ABSTRACT
It is a challenge to moral theory to determine what morality is about without distorting the phenomenon by this theory upfront. This essay examines how rights-based theory deals with this challenge. By reconstructing the dialectically necessary sequence of Alan Gewirth's foundational argument, it is shown that, according to Gewirth, moral reasons are universalized prudential reasons in a specific sense: Moral obligations of others strictly depend on the agent's normative self-relationship, which entails prudential reasoning. Three counterarguments to Gewirth's view are discussed and rejected by explaining Gewirth's standpoint in detail (argument from possible conflict, argument from intersubjectivity, and argument from circularity). With Gewirth, we can see that the formal essence of all ethical theory lies in the acknowledgment of the essential human interest to be able to act at all, an interest that is “prudential”, however, not in the common meaning of rational egoism.
