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Caring is usually defined either too narrowly or too broadly to support a moral and political theory. This chapter outlines a definition of caring that is better suited for guiding the development of a moral and political theory. Caring is defined as a practice encompassing everything we do directly to help individuals satisfy their basic biological needs, develop or maintain their basic capabilities, and avoid or alleviate pain and suffering. The chapter further outlines a theory of obligation for caring, arguing that we all have obligations to care for others in need because we all have made claims upon others to care for us when in need. The last part of the chapter discusses the rightful distribution of our caring obligations, arguing that we might justifiably show partiality in caring for ourselves and our loved ones but ultimately have obligations to care for all individuals in need when we are capable of doing so.

This chapter examines the thought of the late John Rawls about the nature of the relationship between citizenship and religious belief and identity in liberal societies. In particular, it takes issue with Rawls's rejection of a teleological or perfectionist theory of citizenship, casting doubt on the success of political liberalism in rescuing the normative basis of citizenship from comprehensive theories that invoke some definite conception of the human good. Instead, the chapter suggests that a more promising approach is to be found in the ‘natural law’ thinking of Alan Gewirth and John Finnis, which argues for general human goods that are the common preconditions of any comprehensive doctrine.

In developing a theory of rights, it is necessary to understand the principled basis upon which we can make judgments about what is of importance in the lives of sentient beings. The question of how we can make judgments of priority within the class of what is of importance to such beings is also addressed. This chapter considers the theories of Nussbaum, Rawls, and Gewirth, and argues that there are two main sources of value in the lives of sentient beings: experiences and purposes. There are some general capabilities and resources which are necessary prerequisites for individuals to be able to realise their own experiences and purposes. Individuals can be said to have fundamental interests in these capabilities and resources. It is argued that there are two thresholds for these interests.

This chapter considers how we can move from an account of the fundamental interests of sentient beings to an account of their having fundamental rights to have these interests protected. After considering the attempts by Gewirth and Nagel to bridge this theoretical gap, it is argued that the fundamental gap in their theories is the premise that each individual's life is to be treated as being of equal importance to that of every other individual. Reasons are provided for accepting that a society based upon law must treat the lives of each individual being with equal importance. An argument is then provided as to why equal importance must at least require that individuals be guaranteed the necessary preconditions for living lives of value to them. A society founded upon equal importance must consequently realise fundamental rights — both socio-economic and civil-political.

This chapter examines a transcendental argument developed by Alan Gewirth. Gewirth's ‘Dialectically Necessary Method’ is designed to provide a justification for fundamental moral principles on the basis of the implications of human agency. According to Gewirth, all agents are committed to making some moral judgements on the basis of what is necessarily involved in their actions. Gewirth's aim is not to detect factual judgements about the structure of agency, but right from the beginning to detect judgements about the way agents must place positive value in the world. His attempt to found ethics on the implications of agency is the focus of this chapter. To determine whether Gewirth provides a basis for the foundation of moral realism, this chapter first gives a brief account of his reasoning. Moral realism and the argument from agency are discussed and a critique of the argument from agency is presented. Gewirth's objectivation principle is also explored.

Substantive principles of justice derive from actual agreements that result from an actual usually tacit moral bargaining, contrary to arguments by Gewirth, Nagel, and Kohlberg, for thinking that all rational or normal people must recognize certain requirements of justice. Mere hypothetical agreements could not give people reasons. Moral bargaining explains moral concern and respect in a way that does not undermine the moral force of the principles we accept. Being more explicit about moral bargaining will improve moral argument and lead to greater tolerance.

This chapter discusses Alan Gewirth's Principle of Generic Consistency (PGC), and the two arguments for using it as the governing principle in appeals to human dignity in bioethics and biolaw. The first argument is that agents contradict that they are agents if they do not accept that the PGC is the supreme principle governing permissibility of actions. The second argument aims to show that any legal system which recognizes human rights must regard actions that violate human rights as legally invalid.

This chapter discusses the moral theories of Kant and Gewirth. Both Kant and Gewirth agree that (a) morality purports to impose categorically binding standards for action; (b) there is a supreme principle of morality, which actually is categorically binding; (c) a principle can be justified as categorically binding only by demonstrating that it is an absolutely unconditional requirement of reason.

This chapter first considers how the right to be loved should be prioritized. It argues that even if children’s being loved is not as urgent as, for instance, being fed, it is still very urgent; that governments do not give absolute priority to whatever is most necessary for action; and that to develop institutional arrangements that can adequately provide for children’s various fundamental conditions, it is important to take into account all of their fundamental conditions, including their need for love. This chapter then draws the book to a close by pointing out that the proclamation that children have a right to be loved is not merely empty rhetoric and that in fact this right can be justified in the same way as other rights.

Discussions of human dignity have burgeoned in bioethics. John Harris, amongst others, has been highly critical of the vague, and often unreasoned appeals that this involves. Whilst agreeing with much of his stance, it is argued that the concept of human dignity is not merely important but essential for bioethics. Various ways in which dignity has been appealed to in order to constrain autonomous action for self-harm or action that effects only non-autonomous beings (“dignity as constraint”) are criticised, some of which appeal to Kant’s idea of human dignity. However, as applied to non-autonomous beings, this is a misuse of Kant, and anyway Kant’s use of the idea manifests a tension between using dignity as a constraint on autonomy and seeing it as reflecting the fundamental value of autonomy. A conception of “dignity as empowerment” founded on the moral philosophy of Alan Gewirth is outlined and defended.

Chapter 4 presents an analytical introductory overview of the universalistic rights-based theory of action of Alan Gewirth's Reason and Morality, drawing out its focus on action and agency, its basic claim that moral agents have rights to freedom and well-being, and the institutional implications that are claimed to follow. This idea of the person as an agent with rights to freedom and well-being, and, correlatively, duties in respect of others’ rights to freedom and well-being, underlies the conception of de-contextualised citizenship developed throughout Supranational Citizenship. The discussion is organised under the following headings: rights, interaction and interdependence, roles and institutions, the argument against anarchy, political freedom and democracy, welfare and social equality. It establishes that social and political institutions are inextricable elements in Gewirth's moral philosophy.

Chapter 5 shows how and where citizenship fits into an account of the relationship between morality and politics. It claims that citizenship is the essential institutional link between individual human agency and collective political action. It deduces from Gewirth's notion of rational agency a purely political conception of agency that, it contends, flows from his theory of action and interaction. Citizenship is better understood as an institutional role than as a status, and less about passive rights-holding than it is about effective powers to shape existential conditions. The argument presented here is that citizenship is instrumental to persons’ being able to carry out their mutual obligations as moral agents; its task is to render agency operative, by transmuting political agency into capacity for collective action. Thus, citizenship is not a desirable contingency but a moral necessity, and a third primary good, the powers of citizenship, should be added to Gewirth's two primary goods of freedom and well-being.

This chapter provides an analytical discussion of some major themes in Gewirth's Community of Rights and Self-Fulfillment. The focus of the chapter is on how rights- and duty-bearing agents interact to create political community, and how the rights to freedom and well-being posited by his moral theory include the right to develop a conception of the good life to be pursued through political community. Such a community will enable capacity-fulfilment, self-respect, and self-esteem. The chapter draws out of Gewirth's work the notion of a reasonable, situated, mutualist self, able to cooperate with other such selves to enact both the just and the good.

Chapter 11 considers the third major variant of objectivism, according to which meaning in life is constituted primarily by certain non-consequentialist considerations in the natural world. For example, it takes up the views of: Alan Gewirth, who suggests that meaningfulness is a matter of employing one’s reason from a universal standpoint; Neil Levy, who maintains that (great) meaning is constituted by open-ended activities; Joseph Mintoff, who contends that meaning is a function of being attached to transcendent (roughly, extensive) ends; Robert Nozick, who deems meaning to be connection with organic unity; and Quentin Smith, who argues that meaning inheres in developing theoretical and practical rationality. Sometimes the chapter argues that these principles are too broad, entailing that meaning inheres in conditions it intuitively does not, but more often it argues they are too narrow, unable to capture salient respects in which the good, the true and the beautiful are meaningful.

In this chapter various philosophers are cited (e.g., Alan Gewirth, Alan Donagan, Richard Boyd, Michael Slote) to help make the case that there is not much agreement in ethics concerning the correct procedures to be used for dealing with whatever issues one faces. Some of the same philosophers are cited to make out a similar case for how a theory is to be justified. Derek Parfit’s thesis that there is more agreement than is argued for in this work is also discussed

This chapter proposes a revisionist understanding of the philosophical basis of human rights. It argues that human rights are based on sociality and are themselves fundamentally social or relational conceptions, in ways that existing interpretations of them most often fail to recognize. It reviews some of the prominent accounts of human rights, focusing on how those accounts either incorporate or fail to adequately incorporate a conception of human sociality. These include the accounts of James Griffin, Alan Gewirth, Jürgen Habermas, and Charles Beitz. The chapter also describes a ‘quasi-foundational’ social ontological perspective that can mediate between the various desiderata of agency and relationality, and between historicity and normativity.