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Business Ethics
Lecture 3
3.1 Rights and Duties
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The Concept of a Right
O A right is an individual’s entitlement to something
O The entitlement (privilege) is called a ___________,
when the right is derived from a legal system
O The American Constitution, for example,
guarantees all citizens the right to freedom of
speech, and commercial statutes specify that
each party to a valid contract has a right to
whatever performance the contract requires from
the other person.
Legal rights are limited to the particular
jurisdiction within which the legal system is in
force
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The Concept of a Right
O Entitlements can also derive from a system
of moral standards independently of any
particular legal system.
O ___________________ or
___________________ are based on moral
norms and principles that specify that all
human beings are permitted or empowered
to do something or are entitled to have
something done for them.
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The Concept of a Right
O Moral rights , unlike legal rights, are usually
thought of as being universal as they are
rights that all human beings of every
nationality process to an equal extent simply
by virtue of being human beings.
O Example, humans have a moral right not to
be tortured , then this is a right that human
beings of every nationality have regardless
of the legal system under which they live.
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The Concept of a Right
O Moral Rights are tightly correlated with
duties. One person’s moral right can be
defined in terms of the moral duties other
people have toward that person.
O Moral rights impose correlative duties on
others – either duties of noninterference or
duties of positive performance.
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Negative & Positive Rights
O _____________ rights:
O Its members can be defined wholly in terms
of the duties others have to not interfere in
certain activities of the person who holds a
given right.
O Example: if I have a right to privacy, this
means that every other person, including my
employer has the duty not to intervene in my
private affairs.
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The Concept of a Right
O The correlative duties imposed by a right
may fall not on any specific individual , but
on all the members of a group
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Negative & Positive Rights
O ______________ rights:
O some other agents have the positive duty of
providing the holder of the right with whatever he
or she needs to freely pursue his or her interests.
O Example: if I have a right to an adequate
standard of living, this does not mean merely
that others must not interfere: it also means
that if I am unable to provide myself with an
adequate income, then I must be provided with
such an income (perhaps by the government)
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Right vs Utilitarianism
O The individual vs the society as a whole
O Moral standards concerned with rights
promote the individual’s welfare, and protect
the individual’s choices against
encroachment (invasion) by society.
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Right vs Utilitarianism
O Rights limit the validity of appeals to social
benefits and to numbers. That means if a
person has a right to do something, it is
wrong for anyone to interfere although a
large number of people might gain much
more utility from such interference.
O Example: If I have a right to life, it is morally
wrong for someone to kill me even if many
others would gain much more from my
death than I will ever gain from living.
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Contractual Rights and Duties
O Contractual rights and duties are the limited
rights and correlative (complementary) duties
that arise when one person enters an
agreement with another person.
O Contractual rights and duties are distinguished:
O They attach to specific individuals and the
correlative duties are imposed only on other
specific individuals.
O Contractual rights arise out of a specific
transaction between particular individuals.
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Contractual Rights and Duties
O Contractual rights and duties depend on a
publicly accepted system of rules that define
the transactions that give rise to those rights
and duties.
O When a person goes through the
appropriate actions, other people know that
person is putting him or herself under an
obligation because the publicly recognized
system of rules specifies that such actions
count as contractual agreement.
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Contractual Rights and Duties
O Contractual rights and duties provide a basis
for the special duties or obligations that
people acquire when they accept a position
or role within a legitimate social institution
or an organization.
O Example: married parents have a special
duty to care for the upbringing of their
children, doctors have a special duty to care
for the health of their patients.
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Contractual Rights and Duties
O The ethical rules govern contracts have been
traditionally interpreted as including several
moral constraints:
O 1. Both of the parties to a contract must have
full knowledge of the nature of the
agreement they are entering.
O 2. Neither party to a contract must
intentionally misrepresent the facts of the
contractual situation to the other party.
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Contractual rights and Duties
O 3. Neither party to the contract must be
forced to enter the contract under duress
(compulsion by threat) or coercion (to force
compliance by threat).
O 4. The contract must not bind (tie) the parties
to an immoral act.
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Moral Rights: Kant
O Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) developed
ethical theory that provided the foundation for
moral rights.
O Moral principle that he calls the
____________________________: that everyone
should be treated as a free person equal to
everyone else.
O That is, everyone has a moral right to such
treatment, and everyone has the correlative
(reciprocally related) duty to treat others in this
way.
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Moral Rights: Kant the principle
O An action is morally right for a person in a certain
situation if, and, only if, the person’s reason for
carrying out the action is a reason that he or she
would be willing to have every person act on, in
any similar situation.
O If I am not willing to have everyone act in this way,
even toward me, then it is morally wrong for me to
act in this way toward others. A person’s reasons
for acting must be “________________”. Golden
Rule does say “Do unto others as you would have
them do unto you.”
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Moral Rights: Kant
O The first formulation of the principle must
incorporate two criteria for determining moral
right and wrong:
O _____________________
O the person’s reason for acting must be reasons
that everyone could act on at least in principle –
pure reasoning
O Reversibility
O the person’s reason for acting must be reasons
that he or she would be willing to have all others
use, even as a basis of how they treat him or her.
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Moral Rights: Kant
O The second formulation Kant gives of the
categorical imperative is this:
O Everyone should treat each human being as a
being whose existence as a free rational person
should be promoted. For Kant, this means two
things:
O 1. Respect each person’s freedom by treating
people only as they have freely consented to be
treated beforehand
O 2. Develop each person’s capacity to freely
choose for him or herself the aims he or she will
pursue.
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Moral Rights: Kant
O The second principle:
O An action is morally right for a person if, and only if,
in performing the action, the person does not use
others merely as a means for advancing his or her
own interests , but also both respects and develops
their capacity to choose freely for themselves.
O Example: an employee may legitimately be asked to
perform the unpleasant or even dangerous tasks
involved in a job if the employee freely consented to
take the job knowing that it would involve these
tasks
O But it would be wrong to subject an employee to
health risks without the employee’s knowledge.
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Moral Rights: Kant
O By deceiving a person into making a
contract that person would not freely choose
to make, I fail to respect that person’s
freedom to choose and merely use the
person to advance my own interests.
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