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Revisability and Rational Choice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Allen Buchanan
Allen Buchanan*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
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Extract

1. There is no dearth of objections to Rawls's A Theory of justice. Scores of articles and several books begin by praising the rigor and depth of Rawls's book — and end by concluding that it is thoroughly mistaken. In the present essay I will not add to the list of negative responses to A Theory of Justice. Instead I will attempt to reply to Rawls's critics in a way which makes a positive contribution to his theory.

2. Among the many objections that have been raised against Rawls's theory, two are of paramount importance. It is these two objections I shall attempt to meet. They may be formulated as follows.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , November 1975 , pp. 395 - 408
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1975

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Footnotes

*

In developing the ideas presented in this essay I am indebted to A. Kuflik and S. Darwall. Darwall was very helpful in steering me away from several errors in my discussion of revisability. It was Kuflik who first suggested to me that the strongest interpretation of Rawls's theory is the Kantian interpretation. It was this suggestion which prompted me to develop the arguments of the present essay. I would also like to thank the referees of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy for several helpful comments.

References

1 Rawls, A Theory of justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard U niversity Press, 1971), p. 11.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., pp. 408-15.

3 Ibid., p. 412.

4 Ibid., p. 92.

5 Ibid., pp. 396-97.

6 Ibid, pp. 62, 92-93.

7 The primary goods I list here are what Rawls calls the social primary goods; they are products of social cooperation. Among the natural primary goods, Rawls includes, vigor, imagination, health, and intelligence.

8 Schwarz, “Moral Neutrality and Primary Goods,” Ethics, vol. 83, p. 294.

9 Teitleman, “The Limits of Individualism,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. LXIX, no. 18, p. 551.

10 Rawls, pp. 139-40.

11 Ibid., p. 12.

12 Ibid, p. 136.

13 Rawls, “Fairness to Goodness,” (An unpublished essay) pp. 5 and 7. This passage is cited with the permission of the author.

14 Rawls, p. 207.

15 It is generally recognized that ].5. Mill gives a similar justification for liberties in general in Chapter Ill of On Liberty. The argument I have sketched is distinct from Mill's: it is at a higher level of abstraction and is not necessarily linked to Mill's radical value-empiricism nor to utilitarianism. Mill argues that liberty is required for the effective pursuit of one's own happiness through experimentation in practical experience and that social utility will be maximized by insuring equal liberty for all to engage in such experimentation. The difference is that while Mill views liberty as necessary for rationally informed conception- construction in the individual's conception of what is conducive to his own happiness, the argument I have presented views liberty as necessary for rationally informed construction and revision of the individual's conception of the good, where it is not assumed that the individual's conception is hedonistic or even egoistic.

16 It might be thought that this characterization of the parties implies that they are egoists. This is false. On p. 129 Rawls makes it clear that there is a distinction between one's own conception of the good and one's conception of one's own good and that the parties know only that they have a conception of the good: “It should be noted that I make no restrictive assumptions about the parties' conceptions of the good except that they are rational long-term plans. While these plans determine the aims and interests of a self, the aims and interests are not presumed to be egoistic or selfish.” Failure to attend to this passage has led many of Rawls's critics to make the mistake of describing the parties as being egoistically motivated.

17 Rawls, p. 254.

18 Kant, Band VIII, p. 305, Academy Edition.