HR Reading 2

Mind Association
The Right to Life

Author(s): H. J. McCloskey
Source: Mind, New Series, Vol. 84, No. 335 (Jul., 1975), pp. 403-425
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association
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The Right to Life
H. J. McCLOSKEY
Although the issues with which this paper is concerned are of the
greatest importance, the paper itself is a modest one which re-
presents an attempt to bring together strands in contemporary
Western thought about respect for human life. I am concerned
with the basis of the right to life, whether all human beings possess
it, and why, what the right involves and enjoins, what constitutes
lack of respect for it, what are its limits, how, in what ways and to
what degrees it is a prima facie or conditional right. The theme of
the paper is an examination of the right to life with reference to the
rationale of contemporary humanist thought on the matter. My
thesis is that the right to life is a right possessed by persons and by
certain potential persons, that its ground is and must be found in
the nature of man, in man's autonomy, that it is not merely a
negative right as Locke and so many since him have seen it as
being, a right not to be killed, but a right to receive aids and
facilities to protect and preserve one's life against dangers,
humanly and naturally created, and that, being a right of recipience,
it is a prima facie or conditional right, a right, the claims of which
must on occasion be subordinate to the claims of other rights and
values. What I am concerned to oppose is the view that all human
beings possess the right to life, an absolute, inviolable, inalienable
right to life at that.
What is a right? Elsewhere I have argued that rights are to be ex-

plained not as powers, claims, expectations, liberties, but as
entitlements to do, have, enjoy, or have done, which are possessed
by the possessor of the right.1 I shall not here repeat the arguments
I urged in that discussion, and will simply note that whilst the
explanation of rights as entitlements, i.e. in terms of a synomyn
may not seem very illuminating, it does in fact assist in the under-
standing of the nature of rights, including the right to life, and it
does avoid the errors to which other accounts lead, for example,
I See 'Rights', Philosophical Quarterly, 15, I965. In this article I attend
especially to accounts in terms of claims and powers, but parallel points
can be developed in respect of those in terms of expectations and liberties.
403
404 H. J. MCCLOSKEY:
of thinking of rights and duties as correlative in some simple and

uniform way, and of rights as always rights against some deter-
minate person or persons. It involves that rights be entitlements
which can meaningfully be ascribed, exercised by or on behalf of
their possessors, be yielded up, etc.
The right to life as a distinct right. It is possible to approach the

right to life as an aspect of, as being involved in, other rights. Thus
it obviously is presupposed in the right to liberty, and equally, in
the right to be self-developing and self-perfecting. If some one
deprives us of our life, he deprives us of our liberty and the possi-
bility of our being self-perfecting, and indeed, of our other rights
as well. Hence a case may be made out for the right to life from
other rights. Here I am concerned with the case for the right to
life as such. My contention will be that the rights to life and
liberty are distinct rights although they have a common basis in
man's autonomy, the latter however constituting only part of the
basis of each right.
Defences of the right to life as a right of all human beings. When one
considers the basic, important nature of the right to life, it is
remarkable how little has been written concerning it. What has
been written is much less helpful than one might reasonably have
hoped. Much involves reference to God, and to man, as created
by God. I propose to set aside such theistic accounts. If, as I
believe can be shown to be the case, God does not exist, then the
right to life must be grounded on facts and considerations other
than God's existence and will. Further, the theistic accounts
known to me are open to serious, general, ethical objections. Two
such accounts which are well-known, as coming from Christian
philosophers, John Locke and St. Thomas Aquinas, may usefully
be commented on here.
Locke argued for the right to life on theistic grounds, namely,
that we are God's property, that we therefore lack the right to
take life, our own or that of another person:
6. ... The state of Nature has a law of nature to govern it,

which obliges every one, and reason, which is that law,
teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all
equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his
life, health, liberty or possessions; for men being all the
THE RIGHT TO LIFE 405
workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker;

all the servants of one sovereign Master, sent into the world
by His order and about His business; they are His property,
whose workmanship they are made to last during His, not
another's pleasure.... Every one as he is bound to preserve
himself, and not to quit his station wilfully, so by the like
reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition,
ought he as much as he can to preserve the rest of mankind,
and not unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away or
impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life,
the liberty health, limb, or goods of another.
7. And that all men may be restrained from invading others'
rights, and from doing hurt to one another, and the law of
Nature be observed, which willeth the peace and preservation
of all mankind, the execution of the law of Nature is in that
state put into every man's hands, whereby every one has a
right to punish the transgressors of that law to such a degree
as may hinder its violation. (Second Treatise of Civil Govern-
ment.)
In spite of Locke's statement that every one ought as much as

one can to preserve the rest of mankind, he and those following
him who invoked this argument construed it as one for a very
limited right, a right not to be killed, and not for a right to life of
the kind we so commonly today are claimed to possess.
Aquinas, in Summa Theologica, in dealing with awkward in-
stances of murder, adultery, theft reported in the Old Testa-
ment, also explained life as being the property of God. However,
he did not conclude from this that there was an absolute, inviolable
right to life, but rather a duty and a right to take innocent life
when God so commands. Here Aquinas wrote:
All men alike, both guilty and innocent, die the death of
nature; which death of nature is inflicted by the power of
God on account of original sin, according to I Kings ii, 6:
'The Lord killeth and maketh alive'. Consequently, by the
command of God, death can be inflicted on any man, guilty or
innocent, without any injustice whatever. (I, II, 94, 5, ad. 2,
Dominican Fathers' translation.)
If this view is accepted as correct, to take life at God's command,
is not to invade the right to life; it is simply to assist God in the
management and control of his property.
Such accounts rest on a view of morality as in part or in toto

consisting in conformity with the will of God, there being nothing
intrinsically right or wrong about taking human life, nothing
sacred in itself about human life, all morality and rights in this
area stemming from the will, seemingly, the arbitrary will of God.
(See my 'Morality Without Religion', Question, 7, I974.) Killing
is explained as being wrong when, because, and only because it is
counter to God's will. Since some killing is seen by most theists
to be desirable and even essential on various grounds, it is con-
ceded by them that God permits and even enjoins some killing.
Thus, on this view, the right to life, such as it is in its negative
form, is wholly determined by God's permissions and restrictions.
For practical purposes, the theory dictates whatever those who
have access to God's will claim it to involve or permit. Yet a
major concern of those who have sought to establish that we possess
a right to life has been to find a basis to secure life against the
incursions of those seeking to kill, including those seeking to kill
on behalf and in the name of God. Such a defence of the right to
life obviously leaves much to be desired. Yet we find that many
theists accept this kind of view, implicitly if not explicitly. Stevas
would seem to be right in pointing to this kind of view as the
dominant Christian view of our community when he writes:
The Christian attitude is based on the principle of the sanctity

of life. 'The innocent and just man thou shalt not put to
death' says the book of Exodus (23: 7) and the book of
Daniel (I3: 53) has a similar prohibition. A second principle
also operates, that life is not at the absolute disposal of the
holder but is a gift of God in whose control it lies. Man has no
absolute control over his life but holds it in trust. (N. St. J.
Stevas, The Right to Life, London, Hodder and Stoughton,
I963, p. 5so)
This approach does not constitute a fruitful line of inquiry. It

is significant that Aquinas seemed to be aware of this as he sought
to provide an account of the morality of respect for human life,
not in terms of a command or will of God theory of morality, but
in terms of natural law. Before considering this natural law account,
it is worth noting the attempt to establish and define man's right
to life by reference to his possession of a soul. The argument
appears to be that because man has a soul, he, as possessor of the
soul, possesses rights, including the right to life. Such attempts to
establish rights, in particular, the right to life, impress me as

curious, for seemingly it is the soul, not the body, that is to be
respected. Indeed, since the soul is claimed to be immortal, it is
hard to see how the right to life can arise as an issue in respect of
it. Men cannot destroy the souls of other men, nor their own.
Hence the problem arises for those arguing for a right to life from
man's alleged possession of a soul, of explaining why and how the
possession of a soul makes for man, as possessor of a soul, having
a right to life as a physical being. Reference to a soul commonly
involves an appeal to the argument that we are God's property.
Some of the difficulties which confront that view have already
been noted. Some theists have been aware of problems resulting
from attempts to derive the right to life from the fact that men
possess souls. Consider here the discussion of H. Davis, S.J.:
Some doctors apprehend no moral objection to the destruc-

tion of a human monster at birth. Their plea is that to destroy
it is an act of mercy to it and its parents. If it is given the
benefit of baptism, it is sent to heaven instead of perhaps
living on to its own great distress and that of others. We can
assume that a living monster born of woman may be human.
. . .Therefore, to destroy a monster born of woman might
be murder. As to conserving the life of such a monster, the
doctor, nurse, and parents must take as much care of it as
they would take of any child. If more than ordinary care and
skill are needed, they must be used. (Moral and Pastoral
Theology, 6th edition, London, Sheed and Ward, I949, vol.
2, p. I97.)
The doctors impress me as being very rational, the more so as

killing or letting die such beings may save them from hell. It is
notable that Davis himself seeks to ground the right to life of
human beings, including human monsters, in terms of a natural
law ethic.
I suggest that those who wish to argue from man's possession
of a soul need to stress the unity of soul and body. Even then the
problem breaks out as to why, other than that we are the property
of God, we should respect the life of the body-soul.
To consider now the Thomistic natural law account of rights,
in particular, the right to life, as this is probably the most care-
fully thought out, most widely accepted, and most celebrated
account of human natural rights. As I understand the theory of
natural law of St. Thomas Aquinas, both the duty and the right
are seen to relate to our natural end, in the case of the duty to
respect life, and the right to life, to our natural ends as substances.
(Aquinas here did not speak of rights but the rights theory was a
very easy and natural development of his theory by his followers.)
The most relevant part of Aquinas's writing is the much quoted
passage which runs:
Since, however, good has the nature of an end, and evil the
nature of a contrary, hence it is that all those things to which
man has a natural inclination are naturally apprehended by
reason as being good and, consequently, as objects of pur-
suit, and their contraries as evil and objects of avoidance.
Wherefore the order of the precepts of the natural law is
according to the order of natural inclinations. Because in man
there is first of all an inclination to good in accordance with the
nature which he has in common with all substances, inasmuch as
every substance seeks the preservation of its own being, according
to its nature; and by reason of this inclination, whatever is a
means of preserving human life and of warding off its obstacles
belongs to the natural law. (I, II, 94, 3-italics mine.)
Thus the right and duty are claimed to relate to us as substances.

We have an inclination (appetite) in common with substances such
as stones to preserve ourselves. This contention is a puzzling one;
it is not easy to grasp the sense of the expressions, inclination,
appetite, according to which stones, things, and human beings
have inclinations, appetites in common, to preserve themselves.
More fundamentally, how, from an ego-centred morality of pur-
suing one's natural end, does one move to a duty to restrain one's
pursuit for the sake of others' pursuit of their natural ends? In
particular, why, on this ethic, should we respect the lives of others,
the more especially when there is a conflict between what is neces-
sary for our attaining our natural ends, including our self-preserva-
tion, and what is necessary for the self-preservation of others,
where they are not unjust aggressors, for example, where there is
insufficient food* for all. (The incorporation of the Hareian
principle of consistency/universalizability would help here but
would by no means resolve all problems as, in the eyes of the up-
holders of the theory, it would unduly undermine the ego-centri-
city of the theory, putting duties involving and in respect of others
on a par with duties concerning one's self.) Equally important is
the claim that the na

and hence always wrong to take (innocent) life. Exponents of the
theory claim that it follows from the argument of the passage
quoted above that there is an absolute, inviolable duty to respect
(innocent) human life, and that the right to life is equally an
absolute, inviolable, inalienable one. Yet discussions which con-
stitute anything like even the beginnings of a deduction are notably
absent from treatises on the natural law. The problem for the
Thomist is made virtually insoluble because he wishes to argue
that it is not all life that it is intrinsically and absolutely, always,
without exception, wrong to take, but simply innocent life; and
not always innocent life, but innocent life intentionally taken;
that it is not always intrinsically wrong to take guilty life, although
it may be wrong to do so, that it may not be wrong deliberately
but unintentionally to take innocent life, where the known good
intended is proportionally good enough to justify the known,
deliberately caused, but unintended killing of innocent persons.
How, from the basic premisses of the natural law, Seek good and
avoid evil, Pursue one's natural end, Perfect one's nature, can one
arrive at an intrinsic duty of this qualified kind, and at the so-
called inviolable, inalienable right to life?
A defence of an absolute, inviolable, but negative right to life
has been attempted on the basis of the contention that it is always,
under all circumstances, wrong to take human life. Certain paci-
fists have argued in this way, often on the basis of religion and
reference to the sixth commandment. The basic objections to the
attempt to establish such an absolute, albeit negative right to life
relate to the moral premiss. If it is derived as it commonly is
from a religious morality wherein morality is defined in terms of
the will of God, it is open to the kinds of criticisms which relate
to the difficulties with which G. E. Moore was concerned in his
discussion of the naturalistic fallacy. If the moral premiss is not
so based, other problems which will emerge in the positive discus-
sions of this paper arise which suggest that it should not be
accepted.
It is commonly claimed, for example, as in the American
Declaration of Independence, that the right to life is a right that
is self-evident. It is not self-evident to me that all born of human
parents and only such, possess the right to life. Further, if they
possess it, they must possess it in virtue of some feature, trait,
capacity as humans. Of this, more needs to be said to make the
4IO H. J. MCCLOSKEY:
claim intelligible and in any way plausible. The subsequent dis-

cussion here will bear on this, and on what is self-evident.
A positive approach. The various approaches noted to date here

are unpromising. I shall therefore make a fresh start along the
lines of considering our attitudes towards animals, and the rational
justification or lack of it, of them. Most of us believe that human
beings possess a right to life, whereas we think of some, most, all
animals as being much lesser beings, lacking rights, being in the
cases of most if not all animals, incapable of possessing rights, in
particular, the right to life.
To enlarge: Even those of us who are concerned at the mon-
strous cruelty that is needlessly being perpetrated against animals
in the production of food and in pointless scientific demonstra-
tions and experiments, are generally reluctant to speak of the
rights of animals to freedom from unnecessary, pointless pain, and
to life. Rather, we speak of our duties in respect of animals, of our
duties to avoid needless suffering to animals, and the taking of their
lives, the letting of them die, without good reason. I have very briefly
and tentatively touched on why this is so in 'Rights' in terms of
animals as things, complex machines perhaps, but things; things
seem not to be capable of being possessors of rights. Nonetheless
we rightly believe that we need a (good) reason to be justified in
killing many although by no means all kinds of animals. However,
the fact that we do need to have a reason to be justified in taking
the lives of certain animals-and this holds whatever we may
think of the merits or demerits of what are commonly taken to
constitute justificatory reasons-is something very much less and
different from the fact that animals have rights. A man would not
be said to possess a right to life if it were merely the case that we
required a reason, possibly of the kinds reasonably accepted in
respect of animals, to be justified in killing him. If we could
morally legitimately kill him because he was a pest, vermin, harm-
ful to our interests or concerns, because we want to eat him, or to
use his body for scientific experiments, because we can no longer
conveniently care for him (our aged parent), or because he was
suffering a broken hip or pelvis which required long, inconvenient,
painful treatment and rest, he would not properly be said to possess
a right to life in any significant sense of that expression. Even if it
be the case that much more telling reasons are needed than are
now accepted as adequate to justify killing animals, we should still
not be involved in attributing a right in insisting on such reasons.

Further, there are conceptual difficulties in the way of ascribing
rights to most if not to all animals. Here it is worth examining the
kinds of considerations to which those who seek to make out a
case for animals having the right to life would have to point and
seemingly have to claim as holding of animals, by considering
various members of the animal kingdom.
Consider the amoeba. What possible reason could anyone have
for suggesting that it possesses a right to life? What of the jellyfish
and the sea urchin? Or, to move higher up the animal kingdom,
does the ant, the fly, the fish, or the snake have the right to life?
It is clear that, as it becomes more probable that a creature has a
capacity for pain the more relevant becomes the case for refrain-
ing from acting towards it in ways which would cause it pain, if it
could experience pain. This is distinct from there being a reason
for abstaining from painlessly killing it. More important for the
purposes of this paper, both are different from ascribing the
animal a right to life. It is only when animals come to have valued
traits besides that of sentience, a capacity for suffering as well as
for pain, a capacity to experience emotions and not simpiy pleasure,
intelligence, and such like traits, that is, when we believe that we
can anthropomorphize and truly project human traits such as
human consciousness and self-consciousness, self-identity, reflec-
tion, feeling, etc., that we incline to question our right arbitrarily
to take the life of an animal, or to let die or not save one we could
save. It is with animals such as dolphins, chimpanzees, apes,
gorillas, in particular, and to a lesser degree, horses, dogs, cats,
that this is felt, even though mice, rats, pigs, sheep, cattle show
many of the same traits. This is important. It is in so far as we,
rightly or wrongly, attribute human-type characteristics to
animals, that we incline towards ascribing to them a right to life
as well as other rights. With dolphins and chimpanzees, it is the
evidence available that forces us to re-examine our attitudes.
Consider the following account of Pauline the dolphin, of its
sociable nature and dislike of solitude, and how the author,
Robert Stenuit who reports its behaviour in his book The Dolphin:
Cousin to Man (Penguin, I971) anthropomorphizes the dolphin.
He writes:
Pauline, a young female recently captured and injured,

arrived in the tank in a state of shock. In spite of adrenalin
injections she remained listless and let herself sink as soon as
4I2 H. T. MCCLOSKEY:
left to herself. Brown attached four buoys to her body to keep

her on the surface. She floated like this for three days, in-
different to everything, refusing to move or to take any food.
Then Brown introduced a companion into the tank. The
male immediately approached her. Did he speak to her? She
immediately reacted, moved, tried to swim. Her buoys were
removed and she began, stiffly and painfully, to swim, while
the male gave her an occasional push towards the surface.
Thanks to his help she recovered completely. They became
inseparable. Two months later she died . . . The male
lamented her death with continuous whistling. He circled
endlessly around the lifeless body and from that day refused
all food. For three days his lamentations could be heard. For
three days he continued to swim in a hopeless circle, and at
the end of the third day he died. Autopsies have never been
performed on romantic lovers who have died of 'heartbreak',
but Brown and Norris report that the autopsy they performed
in this case 'revealed the presence of a perforated gastric
ulcer'. They add: 'The ulcer was probably aggravated by the
animal's refusal to eat thus causing the perforation, the peri-
tonitis to which this gave rise, and death' (pp. I50-I).
Stenuit goes on to draw a parallel with the love between Romeo

and Juliet which led to their deaths. Accounts are to be found of
the behaviour of chimpanzees which lead equally to anthropo-
morphizing them.1
I suggest that at least part of the reason such accounts incline
some people to attribute rights to dolphins and chimpanzees rather
than to flies and mosquitoes lies in the fact that the quality of life
we attribute to such animals makes us regard their lives as being
of value. Pointlessly, needlessly, to destroy them is to destroy a
valuable existent. Just as, to destroy a valuable painting is to
commit an act of vandalism, so too with the destruction of a valu-
able animal existent. However, if we can save a human life only
by using a Grecian vase as a weapon against an aggressor, or by
killing a dolphin that has gone beserk, then we may be entitled to
do so, and hence not be exposed to the charge of vandalism.
Equally, as regards the valuable animal existent and the work of
art, not to save such a life when it can without effort or sacrifice
be saved, is like allowing a great work of art deteriorate and decay
See J. van Luwick Goodall In the Shadow of Man, London, William
Collins & Co., 1971.
THE RIGHT TO LIFE 4I3
when it can easily be preserved. In each case, there would be an

inappropriate, censurable disregard of a valuable existent. To
assert this, however, is not to attribute the right to life to the
animal declared to be a valuable existent, just as it is not to attri-
bute a right to existence to a work of art to acknowledge a duty to
protect and preserve and not destroy it wilfully. If we have good
reasons for destroying them, the dolphin to provide food essential
for the survival of a child stranded on an island after a shipwreck,
or the vase to protect ourselves against an unjust aggressor, we
have not infringed or overridden the rights of an animal or work
of art. The proper description of our action is to be found in
terms of the moral claims of the course of action of killing the
dolphin, destroying the vase, as overriding those of alternative
courses of action. I suggest, therefore, that it cannot be solely
on the basis of the possession of excellences such as sentience,
rationality, emotionality, that rights, entitlements, be possessed
and grounded, and the right to life in particular be defended, for
example, on behalf of animals.
It is when the notion of choice, possible or actual choice, enters
the picture that the idea of a right possessed by the holder of the
right gets some sort of grip. When there is evidence of the pos-
sibility of choice and of the making of rational choices including
moral choices, and more so, when there is evidence of a language
used to express thoughts, decisions, wishes, choices, that we move
from the idea of duties concerning the being to the idea of the being
as a possessor or potential or possible possessor of rights. It seems
then quite evidently not simply to be our duty to act in certain
ways towards the being who can and does choose to do certain
things; such a being comes to be thought to have entitlement, to
have some sort of right to respect for his existence and choices,
and he/it to be a possessor of rights which impose duties on others.
Consider Pauline. If Pauline could really think, fall in love with
the unnamed male, wish not to be separated from him, and could
express all this in a language understandable by us, such that we
could be in no doubt that Pauline could exercise choice, make
decisions based on rationally thought out considerations, and the
like, then we should not simply be disregarding a duty, but ignor-
ing a right, to show lack of respect for its life and its wish to con-
tinue to live. This is even more evidently the case if we were to
think of Pauline as having a grasp of moral concepts and a capacity
for moral choice. This is because the idea of a chooser, a decider,
4I4 H. J. MCCLOSKEY:
who has a full capacity for rational decision and choice, seems to
be central to our idea of a holder of rights.
If I am right in this, we need to consider why choice and
decision, including moral choice and decision, are so basic and
important. The reason seems to lie in part in the idea of the
immense worth of free existence, in part in the idea that the
decider's life and development are his to determine, if and because
he can determine them. The thought is that a decider and chooser
must be rational, he must be a thinker, who makes his decisions,
which affect him, how he is, what he becomes, what he does. Such
a being, logically, can possess rights, entitlements to be, to do, to
become, to have done. He is not a thing to which things simply
happen. He is a being capable of possessing, deciding, doing,
becoming; he is capable of accepting or rejecting rights, of
exercising or yielding up and forgoing rights. The problem is why
we believe that such a being in fact possesses rights, including the
right to life, and why we think that only such beings, or beings who
are either actually or potentially choosers can be and are possessors
of rights.
My contention is that it is autonomous beings that may be
possessors of rights. The argument to that end is that things can
be the objects of duties, of important, grave duties, but that they
cannot be possessors of entitlements. Hence rationality alone, in
so far as it can be explained without reference to freedom and
creativity and hence be attributed to things, for example, to com-
puters, cannot be a ground for ascribing rights. Similarly, whilst
sentience seems to mark a morally profound difference in the
world between those things which possess it, and those which
lack it, sentience alone also seems not to qualify a being to be a
possessor of rights. This appears evident with lower sentient
animals. It is only when sentience comes to be combined with
rationality that the being possessing them comes to be a more
serious candidate to be a possible possessor of rights. Yet even
here we have reservations, reservations we do not have in respect of
rational, free agents, and this is in part at least because rights are
thought of as things which are possessed, enjoyed, exercised,
yielded up, forgone, etc. I suggest that the inclination that some
have to argue that rational, emotional, imaginative, sentient, non-
autonomous beings may be possessors of rights springs from the
fact that we think some sort of autonomy into the rationality and
imaginative, emotional capacities of such beings. Certainly, if we
do have doubts and uncertainties about whether a being is or can

be a possessor of rights, our doubts are resolved if we learn that
the being possesses autonomy, that is, is rational and free.
A problem which arises here, and arises whether it be autonomy
or simply rationality and emotionality that is claimed to be basic
to possession of rights, relates to young infants. As Professor B. D.
Ellis has pointed out to me, what is true of an X is not necessarily
true of a potential X, and that this is true in the sphere of rights.
Hence it would not necessarily hold that infants can be possessors
of rights by virtue of their potentiality to be autonomous beings.
Yet the pressure to attribute rights to infants is considerable, and
this is, I suggest, because of their potentiality. Indeed, many of
their rights, and the duties which spring from them, derive from
their potentialities as free, rational, creative beings-for example,
the right to education to mention only one such right. Thus
reference to potentiality here might seem to solve the problem. In
fact, problems remain, as with the foetus. Potentiality cannot be
the whole story, at most potentiality of autonomy is a necessary
but not a sufficient condition for qualifying as a possible possessor
of rights. I can illustrate this by way of a science fiction kind of
example. Suppose it comes to be possible to create autonomous
human life in a test tube by mixing the appropriate chemicals.
Clearly the mixture of chemicals when first put in the test tube
cannot be a possible possessor of rights. It is a mere collection of
things. Until there is an 'it' which possesses independent life the
question of rights cannot meaningfully arise. Even then, as
discussions of abortion, particularly in the early stages in the
development of the foetus bring out, considerable conceptual and
normative problems remain. In this context it is worth noting that
to stress instead of freedom and autonomy some other human trait
such as rationality does not help. Again the infant, the foetus, the
sperm-ovum immediately before, during and after union, the
chemical mixture in the test tube, possess the potentiality but they
do not equally qualify as possible possessors of rights. There are
obvious problems here.
It might be suggested that such problems arise because my whole
approach is wrong-headed and misguided, that rights are not
intrinsic to persons, that there are no beings who, of their nature,
qualify as possible possessors of rights, that rather, rights are
accorded to certain beings, that we can accord rights as we will,
for example, on utilitarian grounds.
I have here three brief comments to make. Firstly, paradigm

rights talk is of intrinsic rights, that accorded rights talk is para-
sitic on talk about rights as intrinsic, as possessed and not simply
accorded, and that what we typically accord is a right as if it were
intrinsic. Secondly, rights do seem in fact to be possessed and not
simply to be accorded in the cases of the basic rights of men; we
accord people most of the rights we accord them because we
believe that they possess them. Thirdly, there are limits to the
objects to which rights can be accorded without changing the
concept of a right that is accorded. We can talk of great paintings,
famous buildings, trees, and the like, as possessing the rights to
existence and care; we can perhaps accord them these rights; but
when we do so, what we are ascribing and according are not rights
in the ordinary sense of rights. We have changed the concept.
This is evident when it is asked for example, how such rights can
be exercised, yielded up, forgone, and the like.
It is the heart of my contention that those who attribute rights
to animals without anthropomorphizing them are misusing, mis-
applying, or revising the concept of a right. That is why I am
concerned to suggest that animals which lack the relevant human
excellences noted here cannot be possessors of rights, and hence,
the right to life. To look now at the case for ascribing the right to
life to rational, autonomous beings.
The thought concerning autonomous beings as possessors of the
right to life would appear to be that of the theist noted earlier, but
turned on its head. The autonomous being as such possesses a
right to respect for his existence as an autonomous being, and also
for his autonomy; the person affected, who has a will, reason, who
can determine what/how he wants to be, to act, to be acted upon,
ceteris paribus possesses the right to respect for his autonomy as
well as for his existence as an autonomous being. He both may be,
and is, a possessor of rights. Autonomous beings logically may be
possessors of rights, and what makes this to be the case, qualifies
them also to be possessors of certain rights, in particular, the right
to respect for their existence as autonomous beings, to life, and to
liberty. He has a right to respect for his life as respect for autono-
mous existence; and he has a right to respect for his decisions as
they bear on his life. The latter is the Lockean argument turned
on its head in the sense that it is akin to saying that the man who is
a decider, a chooser who has a will of his own, possesses himself,
is his own 'property', and as such, has property rights in and to his
person. His autonomy is his most precious possession, and gives

him his property right in and to himself. His autonomy as a
chooser means that, ceteris paribus, other persons do not have
rights over him and his person; it is his existence as an autonomous
being that gives him the right to a say about his life, even in those
contexts in which he may lack the power to secure his life. I
suggest that autonomy is so important here because of what auto-
nomy involves, namely rationality and the capacity for informed,
rational choice. It is this that gives rise to at least a prima facie
right of an autonomous being that, where his welfare and interests
are concerned, his wishes should be heard and attended to.
Thus I am suggesting a defence of the right to life in three parts:
(i) as resting on the nature of autonomous existence, (ii) as in-
volved in respect for autonomy as giving the autonomous person
rights over his own existence, and (iii) as respect for autonomy
as is dictated in respect for the right to liberty. One requires
a good reason to be justified in overriding another's will in a
matter which vitally affects that person in his enjoyment and
use of his life. Additional supporting considerations might be
urged from the value of the goods that autonomous beings, per-
sons, can achieve. To destroy a person, or not assist him to live,
is not simply not to respect autonomous existence; it is also to
ignore potentialities for great goods. However, I suggest that these
are simply supporting considerations which relate to duties in
respect of life, and are not properly part of the defence of the right
to life. They involve different duties to different persons according
to their potentialities. Were the right to life to be grounded on
such considerations, the right to life would vary in extent and
stringency with the individual's potentiality for good.
The right to life that is claimed here to hold of autonomous
beings is obviously not simply a right not to be killed but a right
to live, and not to be let die. To kill or let die an autonomous being
is to treat his existence with lack of respect, as a thing of no value
or worth. Thus the right to life is not simply a negative right, but
a positive right to recipience.
Before discussing this aspect of the right to life it is important
to note a tension that breaks out between the various grounds of
the right to life. Respect for autonomous life as of worth as a
ground of the right to life would involve the conclusion that the
right to suicide which most of us wish to acknowledge is not a right
which is compatible with nor one which follows from autonomy.
I4
On the other hand, respect for life as the person's possession

would seem to involve that he has the right to dispose of it as
he pleases. Certainly, respect for him as an autonomous being
involves accepting him as such, recognizing his right to determine
his destiny, to take his life if he so chooses. Hence legalizing suicide
and voluntary euthanasia, and making them reasonably accessible
to those who, with good reason, seek the means thereto, are
dictated by one of the grounds that dictates respect for life itself.
However, the would-be suicide would have a duty to respect his
own existence as an autonomous being, and hence would require
a good moral reason, for example, in terms of grave, pointless
suffering as in a terminal illness, insanity, betrayal of others as in
war under torture, to be morally justified in taking his life. The
same thought seems to underlie the acceptance of euthanasia of
autonomous beings by Christians and rationalist humanists,
namely that of respecting what are believed to be or what would be
their rational wishes, whilst acknowledging the value and worth of
autonomous existence. Christians typically approve of euthanasia
only when it takes the form of letting die, by withholding ordinary
or only extraordinary lifesaving measures, from those whose lives
can be saved; humanists are prepared to entertain and support a
more positive form of euthanasia. However, to be justified,
euthanasia of autonomous beings (and of potentially autonomous
infants and children) must be based on judgments concerning what
is or would be the will and rational wish of the being concerned;
and even then it must be supported by grave moral reasons,
the nature of which cannot concern us here. In brief, justified
involuntary euthanasia must always be a kind of proxy voluntary
euthanasia. Those who argue that it is permissible to withhold
extraordinary means of saving life do not always acknowiedge this.
Whilst touching on euthanasia, it should be noted that there are
beings born of human parents, who are neither actual nor political
autonomous beings, neither actually not potentially rational, and
others, who are made so by disease and injury. In terms of the ac-
counts I have canvassed here of possible possessors of rights, and of
the ground of the right to life, such beings do not and cannot possess
the right to life. This impresses me as one of the virtues of the
Kantian account, that it involves this. Having said this, it is important
to go on and observe that such beings would nonetheless come un-
der the morality of duties in respect of life. The cases I have in mind
here are those of the human monster with an undeveloped brain
and no possibility or potentiality of developing into an autonomous

being, those whose brains have suffered irreversible damage or
deterioration such that they are more akin to things than to
persons, and who can be kept alive as living organisms but not as
persons, and then only with the help of machines, for example,
motor victims with irreversible brain damage. To kill or let die
such beings is not to fail to respect their right to life-they are not
or have ceased to be beings that possess such a right. This is not
to say that they may capriciously be let die or be killed. They
remain within the concerns of morality. Further, there are prag-
matic, political and moral, practical reasons which make it very
desirable that a distinction be drawn between killing an animal
and killing a human being, letting an animal die and letting a
human being die, whether or not the human being is a person or
potential person. Nonetheless, important consequences do follow.
We do not have the duties of recipience which arise out of the
right to life towards such beings, that is to say, we do not have the
same duties to provide aids and facilities to save their lives as we
do with those who possess the right to life. Further, there are
moral dangers in according to beings who are neither persons nor
potential persons, the status of persons possessing the right to
life. Such beings have no wills, no powers to make rational
decisions, exercise choice, nor the potentiality to become choosers,
such that we can anticipate their decisions, make judgments con-
cerning them, and act on the basis of them on their behalf. The
'harm to which they may be exposed, the pain and suffering they
may come to experience, together with the very considerable
suffering they usually bring to those upon whom they are made
legally dependent, make it important that we frankly recognize and
acknowledge that they do not come under the morality of the right
to life as a right of recipience. Their position is more akin to that
of a higher animal doomed to a life of suffering, and to be a great
and distressing burden on others. Whilst there are the practical
considerations noted earlier relating to the dangers of callousness
and loss of respect for the lives of persons if a cavalier attitude is
taken towards the lives of such beings, there are equally compelling
utilitarian considerations for stressing the differences between
them and possessors of rights. We rightly acknowledge the
difference between them and possessors of rights, between them
and persons and potential persons, in withholding from them
certain life-prolonging drugs and treatment, although less often
than we ought and would if we were franker and more honest in

our thinking about such beings. As a society, we acknowledge it
also to some extent in the allowing to die of infants who are
monsters. Humanists are surprisingly reticent about euthanasia
although they are vocal enough about abortion. The principles
relating to certain forms of euthanasia impress me as parallel with
those that apply to certain kinds of justifiable abortion. The irre-
sponsible use of medical expertise to keep alive, to prolong useless
suffering, organic life which falls far short of existence as a person,
makes it imperative that this issue frankly and fearlessly be faced.
It would be useful here briefly to contrast my account of the
right to life with utilitarian accounts of this right. (a) Act utilitarian-
ism involves the contention that a right to life should be ascribed
only when it is useful to do so. If greater overall utility dictates
killing, no right needs to be overridden, because rights are not
intrinsic to those to whom they are attributed. What I have
argued in various places elsewhere bears on the difficulties of the
act utilitarian position here. (b) Rule utilitarianism provides a
more promising basis for accounting for the right to life as
humanists in our society seek to explain it. The rule utilitarian
could explain the right in terms of a useful rule which accords
rights to persons, infants, persons in comas, the insane, etc., but
not to foetuses, arguing that such a rule has utility or maximum
utility as an accepted rule. Euthanasia, as it is accepted by human-
ists, in particular, the stress on the need for graver reasons for
killing rather than for letting die, can be written into the approved
rule. It allows too for the incorporation of respect for certain
animal life-a growing trend in humanist thought-to the extent
and in the ways utility dictates. It is possible that it is only in
terms of such a rule utilitarian account that the prevailing humanist
attitudes to the right to life can be set out in a coherent way.
Attractive though it is on this count, I suggest that this approach
will not do both because of the standard criticisms developed
against rule utilitarianism (for example, those first developed by
J. J. C. Smart in 'Extreme and Restricted Utilitarianism', Philo-
sophical Quarterly, 6, 1956) and because it seems to be seriously
mistaken in deriving the right from a rule rather than locating it
in the individual who possesses the right.
Right of recipience. The right to life which springs from man's

autonomy, is a right of recipience. It is a right not to have one's
THE RIGHT TO LIFE 42I
death brought about, not to be let die, to be saved if one wishes

to be saved. To pass by on the street a person bleeding to death
as a result of a hit-run motor accident, to ignore a child's cries for
help as it drowns in a backyard swimming pool, to allow a blind
man to step into the path of a car, is to show a grave lack of respect
for the right to life. This clearly follows from the right as one
based on man's autonomy, that is on respect for autonomous
existence, and not simply for the wishes of the person who pos-
sesses autonomy. The history of the development of thought about
the right to life is in many respects an abstract of the history of
thought about rights in general, involving as it does, a move from
construing the right to life as a negative right, a right not to be
deprived of life, and hence a right to protection against persons
threatening our life in a direct way, to seeing the right as one of
recipience, a right to have one's life made secure against the
ravages of nature and disease as well as against the consequences
of human actions in so far as this is practically possible. The right
has come to be seen to involve the provision of aids and facilities
to secure life, aids and facilities in terms of medical and hospital
services, employment opportunities, social welfare measures
generally for those who cannot gain employment or who are un-
employable, etc. It is now rightly seen to involve parents, the
state, and private individuals, imposing duties on them to act to
secure, protect, and save life. We do not need to be deliberate
aggressors to show lack of respect for the right to life. We show
lack of respect for this right if we knowingly, deliberately, whether
intentionally or unintentionally, kill another, as in war in respect
of innocent non-combatants, and equally, if we let a person die
when we can save him and are the only person so placed as to be
able to do so, or when we know that no one else is likely so to act
as to save him. We can bring about the death of a person without
being open to the charge of having killed him or not having saved
him. We can encourage a person to keep on drinking heavily
before driving on a dangerous route home; we have not killed him
if our intention is to have him betray a confidence to us and not
to have him kill himself. Yet we have shown lack of respect for
his life and for the lives of others. Respect for the right to life
may involve very drastic interference by the state not simply by
way of social welfare legislation of the kind we now have but in
many other ways, for example, by population control, by com-
pulsion in respect of assistance to others, as in compulsory
'donations' of blood, organs, and the like. Obviously other con-

siderations including concern for other rights will bear on what is
the overriding duty of the state in this area. Here I am simply
concerned to bring out the far reaching implications of the right
to life as a right of recipience.
The right to life as a prima facie conditional right. It is commonly

claimed, especially by Roman Catholic moralists, that the right
to life is an absolute, inviolable right. Thus Stevas in The Right to
Life, quoting Pius XII, observes:
It is never lawful to terminate human life . . . and only the

hope of safeguarding some higher good, or of preserving or
prolonging this same human life, will justify exposing it to
danger (p. 49).
J. A. Ryan and F. J. Boland in Catholic Principles of Politics make

the same, familiar claim, observing:
The right to life is said to be absolute because no human

power may licitly kill an innocent man as a mere means to the
realization of any end whatever. The life of the individual
person is so sacred that, as long as the right thereto has not
been forfeited by the perverse conduct of the subject him-
self, it may not be subordinated to the welfare of any other
individual or any number of individuals. Not even to pre-
serve its own existence may the State directly and deliber-
ately put an unoffending man to death. (New York, The
Macmillan Co., I952, p. I4.)
A closer look at traditional thinking suggests that serious

thinkers of our Western philosophical tradition have not really
construed the right to life as an absolute, inviolable one. Thus we
find that Roman Catholic moralists allow that it may be right and
even obligatory to kill the guilty criminal-and the net has often
been cast widely in determining who of the guilty deserves death.
They have argued that it may be right and obligatory deliberately
and knowingly to take the life of an unjust aggressor where the
latter may be one who is neither morally nor criminally guilty but
one who is an involuntary threat to one's life. The right to self-
defence against unjust aggressors is extended to justify just wars,
and the deliberate, knowing but unintentional (indirect as opposed
to direct) killing of innocent persons who are non-participants in the
war, who are unavoidably killed in pursuing military ends, the

value of which is deemed to justify the knowing killing of the
innocent persons. The limitation of the right to life by reference
to the right of self-defence, interpreted as it is, in conjunction
with the principle of double effect and proportional good, is a
very considerable one, the more so according to how sensitive one
is about what constitutes a threat to one's life. It is also contended
that the state may legitimately force individuals to risk their lives
in the defence of their country. These conscripts, like the innocent
persons they are sent out deliberately, knowingly, but uninten-
tionally to kill as in bombing raids, are in Roman Catholic eyes,
innocent persons. To allow the right to life of innocent persons
to be limited in these ways, or to declare, as Thomists seem to do,
that such actions do not infringe the right to life, is very severely
to limit the right to life, either in its essence or enjoyment. The
innocent person who is deliberately but inintentionally, knowingly
killed, obviously has not had his right to life respected. Here it has
been put to me that the right to life is an absolute one against
direct killing but not against justifiable indirect killing. This
obviously will not do. The innocent person's right to life has been
overridden, if he is deliberately killed-justifiably overridden if
the killing is morally justified. Other limitations are acknowledged
in allowing that it may be morally right to let die those who are
suffering a terminal illness, and who are doomed to suffering,
where the aids necessary to prolong life are extraordinary. Other
Christians commonly acknowledge that the right to life is a con-
ditional one, that in the above cases, the right to life may be
overridden by other considerations. If we go outside the Christian
tradition in our cultural tradition, we find that it has been common-
place for moralists, for example, Plato and Aristotle, to maintain
that there are many legitimate grounds for taking life, including
innocent life.
I suggest that, like other rights, the right to life is involved in
conflicts such that it cannot always be the overriding, absolute,
inviolable right it is so misleadingly commonly claimed to be.
Indeed, some of the conflicts which occur, are within the right to
life itself. Further, as a right of recipience, it is and must always
be practically impossible to fulfil all the demands to which it may
and does give rise. We are constantly faced with situations in which
we can save the lives of some only by neglecting to save the lives
of others. A choice has to be made as to who is to receive the heart,
the kidney, the use of the kidney machine, etc. More generally,
our resources are such that for the foreseeable future at least, no
matter how much of the national budget is devoted to health,
preventive medicine, medical research, the prevention of motor
and other accidents, choices will have to be made and decisions
taken as to how the money available is to be spent, and hence
concerning who will benefit and who will not, who will live and
who will die. Further, there are collisions between the claims of
the right to life and of other rights. Consider the obvious clash
between the right to life and the right to education. The demands
of neither are fully met in our society. With higher taxation and
less waste in government spending, the demands of the two rights
could be more fully met, but it is unlikely that they could be fully
met. This is because their demands are almost inexhaustible. The
right to education is simply one among many rights which clash
with the right to life. Another such right is the right to liberty.
The right to liberty involves freedom from restraint and confine-
ment; respect for the right to life of others involves that my
liberty be curtailed by quarantining if I suffer from an infectious
disease which may be fatal to another person. Thus the right to
life dictates quarantining and treatment, whether he wants it or
not, for the person suffering from tuberculosis, typhoid, cholera,
meningitis, and the like. However, the claims of liberty may on
occasion override those of the right to life, as in some cases of in-
curable carriers, or with diseases which may only in rare cases
be fatal. Similarly, concern for the right to life would dictate
different traffic rules, different maximum speeds from those which
would stem from concern for the right to liberty, and for other
rights. Much the same points can be made in respect of other
rights.
Besides being involved in conflicts with rights, the demands of
the right to life may conflict with those emanating from other
values, values such as happiness, justice, respect for persons. We
are all familiar with examples in which a conflict is shown to arise
between the good to be achieved by way of the happiness of the
many and the invasion of the right to life of an innocent person
by way of unjust, useful, deterrent punishment. Justice itself may
even dictate such invasions, justice on the wider scale dictating
injustice and lack of respect for innocent life in the particular case.
The same may be true in respect of the value, respect for persons.
The details of specific examples may be disputed, but the general
point I am making must be accepted, namely, that the resolution

of the conflicts cannot always properly be in terms of favouring the
right to life.
This means that at most the right to life is a prima facie or con-
ditional right. This, I believe, has been acknowledged, implicitly
if not always explicitly, by all great moralists of our Western
civilization, including those who have been most scrupulous about
the taking of human life, pacifists who insist that the right to life
is inviolable and sacred and such that it should always be respected.
What has obscured their awareness of the conditional nature of
the right to life from many including pacifists is the fact that they
have not fully appreciated that the right to life is a right of reci-
pience which creates duties which give rise to clashes with other
duties, rights and values, where some at least of the latter must
sometimes be fulfilled. Once it is seen that the right to life is a
prina facie right, it is easier to get into perspective the issues in-
volved in certain kinds of killings, lettings die, not saving. The
right may licitly be overridden on occasion. The important moral
question is then seen to be that of determining what constitute
sufficient moral reasons for overriding the right to life. An ex-
amination of that question involves a further inquiry to which
this paper is a modest, though vital preamble.
LA TROBE UNIVERSITY

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Mind Association

The Right to Life

What is a right? Elsewhere I have argued that rights are to be ex-

of thinking of rights and duties as correlative in some simple and

The right to life as a distinct right. It is possible to approach the

6. ... The state of Nature has a law of nature to govern it,

workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker;

In spite of Locke's statement that every one ought as much as

Such accounts rest on a view of morality as in part or in toto

The Christian attitude is based on the principle of the sanctity

This approach does not constitute a fruitful line of inquiry. It

establish rights, in particular, the right to life, impress me as

Some doctors apprehend no moral objection to the destruc-

The doctors impress me as being very rational, the more so as

Thus the right and duty are claimed to relate to us as substances.

the claim that the na

claim intelligible and in any way plausible. The subsequent dis-

A positive approach. The various approaches noted to date here

not be involved in attributing a right in insisting on such reasons.

Pauline, a young female recently captured and injured,

left to herself. Brown attached four buoys to her body to keep

Stenuit goes on to draw a parallel with the love between Romeo

when it can easily be preserved. In each case, there would be an

do have doubts and uncertainties about whether a being is or can

I have here three brief comments to make. Firstly, paradigm

person. His autonomy is his most precious possession, and gives

On the other hand, respect for life as the person's possession

and no possibility or potentiality of developing into an autonomous

than we ought and would if we were franker and more honest in

Right of recipience. The right to life which springs from man's

death brought about, not to be let die, to be saved if one wishes

'donations' of blood, organs, and the like. Obviously other con-

The right to life as a prima facie conditional right. It is commonly

It is never lawful to terminate human life . . . and only the

J. A. Ryan and F. J. Boland in Catholic Principles of Politics make

The right to life is said to be absolute because no human

A closer look at traditional thinking suggests that serious

war, who are unavoidably killed in pursuing military ends, the

point I am making must be accepted, namely, that the resolution

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