Zero-Relationship

The primary concern of this essay is to answer such kinds of questions: what is the ground or legitimacy of rights, what kinds of right-claims could be justified and thus legitimate? Among so many modes of justification, the Rawlsian Neo-Contractarianism is bearing a convincing power. Meanwhile, this way of justification is not only valid for Rawls'two principles of justice, but also valid for the other problems in the realm of moral philosophy. Rights (moral rights) could also be justified adopting Rawls'design of original position. But, although equal liberty is Rawls'first principle of justice, Rawls is quite vague on the issue of liberty or rights (these two concepts are normally conceived to be interchangeable). Rawls even refused to give a principle of rights, instead he offered only a general list of basic liberties.If a principle of rights is to be given, in the first place, we have to choose a criterion to evaluate right-claims; while what are the grounds of legitimacy of rights and what kind of right-claims could be justified are but one question, at least keenly connected. For this, we can only search for such a criterion beyond Rawls'system. Referring to the history of liberal theory, we can find an unnoticed clue: rights or liberty are the categories that regulating human actions. Upon this, it is most obvious in Kant's and Mill's writings. Kant explicitly excludes inner incentives from the realm of rights, and conceived rights as the aggregated conditions upon which one individual's freedom can coexists with all the other persons'freedom. While for Mill's simple principle of liberty, it can be generalized as this: as for the individual's actions, there exists a realm of self-regarding actions within which other individuals or government should not interfere; the only legitimate use of coercive forces is to prevent harm. Thus, we suggest human conduct and its impact as the criterion for evaluation right-claims. In the same time, we adopt the concept of cardinal utility which is applied in economics to construct six pairs of structures of reciprocity as the alternatives presented to the parties in the original position; and in the end, we would demonstrate that parties in the original position will choose zero-relationship as the criterion to evaluate right-claims with an unanimous consensus. Here, human actions or conduct and its impact which is calculated by cardinal utility are a technical procedure, which the legitimacy of rights and zero-relationship as the criterion evaluating right-claims are all residing in the fact that they are unanimously agreed upon and chosen by the parties in the original position.Besides the justifications leading to zero-relationship given in the second chapter, the content of all the other chapters are to demonstrate it from different aspects or just give a preparation for the procedure. In the first chapter, we give a brief conceptual analysis of rights, here we adopted a late Wittgensteinian perspective which is that a concept can only be properly understood in a concrete context; while in this essay, we use the concept of rights primarily in the context of the basic structure of a society, and we discuss the problems of rights in the context of basic structure of a society not the practical affairs in judicial contexts. The third chapter refers to the major theories in the liberal thoughts, and we are trying to demonstrate that the logic of liberty or rights is a coherent one, which is expressed in the idea of zero-relationship; Mill, Berlin, and Nozick are describing part of this logic. So, zero-relationship can serve as a lowest denominator of the liberal theory, a thinner theory can not guarantee liberty and a stronger theory is not necessary. The fourth chapter gives different analysis upon the problems within the realm of rights from the perspective of zero-relationship; meanwhile it is also an application of zero-relationship: the so called welfare rights are invalid. The fifth chapter is a response to the problems that are still controversial nowadays, and this could be viewed as an endeavor to expand the realm of rights and liberty; also it is another application of zero-relationship.For a topic that has been discussed for hundreds of years, anyone who claims that he has revealed something that is never discussed before should be of great carefulness. Upon this, zero-relationship seems like a hybrid concept: it adopted Kant's and Mill's perspective on the relation between liberty and the external human actions, taking advantages of the concept of cardinal utility in economics, and finally demonstrated itself in Rawls'original position. Bearing this in mind, there is nothing new in the concept of zero-relationship. But, if the concept of zero-relationship is to reveal anything at all, then I would suggest that it is the structures of reciprocity. This is the aspect of very issue here that has long been neglected: why are the other persons'interests, choice or claim etc, are the adequate reasons to impose me under certain kind of duty? From the perspective of the structures of reciprocity, a right-claim is legitimate upon the fact that if all the members of a political community are to be endowed with certain kind of right, the level of burdens of every single individual are still tolerable---just like what the parties in the original position should have considered. Viewed from the basic structure of an society, rights as the category which regulate the relations between rational beings, the questions they are supposed to answer are these: society as the union of rational beings, as for individuals, what we can do to each other, what kind of burden we can carry for each other, or what we owe to each other? The liberal theories before Nozick answered the former part of this question, which is, as for what we can do to each other, the core idea enters here is non-interference. While Nozick's theory offered an answer to the later part of this question, which is what can afford for each other. Freedom is not free, at least, it requires that every rational being abbey the proper boundary of righteous human conducts; and what we have afford for each other is refraining from interfering with others, which equals to omission. But, any burden that is requiring more than this can not be justified and consequently invalid. Thus, impose such burden to an individual by force: coerce him to benefit others, is a violation of his freedom and rights. This is what has been vetoed by the parties in the original position. And this is what the structures of reciprocity have revealed.Meanwhile, although the procedure of justification is quite complicated, its conclusion is very simple and clear; this advantage can be demonstrated in its applications: in the cases where the two dimensions of zero-relationship are applied, it is revealing this in a transparent manner.Last and not the least, I believe, zero-relationship has expressed such a belief of Kantian universalism: the basic idea of rightness and the minimum concept of the rightness of the basic structure of a society are everywhere the same; while where these minimum concepts of rightness are not popularized, it is still under a condition that is unenlightened.