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. Any further advantages that might be won by the principle of utility . The main grounds for the principles of justice have already been presented. 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. Common sense precepts are at the wrong level of generality (TJ 308). . 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. 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. There has been extensive discussion and disagreement both about the meaning and about the merits of Rawls's claim that utilitarianism does not take seriously the distinctions among persons. And since their choice represents the core of Rawls's official case against utilitarianism, one effect of the way he deploys the argument against monism may be to jeopardize that case. On the one hand, he certainly didnt cut any corners in examining utilitarianism. WebQuestion 4 Rawls rejects utilitarianism because: a) He saw it as a threat. Nor are less egalitarian views than Rawlss. 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. 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Sacagawea proved her value to the expedition on many occassions. (2) Their vigilant observations and careful recordings of the geography and wildlife helped open the area for settlement. The justice or injustice of assigning a particular benefit to a given individual will depend, for utilitarians, on whether there is any other way of allocating it that would lead to an overall distribution with greater (total or average) utility. 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). 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. Rawls may well be right that we have these higher order interests and that utilitarianism is wrong about our fundamental interests in life. But this is no reason not to try (TJ viii). The first, which I have already mentioned, is Rawls's aspiration to produce a theory that shares utilitarianism's systematic and constructive character. 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. 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. Harvard University Press, 1971. However, utilitarians reject the publicity condition. But an argument framed by conditions that utilitarians reject wont be enough to show utilitarians that they are wrong. But they agree on the need for such a criterion and on the derivative and subordinate character of commonsense precepts of justice. Thoughts about God, culture, and the Real Jesus. The argument is not presented to the parties in the original position as a reason for rejecting utilitarianism or teleological views in general. The idea that the distribution of natural talents should be regarded as a common asset is not the idea of an aggregate good that takes precedence over the goods of individual human beings. Yet Rawls's willingness to treat it as a candidate for inclusion, which initially seemed startling, may appear more understandable if one keeps in mind the complexity of his attitude toward utilitarianism in Theory. If libertarianism is true, which of these statements is true? 11 0 obj please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. 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. There was a handout for this class: 24.RawlsVsUtilitiarianism.handout.pdf. These chapters identify. He added an argument to the effect that the parties are incapable of estimating probabilities; this is the second point above. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide, This PDF is available to Subscribers Only. 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. 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. Surely, though, this is not why rape is wrong; the pleasure the rapist gets shouldnt be counted at all, and the whole thing sounds ridiculous. 1 0 obj Chapter 3 - Justice and Economic Distribution Flashcards
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