See for example PL 1345. In conditions of moderate scarcity, we cannot tell whether a particular person should receive a given benefit without knowing how such an allocation would fit into the broader distribution of benefits and burdens within the society. Doing this would achieve greater satisfaction for a greater number of people. 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. 8 0 obj to the dominant utilitarianism of the tradition (TJ viii). Up to a point, then, Rawls and the utilitarian are engaged in a common enterprise, and it is against the background of what they have in common that Rawls takes utilitarianism as his primary target of criticism in Theory. Nevertheless, the impulse to treat some form of utilitarianism as a candidate for inclusion in the consensus, when considered in the context of Rawls's aims in Political Liberalism and his sympathy for certain aspects of the utilitarian doctrine, no longer seems mysterious.33 Whether or not the tensions between that impulse and his forceful objections to utilitarianism can be satisfactorily resolved, they provide a salutary reminder of the complexity of Rawls's attitude toward modern moral philosophy's predominant systematic theory. One of these arguments seeks to undercut the main reason the parties might have for choosing average utilitarianism. 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. 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. 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. It simply does not fit the values that, he asserted, people have. It might recommend an extremely crowded and consequently unhappy world, like the one portrayed in the movie Soylent Green. Perhaps one might even say that it is precisely because he agrees with utilitarianism about so much that Rawls is determined to provide an alternative that improves upon it in the respects in which it is deficient. Thomas Pogge, Three Problems with ContractarianConsequentialist Ways of Assessing Social Institutions. 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. As Rawls says: A distribution cannot be judged in isolation from the system of which it is the outcome or from what individuals have done in good faith in the light of established expectations. Eventually, youll get back to even. This alternative wasnt ever compared with his principles in the Original Position. In arriving at this conclusion, it is important to guard against an excessively narrow, formalistic interpretation of the maximin argument.6 As already noted, Rawls's initial account in section 26 of the reasons for relying on the maximin rule is merely an outline of what he will attempt to establish subsequently. I will then examine an argument by Nozick and by Michael Sandel to the effect that there is a tension between certain aspects of Rawls's theory and his criticisms of utilitarianism. 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. Because the explorers could not communicate with the Native Americans they encountered, it was difficult to maintain peaceful relationships. 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. 12 0 obj There was a handout for this class: 24.RawlsVsUtilitiarianism.handout.pdf. WebRawls against utilitarianism We talked about Rawlss contention that the parties in the original position would reject maximizing average utility as the fundamental principle for Rawls contends that people would find losing out in this way unacceptable. 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. Nevertheless, once we recognize that, for some people, the words in which Rawls articulates his criticism may serve as a way of expressing resistance to holism, it is understandable why some who have echoed those words have not followed Rawls in seeking to devise a constructive and systematic alternative to utilitarianism. In effect, then, an intuitionist conception of justice is but half a conception (TJ 41). . 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). They note that I sometimes watch TV when I could be doing things for my childs future. d) It Question 4 rawls rejects utilitarianism because a he - Course Hero While there would be no need to provide a better theory if utilitarianism did not have serious faults, the effort would hardly be worth making if it did not also have important virtues. My discussion follows those of Steven Strasnick, in his review of. See also Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical, 2489. Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. The classical utilitarian, Rawls argues, reasons in much the same way about society as a whole, regarding it as legitimate to impose sacrifices on some people in order to achieve greater advantages for others. please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. "A utilitarian would have to endorse the execution." The force of this challenge, moreover, is largely independent of Rawls's claims about the justificatory significance of the original position construction. <> Utilitarianism, in Rawls's view, has been the dominant systematic moral theory in the modern liberal tradition. But this suggests that the parties reject theories of justice that incorporate monistic conceptions of the good because Rawls's argument for pluralism has led him to design the original position in such a way as to guarantee that they will do so. Rawls Notes - Sacramento State It is Rawls, after all, who says that a distribution cannot be judged in isolation from the system of which it is the outcome or from what individuals have done in good faith in the light of established expectations, and who insists that there is simply no answer to the abstract question of whether one distribution is better than another. T or F: Libertarians involves a commitment to leaving market relations - buying,selling, and other exchanges - totally unrestricted. WebAbstract. In this sense, desert as traditionally understood is individualistic rather then holistic. Rawls and Utilitarianism | Boundaries and Allegiances: Problems We know her best as the Native American guide who accompanied In Political Liberalism, the context of discussion has shifted. 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. 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. In general, the use of maximin is said to be rational when there is no reliable basis for assessing the probabilities of different outcomes, when the chooser cares very little for gains above the minimum that could be secured through reliance on maximin, and when the other options have possible consequences that the chooser would find intolerable. 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. It describes a chain of reasoning that would lead the parties in the original position to choose utilitarianism. 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. 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). 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). } Taken together, these three features of his view mean that, like the utilitarian, he is prepared to appeal to higher principle, without recourse to intuitionistic balancing, to provide a systematic justification for interpersonal tradeoffs that may violate commonsense maxims of justice. They adopt a particular rule for making decisions under uncertainty: maximize expected utility. To save content items to your account, The argument between Rawls and the utilitarians thus ultimately comes down to some pretty fine points. "useRatesEcommerce": false With them came Sacagawea's baby, Jean Baptiste, to whom she'd given birth eight months before. Rawls's conjecture is that the contract doctrine properly worked out can fill this gap (TJ 52). I want to call attention to three of these commonalities. 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. I like TV as much as the next person, but I care about my child in a different way. Whatever the merits of this view, however, it is not one that Rawls shares. WebRawls and utilitarianism Main points A Theory of Justice tackles many things. As a result, Rawls writes, we often seem forced to choose between utilitarianism and intuitionism. 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. Such a view, he adds, is not irrational; and there is no assurance that we can do better. 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. Second, they regard what Rawls calls stability as an important criterion for choosing principles. If Rawls is telling the parties in the original position that they value something other than happiness or utility, then the original position is not a fair test between utilitarianism and Rawlss principles. Feature Flags: { 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). 2) the 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. The parties have to avoid choosing principles that they might find unacceptable in the real world, outside the original position. See The Appeal of Political Liberalism, Chapter Eight in this volume. In this way, we may be led to a monistic account of the good by an argument from the conditions of rational deliberation (TJ 556). {+ aa?=,|[4/ 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. 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. (6) Sacagawea, with the baby on her back, and seemingly heedless of danger, calmly salvaged the equipment. Mill argued for the desirability of breaking down the sharp and hostile division between the producers or workers, on the one hand, and the capitalists or owners, on the other hand, T or F: According to libertarianism, liberty is the prime value, and justice consists in being free from the interference of others. Social institutions structure people's lives in fundamental ways from birth to death; there is no presocial moment in the life of the individual. Rawls's strategy is to try to establish that the choice between average utility and his two principles satisfies these conditions because (1) the parties have no basis for confidence in the type of probabilistic reasoning that would support a choice of average utility, (2) his two principles would assure the parties of a satisfactory minimum, and (3) the principle of average utility might have consequences that the parties could not accept. 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. Samuel Freeman, Utilitarianism, Deontology, and the Priority of Right. The first is almost certainly wrong: the parties do know the chances of being any particular person are equal to the chance of being anyone else.
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