Alan Gewirth

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Alan Gewirth (born November 28, 1912 ; † May 9, 2004 ) was an American philosopher who taught at the University of Chicago and v. a. worked on topics of practical philosophy .

In 1975 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

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Gewirth represents a deontological rationalistic ethic. According to the thesis of his main work “Reason and Morality”, a supreme moral principle can be derived from the nature of human action and the associated terms and preferences, which he calls the “Principle of Generic Consistency” (PGC). It says that every agent must choose his or her actions in accordance with general rights to freedom and well-being that are accorded to him and all other potential agents.

The reasoning for PGC is not a logical deduction, but requires self-reflection - Gewirth describes the closing mode as "dialectically necessary". “Dialectical” does not refer to the outside world, but to one's own situation as an agent. Each step of the argument describes what the agent thinks and what he is implicitly theoretically committed to. “Necessary” means that, from the perspective of the reflective agent, the initial premise and all further steps are irrefutable.

The initial premise has the form: (1) I perform the action H for the sake of Z. All potential actors implicitly agree to such a premise, provided they are considering a (voluntary) action at all. Anyone who disputes (1) is contradicting the fact of being an agent himself.

Gewirth's main work not only claims to offer an ultimate justification of morality , but also to establish a hierarchy of goods and related rights and duties. This prioritization has as a criterion the relation of the corresponding good to the ability to act. In the case of basic goods, without which free action is absolutely excluded, according to Gewirth there are general rights of entitlement, while in the case of goods which only expand the scope for action, there are weaker legal claims and corresponding obligations.

Finally, Gewirth also undertakes to justify the principles and institutions of the democratic welfare state. In his second major monograph "The Community of Rights", topics of social philosophy and political philosophy are discussed in more detail.

reception

Both Gewirth's basic approach and many of his individual theses and applications have been discussed, adapted, further elaborated and applied to other areas of application, as well as criticized.

Deryck Beyleveld in The Dialectical Necessity of Morality (1991) reformulates a defense of Gewirth's line of argument and responds to a number of critics.

Roger Pilon , a student of Gewirth, developed a libertarian version of Gewirth's theory. In the German-speaking area, v. a. the Bochum philosopher Klaus Steigleder Gewirth made known. He has u. a. a reconstruction of the Kantian deontological ethics was also proposed, which implies several parallels to Gewirth. Also Dietmar Mieth refers in his theological ethics on Gewirth.

literature

Works

  • Reason and Morality (1978)
  • Human Rights: Essays on Justification and Applications (1982)
  • The Community of Rights (1996)
  • Self-Fulfillment (1998)

Secondary literature

  • Franz von Kutschera : Three attempts at a rational justification of ethics : Singer, Hare, Gewirth, in: C. Fehige, G. Meggle (eds.), To moral thinking, vol. 1, Frankfurt a. M. 1995, 54-76.
  • Steven Ross: A Comment on the Argument between Gewirth and His Critics , in: Metaphilosophy (1990)
  • Edward Regis, Jr. (Ed.): Gewirth's Ethical Rationalism : Critical Essays with a Reply by Alan Gewirth, Chicago 1984.
  • Michael Boylan (ed.): Gewirth : Critical Essays on Action, Rationality, and Community, Lanham 1999.
  • Deryck Beyleveld / Roger Brownsword: Human Dignity in Bioethics and Biolaw . Oxford: Oxford University Press 2001.
  • Deryck Beyleveld / Gerhard Bos: The Foundational Role of the Principle of Instrumental Reason in Gewirth's Argument for the Principle of Generic Consistency : A Reply to Andrew Chitty. King's Law Journal 20/1 (2009), 1-20.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Gewirth, Alan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH November 28, 1912
DATE OF DEATH May 9, 2004