Terrorism and Moral Rights

Abstract

It is sometimes thought, indeed it is often said, that the only plausible justifications of terrorism are utilitarian. One can imagine circumstances such that an act or series of acts of terrorism would, in spite of the obvious and regrettable harms they cause, produce much greater benefits in the long run. It might be that terrorism is the most effective means available to produce a social revolution that would be highly beneficial for the masses or the only practical means of ending the despotic rule of a foreign power imposing massive harms upon a colonial population. In such cases, one can plausibly argue that terrorism is morally justified because the benefits it achieves outweigh, even greatly outweigh, the harms it imposes upon its victims. But any such purely utilitarian justification completely ignores rights. If one takes individual rights seriously, moral philosophers frequently argue, then, it is obvious that terrorism is unjustified in each and every instance. One who admits that human beings have basic moral rights and recognizes that these impose side-constraints upon human conduct too strong to be overridden by a net balance of benefits over harms must, to be consistent, deny the possibility of any moral justification of terrorism no matter what the circumstances. Terrorism is the use or attempted use of terror as a means of coercion. Since the essential end of terrorism is coercion and its defining means the use of terror created by actual or threatened harm, terrorism by its very nature violates the moral rights to freedom, property, security of the person and even life of its victims. Hence, taking rights seriously rules out any justification of terrorism Is this so?