Personal Rights and Public Space

Abstract

Individual rights, ranging from fundamental protections against state-sanctioned violence to nuanced claims regarding pornography and free expression, constitute a unified moral subject. These rights function as agent-relative constraints that confer a status of intrinsic inviolability upon all members of the moral community. This status is non-aggregative and independent of cost-benefit calculations, meaning individuals may not be sacrificed for the sake of collective goods or the prevention of larger harms. Within this framework, mental autonomy necessitates broad protections for expression, including speech deemed bigoted or offensive, because the state possesses no legitimate authority to adjudicate the content of an individual’s mental life. Similarly, the private domain of sexual fantasy and practice remains a core area of personal sovereignty that must be exempt from public control. Because the sexual imagination is inherently diverse and often mutually unintelligible, attempts to regulate it based on communal offense or perceived status injury fail to respect the necessary boundaries between public space and private discretion. Ultimately, the recognition of these rights upholds a conception of persons as inviolable subjects whose moral standing is not exhausted by their contribution to social utility. – AI-generated abstract.