ABSTRACT
The essay discusses whether rights-based ethics allow for duties to oneself. Challenges stem from the problem of self-release in general and the moral right of agents to freely live their lives while not harming others in particular. However, there are actions of pure self-harm that duties to oneself should forbid. The question arises whether there is a possible moral wronging of oneself between the extremes of moral heroism and a lack of rational self-care. To answer this, the essay explains the two-part argument to derive duties to oneself in Alan Gewirth's Reason and Morality and in Self-Fulfillment. This leads to the puzzling thesis that whatever a reasonable agent does in the pure self-regarding use of freedom, she always acts in accord with her own generic rights. It is shown how Gewirth's rights-based ethics can avoid this problem.
