‘But You Could Have Hurt Me!’: Risk and Harm

This paper answers two questions. First, on the assumption that risk of harm is of moral significance, does risk’s moral significance lay in its being harmful? Second, is risk of harm itself harmful? I argue that either risk is not harmful or that risk is harmful only in a small range of cases. If risk is not harmful, and yet risk is of moral significance, risk’s moral significance cannot lie in its being harmful. And if risk is harmful only in a small range of the cases in which risk is of moral significance, risk’s moral significance cannot lie in its being harmful.