Gewirth and the egoist: A new objection to the principle of generic consistency

✍ Scribed by Joseph W. E. Schmitt

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1992
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 741 KB
• Volume: 26
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5363
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00136595

✦ Synopsis

The language of human rights throws political weight. The mere condition of being human, where such rights are recognized, legitimately constrains political and economic activity that might otherwise be theoretically justifiable. Outside of governmental and inter-governmental charters and constitutions, however, the groundings of human rights are controversial and difficult to sustain. Of recent philosophical attempts to establish human fights, Alan Gewirth's attempt to derive rights from features of action common to all human agents has withstood several attacks. In this essay I present a new objection to Gewirth's argument which is directed at what I take to be the most forceful, and at the same time the most vulnerable, element of his project: that each agent logically must admit that the basic conditions of his own action are generic. * I am grateful to Onora O'Neill for discussion and comments on an earlier draft of this essay.