Intuitionists do not believe that there are any priority rules that can enable us to resolve such conflicts; instead, we have no choice but to rely on our intuitive judgment to strike an appropriate balance in each case. Example 1. adversary adversaries\underline{\text{adversaries}}adversaries. The argument is that the parties, knowing that they exist and wishing only to advance their own interests, would have no desire to maximize the net aggregate satisfaction, especially since doing so might require growth in the size of the population even at the expense of a significant reduction in the average utility per person. And if all or many precepts are treated as first principles, there is no gain in systematic clarity. On the one hand, utilitarians will say that they wouldnt make life intolerable for anyone: that doesnt make any sense if youre trying to maximize happiness, after all. Well, thats a good utilitarian reason to avoid having anyone lose out. The argument is not presented to the parties in the original position as a reason for rejecting utilitarianism or teleological views in general. The second makes sense, though. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 80. To illuminate the third point of agreement, we may begin by noting that Rawls calls attention to, and has considerable sympathy with, the broad institutional emphasis that is characteristic of the great writers of the utilitarian tradition. Eventually he married Sacagawea. He and Sacagawea joined the expedition. stream Rawls hopes to show that it is possible for a theory to be constructive without relying on the utilitarian principle, or, indeed, on any single principle, as the ultimate standard. These similarities may make it seem that Rawls's theory fails to remedy utilitarianism's neglect of the distinctness of persons. See Responsibility, Reactive Attitudes, and Liberalism in Philosophy and Politics, Chapter One in this volume. For two years, the boy was carried on his mother's back. WebRawls against utilitarianism We talked about Rawlss contention that the parties in the original position would reject maximizing average utility as the fundamental principle for As I have indicated, substantial portions of Part III are devoted to the detailed elaboration of this contrast along with its implications for the relative stability of the two rival conceptions of justice and their relative success in encouraging the selfrespect of citizens.7 Furthermore, Rawls says explicitly that much of the argument of Part II, which applies his principles to institutions, is intended to help establish that they constitute a workable conception of justice and provide a satisfactory minimum (TJ 156). Any further advantages that might be won by the principle of utility . c) Governments wanted it. Yet Rawls says that this assumption is not founded upon known features of one's society (TJ 168). Harvard University Press, 1971. This assumption, Rawls argues, implies the dissolution of the person as leading a life expressive of character and of devotion to specific final ends, and it is only psychologically intelligible14 if one thinks of pleasure as a dominant end for the sake of which a rational person is willing to revise or abandon any of his other ends or commitments. Critics of utilitarianism, he says, have pointed out that many of its implications run counter to our moral convictions and sentiments, but they have failed to construct a workable and systematic moral conception to oppose it (TJ viii). A French-Canadian trader named Toussaint Charbonneau lived with the Hidatsa. (2) Their vigilant observations and careful recordings of the geography and wildlife helped open the area for settlement. See, for example, section 2 of The Basic Structure as Subject, where he associates the comprehensive interpretation with Sidgwick (PL 2602). We have a hierarchy of aims, with some being of a different kind than others. My point is about the nature of his argument. Sacagawea proved her value to the expedition on many occassions. It is noteworthy that this argument against classical utilitarianism is developed without reference to the apparatus of the original position and is not dependent on that apparatus. This aspect of Rawls's attitude toward utilitarianism has attracted less attention. stream endobj They assume the probability of being any particular person (outside the Original Position, in the real world) is equal to the probability of being any other person. Even if utilitarians reject the original position as a device for adjudicating among rival conceptions of justice, in other words, this challenge is not one they can easily ignore. Of course, utilitarians believe that the principle of utility provides the requisite higher standard, whereas Rawls believes that his two principles are the correct higher criterion (TJ 305). Scheffler also suggests that the complexity of Rawls's attitude toward utilitarianism in A Theory of Justice may help to explain his willingness, in Political Liberalism, to treat utilitarianism as a candidate for inclusion in an overlapping consensus. Unless the decision facing the parties in the original position satisfies those conditions, the principle of average utility may be a better choice for the parties even if it is riskier, since it may also hold out the prospect of greater gain (TJ 1656). Cited hereafter as TJ, with page references given parenthetically in the text. Rawls denies that the parties in the original position can assign probabilities. That might be the correct answer. At this point we are simply checking whether the conception already adopted is a feasible one and not so unstable that some other choice might be better. (By the way, Judge Richard Posner, who might be called Jeremy Bentham redivivus, accepts just this view of rape in his Sex and Reason. Nor are less egalitarian views than Rawlss. I have come to the conclusion that the wording in A Theory of Justice is misleading and that the real idea is better expressed in a different publication. As Rawls emphasizes, utilitarianism does not share his view that special first principles are required for the basic structure (PL 262), notwithstanding its broad institutional emphasis, nor does it agree that the question of distributive shares should be treated as a matter of pure procedural justice (TJ 889). I have argued throughout this essay that his undoubted opposition to utilitarianism, and his determination to provide an alternative to it, should not be allowed to obscure some important points of agreement. As Rawls says: The parties . Thus, Rawls believes, there is a chain of argument that begins with a worry about the possibility of rational decision and concludes with an endorsement of hedonistic utilitarianism. However, utilitarians reject On the face of it, however, the suggestion that classical utilitarianism might participate in a consensus of this kind is startling. I want to call attention to three of these commonalities. There is no more reason for the parties to agree to this criterion than to maximize any other particular objective (TJ 563). <> I have said that Rawls's appreciation for utilitarianism's systematic and constructive character has attracted less comment than his claim to have identified a theory of justice that is preferable to utilitarianism. So long as the veil of ignorance prevents the parties from knowing their own identities, providing them with the relevant information about their society need not compromise their impartiality. But its fair to say that it has one dominant theme. (6) Sacagawea, with the baby on her back, and seemingly heedless of danger, calmly salvaged the equipment. Rawls's objection to utilitarianism is not to its holism but rather to the particular criterion it uses for assessing the legitimacy of interpersonal tradeoffs. At the very least, his argument challenges utilitarians to supply a comparably plausible and detailed account of utilitarian social and economic institutions and of the processes by which, in a society regulated by utilitarian principles, motives would develop that were capable of generating ongoing support for those institutions and principles. In summary, Rawls argues, the classical utilitarian view of social cooperation is the consequence of extending to society the principle of choice for one man, and then, to make this extension work, conflating all persons into one through the imaginative acts of the impartial sympathetic spectator (TJ 27). endobj I have discussed some related themes in Individual Responsibility in a Global Age, Chapter Two in this volume. Principles are stable, according to Rawlss use of the term, if people who grow up in a society governed by them tend to accept and follow them. Up to a point, then, Rawls and the utilitarian are engaged in a common enterprise, and it is against the background of what they have in common that Rawls takes utilitarianism as his primary target of criticism in Theory. Whereas the maximin argument is presented as a reason why the parties would not choose utilitarianism, Rawls develops another important line of criticism whose ostensible relation to the original position construction is less straightforward.10 This line of criticism turns on a contrast between those views that take there to be but a single rational good for all human beings and those that conceive of the human good as heterogeneous. But this is no reason not to try (TJ, p. viii/xviii rev.). Rawls contends that people would find losing out in this way unacceptable. In view of the inevitable diversity of reasonable comprehensive doctrines in a modern democratic society, Rawls argues, this is not a realistic assumption and hence the test of stability is inadequate. Nevertheless, the impulse to treat some form of utilitarianism as a candidate for inclusion in the consensus, when considered in the context of Rawls's aims in Political Liberalism and his sympathy for certain aspects of the utilitarian doctrine, no longer seems mysterious.33 Whether or not the tensions between that impulse and his forceful objections to utilitarianism can be satisfactorily resolved, they provide a salutary reminder of the complexity of Rawls's attitude toward modern moral philosophy's predominant systematic theory. They can assign probabilities to outcomes in the society they belong to. Thus his official arguments against utilitarianism take the form of arguments purporting to show that it would be rejected by the parties. Since there is, accordingly, no inconsistency between Rawls's principles and his criticism of utilitarianism, there is no need for him to take drastic metaphysical measures to avoid it.21. First, why are we talking about maximizing average utility? What is Rawls ethical theory? Rawlss theory of justice revolves around the adaptation of two fundamental principles of justice which would, in turn, guarantee a just and morally acceptable society. The second principle states that social and economic positions are to be (a) to everyones advantage and (b) open to all. Each sentence below refers to a numbered sentence in the passage. In his early essay Two Concepts of Rules, for example, he writes: It is important to remember that those whom I have called the classical utilitarians were largely interested in social institutions. It might recommend an extremely crowded and consequently unhappy world, like the one portrayed in the movie Soylent Green. Leslie Mulholland, Rights, Utilitarianism, and the Conflation of Persons. 12 0 obj Although I have argued that this temptation should be resisted, it seems fair to say that the Rawlsian and utilitarian approaches to justice have some important elements in common and that these elements run counter to one deeply entrenched tendency in our moral thought. He thinks this is true of those teleological theories he describes as perfectionist, of certain religious views, and also of classical utilitarianism in so far as its account of the good is understood hedonistically. In this sense, intuitionists deny that it is possible to give a general solution to what Rawls calls the priority problem, that is, the problem of how to assign weight to conflicting considerations of justice. A person who believes that achieving desirable outcomes is more important, than ensuring that each step in the process is equally fair would be. This has been a perennial thorn in my side because I cant get a handle on what theyre supposed to be incapable of estimating. In fact, Rawls states explicitly that the arguments of section 29 fit under the heuristic schema suggested by the reasons for following the maximin rule. The Fine Tuning Argument for God's Existence, Freedom from Self-Abuse (Cutting) - Sermon, The Lemonade-Twaddle of the Consumer Church, Five Views On the Destiny of the Unevangelized. It seems peculiar to suppose that perfect altruists would neglect the distinctness of persons and support the unrestricted interpersonal aggregation to which such neglect is said to give rise. In Rawlss lingo, we have a highest order interest in the development of our two moral powers, the powers to have a rational plan of life and a sense of justice. Since he also believed that personal and political liberty are needed for personal and moral self-development, he thought that the parties would give priority to individual liberty over other goals, such as increasing economic opportunity or wealth. I like TV as much as the next person, but I care about my child in a different way. The significance of this criticism is subject to doubts of two different kinds. And the third is the fact that both the Rawlsian and the utilitarian accounts of distributive justice are, in a sense to be explained, holistic in character. Pleasant or agreeable feeling, in particular, cannot plausibly be thought to constitute such an aim. Since utilitarianism puts individual liberty on the same scale as economic opportunity and wealth, he reasoned, the parties would reject utilitarianism. If you pressed them, utilitarians would admit that it is at least possible that they would be willing to make life intolerable for some people. He may be correct in thinking he needs to show how a society regulated by his conception of justice could be stable despite the prevalence of diverse comprehensive doctrines. WebRawls and utilitarianism Main points A Theory of Justice tackles many things. Social institutions structure people's lives in fundamental ways from birth to death; there is no presocial moment in the life of the individual. If a radically inegalitarian distributioneither of satisfaction itself or of the means of satisfactionwill result in the greatest total satisfaction overall, the inequality of the distribution is no reason to avoid it. Columbia University Press, 1993 (paperback edition, 1996). By contrast, people living in a society that guarantees the highest available minimum would have their self-esteem bolstered by the knowledge that the other members of their society care about them. <>/Metadata 864 0 R/ViewerPreferences 865 0 R>> endobj In his later work, however, it is the comprehensive version of utilitarianism that he himself treats as standard, and with which he contrasts his own institutional approach to justice. And since their choice represents the core of Rawls's official case against utilitarianism, one effect of the way he deploys the argument against monism may be to jeopardize that case. for if we take Utilitarianism to prescribe, as the ultimate end of action, happiness on the whole, and not any individuals happiness, unless considered as an element of the whole, it would follow that, if the additional population enjoy on the whole positive happiness, we ought to weigh the amount of happiness gained by the extra number against the amount lost by the remainder. In 29, Rawls advances two arguments that, in my opinion, boil down to one. (5) The men aboard desperately worked to right the boat, oblivious to the books and instruments that were floating away. For them, constructiveness, systematicity, and holism may all be symptomatic of a failure to attach sufficient moral importance to the separateness of persons. For criticism of this emphasis, see, The proviso is essential. First, it may seem that the criticism simply does not apply to contemporary versions of utilitarianism which do not, in general, purport to construe the good hedonistically. Yet these differences, important as they are, should not be allowed to obscure an important point of agreement, namely, that neither view is willing to assess the justice or injustice of a particular assignment of benefits in isolation from the larger distributional context. She \rule {2cm}{0.15mm} plants and animals, helping the explorers to describe the wildlife. Against this line of thought, Rawls argues, first, that there simply is no dominant end: no one overarching aim for the sake of which all our other ends are pursued. . %PDF-1.7 The idea that the distribution of natural talents should be regarded as a common asset is not the idea of an aggregate good that takes precedence over the goods of individual human beings. WebPhysicians and janitors earn more because they help to keep society well and sanitary. Indeed, according to one familiar and traditional view, justice consists, at least in part, in giving people what they may independently be said to deserve. Doing this would achieve greater satisfaction for a greater number of people. Or, if TV isn't enough, do something else pleasurable: go to the opera, drink beer, master the piano, read Jeremy Bentham, etc. Critics of utilitarianism, he says, have pointed out that many of its implications run counter to our moral convictions and sentiments, but they have failed to construct a workable and systematic moral conception to oppose it ( TJ, p. viii/xvii rev. In slightly different ways, however, all of these appeals are underwritten by the contrast that Rawls develops at length in Part III between the moral psychologies of the two theories. If they were engaged in an activity where there would be repeated plays and no particular loss would be devastating, like low stakes gambling, it would make sense for them to maximize expected utility. Rawls seems to be proposing that the putatively less plausible of the two versions of the very theory which, in A Theory of Justice, he had treated as his primary target of criticism, and as the primary rival for his own principles of justice, might actually join in an overlapping consensus affirming those principles. No loss would wipe them out and they will come out ahead in the long run. After reviewing John Rawls's arguments against utilitarianism in A Theory of Justice and then examining Michael Sandel's and Robert Nozick's criticisms of those In Rawls's own theory, of course, institutions are made the central focus from the outset, since the basic structure of society, which comprises its major institutions, is treated as the first subject of justice.23 This in turn leads to the idea of treating the issue of distributive shares as a matter of pure procedural justice (TJ 845): provided the basic structure is just, any distribution of goods that results is also just.24 Once the problem of distributive justice is understood in this way, the principles of justice can no longer be applied to individual transactions considered in isolation (TJ 878). Adopting one of them as a first principle is sure to lead to the neglect of other things that should be taken into account. Moreover, if there is indeed a dominant end at which all rational human action aims, then it is but a short step to construing that end as the sole intrinsic good (TJ 556) for human beings. Defenders of the principle of average utility have challenged Rawls's arguments in a variety of ways. John Rawls (b. 1921, d. 2002) was an American political philosopher in the liberal tradition. His theory of justice as fairness describes a society of free citizens holding equal basic rights and cooperating within an egalitarian economic system. We know her best as the Native American guide who accompanied Perhaps one might even say that it is precisely because he agrees with utilitarianism about so much that Rawls is determined to provide an alternative that improves upon it in the respects in which it is deficient. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. However, the argument's oblique relation to the original position construction may give rise to doubts of another kind. Society should guarantee a minimum standard of living for its members; their material well-being relative to one another is much less important than the absolute well-being of those at the bottom. Thus, they have maintained, there is less of a difference than Rawls indicates between average utility and his own view in respect of their riskiness. These considerations implicate some significant general issuesabout the justificatory function of the original position and about the changes in Rawls's views over timewhich lie beyond the scope of this essay. They are told what is good or bad for us and then they have to choose principles that will serve the interests they are told we have. But this is no reason not to try (TJ viii). First, they have argued that the standard assumptions are sufficiently robust that it would not be excessively risky for the parties to choose average utility even if this meant relying on the principle of insufficient reason. This is not the way most of us think about what is valuable in our lives. Web- For utilitarians justice is not an independent moral standard, distinct from their general principle, but rather they believe that maximization of happiness ultimately determines That being the case, it is not clear what could reasonably count as the natural baseline or what the ethical credentials of any such baseline might plausibly be thought to be.26 Moreover, as the size of the human population keeps growing, as the scale and complexity of modern institutions and economies keep increasing, and as an ever more sophisticated technological and communications infrastructure keeps expanding the possibilities of human interaction, the obstacles in the way of a satisfactory account of the presocial baseline loom larger, and the pressure to take a holistic view of distributive justice grows greater.27 In their different ways, the Rawlsian and utilitarian accounts of justice are both responsive to this pressure.28. For this very reason, Rawls suggests, utilitarianism offers a way of adapting the notion of the one rational good to the institutional requirements of a modern state and pluralistic democratic society.12 So long as the good is identified with agreeable feeling, however, the account remains monistic.13. The second is that the life prospects of individuals are so densely and variously interrelated, especially through their shared participation in social institutions and practices, that virtually any allocation of resources to one person has morally relevant implications for other people. Rawls may well be right that we have these higher order interests and that utilitarianism is wrong about our fundamental interests in life. These chapters identify four, Which of the following is an accurate statement? The second is his agreement with the utilitarian view that commonsense precepts of justice have only a derivative (TJ 307) status and must be viewed as subordinate (TJ 307) to a higher criterion (TJ 305). . Holists conclude that it is impossible to assess the justice of an assignment of benefits to any single individual without taking into account the larger distributive context of that assignment. . It is reasonable, for example, to impose a sacrifice on ourselves now for the sake of a greater advantage later (TJ 23). (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Thomas Pogge, Three Problems with ContractarianConsequentialist Ways of Assessing Social Institutions. 8 0 obj So Rawls needs to show theyre wrong to do so. The inevitable effect of such an interpretation is to make Rawls's argument seem both more formal and less plausible than it really is. There is still a problem, of course, given his insistence in Theory that neither classical nor average utilitarianism can put fundamental liberal values on a sufficiently secure footing. Rawls observes that the distribution of satisfaction within the society has no intrinsic significance for classical utilitarianism. See The Appeal of Political Liberalism, Chapter Eight in this volume. In 1803, the Lewis and Clark Expedition left from St. Louis, Missouri, to begin an 8,000 -mile journey, during which the explorers would gather information about the huge territory of the Louisiana Purchase. I will conclude by discussing some apparent differences between Rawls's position in A Theory of Justice and his position in Political Liberalism.4. Thus, if we are to find a constructive solution to the priority problem, we must have recourse to a higher principle to adjudicate these conflicts. Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. In other words, they turn on the possibility that the way to maximize average utility across a whole society will involve leaving some with significantly less liberty, opportunities, or wealth than others have. . Nor can the justice of an overall allocation of goods be assessed independently of the institutions that produced it. Why might the parties in the original position choose average utilitarianism? Since the parties regard stability as important, they want to avoid principles that people would find unacceptable. One of these is that they are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission. It is rational for them to maximize their expected utility. I began by summarizing a section of the book that I did not ask you to read. ]#Ip|Tx]!$f?)g%b%!\tM)E]tgI "cn@(Mq&8DB>x= rtlDpgNY@cdrTE9_)__? However, even if the role of the argument against monism in Theory raises questions about the justificatory significance of the original position construction, and even if the philosophical character of the argument is in tension with the political turn taken in Rawls's later writings, I believe that the argument can stand on its own as an important challenge to utilitarian thought. If hes right about that, the parties cannot perform the calculations needed to use the maximize expected utility rule. . In the Preface to A Theory of Justice,1 Rawls observes that [d]uring much of modern moral philosophy the predominant systematic theory has been some form of utilitarianism (TJ vii). (8) She scrutinized plants and animals, helping the explorers to describe the wildlife. Indeed, I believe that those two arguments represent his most important and enduring criticisms of the utilitarian tradition. Why arent we talking about maximizing utility, period? <> It is, according to Rawls, a teleological theory, by which he means that it defines the good independently from the right and defines the right as maximizing the good. In other words, there is a prior standard of desert by reference to which the justice of individual actions and institutional arrangements is to be assessed. Executing a few Danish cartoonists may bring pleasure to a Muslim mob. But its fair to say that it has one dominant theme. Finally, critics have argued that there is a fundamental obscurity in Rawls's account of the way that the parties assess risk. to the dominant utilitarianism of the tradition (TJ, p. viii/xviii rev.). I will explain why I do not regard this argument as persuasive, but will also indicate how it points to some genuine affinities between justiceasfairness and utilitarian ideas, affinities that I will then explore in greater depth. (3) The planning of the expedition, however, showed some disregard for the realities of the journey. Find out more about saving to your Kindle. <> (7) Raised to appreciate the value of nature, she paid rapt attention to sounds and sights, enabling her not only to locate food but to warn the others of possible danger. Rawls's desire to provide a constructive conception of justice is part of his desire to avoid intuitionism. It might permit an unfair distribution of burdens and benefits. This argument is straightforward and appears decisive. Despite his opposition to utilitarianism, however, it seems evident from the passages I have quoted that he also regards it as possessing theoretical virtues that he wishes to emulate. No. Rawls believes that teleological theories, which define the good independently of the right and define the right as maximizing the good, tend also to interpret the good in monistic terms.
Menü
