Document Type
Article
Publication Date
January 2013
Journal
Work in Progress
Abstract
This paper will assume that both rights and options have thresholds. That is to say, I assume rights and options are not absolute. The threshold of a right or an option is the point at which it can be justifiably overridden. If we think that the moral theory which best captures commonsense morality is a version of deontological ethics, the moral theory to which this paper stands to make a contribution is moderate deontology in that the rights and options it contains are moderate versions of rights and options. The question on which it will focus is whether thresholds for rights and thresholds for options share a common structure. I do not ask here whether the thresholds for rights and options differ in size, in terms of the total amount which must be at stake to justify infringing them. In fact, it is my view that rights thresholds are higher than options thresholds—thus even when they protect a good of the same size, I think it takes more good at stake to justify infringing a right than it does to outweigh an option—but that is the subject of a different paper.