Abstract

This dissertation is a critique of the argument Alan Gewirth offers for the necessity of an egalitarian approach to the distribution of freedom and well-being. Gewirth's argument is within the Kantian tradition and it centrally relies on a use of the Principle of Universalizability. In Chapter One of the dissertation I describe various possible interpretations of that principle so that Gewirth's own interpretation can be more clearly understood. Chapters Two and Three, respectively, deal with an explication of Gewirth's argument and with responses to some of his recent critics. In Chapter Four I argue that Gewirth fails in his attempt to present a sound argument for the existence of certain categorical and determinate obligations on every rational agent. In particular, I argue that Gewirth's argument cannot generate determinate judgments due to the nature of his description of the goods of freedom and well-being. More significantly, Gewirth's appeal to universalizability is beset by two apparently insurmountable problems: First, his appeal to universalizability as a means of generating his supreme moral principle, the PGC, depends on a controversial understanding of reasons for action. It is clear that there is a significant alternative construal of practical rationality which makes impossible a non-question-begging argument that practical reason requires all rational agents to assume the moral perspective and to consider favorably the interests of others. Second, even if practical reason could be shown to demand such consideration of the interests of others, Gewirth still has not effectively argued that his egalitarian conclusion is unavoidable. Gewirth's conclusion can be avoided because of deficiencies in his argument that only prospective agency can be offered as a sufficient condition for a rational claim to freedom and well-being. With these deficiencies, the argument cannot appeal to the Principle of Universalizability as a resource for generating one single egalitarian moral principle which all rational agents are forced to accept as overriding. To the contrary, a fundamentally inegalitarian distribution of natural rights to freedom and well-being on the basis of sufficient conditions more restrictive than agency has not yet been shown to be an irrational distribution