ABSTRACT
In Gauthier’s and Lomasky’s arguments, specific interests people happen to have will defeat or take over the direction of the agreement. Substantive first moral principles that emerge with the agreement will be deflected accordingly. In Reason and Morality, Gewirth claims that a person has moral rights to exercise his agency without interference from other people and to the physical and mental capacity required for that exercise. In real life, a person faced with competing alternatives goes on to judge their relative merits, then chooses the best one. A person’s right to have freedom and well-being, however, as in Gewirth’s argument, is compromised if he is disabled and other people always refuse to provide him with well-being. In short, the right to pursue interests, as under my argument, will establish only further negative rights; a right to have good things, as under Gewirth, implies positive rights.
