Topic > Trolley Case Study - 1060

Quinn mentions two rights: negative and positive. In the first, “negative rights are rights of claim against harmful interventions, interference, assaults, assaults, etc” (Quinn 306). “Positive rights, on the other hand, are rights to claim help or support” (Quinn 306). Negative agency comes from negative rights and positive agency comes from positive rights. This means that in “Transplant” the positive rights of five people to be saved by organ transplants are compared with the negative rights of a healthy person not to be killed through organ harvesting. In general, negative rights are morally stronger than positive rights. The reason is that negative rights are strongly connected to the moral sense in which our life is our own. This does not mean that positive rights are not important, but that negative rights are more essential to our overall moral sense than positive rights. Therefore we are not allowed to remove the organs of a healthy person to save the lives of five people because this choice derives from a positive choice.