12 0 obj During the trip, Sacagawea was able to visit her original Shoshone family, when she was briefly reunited with her brother. Yet the most important of those arguments can also be formulated independently of the original position construction and, in addition, there are some arguments that are not offered from the vantage point of the original position at all. 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. 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. Fourth, they have argued that Rawls's own principles of justice are not altogether riskfree, since the general conception of justiceasfairness would permit the infringement of basic liberties under extraordinary conditions. Feature Flags: { Nor can the justice of an overall allocation of goods be assessed independently of the institutions that produced it. "lew Cxn{fxK4>t:u|]OIBHXD)!&Fhv=rt,~m#k#=5717[$765-2N,oa m CQF# fC4b,Im \QZZ~7 b{"e&G4?>SC } 6Kf5~:"Zo5|$HC^'GjD!DKV^plhVClFuzP.7ihS|eUZu4K)i%o lSP-Lm:=EgUrL;M/{&.vV)=QK,%x#O.Dd]@p-SY3` g fM. 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. 6 0 obj Consequently, Rawls reasons, it makes no sense to take the riskier rather than the safer option. Rawls and Utilitarianism | Boundaries and Allegiances: Problems 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. 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. On the other, non-utilitarian alternatives are left out. However, utilitarians reject the publicity condition. Rawls and utilitarianism - Pomona College I will conclude by discussing some apparent differences between Rawls's position in A Theory of Justice and his position in Political Liberalism.4. 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. 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. We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. 5 0 obj 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. 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 parties have to avoid choosing principles that they might find unacceptable in the real world, outside the original position. In theory, one or more of the commonsense precepts could themselves be elevated (TJ 305) to this status, but Rawls does not believe that they are plausible candidates. Rather, the original position has been structured so that utilitarianism is guaranteed to lose. A French-Canadian trader named Toussaint Charbonneau lived with the Hidatsa. 28 May 2006. For them, constructiveness, systematicity, and holism may all be symptomatic of a failure to attach sufficient moral importance to the separateness of persons. (5) The men aboard desperately worked to right the boat, oblivious to the books and instruments that were floating away. it might permit an unfair distribution of burdens and benefits A utilitarian assumption is that we can put all good things on a single scale that they call utility. If libertarianism is true, which of these statements is true? 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. If you were an atheist, what kind of ethical system would you appeal to? There are really two questions here. 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). 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. Solved John Rawls rejects utilitarianism because: I began by summarizing a section of the book that I did not ask you to read. We have a hierarchy of aims, with some being of a different kind than others. 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. The principle of average utility, as its name suggests, directs society to maximize not the total but the average utility (TJ 162). 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. 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 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. It may be enough to show non-utilitarians why they reject utilitarianism, though. 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. 8 0 obj Rawls rejects utilitarianism because it might permit Rawls's desire to provide a constructive conception of justice is part of his desire to avoid intuitionism. 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. After all, he had said in section 29 a) that the stability argument is one of the main arguments for the two principles (TJ 175), b) that it fits under the heuristic schema suggested by the reasons for following the maximin rule (TJ 175), and c) that it depends on the laws of moral psychology and the availability of human motives, which are only discussed later on (sections 7576) (TJ 177). 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. To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org endobj Cited hereafter as PL, with page references to the paperback edition given parenthetically in the text. In, It is worth noting that, in his earlier paper, Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. Rawls produced a number of arguments for this conclusion, some of which are quite technical. It is a feature of the Original Position, of course. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their expedition through the territory of the Louisiana Purchase, from 1803 to 1806. Why is Rawls against utilitarianism? - eNotes.com The risk could be very small or very large. This argument is straightforward and appears decisive. 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. endobj Furthermore, Rawls asserts, the possibility that the society might allow some members to lose out would cause its members to lose self-esteem. WebQuestion: John Rawls rejects utilitarianism because: 1) that maximizing the total well-being of society could permit an unfair distribution of burdens and benefits. It is natural to think that rationality is maximizing something and that in morals it must be maximizing the good (TJ 245). Defenders of the principle of average utility have challenged Rawls's arguments in a variety of ways. <> Why arent we talking about maximizing utility, period? Unless there is some one ultimate end at which all human action aims, this problem may seem insoluble. 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. Rawls would tell the parties in the original position these things about our values and they would use that as a reason to reject utilitarianism. 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. It isnt even considered by the parties. Herein lies the problem. The significance of this criticism is subject to doubts of two different kinds. 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. Which of the following statements about justice is NOT true. But its fair to say that it has one dominant theme. 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. Rawls gives distinct arguments against two forms of utilitarianism: the classical version and the principle of average utility. 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. 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. (These conditions are listed in a handout.). 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. Holism about distributive justice draws support from two convictions. 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. 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. 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. I have discussed some related themes in Individual Responsibility in a Global Age, Chapter Two in this volume. 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). 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. In other words, we normally think that it is reasonable for a single individual to seek to maximize satisfaction over the course of a lifetime. As we know, Rawls thinks that leaves the maximin rule as the one that they should use. Cited hereafter as TJ, with page references given parenthetically in the text. on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. 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. Second, they regard what Rawls calls stability as an important criterion for choosing principles. (Indeed, he claims that the design of the original position guarantees that only endresult principles will be chosen.) Furthermore, the argument from the fundamental ideas to the political conception is envisioned in Political Liberalism as proceeding via the original position, which is said to model the relevant ideas (PL Lecture I.4). This is something he believes that utilitarianism can never do, despite the liberal credentials of its greatest advocates. In this sense, utilitarianism takes the distinctions among persons less seriously than his principles do. It might permit an unfair distribution of burdens and benefits. This in turn may cast doubt on the justificatory significance of the parties' choice. In the Preface to A Theory of Justice, Rawls observes that [d]uring much of modern moral philosophy the predominant systematic theory has been some formof utilitarianism (TJ, p. vii/xvii rev.). 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. 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. <> endobj Final Exam Managerial Ethics Flashcards | Quizlet The possibility of such a consensus lies at the heart of his answer to the question of how a just and stable liberal society is possible in conditions of reasonable pluralism. In particular, he admires utilitarianism's systematic and constructive character, and thinks it unfortunate that the views advanced by critics of utilitarianism have not been comparably systematic or constructive. Since the parties regard stability as important, they want to avoid principles that people would find unacceptable. Rawls Notes - Sacramento State 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. 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. You may be unhappy if your child is chronically ill but that can be counterbalanced by watching enough TV. Has Rawls given reasons to prefer his principles of justice over something like these? 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). . For two years, the boy was carried on his mother's back. These are important differences between the two theories. %PDF-1.7 Nevertheless, there are some genuine commonalities between Rawls's conception of justice and utilitarianism, and these commonalities may be partly responsible for the perception that there is a tension between his endorsement of the former and his criticism of the latter. The parties in the original position do not decide what is good or bad for us. <> So now we have one question answered. No assessment of the overall distribution of benefits and burdens in society or of the institutions that produced that distribution is normally required in order to decide whether a particular individual deserves a certain benefit.
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rawls rejects utilitarianism because