, when we realize that needs are intelligible only in relation to some purpose. Things are "needed" in order to achieve a certain condition or to attain a further end. What makes human respiratory, heart, or brain activity a suitable basis for distinguishing between life and death? What is the regular operation of these processes necessary for? No answer to such questions can be devoid of qualitative judgments. If we held that brain activity was necessary for a person to lead a truly human life, for instance, we would be importing qualitative judgments into the concept of "human."

When trying to identify the needs of human existence, the level of existence that is the appropriate standard to invoke is not self-evident. Adoption of that standard itself involves assumptions about a minimally acceptable quality of life. Thus we could not eliminate qualitative assessments from an account of "mere subsistence" even if we wished to. Protests against rights being based in the objective of a good life are thus ill-founded. My defense of rights is not concerned with promoting a certain quality of life as opposed to a mere quantity of life. Rather, quality and quantity are inextricably interwoven dimensions of any individual's life, the single end that recognition of rights will serve.

If we now have a better idea of the goal to be promoted through respect for rights, the question of why this goal is adequate to justify rights remains. That is, even if respect for rights is necessary for life, why does that constitute sufficient grounds to generate an obligation to respect rights? Rights, after all, are demanding claims.

As soon as it is stated, the question may seem misconceived. Since life is such a broad, all-encompassing aim, it is difficult seriously to entertain doubts that it is a goal that commands our consummate devotion. While questions about the justificatory power of a goal may be reasonable for other ends, for the goal of life, they seem out of place. Still, since alternate teleological accounts would need to defend their objectives, some response to the question seems in order.

To point to more primitive reasons for individuals' pursuing what nearly all so naturally do is difficult. A good life is such an inclusive and fundamental goal that it seems impossible to further penetrate the grounds on which people do or should embrace it. These observations do not attest to the inscrutability of human nature, however. The reason that we cannot provide more basic justification for valuing life (and deriving further obligations from lite's requirements) is that life is the source of moral justification. The desire to live is what gives rise to moral obligation.

A good life is an adequate foundation for rights because life is the fundamental value. Life is the source of all other values and thus of all moral obligations. Obviously this is a vast claim, suitable for a book on metaethics. I am not arguing for it here. But some of our observations about individuals' quest for a good life support it. The overarching aim of securing a good life is what makes sense of our more localized judgments concerning what individuals should do and pursue. If one rejects the view that moral duties are simply handed to us (as by God, nature, or intuition), the way is cleared for obligations being grounded in practical purposes. If one accepts that "shoulds" are rooted in purposes, then adopting a central purpose will enable us to determine our more particular obligations.¹⁹

Life is that central purpose. It is the quest for a good life that makes sense of our other aims and activities. Individuals pursue particular projects and goals-rewarding work, aesthetic pleasures, romantic relationships, a comfortable home - because they expect that these will lead to or be constituents of their having good lives. All our activities are undertaken because they are expected to contribute to that broader ambition.²⁰

No ultimate telos is handed to us as the proper object of our activities. It is for us to adopt and prioritize our ends. No end other than life can exert a greater claim on our allegiance, however.

Consider a few of the other ends sometimes posited as the good that would be served by recognition of rights, such as reason and autonomy. Even if one demonstrated that rights were needed in order for people to be able to exercise reason or to be autonomous, we would need to know why either of these is sufficiently valuable to warrant rights. What is the intolerable consequence of people's being irrational or nonautonomous?

No doubt, we have many sound reasons for encouraging rational and autonomous behavior.²¹ But these reasons stem from still other objectives and the value of those must be accounted for. Ultimately, it is the goal of life that renders all other goals valuable, including rational and autonomous action. For it is only the quest for a good life that makes sense of these more limited pursuits.

Whatever the value of rational or autonomous behavior, life is an even greater value. However dire the consequences of people's acting irrationally or nonautonomously, death is a still more dread disaster because life is a necessary condition for the exercise of either rationality or autonomy and for the realization of whatever ends rational or autonomous behavior might serve. No values can be realized unless life is secure.²²

Moreover, life is necessary for the value of other values. The goal of maintaining one's life bestows the status of "value" on certain other ends and activities. The very concept of value is dependent upon the fundamental, inescapable alternative of life or death.²³

In actual practice, just about all people do seek to maintain their lives, albeit with differing interpretations of what a good life consists of and with varying degrees of consistency. Concerns that the telos of my argument curtails the reach of its conclusion are thus ill-founded. The argument is conditional, but it is conditional on the most widely shared goal imaginable and on the very aim that gives rise to all values and moral principles. A good life is the most compelling aim that anyone has reason to adopt. Strictly, this aim is the source of reasons to do anything. If life does in fact require respect for rights, this justifies wider support for rights than could any alternative end. Because a good life stands as the animating purpose of all our more particular activities, lending them meaning and motivating our engagement in them, it is an end that we have ample reason to pursue. Since life is a prerequisite for the pursuit and the value of any value, and since a good life is the implicit goal behind the pursuit of any value, if any end can be singled out as especially compelling for us, life is it.

Objections

By addressing possible misgivings about the argument, we can further clarify its reasoning.

One question concerns premise 4, the claim that reasoned action requires freedom. If victims of forceful assaults may sometimes respond reasonably, this seems to refute that claim. Indeed, in the example presented, Valerie's compliance with Outlaw's demand may seem quite reasonable, given her alternatives. If so, then unfree Valerie is taking reasoned action. Thus it appears that reasoned action does not require freedom.

In response, one might suppose that what the holdup example reveals is that a person can be free in some areas while unfree in others and that reasoned action in a given sphere requires freedom in that sphere. Valerie's situation would have been very different had Outlaw simply shot her and then grabbed her wallet, By issuing a threat instead, one might argue, Outlaw allows Valerie to make a reasoned choice between the options presented to her. Therefore, while Outlaw's threat may narrow the range within which Valerie can act according to her own reasoned judgment, it does not eliminate the possibility of Valerie taking reasoned action all together.

Extrapolating to other cases, one might contend that people are often free to apply reason to some decisions and not others. In some nations, for instance, the citizen who is free to spend her money how she likes is not free to voice dissatisfaction with her government. A slave may be able to take reasoned action in the disposal of an hour off here or there, though she is not free to proceed by reason in choosing a residence or career.

Though superficially appealing, this analysis is untenable. A person's life cannot be partitioned into free and unfree zones. Note that the "partially free" slave is not free to run away during her occasional time off; the "semifree" citizen is not free to spend her money to support candidates who oppose the governing regime. Even their allegedly free spheres of activity, in other words, are not truly free, since certain activities are closed off to them. Any restriction of freedom in one realm inevitably spills into others, affecting how a person may exercise her "freedom" there. Pockets of "unfreedom" cannot be contained because freedom is not divisible. A person either is or is not free to rule her actions. The denial of freedom to rule some of them leaves a person subservient to the will of those who impose such restrictions.

When a person is instructed: "you may reach and act on any conclusion, except this" (such as spending your money as you had intended), her capacity to take reasoned action is suspended. This capacity cannot survive such a constriction intact, proceeding to render the immediate decision as if no such handcuffs had been applied. Recall that a reasoned action must be rational to the agent, in light of full consideration of her objectives. The arbitrary exclusion of certain courses that stems from another person's weapon, however, makes such action impossible. The action that a person selects from among such forcefully truncated alternatives is not a component of a rationally conceived plan of life. It is not the type of action that the achievement of her highest value relies upon. Freedom remains necessary for that.

What all this leads us to realize is that Valerie's response to Outlaw's demand is not a reasoned action. Valerie does not hand over her money because of a readjustment of her priorities. She has not been persuaded to abandon her playwriting in order to devote her life to others. Her change of course is not analogous to her, after consulting with her garage mechanic, deciding that her savings would be better spent on car repair than on a computer. It is the threat of bodily injury, not persuasion or reflective deliberation, that prompts Valerie to comply with Outlaw's demand.

Note that it is only on a distorted description of Valerie's predicament that her action even appears to be reasoned. When faced with a choice between losing $2,000 or one's life, isn't it reasonable to prefer the loss of money? Sure. Yet this description is artificial. It ignores salient aspects of the actual circumstances in which Valerie confronts this choice, and it severs the action from the broader context of Valerie's life. Since the rationality of a person's action depends on its objective as well as its tactics, we cannot divorce the assessment of whether a particular action is reasoned from the broader course of which it is a part. The goal that motivates Valerie in our scenario is not a component of her broader plans. Valerie's pressing aim—to get through the next two minutes-has been arbitrarily imposed by Outlaw's weapon. In the larger scheme of Valerie's life, however, doing as strangers wish is not a wise strategy. Individual acts of compliance with such a policy do not constitute reasoned action.

Philosophers are well-schooled in the art of devising alternative descriptions for a single action. (Is it reasonable to give a large sum of one's hard-earned money to a stranger who exhibits nothing but hostility?) To determine which description is appropriate, we must accurately depict all relevant features of the actual situation in question (in this case, including Valerie's plans, purposes, past thinking and decisions) and we must bear in mind our larger purpose. Indeed, that broader purpose will determine which features are relevant. Here, we must remind ourselves of the reason for valuing reasoned action In the first place. The reasoned conduct of a person's life, consisting primarily of the design and implementation of long-range plans, is the kind of conduct that is necessary for her life. This is rendered impossible when a person is not free. Others' use or threat of force denies a person of the opportunity to carry out such programs. Outlaw sidetracks the execution of Valerie's game plan, as it were.

The upshot is that, while certain strained descriptions of Valerie's response to Outlaw's threat might make her action appear reasonable, her desperate, defensive maneuver fails to constitute a genuinely reasoned action.

A second objection concerns the implication of steps 2 and 4, that productive effort requires freedom. One might protest that if slaves are the paradigmatic example of unfree people and Ameriean slave labor produced goods that sustained generations, then productive work does not require freedom.

The answer to this objection lies in identifying what it is that enabled slave labor to be productive. Recall that random activity does not accomplish any specific purpose. It was only because slaves were carrying out others' well-designed plans that their activity generated useful results. In order for slaves' following of orders to serve productive purposes, those orders themselves must have been reasoned. For any plans to be reasonably conceived, however, they must have been devised by free minds, minds able to reach conclusions without restrictions imposed by others' use of force.

Slaves' toil had life-furthering consequences as the product of others' free and reasoned judgments. Someone must have decided that a particular course of action would accomplish the chosen objectives (grow corn, build bridges, generate power). Deliberate calculations drive any productive enterprise. To author these plans and force slaves to execute them, the "masterminds" must have been free. Thus the output of slave labor does not disprove the necessity of freedom for production. Free action remains the foundation of slaves' actions yielding the consequences that they did. Unfree work can be productive only to the extent that it is the execution of others' rational plans. In brief: for action to be productive, it must be rationally conceived. For action to be rationally conceived, its originator must be free. Thus freedom remains a bedrock prerequisite for reasoned action and productive work.²⁴

The previous discussion might suggest a third question for my argument: why should all persons hold rights? If the objective sought is human life, seemingly some people could determine means of sustaining life and everyone else could simply follow their instructions. By my reasoning, what is to rule out a society in which freedom is reserved for benevolent dictators who design the requisite productive strategies and compel others to implement their orders? That appears sufficient to secure the professed objective. If life can be attained without everyone enjoying freedom, what justifies universal rights?²⁵

This question is misconceived because it rests on confused images of the telos that rights serve and the freedom that rights protect. In subsequent chapters, we shall further clarify both of these. For now, a brief discussion of each should dispose of the confusion.

First, consider the objective that rights target. The question of why all individuals merit rights to freedom suggests that life is some sort of homogeneous stuff (like a hunk of cheese) that we could slice into smaller pieces to be more widely distributed if only we found compelling grounds for doing so, It isn't.

Individual lives are the only "life" that exists. Life is inescapably individual.

Literally only individuals have lives to lead, Distinct individuals cannot be merged into a conglomerate that then acquires its own lite. Life is not a commodity which exists independently of individual living persons. There is no life other than what life is lived by individuals.

Correspondingly, experience is individual. Each person's actions should be respected as hers to rule because they are her actions. She is the person most directly affected by them.²⁶ Indeed, a person's actions and experiences are her life. Each person's experience is her own; Lance's experience is his experience, yours is yours. Moreover, as one's own experience, each person's experience is neither translatable nor transferable to others. The pains, thrills, anxieties, desires, and fears that Lance experiences only Lance can know as Lance's pains, thrills, etc. He is the single and unique subject of all the changes and encounters that his mind and body undergo. Whatever happens to them, so to speak, happens to him. Others can listen to Lance talk about his experiences, empathize, and observe their effects on him; they can know of his experiences in greater or less detail and understand them with more or less sensitivity. But this is no substitute for knowing the experiences as Lance does. It is no substitute for having them. Only he has direct, firsthand acquaintance with them, as only he lives them. Experience cannot be detached from the person whose experience it is.

This metaphysical fact is the basis for recognizing individuals' moral authority to govern their own lives. Just as we might think that Lance should decide what career he will pursue or whom he will marry because he's the one who will live with the consequences, so more generally, the individuality of experience provides ample justification for recognizing individuals as the legitimate sovereigns over their actions.

Remember that the life that rights are meant to promote is not mere biological survival. That, no doubt, could be achieved for many by the efforts and freedom of a few.²⁷ Some of the goods needed for physical subsistence are transferable from one person to others. A scheme of freedom for some and compulsory obedience for others, however, could not foster the aim of individuals' having good lives. Genuine well-being is not the sort of thing that can be bestowed on one person by another. Well-being must be self-generated; it can only be acquired through a person's own efforts. (This will be elaborated on extensively in chapter 5) Thus if a person is to attain well-being, she must be free to strive for it for herself. This is why each individual must have rights. Freedom is a necessary condition for each person's attaining the objective that rights are intended to serve.

In short, since all life is individual, the only way to respect life is to respect individual lives. The telos of rights could not be any "life" other than each person's life. Treating individuals as sovereign over their own lives, as holding the moral authority to govern their actions (as we do through recognition of rights), is the proper means of manifesting that respect.

The second major confusion behind the query as to why all should have rights concerns the freedom that rights safeguard. The question places the burden on an individual who wishes to have her freedom respected to provide a convincing case that it should be. Framing the issue in this way suggests that freedom is a society's possession and any individual who wants some freedom must petition to be granted the privilege. This perspective is fundamentally backwards, however, because it rests on an erroneous image of what freedom is.

Freedom is not a commodity that can be produced by some and doled out to others and which can thus be apportioned to individuals who prove themselves worthy. Freedom is a condition marked by the absence of certain types of interference with a person's actions. Moreover, freedom is a person's natural condition. Breaches of freedom (forceful interference with a person's actions) are the manmade and avoidable deviations. Restrictions of a person's freedom are what must be justified. Consequently, the perspective that asks "now who's in line to get some?" is completely at odds with freedom's very nature. Freedom is not the sort of thing whose enjoyment must be justified and parcelled in that way.

When we fully understand the freedom that rights protect and the goal that rights serve, then, we find that all individuals qualify as rightsholders. For each individual, life requires productive effort. That productive effort requires reasoned action, and that reasoned action requires freedom. If it is legitimate for any individual to strive to maintain her life and certain conditions are necessary to do that, then any rights that are generated by those observations apply equally for every person. The elementary proposition that each individual is entitled to pursue her own life incorporates no caveat to the effect that this holds only if no others are prepared to tend to a person's needs. My defense of rights affords no basis for distinguishing some people as more worthy to pursue their lives or as entitled to rule others (benevolently or otherwise). What grounds rights for some, grounds rights for all.

A final concern arises from noticing the multifarious ends to which a person might put her rights. A rightholder enjoys wide latitude concerning how she exercises her freedom. The point of recognizing an individuals rights is to acknowledge that the choice of how to lead her life is hers. Consequently, whether a rightholder is frivolous and foolhardy or cautious and conservative in the disposal of her freedom, her actions may not be restricted on the basis of the contents of her choices. I insisted in chapter 1 that a person is sometimes within her rights in taking immoral actions. Likewise, a rightholder is free to take irrational actions.

Yet if the rationale for recognizing rights is that doing so is necessary to allow people to take reasoned action (which in turn promotes their lives), it may seem that rights should not protect any actions other than reasoned ones. Why should irrational behavior fall under rights' protective shield? Indeed, why should any actions other than those which promote life be safeguarded?

The answer to this question rests in a complete understanding of my argument, particularly the claims concerning the self-generated nature of well-being, the self-authored character of reasoned action, and the fact that reasoned action requires freedom.

First, rights protect freedom because freedom is a prerequisite for reasoned action. Reasoned action is worth protecting because it is essential to individuals' attaining a good life, the ambition that drives all other pursuits. A good life is not the sort of goal that can be obtained by simply performing another's script, however. Adherence to the most clever instructions, insofar as those instructions are dictated by others, is not the material that a good life is made of. Thus being told what to do or being confined to living along a "pro-life" track could not advance an individual's good.

Of course, when left to her own devices, a person still may fail to achieve a good life. But only when free does she stand a chance of achieving well-being. This is why her freedom must be respected. It is important to appreciate that the proposed justification of rights does not attempt to rig conditions so that the desired results become inevitable. No such artful engineering could accomplish that. Well-being must be self-generated. No external manipulations of a person's actions, however shrewd, could secure that person's well-being. Consequently, there is no predesigned track that could assure her taking only "life-furthering" actions.

The second relevant reminder is that reasoned action must be self-authored. Because reasoned action must be rational to the agent, it is impossible to impose reasoned action on others or to restrict people so that they may only take reasoned actions. (Remember, a robot executing others' commands is not engaged in reasoned action.) Externally dictated actions are not, at root, the kind that propel productive effort and human life. Thus a policy of confining people to a "reasoned" or "pro-life" track would be both theoretically incoherent and practically self-defeating. It would deprive individuals of the possibility of doing what they must do in order to achieve their ends.

Finally, we must fully digest what it means to say that reasoned action requires freedom. Respecting individuals' freedom allows for the possibility of their taking nonrational actions. Yet this does not make freedom any less necessary for reasoned action. If freedom is necessary for reasoned action, then restricting freedom is not compatible with the goal of promoting such action.

By its nature, freedom is open-ended. The uses to which freedom may be put are not predetermined or confined within boundaries established by the substantive character of those uses.²⁸ Having their freedom respected allows individuals to decide for themselves what they will do. Consequently, they may choose an array of actions, some rational and some irrational. The fact that freedom also protects non-rational actions is a natural by-product of what freedom is. Without freedom, though, it would be impossible to take reasoned actions. So if we seek to live in a setting in which individuals can pursue their values, and that requires reasoned action, we must protect its precondition - freedom.

Freedom cannot be fine-tuned in order to ensure certain desired results. Such limited freedom would no longer be freedom (nor would it generate the desired results). If one wished to restrict people's actions to those that were "rational" and/or life-promoting, some authority would have to determine which proposed actions met this standard and individuals would require permission to proceed with their chosen courses. Not only would such actions fail to be truly reasoned, since they are not self-authored. They also would not be free. These people's judgment would be on a leash; it may guide their actions only contingent upon that authority's sanction. Such subservience is not the posture of free people. A writ of permission is hardly emancipation, for it retains the presumption that approval of one's action is required. If a person is barred from exercising any of her options, her freedom is denied; its open-ended character is closed.

If freedom truly is needed for reasoned action, then freedom must be respected. Freedom is not a sufficient condition for reasoned action, and we may not welcome all the choices that respect for freedom allows. Yet freedom remains indispensable because without it, we would perish. To insist that only reasoned action should be allowed would withdraw that recognition, erroneously supposing that we could ensure that people performed only and precisely the "right" kinds of actions. Since any such restriction would inhibit freedom, enforcing it would deny the very condition needed if we are to perform the appropriate actions to maintain our lives and achieve well-being.

In sum, because rights protect freedom, rights safeguard moral as well as immoral actions, rational as well as irrational actions, and life-furthering as well as life-diminishing actions. To ask why rights should protect anything beyond the reasoned actions that I claim are necessary for life reveals that one has failed to understand either the nature of reasoned action, the nature of well-being, the nature of freedom, or the fact that freedom is necessary for reasoned action and well-being.

Conclusion

This defense of rights is teleological insofar as it contends that respect for rights is warranted in order to serve a definite, practical purpose. Rights protect individuals' freedom to govern their own actions. It is necessary to respect that freedom if individuals are to have a chance to maintain their lives. Respect for rights does not assure anyone's success, but it is a precondition for such success. By protecting this condition, possession of rights provides individuals with an enormous, tangible benefit.

One significant implication of this argument concerns the range of rights' authority. If my description of the needs of human life is accurate, the means of fulfilling these needs remain constant regardless of the era or place in which one lives and regardless of the customs or world view that one adopts. Consequently, the obligation to respect rights spans generational, geographic, and cultural boundaries.

Given that rights are not grounded solely in these facts about human needs, this extensive authority is not unlimited. This defense of rights will not be compelling for anyone who does not share the aim of living in a society in which individuals have the chance to pursue their lives and well-being. Nonetheless, as an end that nearly all individuals seek and that makes sense of individuals' other activities, life is the most widely compelling objective that we could imagine. If a defense of rights must appeal to some objective, the ideal of a good life provides the sturdiest and most worthy possible anchor.

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