What is the purpose of government? One answer—to benefit the greatest number with the greatest happiness—is advanced by utilitarians with whom, concerning government, many people agree. Another answer—to safeguard the rights of individuals—is common too. But Jeremy Bentham, the original theorist of utilitarian ethics, called rights ‘nonsense on stilts’ (Ross 1995, 85). However, it is conceivable that utility is maximised only when there are inviolable prohibitions which would prevent agents from performing actions, such as expropriation or incarceration, which, in the absence of a glib justification, seem intuitively wrong. Positive rights are problematic, but negative rights, or freedom from harm and coercion, are necessary for a functional society. Sedition, the crime of promoting rebellion against the established order, violates neither positive nor negatives rights but, given certain, albeit complex and unlikely, conditions, could lead to their revolutionary abolition. The question whether a democratic majority can punish an individual for not violating rights on a causally tenuous or purely moral pretence will be answered in the negative. Continue reading
Sedition
08 Friday Nov 2013
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