55 years have gone by since Rawls published his 'theory of justice'. In the preface, he explains what he was attempting.
Perhaps I can best explain my aim in this book as follows. During much of modern moral philosophy the predominant systematic theory has been some form of utilitarianism.
Rawls was familiar with GEM Anscombe's 1958 paper 'modern moral philosophy'. Virtue ethics is considered to have been influenced by this paper. Rawls could be considered to disagree with her 'three theses'.
I will begin by stating three theses which I present in this paper. The first is that it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking.
Rawls thinks that provided humans have a certain type of risk aversion, psychology is irrelevant. Rational analysis can, by itself, assert what a Just society would look like.
The second is that the concepts of obligation, and duty—moral obligation and moral duty, that is to say—and of what is morally right and wrong, and of the moral sense of 'ought', ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible; because they are survivals, or derivatives from survivals, from an earlier conception of ethics which no longer generally survives, and are only harmful without it.
Again, Rawls would say duties are economic & thus can their justice or injustice can be determined by purely rational means. In particular, there is a 'reflective equilibrium' just as, in Economics, there is 'general equilibrium' where all markets clear save by reason of specific 'market failures'.
My third thesis is that the differences between the well-known English writers on moral philosophy from Sidgwick to the present day are of little importance.
Rawls was taking issue with Harsanyi & Vickrey's use of the 'veil of ignorance' so as to provide a more Left-wing or compassionate alternative.
Was Rawls correct? He had taught a course alongside Ken Arrow & Amartya Sen, both of whom received Nobel Prizes for Econ and Econ, surely, is 'positive'- i.e. like Physics- not 'normative'- like Art.
One reason for this is that it has been espoused by a long line of brilliant writers who have built up a body of thought truly impressive in its scope and refinement. We sometimes forget that the great utilitarians, Hume and Adam Smith, Bentham and Mill, were social theorists and economists of the first rank;
Classical economists- maybe. But then you would have to add in Marx & Lasalle & so forth.
and the moral doctrine they worked out was framed to meet the needs of their wider interests and to fit into a comprehensive scheme.
What about Malthus & Ricardo who, arguably, were greater economists?
Those who criticized them often did so on a much narrower front.
The best criticism of an academic scribbler is to say that business men & policy makers ignore them completely.
Utility was the other side of the coin of productivity. As technological progress speeded up, there was bound to be greater interest in raising productivity by increasing 'efficiency' (i.e. what is achieved).
They pointed out the obscurities of the principle of utility and noted the apparent incongruities between many of its implications and our moral sentiments.
This had been done in an earlier age by Mandeville whom both Hutcheson & Smith attacked.
But they failed, I believe, to construct a workable and systematic moral conception to oppose it. The outcome is that we often seem forced to choose between utilitarianism and intuitionism.
Whereas what really matters is Expectations.
Most likely we finally settle upon a variant of the utility principle circumscribed and restricted in certain ad hoc ways by intuitionistic constraints. Such a view is not irrational; and there is no assurance that we can do better.
In other words, we can- by arbitrary stipulation- have something good enough for our purposes. We may say 'the cost of improving the thing isn't equal to any possible benefit we might receive from doing so.'
But this is no reason not to try. What I have attempted 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.
Particularly Kant for whom the thing is hypothetical. If everybody would agree to it (the publicity principle) it is just and, if you held Kant's beliefs, you would feel yourself morally bound to obey the laws of that Society.
In this way I hope that the theory can be developed so that it is no longer open to the more obvious objections often thought fatal to it. Moreover, this theory seems to offer an alternative systematic account of justice that is superior, or so I argue, to the dominant utilitarianism of the tradition. The theory that results is highly Kantian in nature. Indeed, I must disclaim any originality for the views I put forward.
Rawls was being modest. Still, it may have been that similar ideas had been floated in academic seminars in the previous decade.
I mentioned virtue ethics as having, to some extent, emerged from GEM Anscombe's essay. But was Rawls himself a virtue ethicist? Consider the opening of his first chapter-
Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought.
A utilitarian would say social institutions are good if they raise total factor productivity or allocative efficiency. A system of thought might be wholly false but if it is useful, why not use it?
Consider astrology. It is false to say that stars have any influence over us. But astrologers (at least in India) provide focal solutions for coordination or matching problems and thus astrology turns out to be rather useful. It may be that it, like geomancy, originated for this very reason.
A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue;
In STEM subjects- maybe. But solving collective action problems has to do with establishing or identifying public signals which promote better correlated equilibria.
likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust.
But the cure may be worse than the disease. In Economics, there is the 'second best theorem' which says that, when one distortion exists, the "second-best" solution is often to deliberately introduce other, offsetting distortions rather than attempting to fix the primary issue in isolation.
Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override.
None do. Lawyers & Judges & politicians may pretend otherwise but the thing simply isn't true.
For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others.
It may deny anything it likes. But this doesn't mean it speaks sooth.
It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many.
I don't allow myself to fart. I don't know why everybody calls me 'farty-pants'.
Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled;
they may be justiciable- e.g. a convict or incarcerated lunatic may be allowed to approach the court to secure her release.
the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests.
How are 'rights secured'? The answer is by the provision of remedies. But remedies are costly. To get resources allocated to them takes 'political bargaining' or 'the calculus of social interests'.
The only thing that permits us to acquiesce in an erroneous theory is the lack of a better one;
All theories are erroneous. Better theories may exist but finding out about them may be more costly than beneficial.
analogously, an injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice.
We don't know when such necessity arises because we are not omniscient.
Being first virtues of human activities, truth and justice are uncompromising.
Virtue ethics may hold to this view. But it isn't empirically valid.
These propositions seem to express our intuitive conviction of the primacy of justice.
Few of us greatly care about justice. Litigious people tend to be crackpots.
No doubt they are expressed too strongly. In any event I wish to inquire whether these contentions or others similar to them are sound, and if so how they can be accounted for.
They aren't sound- unless we are speaking of 'mere puffery'. They can be accounted for by monomania.
To this end it is necessary to work out a theory of justice in the light of which these assertions can be interpreted and assessed.
Why? If someone says 'Beauty is the ability to fart continually', we don't need a theory to dismiss the assertion as foolish and unfounded. I suppose if a Judge says Justice is the most important thing or if an Artist says Beauty is the most important thing or if I say 'what truly matters is farting', then we understand that people like praising their own calling in life.
I shall begin by considering the role of the principles of justice. Let us assume, to fix ideas, that a society is a more or less self-sufficient association of persons who in their relations to one another recognize certain rules of conduct as binding and who for the most part act in accordance with them.
Societies have to do different things at different times in order to survive. Rules become more or less binding or are superseded by other rules as circumstances dictate.
What Rawls is doing is concluding from the fact that we all think it impolite to fart while in refined company, that we also think it wrong to fart.
Suppose further that these rules specify a system of cooperation designed to advance the good of those taking part in it.
Why bother doing so? Following David Lewis, we may consider conventions to be Schelling focal solutions to coordination games- convenient enough but of no great importance in themselves.
Then, although a society is a cooperative venture for mutual advantage,
it may be. It may not. Man is a social animal. Men sometimes do stupid shit. Whole Societies, too, may do very stupid shit indeed.
it is typically marked by a conflict as well as by an identity of interests. There is an identity of interests since social cooperation makes possible a better life for all than any would have if each were to live solely by his own efforts.
This is an unreal alternative. People are sociable. Few would want to end up like Robinson Crusoe.
There is a conflict of interests since persons are not indifferent as to how the greater benefits produced by their collaboration are distributed, for in order to pursue their ends they each prefer a larger to a lesser share.
They may do. They may not.
A set of principles is required for choosing among the various social arrangements which determine this division of advantages and for underwriting an agreement on the proper distributive shares.
Why? Lots of people do well for themselves without any such thing. True, if you are a pedagogue, you may distinguish 'principles' from heuristic devices or rules of thumb. But most people aren't pedagogues. On the other hand, some legal regimes do distinguish principles applicable to certain types of cases. But that is a matter for lawyers. It isn't connected to a general theory of Justice.
These principles are the principles of social justice:
There may be no principles in a society which its people find to be just. Paternalistic regimes may have this quality.
they provide a way of assigning rights and duties in the basic institutions of society
the most basic is the family. But in a happy family nobody mentions rights or duties. Everything is done out of love.
and they define the appropriate distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation.
Nobody can do this. Expectations seldom match outcomes. Moreover, a benefit may turn out to be a burden & vice versa. There's many a man who thought the arrival of a baby would make his life harder. It didn't. Life became sweeter though- no doubt- money might be tight.
Now let us say that a society is well-ordered when it is not only designed to advance the good of its members but when it is also effectively regulated by a public conception of justice.
We don't know when a society is well-ordered. If it suddenly succumbs to an invasion, insurrection or economic collapse, we say it wasn't well-ordered at all. But this may have been because of unanticipated exogenous factors.
Do 'public conceptions' regulate anything at all? No. Regulation is done by people, not conceptions.
That is, it is a society in which (1) everyone accepts and knows that the others accept the same principles of justice,
how is this possible? Magic? An Angel appearing in the Sky and announcing that such is the case?
and (2) the basic social institutions generally satisfy and are generally known to satisfy these principles.
We don't know of anything which satisfies any principle whatsoever fully or in an absolute sense. Indeed, even in Mathematics there appear to be no absolute proofs.
In this case while men may put forth excessive demands on one another, they nevertheless acknowledge a common point of view from which their claims may be adjudicated.
A separate point of view. It may be held only by those whose profession it is to hold it. The thing doesn't need to be 'common' to all. Justiciability has this quality. There may be nobody in Society- including the Judges- who thinks a particular law is good but it remains the law till overturned. Similarly, in a dispute as to who is the better poet, we might agree that the matter should be settled by the Poet Laureate & in a dispute as to whose Pizza is better, the judge should be Garfield the cat.
If men’s inclination to self-interest makes their vigilance against one another necessary,
It doesn't. There is only a small class of people against whom Society needs to exercise vigilance & there can be separate provision for this- e.g. Homeland Security keeping track of possible terrorists.
their public sense of justice makes their secure association together possible.
Sadly, secure association may be lacking even if there is a public sense of justice & lots of law courts & hanging judges. The opposite is equally true.
Social contract theories are merely 'just-so stories'. The older story was that God was the Judge who either sent you to Heaven or Hell and the King, on Earth, was the shadow of God who hanged evil doers & rewarded the meritorious.
Among individuals with disparate aims and purposes a shared conception of justice
is impossible. James Bond does not share Dr. No's conception of justice. Where aims are different, you have 'separating equilibria' rather than a pooling equilibrium. Two people who want to have babies together get married. Rules which apply to the interactions of strangers don't apply to them.
establishes the bonds of civic friendship;
being civil does not involve bonding. We may apologize when we bump into a chap on the street. This doesn't make us bosom buddies.
the general desire for justice limits the pursuit of other ends.
There is no general desire for justice. It exists in a limited form but may be disintermediated because it is more urgent to pursue other ends.
One may think of a public conception of justice as constituting the fundamental charter of a well-ordered human association.
One may- if of one is a fucking cretin. Constitutions have no magic powers.
Existing societies are of course seldom well-ordered in this sense, for what is just and unjust is usually in dispute.
Usually? Always.
Men disagree about which principles should define the basic terms of their association.
Or they don't bother. The thing is 'mere puffery'.
Yet we may still say, despite this disagreement, that they each have a conception of justice.
Why stop there? Why not say they have a conception of farting or a conception of scratching their arse?
That is, they understand the need for, and they are prepared to affirm, a characteristic set of principles for assigning basic rights and duties and for determining what they take to be the proper distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation.
Nobody in their right mind would bother to do any such thing.
Thus it seems natural to think of the concept of justice as distinct from the various conceptions of justice and as being specified by the role which these different sets of principles, these different conceptions, have in common.
If so, it is also natural to think that the concept of farting is distinct from that of shitting. Yet, sharts occur. Everybody needs to affirm a characteristic set of principle for demarcating farting from sharting because I am writing a big fat book on the Theory of Farting and thus have to pretend that this isn't an utterly foolish and pointless exercise.
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