rawls rejects utilitarianism because rawls rejects utilitarianism because

Common sense precepts are at the wrong level of generality (TJ 308). Write the letter of the choice that gives the sentence a meaning that is closest to the original sentence. Rational choice must often rest instead on selfknowledge: on a careful attempt to ascertain which one of a diverse set of ends matters most to us. In Political Liberalism (xviixx and xliixliv) Rawls says that the account of stability given in Part III of the Theory is defective, because it tests the rival conceptions of justice by asking whether the wellordered society associated with each such conception would continue to generate its own support over time and, in so doing, this account implicitly assumes that in a wellordered society everyone endorses the conception on the basis of a shared comprehensive moral doctrine. 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. 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. 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). 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. 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 argument is not presented to the parties in the original position as a reason for rejecting utilitarianism or teleological views in general. 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. 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. <> Instead, he says, the [h]uman good is heterogeneous because the aims of the self are heterogeneous (TJ 554). As Rawls says: Teleological views have a deep intuitive appeal since they seem to embody the idea of rationality. They adopt a particular rule for making decisions under uncertainty: maximize expected utility. For instance, I suspect that most of us believe that something like the following is more plausible than Rawlss two principles (this is very rough). There are also two arguments for the second point, that some people would find it unacceptable to live under utilitarianism. Nor can the justice of an overall allocation of goods be assessed independently of the institutions that produced it. <> 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. If libertarianism is true, which of these statements is true? Furthermore, hedonism is the symptomatic drift of teleological theories (TJ 560) both because agreeable feeling may appear to be an interpersonal currency (TJ 559) that makes social choice possible and because hedonism's superficial hospitality to varied ways of life enables it to avoid the appearance of fanaticism and inhumanity (TJ 556). We also know that the maximin rule would not lead them to choose utilitarianism. Since utilitarianism puts individual liberty on the same scale as economic opportunity and wealth, he reasoned, the parties would reject utilitarianism. They have as much reason to assume the the probabilities of being any particular person are equal as they do for assuming they are unequal. It may be enough to show non-utilitarians why they reject utilitarianism, though. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. . To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org 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. Rawls may well be right that we have these higher order interests and that utilitarianism is wrong about our fundamental interests in life. ). For at least part of his complaint is that they exaggerate the significance of the overall distributional context and attach insufficient importance to local features of particular transactions. In 29, Rawls advances two arguments that, in my opinion, boil down to one. At the end of Sacagawea's journey, Clark offered to raise and educate her son. Content may require purchase if you do not have access. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 80. See for example PL 1345. This is not to say that their concern is insignificant. 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). on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Example 1. adversary adversaries\underline{\text{adversaries}}adversaries. The other two involve trying to show that the parties would choose Rawlss principles of justice in order to avoid results that they would find unacceptable. 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. 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. A French-Canadian trader named Toussaint Charbonneau lived with the Hidatsa. This possibility arises, Rawls suggests, because utilitarianism relies entirely on certain standard assumptions (TJ 159) to demonstrate that its calculations will not normally support severe restrictions on individual liberties. 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. But all the work in the argument will come from our decision about what to tell the parties in the original position rather than from what they choose. However, a number of critics have argued that Rawls's position has important features in common with utilitarianism, features in virtue of which his view is open to some of the very same objections that he levels against the utilitarian. endobj Given his focus on this new task, utilitarianism is relegated largely to the periphery of his concern. 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. 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). Thus, in looking at the two versions of utilitarianism from the standpoint of the original position, a surprising contrast (TJ 189) between them is revealed. Indeed, I believe that those two arguments represent his most important and enduring criticisms of the utilitarian tradition. (3) The planning of the expedition, however, showed some disregard for the realities of the journey. Herein lies the problem. 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. Its not enough just to insist that its one of the features of the Original Position. 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. "A utilitarian would have to endorse the execution." For these precepts conflict and, at the level of common sense, no reconciliation is possible, since there is no determinate way of weighing them against each other. Kenneth Arrow, Some OrdinalistUtilitarian Notes on Rawls's Theory of Justice, Holly Smith Goldman, Rawls and Utilitarianism, in, R. M. Hare, Rawls' Theory of Justice, in, John Harsanyi, Can the Maximin Principle Serve as a Basis for Morality? It might recommend an extremely crowded and consequently unhappy world, like the one portrayed in the movie Soylent Green. But utilitarianism has some problems. In this sense, desert as traditionally understood is individualistic rather then holistic. (6) Sacagawea, with the baby on her back, and seemingly heedless of danger, calmly salvaged the equipment. To be specific, in the parts we did not read, Rawls argued that the parties in the original position would choose to maximize average utility only if two conditions are met: Rawlss chief reason for denying that this makes sense is the familiar one: maximizing expected utility is too risky in this situation. 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). 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. <> 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. 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. Her presence also helped the explorers make friends. A utilitarian assumption is that we can put all good things on a single scale that they call 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. He and Sacagawea joined the expedition. 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. 10 0 obj This extension to society as a whole of the principle of choice for a single individual is facilitated, Rawls believes, by treating the approval of a perfectly sympathetic and ideally rational and impartial spectator as the standard of what is just. She \rule {2cm}{0.15mm} plants and animals, helping the explorers to describe the wildlife. It is a feature of the Original Position, of course. As Rawls says: The parties . (9) When Native Americans saw Sacagawea carrying her baby, they took it as a tacit sign that the explorers came in peace. 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. 6 0 obj 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 although, as I have argued, this temptation should be resisted, they help us to see that Rawls does share with utilitarianism some features that are genuinely controversial and are bound to generate some strong resistance to both views. d) It The arguments set out in section 29 explicitly invoke considerations of moral psychology that are not fully developed until Part III. Rawls's desire to provide a constructive conception of justice is part of his desire to avoid intuitionism. 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. It is not clear, however, what happened to the valiant woman who added so much to Lewis and Clark's expedition. Yet is probably fair to say that it has been less influential, as an argument against classical utilitarianism, than the argument offered independently of the original position construction. Stability means that they can only choose principles that they would accept if they grew up in a society governed by them. 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. 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. Some people would find it unacceptable to live under utilitarianism. WebAbstract. Which of the following statements about justice is NOT true. The problem is to explain how rational choices among apparently heterogeneous options can ever be made. A Critique of John Rawls's Theory, in, David Lyons, Nature and Soundness of the Contract and Coherence Arguments, in, Jan Narveson, Rawls and Utilitarianism, in, Justice and the Problem of Stability, (. 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. Yet both the Rawlsian and the utilitarian accounts are indeed holistic, and this may be part of what Nozick finds objectionable about them. 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. 2 0 obj 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. 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). If people are to be stably motivated to uphold utilitarian principles and institutions, even when those principles and institutions have not worked to their advantage, the capacity for sympathetic identification will have to be the operative psychological mechanism. T. M. Scanlon, Rawls' Theory of Justice, H. L. A. Hart, Between Utility and Rights, in. 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.). Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. it might permit an unfair distribution of burdens and benefits 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. The losses of some people may, in principle, always be outweighed by the greater gains of other people. Both views hold that commonsense precepts of justice must be subordinate to some higher principle or principles. 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. 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. Holism about distributive justice draws support from two convictions. These chapters identify. No loss would wipe them out and they will come out ahead in the long run. My discussion follows those of Steven Strasnick, in his review of. In, It is worth noting that, in his earlier paper, Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. We have to ask how, on Utilitarian principles, this influence is to be exercised. (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 force of this challenge, moreover, is largely independent of Rawls's claims about the justificatory significance of the original position construction. As we know, Rawls thinks that leaves the maximin rule as the one that they should use. As applied to Rawls, this characterization does not seem right, given the lexical priority of his first principle over his second principle and the fact that he treats the question of distributive shares as a matter of pure procedural justice. 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. Accordingly, what he proposes to do is to generalize and carry to a higher order of abstraction the traditional theory of the social contract as represented by Locke, Rousseau, and Kant. 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). Find out more about saving content to Dropbox. In light of this aspect of Rawls's theory, the temptation to claim that he attaches no more weight than utilitarianism does to the distinctions among persons, is understandable. The parties in the original position do not decide what is good or bad for us. However, utilitarians reject My hope is to arrive at a balanced assessment of Rawls's attitude toward utilitarianism. Has data issue: false . Thus his official arguments against utilitarianism take the form of arguments purporting to show that it would be rejected by the parties. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. 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. 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.