1 Gauthier, David P., Morals by Agreement (New York: Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar. It is misleading to characterize this right in Gauthier's work as “natural”, but likewise misleading not to. The relevant passages are to be found in Gauthier, 222ff.: “… the idea of morals by agreement may mislead, if it is supposed that rights must be the product or outcome of agreement…. [T]he emergence of either co-operative or market interaction, demands an initial definition of the actors in terms of their factor endowments, and we have identified individual rights with these endowments. Rights provide the starting point for, and not the outcome of, agreement…. Market and co-operative practices presuppose individual rights…And the rights so grounded prove to be the familiar ones of our tradition—rights to person and to property. We must, however, recognize that these rights are not inherent in human nature. In defining persons for market competition and for co-operation, they assert the moral priority of the individual to society and its institutions. But they do not afford each individual an inherent moral status in relation to her fellows. In a pure state of nature, in which persons interact non-co-operatively and with no prospect of co-operation, they have no place…It is only that prospect of mutual advantage which brings right into play, as constraints on each person's behaviour”. Although it may seem otherwise, there is a decent case for suggesting tnat Gauthier's view is not really different from Locke's. Like Locke, Gauthier clearly thinks that the fundamental constraint which he summarizes in his “proviso” is, in a perfectly straightforward sense, “inherent in reason”, i.e., is a requirement of reason: a requirement of reason for social situations, to be sure, but not one that requires a prior convention.
