Sources & Extracts

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The argument to rights by way of project pursuit resided thoroughly within a liberal tradition. It is based on the proposition that individuals can and do commit themselves to long-term ends which they have primary reason to advance. These ends are directive in that they determine what will count as a potential item of value for that individual. Individuals therefore are to be understood as project pursuers….Those who pursue projects thereby have reason to value their own ability to be project pursuers and so have reason to try to establish conditions of reciprocal recognition and respect for the interest each has in being able to pursue his personal ends. These conditions are provided by rights - liberal rights.

Although Lomasky is not primarily concerned with free speech, he does comment on the way in which his approach would justify a right to free expression:

A liberal order adequate to the interest individuals have in being able to live as project pursuers places a moral premium on noninterference. Traditional civil liberties descend as a corollary of this postulate. Freedom of speech and assembly, in conjunction with an unconstrained press, is conducive to individuals' articulation of their conceptions of the good, for attempts to enlist the cooperation of others in ends which are rendered attainable or enhanced through joint efforts, to secure access to information that bears instrumentally on one's pursuit of designs, and to secure entry into a forum through which one's conception of a good can be modified in the open air of unconstrained conversation.