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Many philosophers have made objections to Gewirth's argument for individual rights. In many cases the criticism has focused on the move from (a) recognizing that certain goods are necessary for my action to (b) believing that I have rights to those goods. For example:

Gewirth believes that, since I regard it as essential that my own freedom and well-being be protected, I must, to be consistent, have a like regard for the freedom and well-being of every agent. What he has perhaps shown...is that agents (that is, each one of us) want and need freedom and well-being and will typically take steps, where necessary, to protect their access to these goods. In that way each individual, or at least each rational individual, regards it as essential that his freedom and well-being be protected. But it doesn't follow that he must believe, if he is rational (Gewirth's sense), that he has a right to his freedom and well-being. He could quite consistently believe that the protection of his own freedom and well-being were for him necessary goods which it was essential for him to protect, if he could, and still, like Bentham, regard talk of tights as nonsense on stilts.

....Can Gewirth show, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, that a moral agent really must have contradicted himself if he believes that no such rights have been established on the basis of such needs or on the basis of his true claims that the protection of such needs is essential for him?

....So we need to show, if Gewirth's argument is so succeed, that if a rational agent gets thoroughly clear about what is entailed by the concept of action, he will come to see that he has such rights.

....The claim is that if I recognize my freedom and well-being are necessary goods, then I must also recognize, if I am being thoroughly rational, that I am entitled to them or ought to have them as my due.

....[But it] is not --or so, at least, it appears -- self-contradictory for someone, say a gangster, to say that he regards his freedom and well-being as necessary goods and that he will struggle to protect his secure possession of them and will demand that others not interfere with him, hoping that such demands will have the requisite effective force, without asserting, or at least without believing, that he has a right to this protection or even that it is something he ought to have or that reason requires. [Kai Nielsen, "Against Ethical Rationalism" in Why Be Moral?, p. 252-254. brackets added]