The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Literature of Liberty a Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought
• Editorial Staff
• Associate Editors
• Editorial
• Bibliographical Essay: Henry B. Veatch, Natural Law: Dead Or Alive?
• I: Natural Law
• “nature” and “law” In Natural Law
• The Anatomy of Natural Rights
• Egoism and Rights
• The Is/ought Chimera
• Deriving “ought” From “is”
• Facts Vs. Value-laden Whims
• Is/ought and Probable Reasons
• Does Righteous Anger Imply Rights?
• Why Be Moral?
• Truth As an Objective Value
• Was the Revolution Objectively Necessary?
• Natural Law and State of Nature
• Natural Law and the State
• Natural Rights and Anarchism
• Dworkin On Rights
• Liberalism, Rights, and Abortion
• Rights and “mercy Killing”
• Rights and the “brain Drain”
• The Natural Law Right to Work
• Grotius: Contract and Natural Law
• Rights and Communication
• II: Autonomy, Privacy, and Authority
• Bureaucracy and “the Organization Man”
• Autonomy and Anarchism
• Autonomy and Taking Responsibility
• Autonomy, Motivation, and “buck-passing”
• Schooling For Conformity
• The Schoolroom Vs. Autonomy
• Obedience to Authority
• The Meaning of Privacy
• Privacy and Autonomy
• Privacy and Consent
• The Court and Privacy
• III: The Ambiguities of Liberty
• Clarifying Freedom
• Rehabilitating Mill's “harm Principle”
• Experiencing Freedom
• Do Offers Coerce Freedom?
• The Danger of “dangerousness”
• Freedom, Motivation, and Government Programs
• Freedom Vs. Determinism
• Negative Vs. Positive Freedom
• Smith and Utilitarian Economic Freedom
• Locke, Freedom, and Tacit Consent
• Religious Freedom
• Freedom, Existentialism, and Innocent Victims
• Does Censorship Harm Freedom?
• IV: Slavery
• Slavery, Ideology, and Subordination
• Slavery and Imperialist Ideology
• Enlightenment Liberalism Vs. Slavery
• The Anatomy of a Slave Revolt
• Colonial American Slave Law
• Jefferson On Slavery
• Slavery and the Poor
• V: Planning
• Regulation and the Warfare State
• Mail, Privacy, and Social Control
• Corporate State Capitalism: Coal
• French War “planification”: Chlorates
• Bureaucracy and British Regulation
• British Foreign Policy and Stagnation
• Political Decisions and the Economy
• Government, Labor, and Multinationals
• Black Markets Vs. Regulation
• Regulation Vs. Academic Autonomy
• Government Schools and Social Control
• The Economics of Charity
• International State Planning and Inflation
• Competition and Individual Knowledge

Egoism and Rights

Eric Mack

• Tulane University

“An Outline of a Theory of Rights.” Paper presented at the Libertarian Scholars Conference, Princeton University, October 1978.

How can we establish individual rights? We must be able to show that the teleological claim that man “ought” to act in his own self-interest (eudaimonistic egoism) can generate a moral obligation or “deontic claim.” But how does each individual have value so that it is wrong and a violation of “rights” for others to use coercion against him?

Traditional natural rights theory asserts that individuals possess rights because of their status as persons. What kinds of actions would violate someone's personhood and how do we justify our claim that person-denying actions are wrong? The short answer is that we violate someone's person and rights by misusing him, that is, by treating a person as a means to another's end rather than as an end-in-himself.

Misusing a person presupposes a teleology of human nature: each person possesses a certain “natural” or “objective” end, and it is a “natural” function for him to strive to satisfy his natural end. The natural and objective end of each person is his well-being. To strive towards success in achieving this well-being also defines the natural function of each person. This type of eudaimonistic egoism gives us a moral principle to oppose misusing a person as other than an end-in-himself. Each person is an individual, a separate being, with a unique, irreplaceable life; any use of a person that does not recognize a person's status as an end-in-himself is a misuse.

Human individual well-being means living well. Smith can misuse Jones's life by so acting on him that Jones cannot direct his own behavior and purposes toward personal well-being. Smith would thus misuse Jones by treating him as a means to Smith's end rather than as an end-in-himself. But the purpose of individual goal-directed action is a person's living well. Therefore it is wrong and unjustified to coercively deprive another person of self-direction. Such misuse of an autonomous person is deontically wrong. Jones has a valid claim against such treatment because he is an end-in-himself. This claim is a right against misuse or coercion. Thus man possesses a fundamental right against coercion from which other specific rights derive.