This is the flaw in Brian Barry's response to my earlier discussion (in The Appeal of Political Liberalism) of utilitarian participation in an overlapping consensus. Final Exam Managerial Ethics Flashcards | Quizlet Nozick suggests that Rawls can avoid this tension only by placing an implausible degree of weight on the distinction between persons and their talents.17 Michael Sandel, following up on Nozick's point, argues that Rawls has a theory of the person according to which talents are merely contingentlygiven and wholly inessential attributes rather than essential constituents of the self.18 For this reason, Sandel argues, Rawls does not see the distinctness of persons as violated by the idea of treating the distribution of talents as a common asset. 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. In that book, of course, Rawls's aims are different from his aims in A Theory of Justice. As we know, Rawls thinks that leaves the maximin rule as the one that they should use. 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. 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. (These conditions are listed in a handout.). They both turn on the possibility that some people would lose out when everyones interests are aggregated together. 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. As Rawls says: Teleological views have a deep intuitive appeal since they seem to embody the idea of rationality. But this is no reason not to try (TJ, p. viii/xviii rev.). I have discussed some related themes in Individual Responsibility in a Global Age, Chapter Two in this volume. They would be unwilling to take the chance that, in a society governed by utilitarian principles, a utilitarian calculation might someday provide the basis for a serious infringement of their liberties, especially since they have the more conservative option of the two principles available to them. 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. For helpful discussions of this line of criticism, see. It is reasonable, for example, to impose a sacrifice on ourselves now for the sake of a greater advantage later (TJ 23). Rawls' Rejection of Utilitarianism - John Piippo Thus it would not occur to them to acknowledge the principle of utility in its hedonistic form. That is also one of the conditions on the original position. 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. it might permit an unfair distribution of burdens and benefits Rawls hopes to derive principles of social justice that rational persons would Rawls contends that people would find losing out in this way unacceptable. Rawls's conjecture is that the contract doctrine properly worked out can fill this gap (TJ 52). Pleasant or agreeable feeling, in particular, cannot plausibly be thought to constitute such an aim. If this is correct, then it remains difficult to see how classical utilitarianism could be included in an overlapping consensus. <>/Metadata 864 0 R/ViewerPreferences 865 0 R>> Furthermore, Rawls asserts, the possibility that the society might allow some members to lose out would cause its members to lose self-esteem. 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. A particularly difficult conflict between the explorers and a group of Sioux, in South Dakota, convinced Lewis and Clark that they needed an interpreter. WebRawls rejects utilitarianism because a. he saw it as a threat b. it might permit an unfair distribution of burdens and benefits c. governments wanted it d. it values moral purity it @kindle.com emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. The fact remains, however, that classical utilitarianism attaches no intrinsic importance to questions of distribution, and that it imposes no principled limit on the extent to which aggregative reasoning may legitimately be employed in making social decisions. 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. This complaint connects up with a more general source of resistance to holism, which derives from a conviction that its effect is to validate a deplorable tendency for the lives of modern individuals to be subsumed within massive bureaucratic structures and for their interests to be subordinated to the demands of larger social aggregates and to the brute power of impersonal forces they cannot control. Rawls may well be right that we have these higher order interests and that utilitarianism is wrong about our fundamental interests in life. <> The second makes sense, though. Utilitarianism seeks to answer the question: how can we maximize people's, "A utilitarian would have to answer that the pain to the victim outweighs the pleasure to the rapist. "A utilitarian would have to endorse the execution." are highly problematical, whereas the hardship if things turn out badly are [sic] intolerable (TJ 175). 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). Nor, he maintains, does the irreducible diversity of our ends mean that rational choice is impossible. The risk could be very small or very large. These similarities may make it seem that Rawls's theory fails to remedy utilitarianism's neglect of the distinctness of persons. We have a hierarchy of aims, with some being of a different kind than others. 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. In this sense, classical utilitarianism gives what it regards as the aggregate good priority over what it regards as the goods of distinct individuals. endobj 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). At the end of Sacagawea's journey, Clark offered to raise and educate her son. I began by summarizing a section of the book that I did not ask you to read. 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. This leads him to the unexpected conclusion that the classical view is the ethic of perfect altruists, by contrast with the principle of average utility which, from the perspective afforded by the original position, emerges as the ethic of a single rational individual (with no aversion to risk) (TJ 189). See The Appeal of Political Liberalism, Chapter Eight in this volume. As I have argued elswhere, neither Rawls nor the utilitarian thinks about distributive justice in this way.29 For them, the principles of distributive justice, holistically understood, are fixed without reference to any prior notion of desert, and individuals may then be said to deserve the benefits to which they are entitled according to the criteria established by just institutions. 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. Both the theories are systematic and constructive in character, both treat commonsense notions of justice as deriving from a more authoritative standard, and both are committed to distributive holism, in the sense that they regard the justice of any assignment of benefits to a particular individual as dependent on the justice of the overall distribution of benefits in society. The same, as I have already suggested, is true of Rawls's claim that utilitarianism tolerates unacceptable interpersonal tradeoffs. So now we have one question answered. <> 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). 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. 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. Utilitarianism, in Rawls's view, has been the dominant systematic moral theory in the modern liberal tradition. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive. 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. 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. We may speak here of a contrast between monistic and pluralistic accounts of the good. "useRatesEcommerce": false 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. endobj 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. To save content items to your account, Has data issue: false After characterizing classical utilitarianism as the ethic of perfect altruists, moreover, Rawls goes on in the next several pages to ask what theory of justice would be preferred by an impartial, sympathetic spectator who did not conflate all systems of desires into one. But they agree on the need for such a criterion and on the derivative and subordinate character of commonsense precepts of justice. 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.?" There is no more reason for the parties to agree to this criterion than to maximize any other particular objective (TJ 563). If it is asked in the abstract whether one distribution of a given stock of things to definite individuals with known desires and preferences is better than another, then there is simply no answer to this question. Rawls and utilitarianism - Pomona College To accept a holistic account of justice, on this view, is to acquiesce in an erosion of the status of the individual which is one of the most striking features of modern life. endobj See Responsibility, Reactive Attitudes, and Liberalism in Philosophy and Politics, Chapter One in this volume. We talked about Rawlss contention that the parties in the original position would reject maximizing average utility as the fundamental principle for their society. They can also help us to see that some people may be troubled by Rawls's arguments against utilitarianism, not because they sympathize with those aspects of the view that he criticizes, but rather because they are critical of those aspects of the view with which he sympathizes. 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. 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. No. Yet Rawls says that this assumption is not founded upon known features of one's society (TJ 168). No loss would wipe them out and they will come out ahead in the long run. But its fair to say that it has one dominant theme. "A utilitarian would have to endorse the execution." 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. This does not mean that just institutions must give people what they independently deserve, but rather that, if just institutions have announced that they will allocate rewards in accordance with certain standards, then individuals who meet those standards can be said to deserve the advertised rewards. Although the case for holism has considerable force, and many of our intuitions about distributive justice are indeed holistic, there are other, nonholistic ideas about justice that also have widespread intuitive support. 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.