actions; they therefore must accept it on pain of contradicting the assumption that they are agents. From there, Gewirth holds that an agent must attach a positive value to E, through some criterion that motivates them to achieve E, or else there would be no motivation to act in the first place. Because an agent values E, it follows that they must value the conditions necessary to achieve E. Gewirth claims that these conditions are those of freedom, which is the ability to choose purposes, and well-being, which is the ability to realize purposes. Since an agent must value their freedom and well-being, it follows that agents have a claim right to their freedom and well-being, for it is mutually exclusive to hold both that they must have freedom and well-being and that they may not have freedom and well-being. Given that each agent has a claim right to freedom and well-being, and that agents accept parallel reasoning, agents must accept that other agents also have those rights. Therefore, agents must respect the freedom and well-being of their recipients as well as of themselves, since both groups have the generic rights. While Gewirth admits that his argument establishes the PGC only dialectically, he nevertheless claims that the principle is established as necessary, since any and all agents must accept it on pain of contradiction, and further argues that it is not necessary to establish a moral principle assertorically. In 1991, the philosopher Deryck Beyleveld published The Dialectical Necessity of Morality, an authoritative reformulation of Gewirth's argument, including a summary of previously published objections and Beyleveld's own rigorous responses to them on Gewirth's behalf. There is no clear consensus among philosophers regarding the soundness of Gewirth's theory. For at least the past 30 years, philosophers have offered numerous objections to the theory but have nearly all been substantively countered by Gewirth and his adherents. The debate over Gewirth's ideas thus continues. In 2016 Routledge published a volume on Gewirth's ethical theory, edited by Swedish philosopher Per Bauhn and containing contributions by fifteen international scholars. Gewirth's argument bears a (superficial) resemblance to the discourse ethics type theories of Jürgen Habermas, Karl-Otto Apel, and others. His student Roger Pilon has developed a libertarian version of Gewirth's theory. See also American philosophy List of American philosophers References External links Gewirth's obituary by University of Chicago (incl. photo) 1912 births 2004 deaths Memorial High School