Abstract
This paper explicates a conception of injury as right-violation, which allows us to distinguish between setbacks to interests that should, and should not, be the concern of theories of justice. It begins by introducing a hybrid theory of rights, grounded in (a) the mobilisation of our moral equality to (b) protect our most important interests, and shows how violations of rights are the concern of justice, while setbacks where one of the twin grounds of rights is defeated are not. It then looks more closely at the substantive moral components of injury, namely harm—damage to one’s interests—and wrong—disrespect for one’s moral equality. It argues that, on the hybrid conception of rights, harm and wrong are individually necessary and jointly sufficient components of injury, and the disvalue of neither is reducible to the other—in particular, it is a mistake to construe the disrespect identified by wrong as another damaged interest. Finally, it distinguishes between the public and private dimensions of harm and wrong, and makes some preliminary suggestions as to whether the remedy for these different dimensions should lie in criminal, distributive, or corrective justice.
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Notes
When discussing the nature and disvalue of a specific injury, the harm and wrong at stake are always pro tanto: they are determined exclusively by the nature of that injury, without any reference to other factors that may also be at stake. They are thereby distinguished from all things considered judgments of harm or wrong.
Although it cannot be discussed in depth in this paper, the issue of how to understand justified rights violations is relevant here (thanks to a reviewer for pointing this out). On the interest-based theory of rights, if the right-bearer’s interests are outweighed by conflicting considerations, then no disrespect is shown to her by damaging those interests, because she has been treated as an equal by having her interests counted at their proper value. On the hybrid theory of rights, by contrast, there can be justified rights violations when the reasons given by the right-bearer’s status and interests are together overridden by conflicting considerations, but those reasons will remain important—they will be overridden, not eliminated—and may well give grounds for corrective action.
Thanks to David Miller for this example.
An anonymous reviewer has suggested that there can be instances of a single good that are incommensurable with one another. I am not sure this is true: for x and y to be incommensurable, it must be true that we cannot reduce them to a common metric whereby ordinal comparisons can be made between them. If they are instantiations of the same good, then there is necessarily a common metric. However, even if I am wrong that incommensurability presupposes radical pluralism, evidently a monist theory that sought to accommodate incommensurability would have to be still more complicated than a pluralist theory, since it would have to explain not only the great differences between apparently identical values, but also what makes them instantiations of the same good.
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Acknowledgments
While researching and writing this paper I benefited from the generous support of St. Peter’s College, Oxford, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Thanks also to David Miller whose encouragement and criticism were invaluable.
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Winner of the 2008 Postgraduate Essay Prize
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Lazar, S. The Nature and Disvalue of Injury. Res Publica 15, 289–304 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-009-9089-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-009-9089-z