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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 January 2009
1 More specifically, five of the eight chapters, which Rawls calls ‘lectures’, consist substantially of these articles: chs. 1, 4, 5, 7, and 8. Thus, ch. 1, §§ 1–5, corresponds to his ‘Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, xiv (1985), 227–44Google Scholar. Most notably, chs. 2 and 3 are based more loosely on, elaborating and reworking the main themes from, his Lectures, Dewey, ‘Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory’, Journal of Philosophy, lxxvii (1980), 515–72Google Scholar. (Rawls's, present book is also in the ‘John Dewey Essays’ Series by Columbia Univ. Press.) Ch. 4, §§ 3–8Google Scholar, corresponds, again essentially verbatim, to Rawls's, ‘The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus’, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, vii (1987), 10–25Google Scholar. For convenience in this essay, we will refer to these corresponding articles by year, and to his other major opus, just cited, as ‘TJ’ while the new book will be denoted as ‘PL’ where the reference is not otherwise clear. Additionally, this essay must critically address also Rawls's, Justice as Fairness: A Briefer Restatement, a 157-pageGoogle Scholar manuscript that circulated informally in the late 80s (in the version circulated to me, dated 1989 in Cambridge, Mass.). In the context of the present analysis, that ms. contains some more explicit argument that can be used to highlight deficiencies in his current PL, especially as related for example to political economics vis-à-vis the present game-theoretic and utilitarian concerns.
2 An expanded analysis of this model is given in my ‘Uncertainty in Moral Theory: An Epistemic Defense of Rule-Utilitarian Liberties’, Theory and Decision, xxix (1990), 133–60, esp. 139f.Google Scholar; and for further detail, cf. my ‘Choosing Between Choice Models of Ethics: Rawlsian Equality, Utilitarianism, and the Concept of Persons’, Theory and Decision, xxii (1987), 209–24Google Scholar.
3 TJ, pp. 20, 48; this general methodological approach was thematic already in Rawls's ‘Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics’, Phil. Review, l (1951), esp. pp. 184ffGoogle Scholar. This article also illustrates the distinction which we have drawn in the text above, between the ‘decision procedure’ and the ‘choice model’, since Rawls's more distinctive version of the latter – connecting moral judgement with rational choice – was not developed until later, in his essay ‘Distributive Justice’, anthologized in 1967 and 1987.
4 On Kant's denial of the divine command theory, for example, or ethical intuitionism vis-à-vis moral-sense theories, cf. Kant, I., Grundlegung, Verlag, Felix Meiner, Hamburg, 1965, pp. 48, 68Google Scholar; with id., Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Hamburg, 1974, pp. 55, 93, 107f.Google Scholar; and id., Metaphysik der Sitten, Hamburg, 1966, pp. 21, 242, 297, 353Google Scholar. On the other hand, Rawls's pragmatic turn in PL could arguably be construed as compatible with the spirit of (!) Kant's essay in reaction against the slogan, , ‘That may be right in theory, but doesn't work in practice’: in Kant, I., Kleinere Schriften zur Geschichtsphilosophie, Ethik und Politik, Hamburg 1973; cf. esp. pp. 71, 74ff., 95Google Scholar. In another essay connecting ethics and politics, viz. ‘On Perpetual Peace’, Kant presses the related idea that a moral principle must be publicizable: in ibid., cf. pp. 151, 166ff.
5 Habermas, Jürgen, Moralbewβtsein und kommunikatives Handeln, Frankfurt a.M., 1983, esp. pp. 68f., 72ff., 89, 105, 127, 140f.Google Scholar; and on his contrast with ‘utilitarianism’, cf. pp. 45, 59. Cf. Hare's, R. M. more recent comments in his Essays in Ethical Theory, Oxford, 1989, esp. ch. 1, and pp. 108, 213f., 229Google Scholar. In recent correspondence with me, Professor Hare has emphasized that his theory of ‘universalizability’ cannot be reduced to ‘pragmatics’ (à la Stevensonian emotivism); nevertheless, I would argue that much of his insight could be constructively assimilated within an extended Humean emotivistutilitarian perspective. On the more direct link of rationality to utilitarian ethics, vis-à-vis Brandt, R., A Theory of the Good and the Right, Oxford, 1979Google Scholar, and Gibbard, A., Wise Choices, Apt Feelings, Oxford, 1990, see n. 10Google Scholar below.
6 For readers of this journal, I have called attention to this ‘having/using’ distinction, and the related ‘pragmatic’ vis-à-vis game-theoretic problem in my ‘Maximin Justice, Sacrifice, and the Reciprocity Argument’, Utilitas, v (1993); cf. esp. 169Google Scholar; 184n.
7 This general methodological topic of ‘empirical arguments’ — especially as related to economics and utilitarianism — was explored in my doctoral dissertation (1978), the main chapters of which have subsequently been published in updated and expanded journal-article form: Cf. n. 2 above, with the extended analysis below at nn. 10f., as particularly pertinent for readers of this journal.
8 The most extensive single work illustrating and elaborating upon this decision-theoretic vis-à-vis game-theoretic problem in early Rawlsian theory is Wolff's, R. P. Understanding Rawls, Princeton, 1977, esp. ch. 15Google Scholar. Cf. Barry, Brian, The Liberal Theory of Justice, Oxford, 1973, esp. chs. 9–11Google Scholar, and Harsanyi, John C., ‘Can the Maximin Principle Serve as a Basis for Morality?’, American Political Science Review, lxix (1975), 594–606CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The ‘liberal bias’ objection is the main theme of Barry's book, esp. pp. 32f., 50, 120, 125f., 166. And for this more specific type of argument vis-à-vis Marx, Freud, and philosophy of science, cf. Wolff, esp. pp. 73, 121ff, 129–32, 138–41.
9 This is the main defect of the pervasive argument in R. P. Wolff's book, despite its useful historical orientation; i.e. Wolff attacks TJ as though it continued Rawls's methodological reliance on the ‘formal’ models of analysis associated with rational bargaining in utility theory, welfare economics and game theory: Understanding Rawls, cf. pp. 10, 71f, 120, 142, 161, 184f., 204, 210.
10 So argued for readers of this journal in my ‘Maximin Justice, Sacrifice, and the Reciprocity Argument’, esp. 168f., and 184, n. 33. And for related developments in rationality theory, see my ‘Gibbard's Evolutionary Theory of Rationality and Its Ethical Implications’, Biology & Philosophy, x (1995), 129–80, esp. sect. 4Google Scholar, and 170 as related to my Utilitas essays.
11 Cf. the ‘Symposium on Rawlsian Theory of Justice: Recent Developments’, Ethics, ic (1989): 717 (W. Galston on ‘enslavement as the outcome of a utilitarian calculus’)Google Scholar; 731, 742f., 746 (G. Cohen on the ‘uncertainty’ of utilitarian liberties, or possible ‘sacrifices’); 762, 765, 768–70 (T. Hill on ‘merging of interests’ and ‘sacrifices’); 797f., 804f, n. 17 (J. Hampton on the contingency/instrumentality of utilitarian liberty); 849f. (G. Doppelt on ideals of ‘personhood’ vs. utilitarian decision-making). Similarly cf. Über John Rawls' Theorie der Gerechtigkeit, ed. Höffe, Otfried, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1977, pp. 19f., 26, 121f.Google Scholar; with Critique: Revue générale des publications françaises et étrangères, xlv (1989): 416, 540 (C. Audard on utilitarian contingency)Google Scholar; 472 (J.-P. Dupuy on stock sacrifice objections); 487 (A. Ryan on sacrifice and conflation); 503, 505 (M. Rosen on utilitarianism as imposing impermissible risks or losses on others). Cf. esp. Jean-Paul Dupuy's essay, ‘La Théorie de la Justice: une machine anti-sacrificielle’, which attempts to defend utilitarianism from such ‘sacrifice’ objections, but still suggests that Rawls is right (or ‘has reason’) to assert that ‘one of the major weaknesses’ of utilitarian theory is its hinging economic equality or liberty on ‘ad hoc’ or ‘arbitrary’ empirical premises (474).
