endobj I want to call attention to three of these commonalities. This in turn may cast doubt on the justificatory significance of the parties' choice. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 80. Nonteleological forms of utilitarianism, such as the principle of average utility,11 are also monistic if they rely on a hedonistic interpretation of the good. Yet Rawls had said quite explicitly in A Theory of Justice that classical utilitarianism does not accept that idea (TJ 33). on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. 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. There are really two questions here. 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. Each sentence below refers to a numbered sentence in the passage. For each key term or person in the lesson, write a sentence explaining its significance. The fact that Rawls agrees with utilitarianism about the desirability of identifying a clear and constructive solution to the priority problem leads more or less directly to the second point of agreement. 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). There is no more reason for the parties to agree to this criterion than to maximize any other particular objective (TJ 563). Under normal conditions neither would permit serious infringements of liberty while under extraordinary conditions either might. The latter view is committed to increasing the population, even at the cost of lowering average utility while the former is not. Rights are certain moral rules whose observance is of the utmost importance for the long-run, overall maximization of happiness, it would be unjust to coerce people to give food or money to the starving, According to John Rawls, people in "the original position" choose the principles of justice on the basis of. a. Adam Smith defends capitalism by appealing to the idea of a natural, moral right to property. A utilitarian assumption is that we can put all good things on a single scale that they call utility. Total loading time: 0 See for example PL 1345. 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. Why might the parties in the original position choose average utilitarianism? For example, where Rawls says that [u]tilitarianism does not take seriously the distinction between persons (TJ 27), Robert Nozick, explicitly citing Rawls, says that to sacrifice one individual for the greater social good does not sufficiently respect and take account of the fact that he is a separate person, that his is the only life he has.2 And Bernard Williams, developing a different but not entirely unrelated criticism, argues that utilitarianism makes personal integrity as a value more or less unintelligible.3 But neither Nozick nor Williams stresses the importance of providing a systematic alternative to utilitarianism. 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. Rather, the original position has been structured so that utilitarianism is guaranteed to lose. Often, for example, we seem prepared to say that an individual deserves or has a right to some benefit, and that it is therefore just that he should get it, without inquiring into the larger distributional context. Rawls's conjecture is that the contract doctrine properly worked out can fill this gap (TJ 52). We know how the argument will go from the utilitarian side. 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. In this sense, classical utilitarianism gives what it regards as the aggregate good priority over what it regards as the goods of distinct individuals. b. Adam Smith denies that human beings are, by, According to Locke, a. individuals are morally entitled to take others property b. property is a moral right c. individuals are not morally entitled to the products of their labor d. property, How do these four features of capitalism relate to you as an individual residing in the "land of free enterprise.?" It is an alternative to 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). 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. This aspect of Rawls's attitude toward utilitarianism has attracted less attention. There are also two arguments for the second point, that some people would find it unacceptable to live under utilitarianism. It should invest significant resources in trying to equalize opportunity, but equal opportunity is just one goal of social policy among others, albeit a very important one. Leaving the utilitarians to one side for a moment, I think Rawls was trying to make a similar point about politics at the end of 28 and in 82. Rawls and utilitarianism - Pomona College (10) At first, she wasn't receptive to this offer, but she eventually agreed. Viewed in this light, the argument's significance as a contribution to the criticism of utilitarianism is easier to appreciate. These issues have been extensively discussed, and I will here simply assert that, despite some infelicities in Rawls's presentation, I believe he is correct to maintain that the parties would prefer his two principles to the principle of average utility. The project is But its fair to say that it has one dominant theme. Feature Flags: { See The Appeal of Political Liberalism, Chapter Eight in this volume. These arguments appeal to what Rawls calls finality and stability. 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. He added an argument to the effect that the parties are incapable of estimating probabilities; this is the second point above. See also Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical, 2489. As I have argued elsewhere, it is very difficult to see how this might work.31 For one thing, the participants in the consensus he describes are envisioned as converging not merely on the principles that constitute a political conception of justice, but also on certain fundamental ideas that are implicit in the public political culture and from which those principles are said to be derivable. Since utilitarianism puts individual liberty on the same scale as economic opportunity and wealth, he reasoned, the parties would reject utilitarianism. But this is no reason not to try (TJ, p. viii/xviii rev.). "As Rawls says, there is a sense in which classical utilitarianism fails to take seriously the distinction between persons.", Rawls rejects utilitarianism, and puts forth his own theory in his famous. 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. The same, as I have already suggested, is true of Rawls's claim that utilitarianism tolerates unacceptable interpersonal tradeoffs. Rawlss Egalitarianism reaffirms the centrality of one of the twentieth centurys foremost political philosophers in informing our thinking about the twin issues of poverty and inequality that confront us afresh in the post-pandemic world. But Scheffler argues that Rawls's theory accommodates holistic pressures while maintaining a commitment to the inviolability of the individual. Utilitarianism, in Rawls's view, has been the dominant systematic moral theory in the modern liberal tradition. How to Formulate a Christian Perspective on Same-S April 20, 6:30 PM - Speaking to students on "Hope" - Monroe County Community College, May 3 - Preaching at Lenawee Christian School, Adrian, Michigan, May 4 - Preaching at National Day of Prayer, Lenawee County, Michigan, May 17-18-19 - Doing two Presence-Driven workshops at Resource Leadership Conference in Savoy, Illinois, June 3, 10, 17 - 2-Step Leadership - Zoom Mini-Conference, June 25-29 - With Chris Overstreet and Derrick Snodgrass; HSRM Annual Conference, Green Lake, Wisconsin, July 24-27 - Teaching "Marriage, Parenting, and Sexuality" in New York City at Faith Bible Seminary, April 12-13, 2024 - Boston, MA - Speaking on Spiritual Formation at annual retreat of Alliance of Asian American Baptist Churches. But the reason why a utilitarian society would fail the conditions is the same one Rawls had used before: someone in a utilitarian society could be a big loser and find life as a loser intolerable. The losses of some people may, in principle, always be outweighed by the greater gains of other people. 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. Holism about distributive justice draws support from two convictions. 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. Indeed, for some people, this is why Rawls's complaint that utilitarianism does not take seriously the separateness of persons has such resonance. During the trip, Sacagawea was able to visit her original Shoshone family, when she was briefly reunited with her brother. To the extent that this is so, they can help to illuminate Rawls's complex attitude toward utilitarianism: an attitude that is marked by respect and areas of affinity as well as by sharp disagreements. Rawls contends that people would find losing out in this way unacceptable. 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. 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. Social institutions structure people's lives in fundamental ways from birth to death; there is no presocial moment in the life of the individual. Thus it would not occur to them to acknowledge the principle of utility in its hedonistic form. The significance of this criticism is subject to doubts of two different kinds. This is, he says, a peculiar state of affairs, which is to be explained by the fact that no constructive alternative theory has been advanced which has the comparable virtues of clarity and system and which at the same time allays these doubts (TJ 52). First, since the parties agreement in the Original Position is final, they know that they cant go back on it once they get to the real world. 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. That is also one of the conditions on the original position. 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. 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. . 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? However, the argument's oblique relation to the original position construction may give rise to doubts of another kind. Columbia University Press, 1993 (paperback edition, 1996). 2 0 obj Lewis and Clark met Charbonneau, who offered to translate for them. 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. 6 0 obj But this makes it even less clear why classical utilitarianism should be associated with perfect altruism. @free.kindle.com emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. Instead, Rawls offers a contractualist, proceduralist account of 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. 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. However, as Rawls acknowledges, the maximin rule is very conservative, and its employment will seem rational only under certain conditions. Rawls's claim to have outlined a theoryjustice as fairnessthat is superior to utilitarianism has generated extensive debate. Although Rawls first outlines this strategy in section 26, it is important to emphasize that what he provides in that section is only a sketch of the qualitative structure of the argument that needs to be made if the case for these principles is to be conclusive (TJ 150). This is something he believes that utilitarianism can never do, despite the liberal credentials of its greatest advocates. One of the few times he has anything substantial to say about it is when he includes classical utilitarianismthe utilitarianism of Bentham and Sidgwick, the strict classical doctrine (PL 170)among the views that might participate in an overlapping consensus converging on a liberal political conception of justice, the standard example (PL 164) of which is justiceasfairness. In the parts we did read, Rawls argued that they would have decisive reasons not to follow this chain of reasoning and so they have decisive reasons to reject utilitarianism. Rawls suggests that teleological views may be drawn to monistic accounts out of a desire to avoid indeterminacy in the way the good is characterized, since for teleological views any vagueness or ambiguity in the conception of the good is transferred to that of the right (TJ 559). It is natural to think that rationality is maximizing something and that in morals it must be maximizing the good (TJ 245). The utilitarians will emphasize their ability to cope with disasters, cases where suspensions of the normal rules of justice are needed. In the end, he speculates, we are likely to settle upon a variant of the utility principle circumscribed and restricted in certain ad hoc ways by intuitionistic constraints. We also know that the maximin rule would not lead them to choose utilitarianism. In both cases, the parties are said to fear that their own interests might be sacrificed for the sake of the larger utilitarian goal. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service. Since theyre on the same scale, you could compare them and even make up for deficits in the one with an excess of the other. ), Find out more about saving to your Kindle, Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521651670.013. T or F: Libertarians involves a commitment to leaving market relations - buying,selling, and other exchanges - totally unrestricted. Content may require purchase if you do not have access. Write the letter of the choice that gives the sentence a meaning that is closest to the original sentence. [the original position] irrespective of any special attitudes toward risk (TJ 172). Thus, the excessive riskiness of relying on the principle of insufficient reason depends on the claim about the third condition, that is, on the possibility that average utility might lead to intolerable outcomes. 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. Furthermore, Rawls asserts, the possibility that the society might allow some members to lose out would cause its members to lose self-esteem. This is a decisive objection provided we assume that the correct regulative principle for anything depends on the nature of that thing, and that the plurality of distinct persons with separate systems of ends is an essential feature of human societies (TJ 29). 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. 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. 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. . 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. Of course, utilitarians will be unimpressed. 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. If, however, there is some dominant end to which all of our other ends are subordinated, then a rational decision is always in principle possible, since only difficulties of computation and lack of information remain (TJ 552). In this sense, both Rawls and the utilitarian take a holistic view of distributive justice: both insist that the justice of any particular assignment of benefits always dependsdirectly or indirectlyon the justice of the larger distribution of benefits and burdens in society. Executing a few Danish cartoonists may bring pleasure to a Muslim mob. For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription. These people will inevitably conclude that his criticisms of utilitarianism do not go far enough, and that his own theory exhibits some of the same faults that they see in the utilitarian view. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. In light of this assessment of the utilitarian conception of the good and his own defence of a pluralistic conception, Rawls's comment in section 15, that utilitarianism and his theory agree that the good is the satisfaction of rational desire (TJ 923) seems misleading at best. Of course, as Rawls recognizes, utilitarians frequently argue that, given plausible empirical assumptions, the maximization of satisfaction is unlikely to be achieved in this way. d) It Doing this would achieve greater satisfaction for a greater number of people. The basis for a valid desert claim, on this view, must always be some characteristic of or fact about the deserving person. Yet that capacity is, as a rule, not strong enough nor securely enough situated within the human motivational repertoire to be a reliable source of support for utilitarian principles and institutions. 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. These chapters identify. 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. Leslie Mulholland, Rights, Utilitarianism, and the Conflation of Persons. endobj Finally, it should give a list of individual liberties great, but not absolute, weight.. 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. However, the characterization of classical utilitarianism as the ethic of perfect altruists seems puzzling, given the fact that the classical view is said to conflate all persons into one. 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. The force of this challenge, moreover, is largely independent of Rawls's claims about the justificatory significance of the original position construction. Pleasant or agreeable feeling, in particular, cannot plausibly be thought to constitute such an aim. Rawlss single-minded focus on presenting an alternative to utilitarianism is a blessing and a curse. However, utilitarians reject the publicity condition. Rawls denies that the parties in the original position can assign probabilities. Solved John Rawls rejects utilitarianism because: 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. In this context, utilitarianism, with its prominent place in the traditions of liberal thought and its various more specific affinities with Rawls's own view, presents itself as a natural ally. Significantly, Nozick classifies both the utilitarian and the Rawlsian principles of justice as endresult principles. They help to explain why it can be tempting to think that Rawls's principles display the very faults for which he criticizes utilitarianism. 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.). Adopting one of them as a first principle is sure to lead to the neglect of other things that should be taken into account. This has been a perennial thorn in my side because I cant get a handle on what theyre supposed to be incapable of estimating. . Classical utilitarianism identifies the good life for an individual as a life of happiness or satisfaction. As we know, Rawls thinks that leaves the maximin rule as the one that they should use. We know her best as the Native American guide who accompanied Hugo Bedau, Social Justice and Social Institutions. Herein lies the problem. 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. 2) the His primary goal is no longer to develop his two principles as an alternative to utilitarianism, but rather to explain how a just and stable liberal society can be established and sustained in circumstances marked by reasonable disagreement about fundamental moral and philosophical matters. The first, which I have already mentioned, is Rawls's aspiration to produce a theory that shares utilitarianism's systematic and constructive character.