Justice – Its Conditions and Content

Summary of paper given by Alan Gewirth

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights commits its signatories – most of the nations on Earth – to respecting certain fundamental rights. But some claim that this is nothing more than the imposition of a particular set of Western values, and that human rights have no universal validity at all. After all, the great utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham didn’t believe in natural rights at all, declaring natural and inalienable rights to be “nonsense on stilts.” This used to trouble me a little in the days when I was a member of Amnesty International, and I was therefore very interested to hear that Alan Gewirth of the University of Chicago would be speaking in support of universal human rights at the closing plenary session of the World Congress. His talk seemed to me to be very coherent and interesting, though I haven’t quite decided yet whether or not I am convinced by it. I’ve summarized here some of the main points of his argument, from notes which I took at the time. Apologies in advance to Alan Gewirth and to you, gentle reader, if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick. RL

Plato said that justice consists of rendering to each person that which is his or her due. Human rights are rights which are due to all human beings simply as a result of them being human beings.

Can it be proved that there are any such rights which are due to all human beings? There are two approaches to this: the intuitive and the argumentative.

1) Intuitive: to say that it is self evident that certain rights exist. This was the approach taken by Jefferson when drafting the US Constitution. However what is self evident to one person may not be self-evident to another.

2) Argumentative: There are two sorts of arguments in favour of rights: religious arguments and secular ones.

2a) Religious: All humans are children of God and human life has a sacredness for that reason. But this wouldn’t convince a non-believer.

2b) Secular: for example John Rawls in A Theory of Justice put forward arguments based on the idea of reflective equilibrium.

Gewirth’s Argument for Human Rights

Gewirth’s approach is also a secular argument, and goes as follows. He says that when we say that someone has a right to something, it is in the context of human action. All moralities require people to act in certain ways. So, he says, let’s focus on action. Action has necessary conditions. These conditions justify the move from “A is human” to “A has certain rights.” Actions require both freedom (autonomy through unforced choice in the light of knowledge) and purposefulness: people act with some end in view. Well-being is having the conditions for purposeful action. Basic well-being requires life, physical integrity and mental equilibrium. Gewirth then presents us with three propositions:

(1) Every agent must regard freedom and well-being as necessary goods, as without them we cannot act – cannot be an agent – at all.

Logically, he said, every agent either

(2) must regard freedom and wellbeing as rights or

(3) must accept that others can curtail his or her freedom and wellbeing.

However, (3) would contradict (1) so therefore every agent must accept (2) to avoid a contradiction. Therefore consistency requires all agents to act to claim their own rights. But to claim rights necessarily entails accepting duties, so the agent must recognize rights for other people. Therefore, Gewirth concludes that to violate somebody’s rights to freedom and well-being involves the agent in selfcontradiction.

In practice, says Gewirth, governments act for human beings as recognisors of rights. Governments and their representatives are also bound by the logic above to support these human rights.

Gewirth says that the nature of this argument means that it can only provide a basis for rights to freedom and well-being, not to other goods however desirable. To use his example, one can’t say “I have a right to a 10-speed bike.” The argument doesn’t work for that, as having a 10-speed bike isn’t a necessity for acting at all, whereas freedom and well-being are.

He described and dealt with several potential objections to his theory. One interesting objection was that it could be said that human rights as supported by his argument aren’t sufficient, as they only protect the freedom and well-being of individuals. Therefore they might conflict with rights which protect communities. (The example he gave was the idea of ‘Asian values’ popular with governments in Singapore and elsewhere, which includes an idea of deference to due authority and so on). But, asked Gewirth, what is this community whose rights take precedence? Is it really distinct from the individuals who comprise it? He argued that when two rights are in conflict and can’t both be fulfilled, as might be the case here, then that right should take precedence which is more needed for action. Therefore when the right not to starve conflicts with the right to private property, it is the latter which should give way. This is because, for Gewirth, human rights are based on the necessary conditions for human action.

Rick Lewis