These people will inevitably conclude that his criticisms of utilitarianism do not go far enough, and that his own theory exhibits some of the same faults that they see in the utilitarian view. Since there is, accordingly, no inconsistency between Rawls's principles and his criticism of utilitarianism, there is no need for him to take drastic metaphysical measures to avoid it.21. I have said that Rawls's appreciation for utilitarianism's systematic and constructive character has attracted less comment than his claim to have identified a theory of justice that is preferable to utilitarianism. The aim now is to show how liberal institutions can achieve stability in conditions of pluralism by drawing on diverse sources of moral support. I like TV as much as the next person, but I care about my child in a different way. 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. For relevant discussion, see. 8 0 obj John Rawls (b. 1921, d. 2002) was an American political philosopher in the liberal tradition. His theory of justice as fairness describes a society of free citizens holding equal basic rights and cooperating within an egalitarian economic system. See also Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical, 2489. Indeed, I believe that those two arguments represent his most important and enduring criticisms of the utilitarian tradition. Utilitarianism seeks to answer the question: how can we maximize people's, "A utilitarian would have to answer that the pain to the victim outweighs the pleasure to the rapist. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service. So that, strictly conceived, the point up to which, on Utilitarian principles, population ought to be encouraged to increase, is not that at which average happiness is the greatest possible,as appears to be often assumed by political economists of the school of Malthusbut that at which the product formed by multiplying the number of persons living into the amount of average happiness reaches its maximum.** The Methods of Ethics, IV.1.2, 34. Thus his official arguments against utilitarianism take the form of arguments purporting to show that it would be rejected by the parties. And the third is the fact that both the Rawlsian and the utilitarian accounts of distributive justice are, in a sense to be explained, holistic in character. They help to explain why it can be tempting to think that Rawls's principles display the very faults for which he criticizes utilitarianism. (2) Their vigilant observations and careful recordings of the geography and wildlife helped open the area for settlement. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. 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. 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. It seems peculiar to suppose that perfect altruists would neglect the distinctness of persons and support the unrestricted interpersonal aggregation to which such neglect is said to give rise. WebRawls and utilitarianism Notes for October 30 Main points. Some people would find it unacceptable to live under utilitarianism. Utilitarians are all about increasing happiness, after all, and assaulting peoples self-esteem or pushing them to regard social life as unacceptable are very strange ways of maximizing happiness. <> endstream endobj But this is no reason not to try (TJ, p. viii/xviii rev.). Result: Permitting some people to be better off than average resuls in the least-well-off x\wHnrA1lf7n;gkDTu}''oE7bD`/3O T:%3?*e Fp=wWZ8*|RvT90dy,1{|3D-gE{[*] V|+5Y(F=2gxcZ}IQh6\9;;bsMzal{z )TreGw$a'J6sm~O#|f7$k2Sb1_OGrm%b[Cmx(d-&M-
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