Many of our strongest moral convictions are expressed in the language of rights: the right to life, to free speech, not to be tortured. This level looks at what rights are, why life is thought to have special value, and the famous hard cases that test our theories.
What rights are
A right is a claim that protects a person's interests or choices and places duties on others. If you have a right not to be assaulted, everyone else has a duty not to assault you. Philosophers distinguish:
- Negative rights: rights not to be interfered with, such as the right not to be killed or imprisoned without cause.
- Positive rights: rights to receive something, such as education or emergency medical care.
The idea of natural rights held by all people simply as human beings, developed by thinkers such as Locke, shaped the American Declaration of Independence (1776). After the Second World War, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).
The philosopher Robert Nozick described rights as side constraints: limits on what we may do to people in pursuit of any goal, even a good one. This is the key difference from simple utilitarianism, which would allow violating one person's rights if the total outcome were better. Mill tried to make room for rights within utilitarianism, arguing that firmly protected rights produce the best results over time. In On Liberty (1859) he defended the harm principle: power may be used against a person's will only “to prevent harm to others.”
The value of life
Almost every ethical tradition treats human life as deeply valuable, but they explain it differently. Religious traditions often speak of the sanctity of life. Kantians point to the dignity of rational agents. Utilitarians focus on the good experiences a life contains. These differences matter in debates such as euthanasia.
The trolley problem
The philosopher Philippa Foot introduced a famous case in 1967, and Judith Jarvis Thomson developed it into the version most people know. A runaway trolley will kill five people on the track ahead. You can pull a lever to divert it onto a side track, where it will kill one. Most people say pulling the lever is permitted.
In Thomson's footbridge variation, you stand on a bridge over the track next to a large man. Pushing him onto the track would stop the trolley and save the five, but kill him. Most people say this is wrong, even though the numbers are the same: one dies, five live. Why the difference?
- The doctrine of double effect, with roots in Thomas Aquinas, holds that it can be permissible to cause harm as a foreseen side effect of pursuing a good end, but not to intend harm as the means. Diverting the trolley kills one as a side effect; pushing the man uses his death as the means.
- Using a person: in Kantian terms, the man on the bridge is treated merely as a means.
Lying and sacrifice
Kant argued in a 1797 essay that it is wrong to lie even to a murderer asking where your friend is hiding. Most other theories, and most people, disagree: the murderer has no claim to the truth. Self-sacrifice raises a different question. We praise people who give their lives for others, but most theories treat such acts as beyond duty (philosophers call them supererogatory): admirable, but not required.
Why hard cases matter
Trolley cases are artificial, but they change one variable at a time, like a controlled experiment. They help us discover which features of a situation, such as intention or numbers, our moral judgments actually track.
Worked example: the transplant surgeon
Thomson discussed another case that sharpens the puzzle. A surgeon has five patients who will die without organ transplants. A healthy young man comes in for a routine checkup, and he is a perfect match for all five. If the surgeon secretly kills him and distributes his organs, five live and one dies.
Almost everyone judges this monstrous, more clearly wrong even than pushing the man off the footbridge. Yet the numbers are the same as in the lever case. What explains the difference?
- Rights: the young man has a right not to be killed, and the five patients have no right to his organs. Rights as side constraints rule this out at once.
- Double effect: his death is not a side effect; it is the very means of saving the others.
- Rule consequences: a rule utilitarian notes that if surgeons did this, people would stop going to doctors, and far more would die. Consequences, viewed at the level of rules and practices, condemn it too.
- Kant: the man is used merely as a means, without consent.
Every major theory, applied carefully, condemns the surgeon, though for different reasons. That convergence is itself useful evidence: when several independent lines of reasoning agree, we can be more confident in the judgment.
Compare a real policy question: after a person dies, should their organs be available for transplant unless they opted out? Here no one is killed, and the debate turns on consent, respect for the dead and families' wishes, weighed against lives saved.