Thank you, Chris Cathcart, for this good integration on these issues. Thanks also to Prof. Younkins for the summaries of these works on rights and ethics from Profs. Rasmussen and Den Uyl and from Prof. Machan.

The last study I wrote in social philosophy, at the end of the 80s, pertained to these issues. It was published in Nomos in 1994. Beginning with Rand's conception of human rights---a right is a moral principle defining and sanctioning an individual's freedom of action in a social context---it shows how game theory can inform rights theory. This study is presented in a double book review of Russell Hardin's Morality within the Limits of Reason (1988 U Chicago P) and Robert Sugden's The Economics of Rights, Co-operation, & Welfare (1986 Blackwell).

My review essay was titled "Human Rights as Game Strategies." I will try to publish some parts of this in the SOLO general forum.

Hi Chris:

Good insights!!!

I was thinking that you might be a great person to write a review of Rasmussen and Den Uyl's new book, Norms of Liberty. Perhaps you could write it for JARS?

Cheers!!!

Ed

Rasmussen and Den Uyl (RDU) basically get the argument right. There is a need for the concept "rights" but the Machan argument doesn't really show how it arises. To respect others' self-directedness is, yes, to respect rights, but you need to identify the conceptual basis for calling it a "right" rather than merely protected-self-directedness. Machan says that it's a moral concept, but RDU are correct to point out that it's a concept at a different "level" of normativity than those which instruct you in how to flourish. Machan says that it's a moral concept that applies to your actions in a social-political context, but doesn't provide the argument for how it's a normative concept over and above their being rights in a mere legal sense (i.e., as legally-recognized and institutionalized immunities, protections, etc.).

RDU are correct to recognize the egoistic basis for rights in the need for self-directedness; the wrong way of going about trying to ground rights in egoism is to justify respecting others' rights on the basis of one's own interests. This gets back to the first objection -- how it grounds the concept "rights" rather than just another part of the instructions on how to flourish, applied to an interpersonal context. This is where Mack's argument provides useful insight as much as it differs slightly from the essentially correct RDU position. The justification for a person's rights does derive from the requirements for that person to flourish, and in the very egoistic sense that Rand dramatized at length in her novels: Galt, Roark et al don't justify their rights on the basis of how their rights being respected contributes to others' well-being.

Mack gets that part right-on but goes a different route: he uses a deontological argument that says that since Galt's rights aren't grounded in the requirements of others' well-being, that his rights are grounded in, well, in duty: others are duty-bound to respect Galt's rights because Galt is an end in himself, existing for his own sake. His rights need no further justification than that, and rational people will just recognize this, without having to be shown how it's in their interests to respect Galt's rights. The basis for Galt's rights has an independent normative ground from the requirements of the rights-respecters' flourishing. But then, all of a sudden, this doesn't look like something compatible with or consistent with egoism. In an egoistic morality, don't the obligations that I'm bound to have to be grounded in what's best for me? Here, Mack relies further on a Kantian-style argument about what rational agents do. A rational agent, considering all the relevant moral facts, will do some conceptual universalization: what's true for me is also true with respect to other moral agents, i.e., that since I have rights grounded in the requirements for my flourishing, I also recognize the same condition as applies to other moral agents. So Mack's argument is a rationality-based argument. But, actually, this argument here more resembles the fundamentally correct line of argument that RDU go. But actually, I've granted a little too much credit to Mack's argument proper: his argument can be shown to be a pure-rationality argument, not based in the requirements of flourishing. Here he takes a radically Kantian turn and says that rights really are or can be grounded solely in the requirements for human agency as such, i.e., the fact that we are rational end-having beings is sufficient to entitle them us to respect. So his argument for rights is a respect-for-persons argument.

The RDU position shares features with this Mack argument but stays firmly Aristotelian, grounding rights in the requirements of flourishing. They go the route of "metanormativity" which is a strange-looking one at first and takes some explaining. As best as I understand it, it uses "meta" in a standard way and say that rights are like conditions for the possibility of normative actions, even though they don't directly provide guidance in the basic normative enterprise which is discovering (and applying) how to flourish. So they're grounded in the requirements of flourishing without providing guidance as to how to flourish. That does seem to create a conceptual tension: how can you have principles grounded in the requirements of flourishing that don't guide you in how to flourish? What's the point of those principles? Well, to protect a necessary condition for the possibility of flourishing, i.e., self-directedness. "Be self-directed" isn't a moral principle offering you any guidance, but the necessity of self-directedness for the possibility of flourishing does have moral importance. But the moral guidance it implies is for how to form and maintain social-political institutions. The principle here is stated in a rather odd way: People ought to be free to act on the judgment of their own minds. What's the "ought" here and to whom does it provide guidance (and why)? Well, the ought (as any ought) is directed at all individuals, and the advice is: in your personal lives or in the formation of social institutions, leave others free to act on their own judgment.

There's still something that looks like a tension here, or at least something that makes me want to add more to what these thinkers have argued. After all, once we've come this far, how does the position differ from Machan's argument? After all, what we're after is an understanding of the right social-political system in which we can flourish as individuals, and our obligations are based on what is required for each of us to flourish. We've come to an understanding of the concept "rights" being grounded in the requirement, in a social context, to be free in order to flourish, even though rights don't directly provide any guidance as to how to flourish. What's more, we import the proper elements of the Mack argument, which is that as properly rationally-deliberating agents, we recognize the conditions required for others' flourishing as much as our own. So what's the tension? I think it's like this: why "egoism" on the one hand, and "rights" on the other? Why a complicated argument from egoism to get to rights, and even then, why do they need to be offered on different normative "levels" to work? Here's where I think the Mack argument can be fixed and the RDU argument refined further.

Here it is, and here's how it ties back to Rand's own position: We need to grasp that it's a new concept of egoism that grounds rights. It's an egoism that is classically eudaemonistic but not simply another name for a standard virtue-ethics. Rather, it's an egoism that affirms every man as an end in himself, and that the proper end of his own actions is his own happiness. At the same time, it's an egoism grounded in the requirements of the specifically human mode of living: rationality. It's a rationality firmly tied to what it takes to flourish, not a detached Kantian rationality that reduces everything to constraining conditions like universalizability and respect for persons. A rational egoist properly considering the relevant moral facts will already come to realize the objective need to respect other persons. In this sense, rights are just as much grounded in the requirement to flourish as in the other arguments, but also much more directly so. As a virtuous, rational, egoist eudaemonist, you do recognize others as moral ends in themselves, and your only obligation to them is a negative: to leave them free to act. That imposes no positive duty to contribute to their welfare -- certainly not any kind of duty or obligation not tied to the requirements of one's own flourishing, that is. (One can find it in one's interests, in the appropriate contexts, to contribute to others' welfare. But the moral import of the requirements of others' flourishing doesn't on its own make one duty-bound to positively contribute to their well-being.) Here, Mack does offer an important observation. Rationality is not narrowly consequentialist; it includes, in his terms, both end-setting and boundary-precluding considerations. The concept "rights" arises in a social-legal-political, but this practical reason is pre-legal and provides the egoist with all the general advice (and grounding for it) he requires for interaction with others. All the relevant moral material is there before it gets whatever legal codification in terms of rights.

(I'm trying to think if there's anything else that needs saying, but I think this pretty well sums it up.)