No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Considerations of Justice and their place in the ethical evaluation of human behavior is the focus of almost all criticism of utilitarianism as an adquate and self-sufficient criterion for determining the morality of human action.
In turn, the historical turns of utilitarianism—the move from a criterion which evaluates individual acts according to their utility to a criterion which evaluates acts in accordance with their conformity to de facto or ideal utilitarian rules, the presentation of utilitarianism as a logical thesis rather than a normative principle, the argument by some philosophers that the utilitarian consequences which Justify actions must be optimific in terms of happiness produced rather than mere pleasure experienced, and, by others, that the Justifying utilitarian consequences must be even more broadly construed as “instrinsically worthwhile“—all represent attempts by utilitarians to overcome, in one way or another, the charge of injustice.
1 Anthony Quinton, “On Punishment,” reprinted in freedom and Moral Responsibility, edited by Herbert Morris (Stanford, Connecticut: Stanford University Press, 1961), p. 514.
2 Benn, S. I. and Peters, R. S., Principles of Political Thought (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1959). pp. 201–227.Google Scholar
3 Rawls, John, “Two Concepts of Rules,” Philosophical Review, 64 (1955), 3–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Quinton, op. cit., p. 514.
5 For a discussion on whether or not there must be some pretense of guilt and offense, see my “The Criteria of Punishment: Some Neglected Considerations”, this Journal, 2 (1972-3), 363-377.
6 Although the phrase “contextual” is Nowell-Smith's, the appropriate analysis of the oddities which are here termed “contextual” belongs, in my view, to H. P. Grice. On Nowell-Smith's account the meaning and therefore the implications of a sentence are contingent on the conditions under which that sentence is asserted with the result that the meaning and implications of a sentence may vary from context to context. On Grice's view, the meaning and therefore the implications of a sentence remain constant; it is the assertion of the sentence which entitles us to draw different inferences according to the different circumstances under which it is made. Cf. Nowell-Smith, Ethics (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1954), pp. 95-105, and Grice, H.P., “The Casual Theory of Perception,” Proceedings of The Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Vol. 35 (1961), 121-52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 The denial here of guilt as a defining feature of the concept of punishment in no way denies its role in a system of punishment. It is doubtful that there could be a system of inflicting suffering, rightly termed “punishment,“ without there figuring in this system some reference to offense and offender and, therefore, to guilt. But, the defining features of the concept of punishment and those of a system of punishment are not necessarily the same.
8 Benn and Peter, op. cit. (Emphasis added.)
9 Rashdall, Hastings reminds us that” … popular ideas as to the moral gravity of many offenses depend largely upon the punishment which is awarded to them by the criminal courts.” The Theory of Good and Evil (London: Oxford University Press, 1948), p. 296.Google Scholar
10 McCloskey, H. J., “A Non-Utilitarian Approach to Punishment.” Inquiry, 8 (1965), p. 262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11 Concerning the controversy over whether Mill was an ‘act’ or ‘rule’ utilitarian, See Urmson, J.O., “The Interpretation of the Moral Philosophy of J.S. Mill,” Philosophical Quarterly, 3 (1953). 33-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Mabbott, J. D., “Interpretations of Mill's Utilitarianism,” Philosophical Quarterly, 6 (1956), 115-20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12 Actually, this is only one (not very precise) way of expressing the rule — utilitarian position. But it will do to bring out the point relevant to our discussion.
13 And, to the extent that it produces results which are, on analysis, the same as those yielded by act-utilitarian assessments, the move has no moral significance. See, in this regard, Lyons, David, Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism (Oxford Univ. Press, 1965).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14 Rawls, op. cit., p. 25
15 Ibid. p. 26
16 Ibid. p. 10 (Emphasis added.)
Although Rawls offers this as a definition of “punishment,” it is clear that he restricts his definition to the institution of legal punishment. Suffering inflicted without establishment of guilt by trial, outside of state authority, and without advance public notice of offense and penalty, may still qualify as punishment — by a parent of a child, for example — though it would not, of course, qualify as being within legal practice.
It is not clear whether Rawls intends his definition to be all-inclusive or whether, more likely, he deliberately restricts it to legal cases, a restriction which would be understandable were utilitarianism viewed today, as it was by those who introduced it, as a program for political and social remedy rather than, as it is currently defended, a coherent ethical theory designed to provide a criterion of Judgment relevant to any moral issue and hence to punishments of all sorts.
17 Ibid., p. 31
18 In listing these rules I draw heavily from suggestions made by J. L. Austin concerning the rules which apply to the felicitous execution of all performative utterances. Cf. Austin, J. L., How To Do Things With Words, edited by Urmson, J. O. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965).Google Scholar
19 The line between when a promise fails for one reason and when it fails for another is, as this example suggests, not always very clear.
20 Rawls conceds that the rules of promising do not rule out the breaking of Promise altogether. What he questions is only whether these rules rule out the breaking of a promise for utilitarian reasons.