Columbia University Press, 1993 (paperback edition, 1996). endobj If you were an atheist, what kind of ethical system would you appeal to? . (4) They became preoccupied with finding one. Rawls's criticisms of utilitarianism comprise a variety of formulations which depend to varying degrees and in various ways on the apparatus of the original position. Given these starting points, it seems antecedently unlikely that the parties will accept any theory of justice that relies on a hedonistic or other monistic conception of the good. 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. 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. For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription. If the conclusion that the parties would regard the principle of average utility as excessively risky depends on the claim that, under certain conditions, it would justify the sacrifice of some people's liberties in order to maintain the average level of wellbeing within the society at as high a level as possible, then Rawls's arguments against average utility are not as different from his arguments against classical utilitarianism as his talk of a surprising contrast might suggest. 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. If they do use this rule, then they will reject average utility in favour of his two principles, since the maximin rule directs choosers to select the alternative whose worst outcome is superior to the worst outcome of any other alternative, and the two principles are those a person would choose if he knew that his enemy were going to assign him his place in society. For them, constructiveness, systematicity, and holism may all be symptomatic of a failure to attach sufficient moral importance to the separateness of persons. Or, if TV isn't enough, do something else pleasurable: go to the opera, drink beer, master the piano, read Jeremy Bentham, etc. Rawls assumes that if the parties had to choose between plain old utilitarianism and average utilitarianism, they would prefer the latter. Eventually, youll get back to even. One day, their boat overturned in a sudden storm. We know how the argument will go from the utilitarian side. 1. This is presumably because the maximization of average utility could, in societies with certain features, require that the interests of some people be seriously compromised. 2 0 obj Both views hold that commonsense precepts of justice must be subordinate to some higher principle or principles. The answer is that they would choose average utilitarianism if the following conditions were met: The handout shows how this combination would lead to average utilitarianism. (2) Their vigilant observations and careful recordings of the geography and wildlife helped open the area for settlement. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. 11 0 obj To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org Instead, the thought is that a system that treats the distribution of talents as a collective asset under the terms of the difference principle, is actually required if each person is to have a chance of leading a good life. Of course, utilitarians will be unimpressed. 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. <> As a result, Rawls writes, we often seem forced to choose between utilitarianism and intuitionism. - Ques Two Books That Help in Understanding Culture. And since there is no dominant end of all rational human action, Rawls continues, it is implausible to suppose that the good is monistic. Rawls says that, given the importance of the choice facing the parties, it would be rash for them to rely on probabilities arrived at in this way. At the same time, it is a measure of Rawls's achievement that utilitarianism's predominant status has been open to serious question ever since A Theory of Justice set forth his powerful alternative vision. It is natural to think that rationality is maximizing something and that in morals it must be maximizing the good (TJ 245). Each sentence below refers to a numbered sentence in the passage. At any rate, it has attracted far less controversy than Rawls's claim that the parties would reject the principle of average utility. 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). Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their expedition through the territory of the Louisiana Purchase, from 1803 to 1806. Classical utilitarianism, as he understands it, holds that society is rightly ordered, and therefore just, when its major institutions are arranged so as to achieve the greatest net balance of satisfaction summed over all the individuals belonging to it (TJ 22). One-Hour Seminary - What About People Who Have Nev Dr. Michael Brown Speaking at Our Summer 2018 Conf What Makes Jesus Different From Other Gods? WebRawls and utilitarianism Notes for October 30 Main points. The first is that all people's lives are of equal value and importance. As Rawls says: The parties . See The Appeal of Political Liberalism, Chapter Eight in this volume. The dispute about whether utilitarianism is too risky or not. on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. WebQuestion: John Rawls rejects utilitarianism because: 1) that maximizing the total well-being of society could permit an unfair distribution of burdens and benefits. I want to call attention to three of these commonalities. Sandel maintains that the only way out of the difficulties Nozick raises would be to argue that what underlies the difference principle is an intersubjective conception of the person, according to which the relevant description of the self may embrace more than a single empiricallyindividuated human being.20 This would enable Rawls to say that other people's benefiting from my natural talents need not violate the distinctness of persons, not because my talents aren't really part of me but rather because those people may not, in the relevant sense, be distinct from me. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive. No. However, utilitarians reject the publicity condition. Despite the vigor of his arguments against utilitarianism, however, some critics have contended that Rawls's own theory displays some of the very same features that he criticizes in the utilitarian position. (Utilitarians regard this fuzzy talk of different ways of valuing things with suspicion. Nor are less egalitarian views than Rawlss. All it means is that formal principles play a limited role in determining such choices. Thus he hopes to produce a solution to the priority problem that offers an alternative to the utilitarian solution but remains a constructive solution nonetheless. 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. 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. <> No loss would wipe them out and they will come out ahead in the long run. 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. The Veil of Ignorance is a way of working out the basic institutions and structures of a just society. According to Rawls, [1], working out what justice requires demands that we think as if we are building society from the ground up, in a way that everyone who is reasonable can accept. It describes a chain of reasoning that would lead the parties in the original position to choose utilitarianism. do not know what final aims persons have, and all dominantend conceptions are rejected. Rather, it appears to play a role in motivating the design of the original position itself. Since the parties regard stability as important, they want to avoid principles that people would find unacceptable. Instead, it is based on the principle of insufficient reason, which, in the absence of any specific grounds for the assignment of probabilities to different outcomes, treats all the possible outcomes as being equally probable. Which of the following statements about justice is NOT true. However, defenders of average utility have questioned whether it makes sense to suppose that there is an attitude toward risk that it is rational to have if one is ignorant of one's special attitudes toward risk. 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. First, why are we talking about maximizing average utility? It helps to explain why the parties are denied knowledge of any specific conception of the good, and why they are instead stipulated to accept the thin theory of the good, with all that that involves. It simply does not fit the values that, he asserted, people have. (These conditions are listed in a handout.). 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. endobj hasContentIssue false, Rawls on the Relationship between Liberalism and Democracy, Rawls on Constitutionalism and Constitutional Law, https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521651670.013, Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. See, for example, section 2 of The Basic Structure as Subject, where he associates the comprehensive interpretation with Sidgwick (PL 2602). On this issue, he and the utilitarian are on the same side. It is a feature of the Original Position, of course. The parties in the original position do not decide what is good or bad for us. But utilitarianism has some problems. Instead, the sensible choice is to follow the maximin rule. endobj But, once again, these are not the same faults that he sees in utilitarianism, whether or not they can be expressed in the same words. Furthermore, Rawls asserts, the possibility that the society might allow some members to lose out would cause its members to lose self-esteem. In other words, the arguments of section 29 are intended to help show that the choice confronting the parties has features that make reliance on the maximin rule rational. 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. However, utilitarians reject Thus, Rawls's reliance on pure procedural justice does not mean that his theory is procedural rather than substantive. The justice or injustice of assigning a particular benefit to a given individual will depend, for utilitarians, on whether there is any other way of allocating it that would lead to an overall distribution with greater (total or average) utility. If the idea is that utilitarianism is wrong in holding that happiness is what is good for us, then the original position argument is irrelevant. Rawlss argument against utilitarianism - Pomona College The significance of this criticism is subject to doubts of two different kinds. 10 0 obj Rawls will emphasize the publicity condition in order to show that utilitarians cant give people the kind of security that his principles can. 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. Surely, though, this is not why rape is wrong; the pleasure the rapist gets shouldnt be counted at all, and the whole thing sounds ridiculous. He and Sacagawea joined the expedition. One of these arguments seeks to undercut the main reason the parties might have for choosing average utilitarianism. Whatever the merits of this view, however, it is not one that Rawls shares. 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. When such views advocate the maximization of total or average satisfaction, their concern is with the satisfaction of people's preferences and not with some presumed state of consciousness. The second makes sense, though. Rawls and utilitarianism - Pomona College 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. 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). If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. It is ironic, therefore, that the author of that complaint not only is not opposed to holism about distributive justice but in fact is one of its strongest advocates. In 29, Rawls advances two arguments that, in my opinion, boil down to one. We have a hierarchy of interests, with our interest in our personal and moral self-development taking priority over other interests. If that association is unwarranted, then the contrast between the classical and average views may be less dramatic than Rawls suggests, and the claims of the original position as an illuminating analytic device may to that extent be reduced. 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. Stability means that they can only choose principles that they would accept if they grew up in a society governed by them. The fact that Rawls's attitude toward utilitarianism is marked not only by sharp disagreements but also by important areas of affinity may help to explain some otherwise puzzling things he says about the view in Political Liberalism. Nor, to those who find holism compelling, does the project of identifying a putatively natural, presocial baseline distribution of advantages, and assessing the justice of all subsequent distributions solely by reference to the legitimacy of each move away from the baseline, seem either conceptually sound or ethically appropriate. 28 May 2006. 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. So now we have one question answered. T or F: Libertarians reject inheritance as a legitimate means of acquiring wealth, T or F: The phrase "the declining marginal utility of money" means that successive additions to one's income produce, on average, less happiness or welfare than did earlier additions, T or F: Robert Nozick uses the Wilt Chamberlain story to show the importance of economic re-distribution, T or F: Rawls's theory of distributive justice is a form of utilitarianism, T or F: The United States leads the world in executive pay, T or F: According to John Rawls, people in the original position do not know what social position or status they hold in society, T or F: According to the "maximin" rule, you should select the alternative under which the worst that could happen to you is better than the worst that could happen to you under any other alternative, T or F: Distributive justice concerns the morally proper distribution of social benefits and burdens, T or F: According to Mill, to say that I have a right to something is to say that I have a valid claim on society to protect in the possession of that thing, either by force of law or through education and opinion, T or F: In his Principles of Political Economy, J.S. 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). The risk could be very small or very large. @kindle.com emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. But the parties in the original position have to make a single decision that will never be repeated and that could have calamitous implications over the course of their entire lives. Yet in Social Unity and Primary Goods, where he builds on an argument first broached in the final four paragraphs of Section 28 of TJ, Rawls contends that even contemporary versions of utilitarianism are often covertly or implicitly hedonistic. 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. Utilitarians are all about increasing happiness, after all, and assaulting peoples self-esteem or pushing them to regard social life as unacceptable are very strange ways of maximizing happiness. But Scheffler argues that Rawls's theory accommodates holistic pressures while maintaining a commitment to the inviolability of the individual. Rawls produced a number of arguments for this conclusion, some of which are quite technical. WebRawls explains in A Theory of Justice that he is against utilitarianism because this philosophical system bases itself on aggregate happiness, not justice or fairness. Yet, as noted above, Rawls explicitly states that an overlapping consensus is deep enough to include such fundamental ideas as the idea of society as a fair system of cooperation (PL 149, 15860, 1646), and the suggestion that classical utilitarianism might support the political conception as a workable approximation does not explain what attitude the utilitarian is now supposed to have toward that idea.32. He also suggests that part of the attraction of monistic accounts, and of teleological theories that incorporate such accounts, may derive from a conviction that they enable us to resolve a fundamental problem about the nature of rational deliberation. If that happened, they would seek to change the society (contrary to the finality condition) and, of course, they would not accept its rules (contrary to the stability condition). Will Kymlicka, Rawls on Teleology and Deontology, Samuel Freeman, Utilitarianism, Deontology, and the Priority of Right. Classical utilitarianism identifies the good life for an individual as a life of happiness or satisfaction. (By the way, Judge Richard Posner, who might be called Jeremy Bentham redivivus, accepts just this view of rape in his Sex and Reason. The United States honored her at long last, in the year 2000, by minting the Sacagawea gold dollar. 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. Intuitionism, as Rawls understands it, holds that there are a plurality of first principles of justice which may conflict on particular occasions. (Indeed, he claims that the design of the original position guarantees that only endresult principles will be chosen.) Content may require purchase if you do not have access. 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. 9 0 obj

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