Is Herbert Spencers Law of Equal Freedom a Utilitarian or a Rights-Based Theory of Justice?
Journal of the History of Philosophy – Volume 26, Number 2, April 1988, pp. 259-278 The Johns Hopkins University Press Is Herbert Spencer’s Law of Equal Freedom a Utilitarian or a Rights-Based Theory of Justice? T. S. GRAY 1. INTRODUCTION THE RELATIONSHIP between utility and rights has long occupied writers on ethics and politics. These two principles appear to supply alternative and opposed foundations for political theory. Some utilitarians (such as Bentham) dismiss (natural) rights as nonsense. Some rights theorists (such as Kant and Nozick) dismiss utilitarian considerations as outside justice. But attempts have been made to bridge the gulf apparently separating utility from rights. Utilitarians such as J. S. Mill have tried to accommodate the notion of rights within the principle of utility. ~ And Rawls’ A Theory of Justice may be interpreted as an attempt by a rights-theorist to accommodate the principle of utility. Herbert Spencer, who was faced in 185o like Rawls in 197o with a
