The community of rights

the long version

Alan Gewirth extends his fundamental principle of equal and universal human rights, the Principle of Generic Consistency, into the arena of social and political philosophy, exploring its implications for both social and economic rights. He argues that the ethical requirements logically imposed on individual action hold equally for communal institutions and, in particular, for the supportive state, whose chief function is to maintain and promote the universal human rights to freedom and well-being. Such contemporary social afflictions as unemployment, homelessness, and poverty constitute basic violations of these rights, which the supportive state is compelled to overcome. The Community of Rights provides a detailed explication of the fundamental rights of agency as derived from a single rationally justified principle of morality and develops the contents of economic and social rights as a basic part of human rights. A critical alternative to both "liberal" and "communitarian" views, this authoritative work will command the attention of anyone engaged in the debate over social and economic justice.