{"agent_id":"nozick","agent_name":"Robert Nozick","slug":"side-constraints","label":"Side constraints: are rights structural limits on action rather than goals to be promoted?","topic":"Side constraints","question":"Are rights structural limits on action rather than goals to be promoted?","position":"Rights function as side constraints on action rather than as goals to be promoted. A goal-based theory would tell agents to minimize total rights violations across the world; a side-constraint theory tells each agent that there are things she may not do, regardless of consequences. The structural difference matters: a goal-based theory permits violating rights in the present to prevent more rights violations later (the standard utilitarian-of-rights move); a side-constraint theory forbids violating rights even to prevent worse rights violations elsewhere. The deeper rationale is the separateness of persons: there is no super-entity (society, the social whole, humanity) for whose sake one person may be sacrificed to another. To use a person as a mere means — even for the sake of preventing other uses-as-mere-means — is the central moral wrong, and side constraints are the structure that forbids it. The Kantian inheritance is direct: humanity is always to be treated as an end and never merely as a means.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Rights function as side constraints on action rather than as goals to be promoted.","n":[]},{"t":"A goal-based theory would tell agents to minimize total rights violations across the world; a side-constraint theory tells each agent that there are things she may not do, regardless of consequences.","n":[]},{"t":"The structural difference matters: a goal-based theory permits violating rights in the present to prevent more rights violations later (the standard utilitarian-of-rights move); a side-constraint theory forbids violating rights even to prevent worse rights violations elsewhere.","n":[1]}],[{"t":"The deeper rationale is the separateness of persons: there is no super-entity (society, the social whole, humanity) for whose sake one person may be sacrificed to another.","n":[]},{"t":"To use a person as a mere means — even for the sake of preventing other uses-as-mere-means — is the central moral wrong, and side constraints are the structure that forbids it.","n":[2]},{"t":"The Kantian inheritance is direct: humanity is always to be treated as an end and never merely as a means.","n":[3]}]],"texts":"Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), Chapter 3 (Moral Constraints and the State); Philippa Foot's earlier work on the doing/allowing distinction. Reception: Philip Pettit's chapter on Non-Consequentialism in Schmidtz; Samuel Scheffler's The Rejection of Consequentialism (1982); the broader debate between consequentialist and deontological structures of moral theory.","works":["Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), Chapter 3 (Moral Constraints and the State)","Philippa Foot's earlier work on the doing/allowing distinction"],"reception":"Philip Pettit's chapter on Non-Consequentialism in Schmidtz; Samuel Scheffler's The Rejection of Consequentialism (1982); the broader debate between consequentialist and deontological structures of moral theory.","status":"One of the most influential moves in late-twentieth-century moral philosophy. Side constraints reshaped how moral philosophy thought about the structure of obligations, and the goal-versus-side-constraint distinction is now standard. Pettit's chapter in Schmidtz offers the most sophisticated contemporary critique from a non-consequentialist who nonetheless rejects pure side constraints. Scheffler's Rejection of Consequentialism developed a hybrid position — agent-centered prerogatives but no agent-centered restrictions — that engages Nozick's framework. The standard consequentialist reply is that side constraints produce monstrous results when respecting them allows worse rights violations to occur.","era":"1938-2002","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Anarchy, State, and Utopia","page":"pp. 44–45","canonical":"","quote":"Hence an argument for a side-constraint structure that consists largely in arguing against an end-state maximization structure is inconclusive, for these alternatives are not exhaustive. (On page 46 we describe a view which fits neither structure happily.) An of structures must be precisely formulated and invesarray tigated; perhaps some novel structure then will seem most appropriate.","label":"Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 44–45"},{"n":2,"work":"Anarchy, State, and Utopia","page":"pp. 47–48","canonical":"","quote":"Had Kant held this view, he would have given the second formula of the categorical imperative as, \"So act as to minimize the use of humanity simply as a means,\" rather than the one he actually used: \"Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.\" 4 Side constraints express the inviolability…","label":"Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 47–48"},{"n":3,"work":"Anarchy, State, and Utopia","page":"p. 44","canonical":"","quote":"A mob rampaging through a part of town killing and burning will violate the rights of those living there. Therefore, someone might try to justify his punishing another be knows to be innocent of a crime that enraged a mob, on the grounds that punishing this innocent person would help to avoid even greater violations of rights by others, and so would lead to a minimum weighted score for rights violations in the…","label":"Anarchy, State, and Utopia, p. 44"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-minimal-state","label":"The minimal state: is anything more extensive than the night-watchman state morally justified?"},{"slug":"the-entitlement-theory","label":"The entitlement theory: is justice a matter of historical process rather than patterned distribution?"},{"slug":"taxation-as-forced-labor","label":"Taxation as forced labor: is taxation of earnings on a par with forced labor?"},{"slug":"the-experience-machine","label":"The experience machine: is hedonism refuted by the fact that we want to do, not just to feel?"}]}