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Speaker I agree with Gewirth that freedom and well-being are necessary for agents to act in purposive ways. And I agree that IF an agent were to claim that he or she had certain rights to freedom and well-being THEN he or she would have to ascribe the same rights to others. The only way to avoid ascribing those rights to others would be to show a morally relevant difference between himself and other people, and I don't think that is possible.

The problem is that I do not agree that the agent MUST claim rights to freedom and well-being for himself. I see no contradiction between (a) saying that I need freedom and well-being in order to do X, and (b) saying that I do not have rights to freedom and well-being and that others may have a right to deny them to me (or that they are not wrong to deny them to me).

That's why my argument doesn't claim to PROVE that people have rights to the conditions required to carry out their projects or fulfill their capacities. It claims instead that the fact that they need such rights to do those things is a good reason to establish a system of moral and legal rights that guarantees those rights.



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