Instead, it is a constraint on the justice of distributions and institutions that they should give each individual what that individual independently deserves in virtue of the relevant facts about him or her. So if they choose rules that allow slavery in their society, they do not know how likely it is that they will wind up as slaves. One of these arguments seeks to undercut the main reason the parties might have for choosing average utilitarianism. Of course, utilitarians will be unimpressed. Second, they regard what Rawls calls stability as an important criterion for choosing principles. In theory, one or more of the commonsense precepts could themselves be elevated (TJ 305) to this status, but Rawls does not believe that they are plausible candidates. 1. The main grounds for the principles of justice have already been presented. Rather, it appears to play a role in motivating the design of the original position itself. Eminent domain is the ancient right of government to take what from an individual? 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. On the one hand, he certainly didnt cut any corners in examining utilitarianism. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 80. However, Sandel believes that the underlying theory of the person suffers from incoherence19 and cannot, therefore, provide Rawls with a satisfactory response to the charge that he too is guilty of neglecting the distinctness of persons. We know how the argument will go from the utilitarian side. The parties have to avoid choosing principles that they might find unacceptable in the real world, outside the original position. This is partly because Rawls's formulation has appeared to some readers to straddle two or more of the following claims: 1) a claim of metaphysical error, to the effect that utilitarianism simply fails to notice that persons are ontologically distinct, 2) a claim of moral error, to the effect that utilitarianism tolerates unacceptable interpersonal tradeoffs, and thereby fails to attach sufficient moral significance to the ontological distinctions among persons, and 3) an explanatory claim, to the effect that utilitarianism fails to attach sufficient moral significance to the ontological distinctions among persons because it extends to society as a whole the principle of choice for one person. In other words, there is a difference between maximizing average utility and maximizing utility, period. 4 0 obj <> For Rawls, by contrast, the good life for an individual consists in the successful execution of a rational plan of life, and his principles of justice direct us to arrange social institutions in such a way as to protect the capacity of each individual to lead such a life. they are formed simply by an, This week we are covering textbook topics found in Chapter 4, "The Nature of Capitalism," (beginning on page 117) and Chapter 5, "Corporations," (beginning on page 156). Rawls may well be right that we have these higher order interests and that utilitarianism is wrong about our fundamental interests in life. Finality means that the parties can only choose principles that are final: that was one of the conditions on the original position. 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. In response, he argues that a benevolent person fitting this description would actually prefer justiceasfairness to classical utilitarianism. This is not the way most of us think about what is valuable in our lives. Her presence also helped the explorers make friends. In both cases, the parties are said to fear that their own interests might be sacrificed for the sake of the larger utilitarian goal. <> Rawls rejects utilitarianism because it is unstable. My point is about the nature of his argument. Since the impartial spectator identifies with and experiences the desires of others as if these desires were his own, his function is to organize the desires of all persons into one coherent system of desire (TJ 27). As Rawls says: Teleological views have a deep intuitive appeal since they seem to embody the idea of rationality. It isnt even considered by the parties. Given the importance that the parties attach to the basic liberties, Rawls maintains that they would prefer to secure their liberties straightaway rather than have them depend upon what may be uncertain and speculative actuarial calculations (TJ 1601). 11 0 obj These three points of agreement, taken together, have implications that are rather farreaching. We saw this when talking about libertarianism. 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. 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). @free.kindle.com emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. These points imply that the discussion in section 76 is an indispensable part of the presentation of the main grounds for the principles of justice. Formally, his aim is to show is that the parties in the original position would prefer his own conception of justicejustice as fairnessto a utilitarian conception. 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). "As Rawls says, there is a sense in which classical utilitarianism fails to take seriously Although classical and average utilitarianism may often have similar practical consequences (TJ 189), and although those consequences will coincide completely so long as population size is constant, Rawls argues that the two views are markedly distinct conceptions whose underlying analytic assumptions are far apart (TJ 161). Indeed, whereas Rawls's assertion that the parties would reject classical utilitarianism has attracted little opposition, his claim that his conception of justice would be preferred to the principle of average utility has been quite controversial.5 Most of the controversy has focused on Rawls's argument that it would be rational for the parties to use the maximin rule for choice under uncertainty when deciding which conception of justice to select. endobj endobj This suggests to Rawls that even if the concept of the original position served no other purpose, it would be a useful analytic device (TJ 189), enabling us to see the different complex[es] of ideas (TJ 189) underlying the two versions of utilitarianism. Rawls's claim to have outlined a theoryjustice as fairnessthat is superior to utilitarianism has generated extensive debate. In Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical he describes it as one of the faults of TJ that the account of goodness developed in Part III often reads as an account of the complete good for a comprehensive moral conception.15 And in Political Liberalism, he recasts the argument against monistic conceptions of the good; the point is no longer that they are mistaken but rather that no such conception can serve as the basis for an adequate conception of justice in a pluralistic society.16. By itself, the claim that even the average version of utilitarianism is unduly willing to sacrifice some people for the sake of others is not a novel one. Surely, however, if it is true that the wellordered utilitarian society would not continue to generate its own support even if everyone initially endorsed utilitarian principles of justice on the basis of a shared commitment to utilitarianism as a comprehensive philosophical doctrine, then that remains a significant objection to the utilitarian view. It should not be interpreted, as it sometimes has been, as the selfcontained presentation of a formal decisiontheoretic argument which is independent, for example, of the appeals to stability, selfrespect, and the strains of commitment in section 29. 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. So now we have one question answered. The parties must avoid rules that would fail either condition, so they would reject utilitarianism. On this issue, he and the utilitarian are on the same side. For pertinent discussion, see, Rawls gives his most extended defence of his emphasis on the basic structure in The Basic Structure as Subject, which is included in PL as Lecture VII. 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. But its fair to say that it has one dominant theme. 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). . And once we have accepted a monistic account of the good, a teleological view directing us to maximize that good may seem plausible. 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. % For they rely on something like a shared highest order preference function as the basis for interpersonal comparisons of wellbeing, and such a function treats citizens as subscribing to a common ranking of the relative desirability of different packages of material resources and personal qualitiesincluding traits of character, skills and abilities, attachments and loyalties, ends and aspirations. to the dominant utilitarianism of the tradition (TJ, p. viii/xviii rev.). For two years, the boy was carried on his mother's back. If he did not himself agree that we need a need a clear, systematic theory to reduce our reliance on unguided intuition and provide an adequate basis for liberal, democratic institutions, he would not be so concerned to emphasize utilitarianism's deficiencies or to produce a theory that remedies those deficiencies while preserving the view's virtues. Render date: 2023-05-01T02:24:57.324Z For them, constructiveness, systematicity, and holism may all be symptomatic of a failure to attach sufficient moral importance to the separateness of persons. His own theory of justice, one might say, aims not to resist the pressures toward holism but rather to tame or domesticate them: to provide a fair and humane way for a liberal, democratic society to accommodate those pressures while preserving its basic values and maintaining its commitment to the inviolability of the individual. Yet Rawls's willingness to treat it as a candidate for inclusion, which initially seemed startling, may appear more understandable if one keeps in mind the complexity of his attitude toward utilitarianism in Theory. At the end of Sacagawea's journey, Clark offered to raise and educate her son. By contrast, utilitarianism does not embody an idea of reciprocity. to the dominant utilitarianism of the tradition (TJ viii). Indeed, one of the broad morals of Sandel's analysis is supposed to be that the difference principle is a sufficiently communitarian notion of justice that it requires a thoroughly communitarian conception of the self. of your Kindle email address below. Common sense precepts are at the wrong level of generality (TJ 308). If so, however, then their ultimate concern is not the same as his, even if it can be expressed in the same words. However, it directs us to arrange social and political institutions in such a way as to maximize the aggregate satisfaction or good, even if this means that some individuals' ability to have good livesin utilitarian termswill be seriously compromised, and even though there is no sentient being who experiences the aggregate satisfaction or whose good is identified with that aggregate. Of course, this is not to deny that the principle of average utility would have more appeal than classical utilitarianism for the parties in the original position. 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. These similarities may make it seem that Rawls's theory fails to remedy utilitarianism's neglect of the distinctness of persons. please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.

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