Sources & Extracts

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In the history of western ethical theory there are several different traditions. One tradition stresses the consequences of our actions. Whether an act is good or bad, right or wrong, is determined entirely or largely by its consequences. Utilitarianism falls into this tradition of consequentialism.

Another tradition, sometimes called ethical rationalism, tends to minimize the importance of consequences. Alan Gewirth falls into the rationalist tradition because he attempts to prove that people have certain rights by demonstrating that actors contradict themselves if they deny that they and others have those rights. Another philosopher in the rationalist tradition was Immanuel Kant. Kant developed his categorical imperative as a way to determine which "maxims" or principles were ethically correct. The categorical imperative tells us that if the maxim determining our action can be generalized as a rule for all to follow (i.e., if it can be universalized) without contradiction or some other fatal problem, it is a correct ethical rule.

In The Metaphysical Elements of Justice, Kant restates the categorical imperative and then derives a principle or right to liberty from it. He writes as follows:
A basic principle that makes certain actions a duty is a practical law. The rule that the agent adopts on subjective grounds as his principle is called his maxim; hence, the maxims of agents may differ greatly with regard to the same laws.

The categorical imperative, which in general only asserts what obligation is, is this: act according to a maxim that can at the same time be valid as a universal law....

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....

Hence the universal law of justice is: act externally in such a way that the free use of your will is compatible with the freedom of everyone according to a universal law. [Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysical Elements of Justice, translated by John Ladd, p. 26, 34-35. Brackets added by translator.]