I will conclude by discussing some apparent differences between Rawls's position in A Theory of Justice and his position in Political Liberalism.4. If that association is unwarranted, then the contrast between the classical and average views may be less dramatic than Rawls suggests, and the claims of the original position as an illuminating analytic device may to that extent be reduced. 1 0 obj Nevertheless, there are some genuine commonalities between Rawls's conception of justice and utilitarianism, and these commonalities may be partly responsible for the perception that there is a tension between his endorsement of the former and his criticism of the latter. This has been a perennial thorn in my side because I cant get a handle on what theyre supposed to be incapable of estimating. Has Rawls given reasons to prefer his principles of justice over something like these? <>/Font<>/XObject<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB/ImageC/ImageI] >>/MediaBox[ 0 0 960 540] /Contents 4 0 R/Group<>/Tabs/S/StructParents 0>> In my opinion, they mostly boil down to one point: the parties would not be willing to run the risk of being the big losers in a utilitarian society. The argument is that the parties, knowing that they exist and wishing only to advance their own interests, would have no desire to maximize the net aggregate satisfaction, especially since doing so might require growth in the size of the population even at the expense of a significant reduction in the average utility per person. To save content items to your account, Eventually, youll get back to even. b. Adam Smith denies that human beings are, by, According to Locke, a. individuals are morally entitled to take others property b. property is a moral right c. individuals are not morally entitled to the products of their labor d. property, How do these four features of capitalism relate to you as an individual residing in the "land of free enterprise.?" Significantly, Nozick classifies both the utilitarian and the Rawlsian principles of justice as endresult principles. But, they would say, this would happen only in dire conditions, when life was bound to be intolerable for some people anyway. endobj endobj Consequently, Rawls reasons, it makes no sense to take the riskier rather than the safer option. They adopt a particular rule for making decisions under uncertainty: maximize expected utility. But its fair to say that it has one dominant theme. x[K#A?. Since the impartial spectator identifies with and experiences the desires of others as if these desires were his own, his function is to organize the desires of all persons into one coherent system of desire (TJ 27). One of these is that they are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission. . And the problem becomes more acute, for the reasons given above, when the overlapping consensus is conceived of as affirming not merely liberal principles in general but Rawls's theory of justice in particular. First, it may seem that the criticism simply does not apply to contemporary versions of utilitarianism which do not, in general, purport to construe the good hedonistically. WebQuestion: John Rawls rejects utilitarianism because: 1) that maximizing the total well-being of society could permit an unfair distribution of burdens and benefits. Or, if TV isn't enough, do something else pleasurable: go to the opera, drink beer, master the piano, read Jeremy Bentham, etc. The fact that Rawls's attitude toward utilitarianism is marked not only by sharp disagreements but also by important areas of affinity may help to explain some otherwise puzzling things he says about the view in Political Liberalism. In Rawlss lingo, we have a highest order interest in the development of our two moral powers, the powers to have a rational plan of life and a sense of justice. Since he also believed that personal and political liberty are needed for personal and moral self-development, he thought that the parties would give priority to individual liberty over other goals, such as increasing economic opportunity or wealth. Instead, it is based on the principle of insufficient reason, which, in the absence of any specific grounds for the assignment of probabilities to different outcomes, treats all the possible outcomes as being equally probable.
