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I would like to make an historical comment, just to provide a little context for our discussion. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) represent the utilitarian and consequentialist tradition in moral philosophy. In that tradition, rights must be based on good consequences. In other words, the good is primary and rights are derived from the good. Alan Gewirth represents what we might call the rationalist or deontological tradition. Perhaps the most famous philosopher in that tradition is the German Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). In that tradition rights are not based on good consequences.

Kant famously proposed his "categorical imperative" as a kind of touchstone for testing moral principles. As individuals we often act on what Kant called "maxims" of behavior. But, he believed, the test of such maxims was whether they could be universalized without fatal problems. For example, a maxim stating that I can break a promise when it is in my interest to do so would break down if universalized because the entire institution of promise-making would be undermined.

Kant attempted to found his version of political liberalism on his categorical imperative. Each individual had the right to the largest sphere of freedom that was compatible with everyone having the same freedom. In other words, each of us had a right to the greatest freedom that could be universalized.

In that way, Kant was able to provide a reasoned basis for a right to freedom. Good consequences, although they might occur, were not the foundation. Nor were the preferences or decisions or likes and dislikes of human beings. Gewirth follows in this tradition when he argues that we are guilty of a contradiction if we deny certain individual rights.

Here are a few short paragraphs from Kant's Metaphysical Elements of Justice to give you the flavor of his ideas.

Justice is therefore the aggregate of those conditions under which the will of one person can be conjoined with the will of another in accordance with a universal law of freedom....

"Every action is just [right] that in itself or in its maxim is such that the freedom of the will of each can coexist together with the freedom of everyone in accordance with a universal law."

If, therefore, my action or my condition in general can coexist with the freedom of everyone in accordance with a universal law, then anyone who hinders me in performing the action or in maintaining the condition does me an injustice, inasmuch as this hindrance (this opposition) cannot coexist with freedom in accordance with universal laws. [The Metaphysical Elements of Justice, translated by John Ladd, p. 34-35, brackets in original]