Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Ethics.
http://www.jstor.org
LeonardChoptiany
Victoria College, University of Toronto
the device lends unearnedcredit to the concept or theory if the choice of illus-
tration is attractive in itself. Who could entirely despise Hobbes's notion of
sovereignty when told that it saves thousandsof unfortunatesfrom a life which
is "solitary,poor, nasty, brutish,and short"?
Rawls's theory is attractive for similar reasons. Laissez faire capitalist
writers, like Friedrich Hayek, have been telling us for years that the market
is a fair political mechanism because it is agreeableto, and permits the func-
tioning of, free self-interested agents.2But it has never been made clear how
being agreeableto egoists makes an institution just. While Rawls's theory does
not provide this explanation,it does claim to have derived the only principles
of justice which wouldbe accepted by rational egoists. The mere showing that
rational egoists could acceptprinciples of justice has been sufficient to earn
Rawls'stheory considerablepraiseand attention.
Seen in the capitalistpolitical tradition, Rawls's rationale for his theory is
closer to Hayek than to Kant. Rawls says, "The aim of the contract doctrine
is precisely to account for the strictnessof justice by supposingthat its princi-
ples arisefrom an agreementamong free and independentpersonsin an original
position of equality and hence reflect the integrity and equal sovereignty of the
rationalpersons who are the contractees." Thus, Rawls is concerned to attack
utilitarianconceptions of justice for their collectivist implications.It is a small
step from the utilitarianprecept that justice is a matter of the common good
to the socialisttheories which justify the subordinationof individualgain to the
welfare of the group.
It is worth noting that Rawls's principlesof justice would not be just even
were his derivation to succeed. They are neither necessary nor sufficient as
principles of justice.
The second, or 'difference'principle is much too strong. It specifies that
inequalities are arbitrary unless they will work out to the advantage of the
representativeman. But this Pareto-inclusiverule prevents any redistribution
which lowers the wealth of the rich from being consideredjust.
The 'difference'principle is not sufficient either, since it gives no specifi-
cation of the size of the inequality allowed in comparisonwith the amount of
the advantageprovided. Any inequality, no matter how great, would be justi-
fied by any advantage,no matter how slight, to the badly off. Rawls does not
call this perfectly just, but he considers it 'just' all the same.4
While I consider these and similarobjections5to the content of his theory
to be telling, I think it is importantto challenge the derivationof Rawls's prin-
ciple itself.
2. Cf. The Constitution of Liberty (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960),
pp. 99-100. Hayek argues that while capitalist economic systems do not achieve "dis-
tributive justice" (because the latter requires the assessment of merit by the state),
they do strive for "commutative justice."
3. "Distributive Justice," Philosophy, Politics and Society, ed. P. Laslett and
W. G. Runciman, 3d ser. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967), p. 59.
4. "DistributiveJustice," p. 66.
5. C.f. A. K. Sen, Collective Choice and Social Welfare (San Francisco: Holden-
Day, 1970), pp. 135-41.
Rawls at one point seems to have sensed this, since in "The Sense of Jus-
tice" he suggests that "the parties in the original positions are assumed to be
moral persons abstracted from certain kinds of knowledge of themselves and
their situation."12
If Rawls is prepared to allow moral sentiments in the contract situation,
then the door is open to a utilitarian solution. In a footnote to "Distributive
Justice," Rawls says: "Given the circumstances of the original position, it is
rational for a man to choose as if he were designing a society in which his
enemy is to assign him his place. Thus, in particular, given the complete lack
of knowledge . . . it is rational to be conservative and so to choose in accor-
dance with an analogue of the maximin principle.... Moreover, it seems clear
how the principle of utility can be interpreted: it is the analogue of the La-
placean principle for choice uncertainty."'3
The maximin principle is, roughly, to choose the act whose security level
(minimum utility) is highest. The Laplacean Principle of Insufficient Reason is
that, if one is ignorant as to which state of nature will obtain, then one should
behave as if they are equally likely. In that case, one chooses the act with the
largest expected utility. The specific analogue to it in the contract situation is
taken by Rawls to be the choosing of principles which would tend to maximize
the utility of the group as a collectivity when followed in the practice.14
If one thinks that rational egoists could not accept the Laplacean strategy
because it calls for a nonegoistic commitment to the group-that is, a moral
stance-it should now be clear that Rawls's maximin principles cannot be ad-
hered to without a similar stance. One can neither draw blood from a stone nor
extract moral principles from the decisions of rational egoists.
12. "The Sense of Justice," Philosophical Review 72 (1963): 301 (italics added).
13. "DistributiveJustice," p. 61 n.
14. If the possible future states are a, b, c, . . ., n, and f (i) is the expected utility
of any one of them, then the Laplaceansolution is to attempt to maximize f (a) + f (b)
+ f(c) + . . . + f (). This ranges over all the roles of the practice situation, and is
tantamountto the strategy of maximizing the utility of everyone in the group.