Abstract

Does the fact that a person voluntarily accepted a risk of being harmed make it less wrongful to unjustifiably inflict this harm on them than if they hadn't accepted the risk? I believe it doesn't, but the challenge in giving this answer is that it seems to conflict with another intuitively attractive claim. This is the claim that it’s easier to justify harming someone who voluntarily accepted a risk of being harmed than it is to justify harming someone who didn't accept such a risk. After outlining and criticising some attempts at resolving the (apparent) conflict between the ‘less wrongful’ and ‘easier to justify’ claims, I develop and defend a novel solution.