International Journal of Applied Philosophy, 1992, Vol. 7, pp. 1-8
It is generally accepted that rights and duties are related in such a way that the rights of one person entail the duties of another person.(1) For example, if I have a right to payment of $10 by Smith, then Smith has a duty to pay me $10. This is called the correlativity of rights and duties. Although never thoroughly developed, it was suggested that the reverse correlation holds as well, that the duty of one person entails the rights of another person.(2) This view is called the correlativity of duties and rights.
The correlativity of rights and duties has met with criticism, most notably by David Lyons,(3) nevertheless, the basic doctrine still stands. However, doubt has continued to grow about the plausibility of the reverse doctrine concerning the correlativity of duties and rights. I will defend this latter doctrine. Criticisms against the correlativity of duties and rights arise from counter examples showing the presence of a duty without a corresponding right. The most noted examples include (1) duties of obedience (such as obeying a traffic light at a deserted intersection), (2) duties of charity (where recipients have no valid claim), and (3) duties to collective entities (such as species preservation where token members have no valid claim).
Addressing these three counter-examples, I will first argue that the problem with obedience is resolved when seeing how this duty stems from the need to develop habits which do not lead to the infringement of future persons' rights. Second, I argue that the duty to be charitable entails a corresponding right to charity insofar as these duties and rights are graduated according to social proximity. Finally, I argue that the duty toward species preservation entails corresponding rights to token members, graduated according to the endangerment of the species as a whole.
There are two important advantages to defending the correlativity of duties and rights. First, it reduces the conceptual baggage needed for morality. For, if duties and rights are not always correlated, then we have two classes of moral situations: (1) those where obligations are related to rights and (2) those where obligations are not related to rights. Thus, parsimony alone would encourage defending the correlativity of duties and rights. More importantly, though, value theory is often artificially divided between the sub-disciplines of ethics, social philosophy, and legal philosophy. The notion of "duty" (or obligation in general) is primary to ethics whereas the notion of "rights" is primary to social and legal philosophy. Thus, defending the correlativity of duties and rights is a step toward unifying the various divisions of value theory.
To narrow my field of inquiry, I will not be arguing that all duties are defined in terms of rights or that the meaning of "has an obligation" is a perfect mirror image of the meaning of "has a right." There are differences in meaning which have been noted.(4) Instead, I will argue only that the existence of a right is a necessary condition for the existence of a duty. The foundation of this entailment, whether logical or definitional, can only be settled after it is seen that "has a duty" entails "has a right."
Joel Feinberg describes the problem posed by duties of obedience as
follows:
Following the above illustration, if I fail to obey a red light at a crowded intersection, then I have clearly violated the active rights of other motorists to proceed safely through the intersection. However, the problem of duty arises when I ignore a red light and there are no other motorists around. Here I would have a duty to stop, yet no motorists' active rights have been violated.
With deserted intersections, it is arguable that there is no true duty for us to patiently wait for a changing light, and that the laws should be changed. If so, then this problem of correlation of duties and rights disappears. Suppose, though, that we think such traffic laws do reflect a duty. Whose rights then would be violated? The answer rests in understanding the reasons behind imposing these duties of obedience. When devising traffic codes, the lawmakers probably argued that traffic lights should always be obeyed, since it is important for drivers to develop habits which assure that they will stop at red lights in crowded intersections. Ignoring a red light at three a.m. would weaken our habit of stopping at other red lights and, hence, increase the likelihood that we might ignore a red light at a crowded intersection. When I fail to stop at a deserted intersection, then, I violate the right of some future motorist by developing a bad habit which will contribute to my actually ignoring his right of way on a future occasion. Analogously, by burying a land mine in my back yard, I might violate the rights of some future person who wanders onto my property. In both cases I have created an accident (or violation) which is waiting to happen.
Two objections to this solution may be anticipated. First, ethicists frequently argue that non-existent beings cannot have rights.(6) Consequently, it does not make sense to say that a future (or perhaps non-existent) person's rights are violated by my unsafe habits today. In reply, future contingent propositions are either true or false now. It is either true or false right now that at some future time T, I will cause an accident involving a particular motorist M by running a red light. Since this future contingent fact is either true or false right now, then M's right either would or would not be violated at T, even if M does not yet exist. Given the relevant causal link between my forming unsafe driving habits today and the accident I cause at time T, then by running a red light today, I violated M's rights in the future.
For the second objection, suppose that I am lucky (or careful) about running red lights and do so only when no motorist or pedestrian is present. If this continues my whole life, then I have never actually violated any person's right. It would seem, then, that I would not have had a duty to stop at those deserted intersections, in spite of having developed bad habits. In retrospect, perhaps I did not have a duty to stop. Obedience for me would have been a matter of prudence, not duty. But this absolution could only be pronounced after my driving career is over, for only then could we assess that I never directly violated anyone's rights. But, for practical purposes (and in view of counter factual events), it must be assumed that my bad habits today are genuine threats to future motorists. Thus, I have an assumed duty of obedience.
A second and more important counter example to the correlativity of duties and rights involves charity. The problem arises from its classification as what Kant calls an imperfect duty. Accordingly, we all have a duty to be charitable, but it is up to us to decide when and to whom we should donate. Recipients of charity, then, have no right to anyone's donation except in the unlikely circumstance that he or she is the only needy person in the world.
Keith Burgess-Jackson has recently offered a solution to the charity problem based on a distinction between (a) the duty to develop a particular virtuous character trait and (b) the duty to perform a specific virtuous action. He argues that only this second type of duty--the duty to perform a specific action--implies correlative rights. The duty of charity, however, is a duty of the first sort where we have a duty only to develop a charitable character trait. And this type of duty does not imply a correlative right. Burgess-Jackson's suggestion, then, is that the correlativity of duties and rights should be understood to apply only to duties to perform specific actions. In this sense, the duty of charity presents no problem.(7)
There are two problems with Burgess-Jackson's solution. First, it requires the adoption of a virtue theory of morality, or at least in the case of charity. This would not find acceptance among those who believe that an agent's intentional actions are the object of moral judgments, and not an agent's character traits.(8) A second and more important problem with Burgess-Jackson's theory is that it does not resolve the problem of charity for the correlativity thesis. The problem still remains that there is a duty to develop charitable character traits which entails no corresponding rights.
A solution to this problem may derive from a reassessment of the concept of charity. Of all traditional moral duties, charity is the easiest to avoid without suffering from social disapproval or personal guilt. This elusive character of charity stems from its classification as an imperfect duty where the occasions and recipients of charity are left entirely to the discretion of the agent/donor. But given human nature, it is probably too optimistic to expect a voluntary fulfillment of charitable duties. This suggests that we should reconsider the classification of charity as an imperfect duty. One alternative is to reclassify charity under the heading of prudence. In terms of de facto morality this is largely how charity is viewed. However, this is not the best alternative since in some circumstances the moral character of charity is clear. This is particularly so where the would-be recipient of charity is a relative or friend. If I deny help to a needy relative or friend, I have done more than committed an act of imprudence akin to bad table manners. Instead, the offense would be distinctly moral, more like lying or character defamation.
With relatives and close friends there is a strong sense of moral duty for charity, but as social ties weaken, the sense also weakens. Hume recognized this tendency in human nature to value the proximate more highly than the distant. He resolved the problem by suggesting that humans have a natural principle which evens out differences in social proximity.(9) Unfortunately, such a natural principle of compensation does not exist with charity. Human behavior suggests that our duty of charity is graduated according to social proximity. Perhaps at some point our duty to be charitable disappears entirely and then becomes a matter of prudence. This may happen once we look beyond our circle of friends. However, this point does not need to be settled here. It will be assumed that, however weak, we retain a moral duty even to those on the other side of the globe.
Once recognizing that charity is a graduated duty, it is not difficult to see how there may be corresponding graduated rights to charity. If I have a duty to be charitable to a close friend, then he would seem to have a right to expect charitable help from me. Critics usually reject a right to charity since someone like a street beggar has no valid claim or entitlement to my money, even if I feel duty bound to give him something. There is much to this intuition when the needy person is an anonymous figure. But, paralleling the account above, the situation changes when the recipient of my charity is socially connection with me. If the beggar is my friend instead of an unknown person, he would have a valid claim to a charitable handout from me. Usually we do not find our friends relatives on the street asking for money, so it is difficult to identify with this scenario. It is more likely that our unlucky friends or relatives expect financial favors from us to help cover bills. In these cases not only is our moral responsibility evident, but our friend or relative's entitlement to some kind of help is also evident. Although this right to charity would be strongest among family, and then friends, it seems that weaker rights to charity also exist among members of our social community. My needy townsfolk might also be entitled to a degree charity from me by virtue of being part of my social family. Insofar as I am a global citizen, perhaps each needy person worldwide has a very weak right to charity from me specifically.
Given the above, the correlativity of duties and rights to charity may
be stated as follows:
The success of this solution hinges on the concepts of graduated rights and duties, concepts which are not part of our usual ethical vocabulary. Consequently, a close analysis of these concepts is needed. I will focus first on the concept of graduated rights in general, and then explain what is precisely entailed by a graduated right to charity.
A graduated right should be seen as a right which varies in strength from including much entitlement to little entitlement. This may be confused with a prima facie right which is "the right to X unless some stronger claim shows up."(10) For example, my prima facie right to play my stereo loudly remains valid unless it interferes with another person's overriding right to privacy. With prima facie rights, the validity of my right depends on circumstances external to me, particularly the existence of a stronger right independent of my own. A graduated right, by contrast, is a right which varies in strength depending on conditions internal to the right holder. For example, prisoners have weak rights to free speech and movement given their personal condition of guilt and conviction for a crime. Nonprisoners, by contrast, have stronger rights to free speech given their innocence. Property rights provide good examples of graduated rights, particularly in marriage contracts or business partnerships where more than one person has ownership. Here my right as a partner to some property is weaker than it would be if I were sole owner. The right to life could also be viewed as a graduated right according to the extent to which a living thing exhibits signs of personhood (such as having beliefs, desires, memories and being self-aware).(11)
One might attempt to explain these examples of graduated rights in terms of prima facie rights. For example, perhaps a prisoner retains full rights to movement and speech but that these rights are overridden by more pressing social concerns. Similarly, perhaps a business partner has a full right to a percentage of property, but his exercise of that right may be overridden by the rights of other partners. But such explanations do not work. We typically feel that prisoners forfeit their rights, and do not simply have their rights overridden. Further, forfeiture of rights is a matter of degree since the restrictions upon a prisoner's movement and speech can vary greatly according to his crime. It therefore makes more sense to speak of a prisoner forfeiting part of his rights to speech and movement, retaining only weak rights. With property rights, the idea of having full rights to a percentage of property is most often understood metaphorically. Although some types of property can be divided according to a percentage, such as money and land, most property cannot be so divided. One cannot speak literally of full rights to a percentage of a house or a work of art.(12) Accordingly, joint owners of a house or a work of art would only have a partial claim to the use of that object. Again, the idea of graduated rights better reflects our intuitions.
But what exactly makes one right strong and one right weak? When speculating
about the possibility of weak rights, Feinberg offers the following explanation:
Feinberg's explanation, though, is not satisfactory. A prisoner who has only a weak right to movement still has a valid claim not to be chained to his cell wall for the duration of his imprisonment. The prisoner's claim is weak because he has a claim to only a segment of those movements which are the rights of a nonprisoner.
A better account of graduated rights is this. A given right may be described in terms of an extensional set, which includes a complete list of possible actions for an ideal right holder. In the case of freedom of movement, for example, let S be the complete set of possible movements for an ideally free agent A. S would include A playing baseball at time T, A playing baseball at T+1, A moving his finger one inch at T, A and moving his finger two inches at T. The possible actions would be infinite. A strong right to movement would be a subset of S which leaves out only those actions outweighed by prima facie considerations (for example playing baseball at T in the Metropolitan Museum). A weak right to movement would be a subset of a strong right, excluding further actions on the basis of contracts or legal constraints (for example, constraints upon prisoners).
The freedom of movement is often classified as a negative active right. The above analysis will apply to other negative active rights, such as the right to speech. Here S would include all possible ideas communicated through the various media. A strong right to speech would exclude activities outweighed by prima facie considerations (such as character defamation). A weak right would further exclude actions ruled out by contracts or legal constraints (such as constraints upon prisoners). Negative passive rights such as privacy would be construed slightly differently. Here S would be the class of all actions which other agents would be forbidden to perform. Strong and weak rights to privacy would be a subset of these. Property rights, which are both negative active and negative passive, would be understood in terms of two classes of activities: (1) the class of all things an owner could do to a given piece of property, and (2) the class of all actions other agents would be forbidden to perform with respect to that property. A strong property right would be one which excludes activities in both classes outweighed by prima facie considerations and a weak one would further exclude activities in either class ruled out by contracts or laws.
We may now apply this analysis of graduated rights to the right of charity, which would be classified as a positive right. Let S be the complete set of possible donations which might be given to a needy person N. Here S would include donations of every variety and financial degree from everyone world wide. A strong right to charity would be a subset of S which excludes (a) donations from outside of N's circle of close relatives or friends, and (b) donations outweighed by prima facie considerations. The prima facie considerations here differ from those noted above concerning rights to movement, speech and property. Those were examples of negative rights to non-interference and were sometimes outweighed by conflicting rights. Since charity is a positive right to someone's constructive action, the prima facie considerations here involve not so much conflicts with other rights, but three main practical considerations. First, in some cases I would be absolved of my duty to donate, such as if I am poorer than N, if N would use the donation to support a drug habit, or if N received a large enough donation from other donors. Second, a ceiling would be put on the total amount of charity N deserves, which would probably be set by community standards. Finally, a ceiling would be put on the total amount I am obligated to donate.
A weak right to charity would not be a subset of a strong right (as was the case with rights to movement, speech and property), but an entirely different set. A weak right would be a subset of S which excludes (a) donations from inside of N's circle of close relatives or friends, and (b) donations outweighed by prima facie considerations. Here the prima facie considerations would be the same as with strong rights, but my ceiling donation would be lower in proportion to my social proximity to N. Thus, as my social proximity to the needy person decreases, so to does the dollar amount I am obligated to give. It is conceivable that my duty to a particular person in another city or on the other side of the world may require my donating only a fraction of a cent. I might approach this minute obligation by considering the sum of my weak duties to all needy people world wide, and donating in one lump sum to a world wide charity. Alternatively, I may feel that my duty to the unknown needy are met by that portion of my income tax which serves national or global charity.(14) In any case, under the above analysis a donor's strong or weak duty of charity may be reasonably correlated with the needy's strong or weak right to charity.
A final counter example to the correlativity of duties and rights involves duties to collective groups, such as minorities, animal species or eco-systems. Several philosophers today argue for a direct duty to these groups as a whole. The problem is that rights bearers, as traditionally understood, must be individuals and not collections. For some types of collective rights this poses no problem since the right applies to each token in the class, rather than to the class type. Women's suffrage, for example, secured the right to vote for each woman and not for the class of women.
But other kinds of obligations to groups cannot be understood as easily. The position that blacks or women as a whole need to be elevated in society goes beyond rights of individual class members. For example, giving preferential treatment to lesser qualified minorities does not seem to be a right which any minority member can demand. The same problems arise when considering the obligation we have to the environment. Baird J. Callicott, for example, argues that we have a direct duty to preserve the plant and animal species,(15) yet it is absurd to suggest that each plant and animal member of the environment has rights.(16) With both of these examples we seem to have a duty where there is no corresponding right. I will address this problem by examining our duty to preserve species.
In dealing with this issue, it is important to distinguish between indirect and direct duties toward species preservation. For example, when considered indirectly, the rapid depletion of rare plant species is bad at least in part because it robs us of their potential pharmaceutical use. This duty would be indirect since it derives from how humans would benefit by species survival. Further, it would pose no problem for the correlativity of duties and rights, since this duty would simply be correlated with each human's right to a healthy life.
The situation is different when species preservation is considered a direct duty. This means we would have a duty to avoid pushing a species to the point of extinction, irrespective of how this will affect human beings. Here our duty would need to be correlated with the species itself and not with humans. The idea of direct environmental obligation is considered controversial by many. It would be out of place to defend the general theory here. However, I believe that this theory taps our intuitions. For, when an endangered species is heroically rescued from the brink of extinction, it is by and large viewed as a moral victory, irrespective of how that species will benefit humans.
Following the above discussion of strong and weak rights, the connection
between duties and rights of species preservation would be as follows:
Intuitively, if a given plant or animal species is greatly endangered, then every member of that species has a strong right to survival, the recognition of which ranks highly on our list of moral duties. This criterion for species rights is collective in that the existence and strength of a given right depends on the well-being of the species as a whole. However, the actual rightholder is an individual species member, and not the species itself (which is in accord with the traditional notion of a rightholder).
Similar to property rights examined above, species rights may be either positive (demanding positive action) or negative (demanding only noninterference), depending on what is needed to reduce endangerment. Accordingly, species rights should be understood in terms of two classes of actions: (1) the class of actions which each human could actively do to preserve specific species members, and (2) the class of actions which each human could avoid doing to preserve specific species members. A strong species right would be one which excludes activities in both classes outweighed by prima facie consideration. An important consideration is the intrinsic nature of the species itself. Species which are conscious and even self-aware(17) have a greater intrinsic value than nonconscious organisms, such as plants. Other considerations involve the time, money and general human interests invested in saving a species. For example, even if greatly endangered, human lice or killer bees should probably be forced into extinction when weighed against a strong prima facie human interest. It is also important to note that there is a natural limitations to our duty to preserve a species. For, at least some species extinction is a prerequisite for natural selection.
Weak species rights would be a subset of strong ones, in proportion to how endangered or rare a species is. Less endangered species would require less urgent actions, such as fewer positive actions aimed at strengthening the species. Negative constraints of non-interference may be adequate.
The goal of this essay has been to defend the correlativity of duties and rights by responding to the counter-examples of obedience, charity and duty toward species preservation. In dealing with each I have been noncommittal about whether these specific duties even exist. For, the metaethical issue of correlating duties with rights should not depend on the normative issue of precisely which duties we have. The metaethical issue should be construed conditionally, so that if we have duties of obedience, charity or species preservation, then these are the entailing rights.
Regarding our duty to patiently wait at deserted stop lights, perhaps we do not truly have this obligation, in which case the traffic laws should be rewritten so deserted stop lights could be treated as flashing red lights. Nevertheless, there are other duties of obedience which should be retained to prevent us from forming bad habits and victimizing future right holders. Laws regarding the transportation and disposal of hazardous wastes are one example. With charity, it is possible that the issue is only prudential once we go beyond our immediate social circle. Nevertheless, when charity becomes a duty, it is a graduated duty which is in proportion to the rightful claim that a recipient has on us. The issue of our duty toward species preservation is a recent one, and many theorists believe it is merely an indirect, and not a direct duty. But, there is growing interest in collective rights, and in our conceivably direct duties toward these groups as a whole. With the appropriate modifications, the above scheme for graduated species rights can make sense of minority rights to preferential treatment, as well as ecosystem rights, neither of which makes sense under traditional analysis.
1. See Marcus Singer, "The Basis of Rights and Duties," Philosophical Studies, 1972, Vol. 23, pp. 48-57; David Braybrooke, "The Firm but Untidy Correlativity of Rights and Obligations," Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 1972, Vol. 1, pp. 351-363; Joel Feinberg, Social Philosophy, (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1973), p. 62; Rex Martin and James W. Nickel, "Recent Work on the Concept of Rights," American Philosophical Quarterly, 1980, Vol. 17, pp. 165-167; Jack Donnelly, "How are Rights and Duties Correlative," Journal of Value Inquiry, 1982, Vol. 16, pp. 287-294. Cf. Alan Gewirth, "Why Rights are Indispensable," Mind, 1986, pp. 329-344.
2. Benn and Peters argue, for example, that "Right and duty are different names for the same normative relation, according to the point of view from which it is regarded," Social Principles and the Democratic State, (London: George Allen, 1959), p. 89.
3. David Lyons, "The Correlativity of Rights and Duties," Nous, 1970, Vol. 4, pp. 45-55.
4. See Richard Brandt, Ethical Theory, (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1959), p. 440; Alan Gewirth, "Why Rights are Indispensable."
5. Joel Feinberg, Social Philosophy, p. 63.
6. For example, on contractarian theory, non-existent people cannot have rights since they cannot be parties to agreements. Their value would have only secondary consideration, insofar as we are affected by their well-being.
7. Keith Burgess-Jackson, "Duties, Rights and Charity," Journal of Social Philosophy, 1987, Vol. 18, pp. 3-12.
8. In my resolution of the obedience problem above, I discuss the importance of avoiding bad habits. However, my account does not rely on a virtue theory, for it is ultimately the motorist's intentional act of failing to stop which is the object of moral judgment, and not his habit.
9. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), p. 583; Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Selby-Bigge and P.H. Nidditch, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 227.
10. Joel Feinberg, Social Philosophy, p. 73.
11. Cf. Joel Feinberg, "Abortion," in Matters of Life and Death, ed. Tom Regan (New York: Random House, 1986), pp. 267-270.
12. For legal purposes joint ownership of nondivisible property translates into full rights to a percentage of an object's value. But reducing property to its resale or investment value does not fully explain the nature of property rights. It fails to account for the object's access, use, or benefit to the owner(s), independent of the object's monetary value.
13. Joel Feinberg, Social Philosophy, p. 66.
14. It would make little difference if each needy person in the world actually received the fraction of a cent I owe him. Since my duty is prima facie, the problem of distribution outweighs my particular obligation to those who slip through the world wide safety net.
15. J. Baird Callicott, "Non-Anthropocentric Value Theory and Environmental Ethics, American Philosophical Quarterly, 1984, Vol. 21, pp. 299-309. Holmes Rolston III, Richard Routley, and John Rodman hold views similar to Callicott's.
16. Tom Regan makes this argument in The Case for Animal Rights, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), p. 362.
17. Self-awareness (conceiving of oneself as existing in time) is often seen as the foundational criterion which confers a moral standing to a being. The concept traces back at least to Locke who described a person as an intelligent being who "can consider itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places" An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, Ch. 29, Par. 9. On my analysis of species rights, self-awareness functions as an important prima facie criteria for preserving a species member. However, species endangerment is the foundational criteria which confers species rights. This is completely compatible with the view held by some, such as Peter Singer, that self-awareness confers the right to life (which would be a right separate from species rights).