A Right to Do Wrong *

The paradox of a right to do wrong is serious because it threatens to introduce incoherence into all these reductive enterprises. Such a threat cannot be removed simply by substituting a fresh string of letters for one of the delinquent terms. The language of rights is now a familiar part of moral discourse. It should not be necessary to emphasize that the topic here is moral rights, not legal rights—no matter how the former are supposed to be related to the latter. Some philosophers seem to have adopted conceptions of moral rights such that the proposition 1. P has a moral right to do A. The professional philosopher is likely to be tempted to see whether W. D. Ross's distinction between prima facie and actual duties can be of any use. When they are stated in general terms, the intuitively apprehended demands of morality often appear to contradict one another.