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Comment on Gibbard Utilitarianism Versus Human Rights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

James Fishkin
James Fishkin
Affiliation:
Political Science, Yale University
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Extract

Rather than respond to Gibbard, point by point, I will comment on what I take to be the general spirit of his argument. The old consensus on some form or another of utilitarianism, a consensus that dominated discussions in moral and political theory only a few years ago, has now largely evaporated before the heat of distributional objections founded on justice, the “separateness of persons,” and other concerns for the severe sacrifices that utilitarianism might require of some for the sake of greater gains to others (or for the sake of gains to a greater number of others).

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , Spring 1984 , pp. 103 - 107
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1984

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References

1 For some insightful remarks on this general transition see Hart, H. L. A. “Between Utility and Rights” in Ryan, Alan (ed.) The Idea of Freedom: Essays in Honour of Isaiah Berlin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

For one attempt to formulate distributional objections to utilitarianism and other key principles see my Tyranny and Legitimacy: A Critique of Political Theories (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1979).

2 For efforts to draw this distinction more precisely see Tyranny and Legitimacy 26–9 and Dworkin, RonaldTaking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978) 234–5Google Scholar.

3 Harman, GilbertThe Nature of Morality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977) 3–4Google Scholar.

4 This last right is not on his list but I assume it is an oversight.

5 For a discussion of this latter right and related issues of liberty see my Justice, Equal Opportunity, and the Family (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983).