Abstract
In this paper. I comment on the importance of the distinction between the problem what is. or ought to be, qualified as a right and the problem of the extent to which an individual can concretely exercise his/her rights. That is the distinction between the qualification of right and the effectiveness of right respectively. For something to be qualified as a right implies that it is recognized as having a universal value at least for all human beings. Yet, in the exercise of a right we must consider differences in personal characteristics or social contexts, since the extent to which individuals can concretely exercise rights might differ greatly according to the differences in personal characteristics or social contexts. To respect every individual impartially, we must set up public rules concerning the effectiveness of rights, which will direct each individual in concrete terms of the doings and beings he/her can actually realize depending on his/her will. In proposing “The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal”. Sen used a social choice framework to describe the freedom of action. He did so because he noticed that since an individual private action is nothing but a constituent of a social state, an individual is able to restrict the range of possible social states through changing his/her own action. A Broad but integrated framework of Consequentialism proposed by Amartya Sen is an idea that advances this approach. It assigns a certain array of weights taking into account the influences brought by exercising individuals’ rights. It is assumed that although the concrete array of weights may change according to variations in personal preferences or social institutions, how it changes continues to satisfy ethical criteria accepted by individual public judgments.
