GEORGIA LAW REVIEW - StephanKinsella.com

1154 GEORGIA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 13:1143
moral and human rights, we must show that each agent must admit
that all other humans also have these rights. For in this way the
agent will be committed to take favorable account of the purposes
or interests of other persons besides himself. Let us see why he must
take this further step.
This involves the question of the ground or sufficient reason or
sufficient condition on the basis of which any agent must hold that
he has the generic rights. Now this ground is not subject to his
optional or variable decisions. There is one, and only one, ground
that every agent logically must accept as the sufficient justifying
condition for his having the generic rights, namely, that he is a
prospective agent who has purposes he wants to fulfill. Suppose
some agent A were to hold that he has these rights only for some
more-restrictive necessary and sufficient reason R. This would entail
that in lacking R he would lack the generic rights. But if A were to
accept this conclusion, that he may not have the generic rights, he
would contradict himself. For we saw above that it is necessarily
true of every agent that he must hold or accept at least implicitly
that he has rights to freedom and well-being. Hence, A would be in
the position of both affirming and denying that he has the generic
rights: affirming it because he is an agent, denying it because he
lacks R. To avoid this contradiction, every agent must hold that
being a prospective purposive agent is a sufficient reason or condi-
tion for having the generic rights.
Because of this sufficient reason, every agent, on pain of self-
contradiction, must also accept the generalization that all prospec-
tive purposive agents have the generic rights. This generalization is
an application of the logical principle of universalizability: if some
predicate P belongs to some subject S because S has the quality Q
(where the "because " is that of sufficient reason or condition), then
it logically follows that every subject that has Q has P. If any agent
A were to deny or refuse to accept this generalization in the case of
any other prospective purposive agent, A would contradict himself.
For he would be in the position of saying that being a prospective
purposive agent both is and is not a sufficient justifying condition
for having the generic rights. Hence, on pain of self-contradiction,
every agent must accept the generalization that all prospective pur-
posive agents have the generic rights.
Thus we have now arrived at the basis of human rights. For the
generic rights to freedom and well-being are moral rights, since they
require of every agent that he take favorable account of the most