PHIL 490: ETHICS AND VALUE THEORY
READINGS PACKET #1
CONTENTS
1. Louis Pojman: Ethical Relativism and Objectivism
From Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong (2008)
2. John Locke: Natural Rights
From Two Treatises of Government (1690)
3. John Stuart Mill: Liberty of Speech and Action
From On Liberty (1859), Chapters 1, 2, 3 and 4
4. John Rawls: Justice as Fairness
From: “Justice as Fairness” (1958)
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#1
Ethical Relativism and Objectivism
Louis Pojman
Louis P. Pojman (1935-2005) was Professor of Philosophy at the United States Military Academy, West Point The selection below is from his book Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong (2009, sixth edition). Pojman evaluates two competing views regarding the source of moral values: ethical relativism and ethical objectivism. Ethical relativism in general is the view that moral values are human inventions, and there are two versions of this, both of which he criticizes. First, subjective ethical relativism holds that all moral principles are justified by virtue of their acceptance by an individual agent him or herself. The problem here is that on this view notions of good and bad cease to have interpersonal evaluative meaning, which thus undermines the very nature of moral judgments. Second, conventional ethical relativism, the more serious of the two positions, holds that all moral principles are justified by virtue of their cultural acceptance. This view entails that moral values vary from society to society (the diversity thesis) and that moral values depend on one’s society (the dependency thesis). He attacks conventional ethical relativism on three grounds. First, it undermines important moral values; for example, we can’t criticize anyone who espouses heinous principles, such as Hitler. Second, Pojman argues that moral diversity is exaggerated: there are some core moral values that we see throughout the world. Third, there are two ways of interpreting the dependency thesis, one of which does not imply relativism. Rejecting relativism, Pojman defends a moderate version of moral objectivism, the view that there are universal moral principles, valid for all people and social environments. He lists ten such cross-cultural moral principles and maintains that their objectivity arises from our common human nature.
In the nineteenth century, Christian missionaries sometimes used coercion to change the customs of pagan tribal people in parts of Africa and the Pacific Islands. Appalled by the customs of public nakedness, polygamy, working on the Sabbath, and infanticide, they went about reforming the “poor pagans.” They clothed them, separated wives from their husbands to create monogamous households, made the Sabbath a day of rest, and ended infanticide. In the process, they sometimes created social disruption, causing the women to despair and their children to be orphaned. The natives often did not understand the new religion but accepted it because of the white man’s power. The white people had guns and medicine.
Since the nineteenth century, we’ve made progress in understanding cultural diversity and now realize that the social conflict caused by “do-gooders” was a bad thing. In the last century or so, anthropology has exposed our fondness for ethnocentrism, the prejudicial view that interprets all of reality through the eyes of one’s own cultural beliefs and values. We have come to see enormous variety in social practices throughout the world. Here are a few examples.
A tribe in East Africa once threw deformed infants to the hippopotamus, but our society condemns such acts. Sexual practices vary over time and from place to place. Some cultures permit homosexual behavior, whereas others condemn it. Some cultures, including Muslim societies, practice polygamy, whereas Christian cultures view it as immoral. There are societies that make it a duty for children to kill their aging parents, sometimes by strangling.
This rejection of ethnocentrism in the West has contributed to a general shift in public opinion about morality. Specifically, it has led to a gradual erosion of belief in moral objectivism, the view that there are universal and objective moral principles, valid for all people and social environments. In this chapter we will examine the central notions of ethical relativism and look at the implications that seem to follow from it. There are two main forms of ethical relativism as defined here:
Subjective Ethical Relativism (subjectivism): all moral principles are justified by virtue of their acceptance by an individual agent him or herself.
Conventional ethical relativism (conventionalism): all moral principles are justified by virtue of their cultural acceptance.
Both versions hold that there are no objective moral principles and, instead such principles are human inventions. Where they differ, though, is with the issue of whether they are inventions of individual agents themselves, or of larger social groups. We’ll begin with the first of these, which is the more radical of the two positions.
SUBJECTIVE ETHICAL RELATIVISM
Some people think that morality depends directly on the individual—not on one’s culture and certainly not on an objective value. As some say, “Morality is in the eye of the beholder,” thereby treating morality like taste or aesthetic judgments, which are person-relative.
This form of moral subjectivism has the sorry consequence that it makes morality a very useless concept, for, on its premises, little or no interpersonal criticism or judgment is possible. Suppose that you are repulsed by observing John torturing a child. You cannot condemn him if one of his principles is “torture little children for the fun of it.” The only basis for judging him wrong might be that he was a hypocrite who condemned others for torturing. However, one of his principles could be that hypocrisy is morally permissible (he “feels very fine” about it), so that it would be impossible for him to do wrong. On the basis of subjectivism, Adolf Hitler and the serial murderer Ted Bundy could be considered as moral as Gandhi, as long as each lived by his own standards, whatever those might be.
In the opening days of my philosophy classes, I often find students vehemently defending subjective relativism: “Who are you to judge?” they ask. I then give them their first test. In the next class period, I return all the tests, marked “F,” even though my comments show that most of them are a very high caliber. When the students express outrage at this (some have never before seen that letter on their papers and inquire about its meaning), I answer that I have accepted subjectivism for marking the exams. “But that’s unjust!” they typically insist—and then they realize that they are no longer being merely subjectivist about ethics.
Absurd consequences follow from subjectivism. If it is correct, then morality reduces to aesthetic tastes about which there can be neither argument nor interpersonal judgment. Although many students say they espouse subjectivism, there is evidence that it conflicts with some of their other moral views. They typically condemn Hitler as an evil man for his genocidal policies. A contradiction seems to exist between subjectivism and the very concept of morality, which it is supposed to characterize, for morality has to do with proper resolution of interpersonal conflict and the improvement of the human predicament. Whatever else it does, morality has a minimal aim of preventing a Hobbesian state of nature, in which life is “solitary, nasty, poor, brutish and short.” But if so, then subjectivism is no help at all, for it rests neither on social agreement of principle (as the conventionalist maintains) nor on an objectively independent set of norms that binds all people for the common good. If there were only one person on earth, then there would be no occasion for morality, because there wouldn’t be any interpersonal conflicts to resolve or others whose suffering he or she would have a duty to improve. Subjectivism implicitly assumes solipsism, a view that isolated individuals make up separate universes.
Subjectivism treats individuals as billiard balls on a societal pool table where they meet only in radical collisions, each aimed at his or her own goal and striving to do the others in before they do him or her in. This view of personality is contradicted by the facts that we develop in families and mutually dependent communities, in which we share a common language, common institutions, and similar rituals and habits, and that we often feel one another’s joys and sorrows. As John Donne wrote, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.”
Subjective ethical relativism is incoherent, and it thus seems that the only plausible view of ethical relativism must be one that grounds morality in the group or culture. Thus, we turn now to conventional ethical relativism.
CONVENTIONAL ETHICAL RELATIVISM
Again, conventional ethical relativism, also called “conventionalism”, is the view that all moral principles are justified by virtue of their cultural acceptance. There are no universally valid moral principles, but rather all such principles are valid relative to culture or individual choice. This view recognizes the social nature of morality, which is the theory’s key asset. It does not seem subject to the same absurd consequences that plague subjectivism. Recognizing the importance of our social environment in generating customs and beliefs, many people suppose that ethical relativism is the correct theory. Furthermore, they are drawn to it for its liberal philosophical stance. It seems to be an enlightened response to the arrogance of ethnocentricity, and it seems to entail or strongly imply an attitude of tolerance toward other cultures.
The Diversity and Dependency Theses
John Ladd gives a typical characterization of the theory:
Ethical relativism is the doctrine that the moral rightness and wrongness of actions varies from society to society and that there are no absolute universal moral standards binding on all men at all times. Accordingly, it holds that whether or not it is right for an individual to act in a certain way depends on or is relative to the society to which he belongs. [Ethical Relativism, Wadsworth, 1973, p. 1]
If we analyze this passage, we find two distinct theses that are central to conventional ethical relativism:
1. Diversity thesis: What is considered morally right and wrong varies from society to society, so there are no universal moral standards held by all societies.
2. Dependency thesis: All moral principles derive their validity from cultural acceptance.
The diversity thesis is simply an anthropological thesis that acknowledges that moral rules differ from society to society; it is sometimes referred to as “cultural relativism”. As we illustrated earlier in this chapter, there is enormous variety in what may count as a moral principle in a given society. The human condition is flexible in the extreme, allowing any number of folkways or moral codes. It may or may not be the case that there is no single moral principle held in common by every society, but if there are any, they seem to be few, at best. Certainly, it would be very hard to derive one single “true” morality on the basis of observation of various societies’ moral standards.
Turning to the second element of conventional ethical relativism—the dependency thesis—this asserts that individual acts are right or wrong depending on the nature of the society in which they occur. Morality does not exist in a vacuum; rather, what is considered morally right or wrong must be seen in a context that depends on the goals, wants, beliefs, history, and environment of the society in question. Trying to see things from an independent, noncultural point of view would be like taking out our eyes to examine their contours and qualities. We are simply culturally determined beings.
In a sense, we all live in radically different worlds. Each person has a different set of beliefs and experiences, a particular perspective that colors all of his or her perceptions. Do the farmer, the real estate dealer, and the artist looking at the same spatiotemporal field actually see the same thing? Not likely. Their different orientations, values, and expectations govern their perceptions; so different aspects of the field are highlighted and some features are missed. Even as our individual values arise from personal experience, so social values are grounded in the particular history of the community. Morality, then, is just the set of common rules, habits, and customs that have won social approval over time, so that they seem part of the nature of things, like facts. There is nothing mysterious about these codes of behavior. They are the outcomes of our social history.
There is something conventional about any morality, so every morality really depends on a level of social acceptance. Not only do various societies adhere to different moral systems, but the very same society could (and often does) change its moral views over time and place. For example, in the southern United States slavery is now viewed as immoral, whereas just over one hundred years ago, it was not. We have greatly altered our views on abortion, divorce, and sexuality as well.
CRITICISMS OF CONVENTIONAL ETHICAL RELATIVISM
So far we’ve examined the main ingredients of conventional ethical relativism and considered its strengths. We now turn to the problems with this view.
Undermines Important Values
One serious problem with conventional ethical relativism is that it undermines the basis of important values. If conventional ethical relativism is true, then we cannot legitimately criticize anyone who espouses what we might regard as a heinous principle. If, as seems to be the case, valid criticism supposes an objective or impartial standard, then relativists cannot morally criticize anyone outside their own culture. Adolf Hitler’s genocidal actions, as long as they are culturally accepted, are as morally legitimate as Mother Teresa’s works of mercy. If conventional relativism is accepted, then racism, genocide of unpopular minorities, oppression of the poor, slavery, and even the advocacy of war for its own sake are as moral as their opposites. And, if a subculture decided that starting a nuclear war was somehow morally acceptable, we could not morally criticize these people. Any actual morality, whatever its content, is as valid as every other and more valid than ideal moralities—since no culture adheres to the latter.
Another important value that we commonly hold is that regarding moral reformers: people of conscience like Gandhi and Martin Luther King who go against the tide of cultural standards. However, according to conventional ethical relativism by going against dominant cultural standards, their actions are technically wrong. Consider the following examples. William Wilberforce was wrong in the eighteenth century to oppose slavery. The British were immoral in opposing suttee in India (the burning of widows, which is now illegal there). The early Christians were wrong in refusing to serve in the Roman army or bow down to Caesar, since the majority in the Roman Empire believed that these two acts were moral duties. Yet, we normally feel just the opposite, that the reformer is a courageous innovator who is right, who has the truth, who stands against the mindless majority. Sometimes the individual must stand alone with the truth, risking social censure and persecution. Yet, if relativism is correct, the opposite is necessarily the case: Truth is with the crowd and error with the individual.
A third important value that conventional ethical relativism undermines is our moral duties towards the law. Our normal view is that we have a duty to obey the law, because law, in general, promotes the human good. According to most objective systems, this obligation is not absolute but relative to the particular law’s relation to a wider moral order. Civil disobedience is warranted in some cases in which the law seems to seriously conflict with morality. However, if ethical relativism is true, then neither law nor civil disobedience has a firm foundation. On the one hand, from the side of the society at large, civil disobedience will be morally wrong, as long as the majority culture agrees with the law in question. On the other hand, if you belong to the relevant subculture that doesn’t recognize the particular law in question (because it is unjust from your point of view), then disobedience will be morally mandated. The Ku Klux Klan, which believes that Jews, Catholics, and African Americans are evil and undeserving of high regard, is, given conventionalism, morally permitted or required to break the laws that protect these endangered groups. Why should I obey a law that my group doesn’t recognize as valid?
Thus, unless we have an independent moral basis for law, it is hard to see why we have any general duty to obey it. And, unless we recognize the priority of a universal moral law, we have no firm basis for justifying our acts of civil disobedience against “unjust laws.” Both the validity of the law and morally motivated disobedience of unjust laws are voided in favor of a power struggle.
Moral Diversity is Exaggerated
A second problem with conventional ethical relativism is that the level of moral diversity that we actually see around the world is not as extreme as relativists like Sumner and Benedict claim. One can also see great similarities among the moral codes of various cultures. Sociobiologist E.O. Wilson has identified over a score of common features:
Every culture has a concept of murder, distinguishing this from execution, killing in war, and other “justifiable homicides.” The notions of incest and other regulations upon sexual behavior, the prohibitions upon untruth under defined circumstances, of restitution and reciprocity, of mutual obligations between parents and children—these and many other moral concepts are altogether universal. [On Human Nature, Bantam Books, 1979, pp. 22–23]
From another perspective, the whole issue of moral diversity among cultures is irrelevant to the truth or falsehood of conventional ethical relativism. There is indeed enormous cultural diversity, and many societies have radically different moral codes. Cultural diversity seems to be a fact, but, even if it is, it does not by itself establish the truth of ethical relativism. Cultural diversity in itself is neutral with respect to theories. The objectivist could concede complete cultural relativism but still defend a form of universalism; for he or she could argue that some cultures simply lack correct moral principles.
By the same reasoning, a denial of complete cultural relativism (i.e., an admission of some universal principles) does not disprove ethical relativism. For even if we did find one or more universal principles, this would not prove that they had any objective status. We could still imagine a culture that was an exception to the rule and be unable to criticize it. So, the diversity thesis doesn’t by itself imply ethical relativism, and its denial doesn’t disprove ethical relativism.
Weak Dependency does not Imply Relativism
A final problem with conventional ethical relativism concerns the dependency thesis that all moral principles derive their validity from cultural acceptance. On close inspection, this principle is rather unclear and can be restated in two distinct ways, a weak and a strong version:
Weak dependency: the application of moral principles depends on one’s culture.
Strong dependency: the moral principles themselves depend on one’s culture.
The weak thesis says that the application of principles depends on the particular cultural predicament, whereas the strong thesis affirms that the principles themselves depend on that predicament. The nonrelativist can accept a certain relativity in the way moral principles are applied in various cultures, depending on beliefs, history, and environment. Indeed, morality does not occur in a vacuum, but is linked with these cultural factors. For example, a raw environment with scarce natural resources may justify the Eskimos’ brand of euthanasia to the objectivist, who would consistently reject that practice if it occurred in another environment. One Sudanese tribe throws its deformed infants into the river because the tribe believes that such infants belong to the hippopotamus, the god of the river. We believe that these groups’ belief in euthanasia and infanticide is false, but the point is that the same principles of respect for property and respect for human life operate in such contrary practices. The tribe differs with us only in belief, not in substantive moral principle. This is an illustration of how nonmoral beliefs (e.g., deformed infants belong to the hippopotamus), when applied to common moral principles (e.g., give to each his or her due), generate different actions in different cultures. In our own culture, the difference in the nonmoral belief about the status of a fetus generates opposite moral stands. The major difference between pro-choicers and prolifers is not whether we should kill persons but whether fetuses are really persons. It is a debate about the facts of the matter, not the principle of killing innocent persons.
So the fact that moral principles are weakly dependent doesn’t show that ethical relativism is valid. In spite of this weak dependency on nonmoral factors, there could still be a set of general moral norms applicable to all cultures and even recognized in most, which a culture could disregard only at its own expense.
Accordingly, the ethical relativist must maintain the stronger thesis, which insists that the very validity of the principles is a product of the culture and that different cultures will invent different valid principles. This, though, is a more difficult position to establish since it requires ruling out all rival sources of substantive moral principles, such as human reason, human evolution, innate notions of human happiness, God. In fact, a detailed examination of these rival explanations will take us on through to the end of this book. In short, while it is reasonable to accept the weak dependency thesis—the application of moral principles depends on one’s culture—the relativist needs the stronger thesis which is a challenge to prove.
MODERATE OBJECTIVISM
Given the problems with ethical relativism, let’s consider the rival position of moral objectivism, which, again, is the view that there are universal and objective moral principles, valid for all people and social environments. If we can establish or show that it is reasonable to believe that there is, in some ideal sense, at least one objective moral principle that is binding on all people everywhere, then we shall have shown that relativism probably is false and that a limited objectivism is true. Actually, I believe that many qualified general ethical principles are binding on all rational beings, but one principle will suffice to refute relativism:
A. It is morally wrong to torture people for the fun of it.
I claim that this principle is binding on all rational agents, so that if some agent, S, rejects A, we should not let that affect our intuition that A is a true principle; rather, we should try to explain S’s behavior as perverse, ignorant, or irrational instead. For example, suppose Adolf Hitler doesn’t accept A. Should that affect our confidence in the truth of A? Is it not more reasonable to infer that Hitler is morally deficient, morally blind, ignorant, or irrational than to suppose that his noncompliance is evidence against the truth of A?
Suppose further that there is a tribe of “Hitlerites” somewhere who enjoy torturing people. Their whole culture accepts torturing others for the fun of it. Suppose that Mother Teresa or Mahatma Gandhi tries unsuccessfully to convince these sadists that they should stop torturing people altogether, and the sadists respond by torturing her or him. Should this affect our confidence in A?
Would it not be more reasonable to look for some explanation of Hitlerite behavior? For example, we might hypothesize that this tribe lacks the developed sense of sympathetic imagination that is necessary for the moral life. Or, we might theorize that this tribe is on a lower evolutionary level than most Homo sapiens. Or, we might simply conclude that the tribe is closer to a Hobbesian state of nature than most societies, and as such probably would not survive very long—or if it did, the lives of its people would be largely “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” But, we need not know the correct answer as to why the tribe is in such bad shape to maintain our confidence in A as a moral principle. If A is a basic or core belief for us, then we will be more likely to doubt the Hitlerites’ sanity or ability to think morally than to doubt the validity of A.
Core Morality
We can perhaps produce other candidates for membership in our minimally basic objective moral set:
1. Do not kill innocent people.
2. Do not cause unnecessary pain or suffering.
3. Do not lie or deceive.
4. Do not steal or cheat.
5. Keep your promises and honor your contracts.
6. Do not deprive another person of his or her freedom.
7. Do justice, treating people as they deserve to be treated.
8. Reciprocate: Show gratitude for services rendered.
9. Help other people, especially when the cost to oneself is minimal.
10. Obey just laws.
These ten principles are examples of the core morality, principles necessary for the good life within a flourishing human community. They are not arbitrary, for we can give reasons that explain why they are constitutive elements of a successful society, necessary to social cohesion and personal well-being.
For example, regarding rule 1, the survival instinct causes us to place a high value on our lives, so that any society that would survive must protect innocent life. Without the protection of innocent life, nothing would be possible for us. Rule 2, “Do not cause unnecessary pain or suffering,” seems quite obvious. No normal person desires gratuitous pain or harm. We want to be healthy and successful and have our needs taken into consideration. The ancient code of medicine requiring that doctors “above all, do no harm” is applicable to all of us.
Regarding rule 3, language itself depends on a general and implicit commitment to the principle of truth-telling. Accuracy of expression is a primitive form of truthfulness. Hence, every time we use words correctly (e.g., “That is a book” or “My name is Sam”) we are telling the truth. Without a high degree of reliable matching between words and objects, language itself would be impossible. Likewise, regarding rule 5, without the practice of promise-keeping we could not rely on one another’s words when they inform us about future acts. We could have no reliable expectations about their future behavior. Our lives are social, dependent on cooperation, so it is vital that when we make agreements, we fulfill them (e.g., “I’ll help you with your philosophy paper, if you’ll help me install a new computer program”). This rule borders on reciprocity, rule 8; we need to have confidence that the other party will reciprocate when we have done our part. Even chimpanzees follow the rule of reciprocity, returning good for good (returning evil for evil may not be as necessary for morality).
Regarding rule 4, without a prohibition against stealing and cheating, we could not claim property—not even ownership of our very limbs, let alone, external goods. And, if free-loading and stealing became the norm, very little productive work would be done, so there would be little to steal and our lives would be impoverished. Anyone who has ever been confined to a small room or has had his limbs tied up should be able to see the need for rule 6, respect other people’s liberty; for without freedom we could hardly attain our goals.
Sometimes, people question whether rule 7, that we do justice, treating people according to what they merit, implies that we should reward and punish on the basis of morally relevant criteria, not irrelevant ones like race, ethnicity, or gender. One part of justice advocates consistency. If a teacher gives Jack an A- for a certain quality of essay, she should give Jill the same grade if her essay is of the same quality. A stronger, more substantive principle of justice holds that we should “Give people what they deserve.”
Rule 10, “Obey just laws,” is necessary for harmonious social living. We may not always agree with the law, but in social situations we must make reasonable compromises and accept the decisions of the government. When we disagree with the law we may work to convince the powers that be to change it, and in extreme situations, such as living in a society with racist laws, we may decide to engage in civil disobedience.
There may be other moral rules necessary or highly relevant to an objective core morality. Perhaps we should add something like “Cooperate with others for the common good,” although I think this is already included when we combine rules 2, 4, and 9. Perhaps you can think of other rules that are necessary to a flourishing community. In any case, while a moral code would be adequate if it contained a requisite set of these objective principles, there could be more than one adequate moral code that contained different rankings or different combinations of rules. Different specific rules may be required in different situations. For example, in a desert community, there may be a strict rule prohibiting the wasting of water, and in a community with a preponderance of females over males, there may be a rule permitting polygamy. A society where birth control devices are available may differ on the rule prescribing chastity from one that lacks such technology. Such moral flexibility does not entail moral relativism but simply a recognition that social situations can determine which rules are relevant to the flourishing of a particular community. Nevertheless, an essential core morality, such as that described above, will be practically necessary for human flourishing.
The core moral rules are analogous to the set of vitamins necessary for a healthy diet. We need an adequate amount of each vitamin—some need more of one than another—but in prescribing a nutritional diet we needn’t set forth recipes, specific foods, place settings, or culinary habits. Gourmets will meet the requirements differently from ascetics and vegetarians, but all may obtain the basic nutrients without rigid regimentation or an absolute set of recipes.
Our Common Human Nature
In more positive terms, an objectivist bases his or her moral system on a common human nature with common needs and desires. There is more that unites all humanity than divides us. As Aristotle wrote, “One may also observe in one’s travels to distant countries the feelings of recognition and affiliation that link every human being to every other human being.” Think of all the things we humans have in common. We all must take in nutrition and water to live and to live a healthy life. We all want to have friends and family or some meaningful affiliation (e.g., belonging to a fraternity, a church, or a club). Children in every culture must be nourished, cherished, and socialized to grow up into productive citizens. We are all vulnerable to disease, despair, and death. And, we each must face our own death. There are many differences between human beings and cultures, but our basic nature is the same, and we have more in common than what separates us. Adopting this premise of our common human nature, we might argue for objectivism in the following manner:
1. Human nature is relatively similar in essential respects, having a common set of basic needs and interests.
2. Moral principles are functions of human needs and interests, instituted by reason to meet the needs and promote the most significant interests of human (or rational) beings.
3. Some moral principles will meet needs and promote human interests better than other principles.
4. Principles that will meet essential human needs and promote the most significant interests in optimal ways are objectively valid moral principles.
5. Therefore, since there is a common human nature, there is an objectively valid set of moral principles, applicable to all humanity (or rational beings).
The argument assumes that there is a common human nature. In a sense, an objectivist accepts the view that morality depends on some social reality for its authentication; only, it is not the reality of cultural acceptance but the reality of our common nature as rational beings, with needs, interests, and the ability to reason. There is only one large human framework to which all humans belong and to which all principles are relative. Relativists sometimes claim that the idea of a common human nature is an illusion, but our knowledge of human genetics, as well as anthropology and history, provides overwhelming evidence that we are all related by common needs, interests, and desires. We all generally prefer to survive, to be happy, to experience love and friendship rather than hatred and enmity, to be successful in reaching our goals, and the like. We care for our children, feel gratitude for services rendered, and feel resentment for intentional harms done to us. We seek peace and security and, being social animals, want friends and family. Game-theorists have performed decision-making experiments throughout the world, from tribes in the Amazon and New Guinea to Western societies. They confirm our judgment that all people value fairness and generosity and are willing to forego profit to punish free-loaders. The core morality is requisite for the attainment of these goals.
Source: Adapted from Louis Pojman, Ethic: Discovering Right and Wrong (Belmont CA: Wadsworth, 2009, sixth edition), Chapters 1 and 2.
Questions for Review
1. What are the absurd consequences follow from subjectivism?
2. How does conventionalism undermine important values?
3. In what ways is moral diversity exaggerated?
4. Pojman argues that the weak dependency thesis does not imply relativism. Explain his point.
5. Pojman offers ten principles that comprise a minimally basic objective moral set. What is it about these particular principles that makes them essential in all societies?
Questions for Analysis
1. Defend subjectivism against the Pojman’s charge that it leads to absurd consequences.
2. Pojman argues that if conventional ethical relativism is true, then we cannot legitimately criticize anyone outside our culture who espouses what we might regard as a heinous principle. Defend conventionalism against this attack and show how a conventional relativist might consistently criticize the views of someone outside his or her culture.
3. Pojman argues that moral diversity is exaggerated. Defend conventionalism against this charge.
4. In support of moderate objectivism, Pojman offers a list of 10 principles of a “core morality” that are essential for human flourishing in any society. Argue that some of these might be culturally relative as well.
5. Pojman calls his view “moderate objectivism.” Could his position just as easily be called “moderate conventional relativism”? Explain.
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#2
Natural Rights
John Locke
John Locke (1632-1704) was one of Britain’s most influential philosophers during the 18th century. He principal work in philosophy, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), defends the empiricist view that all of our ideas originate through experience. In his Two Treatises on Government (1690), though, he develops a notion of natural rights that had profound impact on political institutions throughout the world. In the selections below from this work, he argues that in the state of nature God created people free and equal, and the fundamental law of nature is that no one should harm another person’s life, health, liberty or possessions. Accordingly, we have natural rights to life, health, liberty and possession. The state of nature, Locke argues, is not necessarily a state of war since war is declared only when someone violates our rights. When that happens, the offender deserves to be punished, and even killed. One of our principal rights is that to acquire property—land and other types of wealth—and we first obtain an item of property my mixing our labor with an item. For example, when I cut down a tree that no one owns and make it into a boat, I thereby own the boat. To reduce conflicts and rights violations within the state of nature we make contracts with each other, thereby creating a civil society; but in exchange for this we give up some of our liberty. Through such social contracts we authorize our governments to both defend our natural rights and punish those who violate our rights. We must also follow the will of the majority, which is the only basis of lawful government. Governments, however, do not have absolute authority over us and we may dissolve them through revolution, if necessary, when, through their ineffectiveness, they violate laws and threaten the life, liberty and property of the individual.
CHAPTER 2: OF THE STATE OF NATURE
4. To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.
A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty. . . .
6. But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of license: though man in that state have an uncontrollable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions: for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another’s pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for our’s. Everyone, as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station willfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.
7. And that all men may be restrained from invading others rights, and from doing hurt to one another, and the law of nature be observed, which wills the peace and preservation of all mankind, the execution of the law of nature is, in that state, put into every man’s hands, whereby every one has a right to punish the transgressors of that law to such a degree, as may hinder its violation: for the law of nature would, as all other laws that concern men in this world ‘be in vain, if there were no body that in the state of nature had a power to execute that law, and thereby preserve the innocent and restrain offenders. And if any one in the state of nature may punish another for any evil he has done, every one may do so: for in that state of perfect equality, where naturally there is no superiority or jurisdiction of one over another, what any may do in prosecution of that law, every one must needs have a right to do.
8. And thus, in the state of nature, one man comes by a power over another; but yet no absolute or arbitrary power, to use a criminal, when he has got him in his hands, according to the passionate heats, or boundless extravagancy of his own will; but only to retribute to him, so far as calm reason and conscience dictate, what is proportionate to his transgression, which is so much as may serve for reparation and restraint: for these two are the only reasons, why one man may lawfully do harm to another, which is that we call punishment. In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity, which is that measure God has set to the actions of men, for their mutual security; and so he becomes dangerous to mankind, the tye, which is to secure them from injury and violence, being slighted and broken by him. Which being a trespass against the whole species, and the peace and safety of it, provided for by the law of nature, every man upon this score, by the right he has to preserve mankind in general, may restrain, or where it is necessary, destroy things noxious to them, and so may bring such evil on any one, who has transgressed that law, as may make him repent the doing of it, and thereby deter him, and by his example others, from doing the like mischief. And in the case, and upon this ground, every man has a right to punish the offender, and be executioner of the law of nature. . . .
CHAPTER 3: OF THE STATE OF WAR
16. The state of war is a state of enmity and destruction: and therefore declaring by word or action, not a passionate and hasty, but a sedate settled design upon another man’s life, puts him in a state of war with him against whom he has declared such an intention, and so has exposed his life to the other’s power to be taken away by him, or any one that joins with him in his defense, and espouses his quarrel; it being reasonable and just, I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for, by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion; because such men are not under the ties of the common law of reason, have no other rule, but that of force and violence, and so may be treated as beasts of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures, that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls into their power.
17. And hence it is, that he who attempts to get another man into his absolute power, does thereby put himself into a state of war with him; it being to be understood as a declaration of a design upon his life: for I have reason to conclude, that he who would get me into his power without my consent, would use me as he pleased when he had got me there, and destroy me too when he had a fancy to it; for no body can desire to have me in his absolute power, unless it be to compel me by force to that which is against the right of my freedom, i.e. make me a slave. To be free from such force is the only security of my preservation; and reason bids me look on him, as an enemy to my preservation, who would take away that freedom which is the fence to it; so that he who makes an attempt to enslave me, thereby puts himself into a state of war with me. He that, in the state of nature, would take away the freedom that belongs to any one in that state, must necessarily be supposed to have a design to take away everything else that, freedom being the foundation of all the rest; as he that in the state of society would take away the freedom belonging to those of that society or commonwealth, must be supposed to design to take away from them every thing else, and so be looked on as in a state of war.
18. This makes it lawful for a man to kill a thief, who has not in the least hurt him, nor declared any design upon his life, any farther than, by the use of force, so to get him in his power, as to take away his money, or what he pleases, from him; because using force, where he has no right, to get me into his power, let his pretence be what it will, I have no reason to suppose, that he, who would take away my liberty, would not, when he had me in his power, take away every thing else. And therefore it is lawful for me to treat him as one who has put himself into a state of war with me, i.e., kill him if I can; for to that hazard does he justly expose himself, whoever introduces a state of war, and is aggressor in it.
19. And here we have the plain difference between the state of nature and the state of war, which however some men have confounded, are as far distant, as a state of peace, good will, mutual assistance and preservation, and a state of enmity, malice, violence and mutual destruction, are one from another. Men living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of nature. But force, or a declared design of force, upon the person of another, where there is no common superior on earth to appeal to for relief, is the state of war: and it is the want of such an appeal gives a man the right of war even against an aggressor, though he be in society and a fellow subject. Thus a thief, whom I cannot harm, but by appeal to the law, for having stolen all that I am worth, I may kill, when he sets on me to rob me but of my horse or coat; because the law, which was made for my preservation, where it cannot interpose to secure my life from present force, which, if lost, is capable of no reparation, permits me my own defense, and the right of war, a liberty to kill the aggressor, because the aggressor allows not time to appeal to our common judge, nor the decision of the law, for remedy in a case where the mischief may be irreparable. Want of a common judge with authority, puts all men in a state of nature: force without right, upon a man’s person, makes a state of war, both where there is, and is not, a common judge.
20. But when the actual force is over, the state of war ceases between those that are in society, and are equally on both sides subjected to the fair determination of the law; because then there lies open the remedy of appeal for the past injury, and to prevent future harm: but where no such appeal is, as in the state of nature, for want of positive laws, and judges with authority to appeal to, the state of war once begun, continues, with a right to the innocent party to destroy the other whenever he can, until the aggressor offers peace, and desires reconciliation on such terms as may repair any wrongs he has already done, and secure the innocent for the future; nay, where an appeal to the law, and constituted judges, lies open, but the remedy is denied by a manifest perverting of justice, and a barefaced wresting of the laws to protect or indemnify the violence or injuries of some men, or party of men, there it is hard to imagine any thing but a state of war: for wherever violence is used, and injury done, though by hands appointed to administer justice, it is still violence and injury, however colored with the name, pretences, or forms of law, the end whereof being to protect and redress the innocent, by an unbiased application of it, to all who are under it; wherever that is not bona fide done, war is made upon the sufferers, who having no appeal on earth to right them, they are left to the only remedy in such cases, an appeal to heaven.
21. To avoid this state of war (wherein there is no appeal but to heaven, and wherein every the least difference is apt to end, where there is no authority to decide between the contenders) is one great reason of men’s putting themselves into society, and quitting the state of nature: for where there is an authority, a power on earth, from which relief can be had by appeal, there the continuance of the state of war is excluded, and the controversy is decided by that power. . . .
CHAPTER 5: OF PROPERTY
27. Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labor of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature has provided, and left it in, he has mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature has placed it in, it has by this labor something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labor being the unquestionable property of the laborer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.
28. He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself. No body can deny but the nourishment is his. I ask then, when did they begin to be his? when he digested? or when he eat? or when he boiled? or when he brought them home? or when he picked them up? and it is plain, if the first gathering made them not his, nothing else could. That labor put a distinction between them and common: that added something to them more than nature, the common mother of all, had done; and so they became his private right. And will any one say, he had no right to those acorns or apples, he thus appropriated, because he had not the consent of all mankind to make them his? Was it a robbery thus to assume to himself what belonged to all in common? If such a consent as that was necessary, man had starved, notwithstanding the plenty God had given him. We see in commons, which remain so by compact, that it is the taking any part of what is common, and removing it out of the state nature leaves it in, which begins the property; without which the common is of no use. And the taking of this or that part, does not depend on the express consent of all the commoners. Thus the grass my horse has bit; the turfs my servant has cut; and the ore I have digged in any place, where I have a right to them in common with others, become my property, without the assignation or consent of any body. The labor that was mine, removing them out of that common state they were in, has fixed my property in them.
31. It will perhaps be objected to this, that if gathering the acorns, or other fruits of the earth, &c. makes a right to them, then anyone may engross as much as he will. To which I answer, Not so. The same law of nature, that does by this means give us property, does also bound that property too. God has given us all things richly, 1 Tim. vi. 12. is the voice of reason confirmed by inspiration. But how far has he given it us? To enjoy. As much as any one can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils, so much he may by his labor fix a property in: whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others. Nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy. And thus, considering the plenty of natural provisions there was a long time in the world, and the few spenders; and to how small a part of that provision the industry of one man could extend itself, and engross it to the prejudice of others; especially keeping within the bounds, set by reason, of what might serve for his use; there could be then little room for quarrels or contentions about property so established.
CHAPTER 8: OF THE BEGINNING OF POLITICAL
95. Men being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent. The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil society, is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security against any, that are not of it. This any number of men may do, because it injures not the freedom of the rest; they are left as they were in the liberty of the state of nature. When any number of men have so consented to make one community or government, they are thereby presently incorporated, and make one body politic, wherein the majority have a right to act and conclude the rest.
96. For when any number of men have, by the consent of every individual, made a community, they have thereby made that community one body, with a power to act as one body, which is only by the will and determination of the majority: for that which acts any community, being only the consent of the individuals of it, and it being necessary to that which is one body to move one way; it is necessary the body should move that way whither the greater force carries it, which is the consent of the majority: or else it is impossible it should act or continue one body, one community, which the consent of every individual that united into it, agreed that it should; and so every one is bound by that consent to be concluded by the majority. And therefore we see, that in assemblies, empowered to act by positive laws, where no number is set by that positive law which empowers them, the act of the majority passes for the act of the whole, and of course determines, as having, by the law of nature and reason, the power of the whole.
[The Constraints of the Original Contract]
97. And thus every man, by consenting with others to make one body politic under one government, puts himself under an obligation, to every one of that society, to submit to the determination of the majority, and to be concluded by it; or else this original compact, whereby he with others incorporates into one society, would signify nothing, and be no compact, if he be left free, and under no other ties than he was in before in the state of nature. For what appearance would there be of any compact? What new engagement if he were no farther tied by any decrees of the society, than he himself thought fit, and did actually consent to? This would be still as great a liberty, as he himself had before his compact, or any one else in the state of nature has, who may submit himself, and consent to any acts of it if he thinks fit.
98. For if the consent of the majority shall not, in reason, be received as the act of the whole, and conclude every individual; nothing but the consent of every individual can make any thing to be the act of the whole: but such a consent is next to impossible ever to be had, if we consider the infirmities of health, and avocations of business, which in a number, though much less than that of a common-wealth, will necessarily keep many away from the public assembly. To which if we add the variety of opinions, and contrariety of interests, which unavoidably happen in all collections of men, the coming into society upon such terms would be only like Cato’s coming into the theatre, only to go out again. Such a constitution as this would make the mighty Leviathan of a shorter duration, than the feeblest creatures, and not let it outlast the day it was born in: which cannot be supposed, till we can think, that rational creatures should desire and constitute societies only to be dissolved: for where the majority cannot conclude the rest, there they cannot act as one body, and consequently will be immediately dissolved again.
99. Whosoever therefore out of a state of nature unite into a community, must be understood to give up all the power, necessary to the ends for which they unite into society, to the majority of the community, unless they expressly agreed in any number greater than the majority. And this is done by barely agreeing to unite into one political society, which is all the compact that is, or needs be, between the individuals, that enter into, or make up a commonwealth. And thus that, which begins and actually constitutes any political society, is nothing but the consent of any number of freemen capable of a majority to unite and incorporate into such a society. And this is that, and that only, which did, or could give beginning to any lawful government in the world.
CHAPTER 19: OF THE DISSOLUTION OF GOVERNMENT
212. Besides this over-turning from without, governments are dissolved from within. First, when the legislative is altered.…
221. There is therefore, secondly, another way whereby governments are dissolved, and that is, when the legislative, or the prince, either of them, act contrary to their trust. First, the legislative acts against the trust reposed in them, when they endeavor to invade the property of the subject, and to make themselves, or any part of the community, masters, or arbitrary disposers of the lives, liberties, or fortunes of the people.
222. The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property; and the end why they choose and authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society, to limit the power, and moderate the dominion, of every part and member of the society: for since it can never be supposed to be the will of the society, that the legislative should have a power to destroy that which every one designs to secure, by entering into society, and for which the people submitted themselves to legislators of their own making; whenever the legislators endeavor to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge, which God has provided for all men, against force and violence. Whenever therefore the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society; and either by ambition, fear, folly or corruption, endeavor to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people; by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and, by the establishment of a new legislative, (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own safety and security, which is the end for which they are in society. What I have said here, concerning the legislative in general, holds true also concerning the supreme executor, who having a double trust put in him, both to have a part in the legislative, and the supreme execution of the law, acts against both, when he goes about to set up his own arbitrary will as the law of the society. He acts also contrary to his trust, when he either employs the force, treasure, and offices of the society, to corrupt the representatives, and gain them to his purposes; or openly pre-engages the electors, and prescribes to their choice, such, whom he has, by solicitations, threats, promises, or otherwise, won to his designs; and employs them to bring in such, who have promised before-hand what to vote, and what to enact. …
228. But if they, who say it lays a foundation for rebellion, mean that it may occasion civil wars, or intestine broils, to tell the people they are absolved from obedience when illegal attempts are made upon their liberties or properties, and may oppose the unlawful violence of those who were their magistrates, when they invade their properties contrary to the trust put in them; and that therefore this doctrine is not to be allowed, being so destructive to the peace of the world: they may as well say, upon the same ground, that honest men may not oppose robbers or pirates, because this may occasion disorder or bloodshed. If any mischief come in such cases, it is not to be charged upon him who defends his own right, but on him that invades his neighbors. If the innocent honest man must quietly quit all he has, for peace sake, to him who will lay violent hands upon it, I desire it may be considered, what a kind of peace there will be in the world, which consists only in violence and rapine; and which is to be maintained only for the benefit of robbers and oppressors. Who would not think it an admirable peace betwixt the mighty and the mean, when the lamb, without resistance, yielded his throat to be torn by the imperious wolf?
Source: Two Treatises of Civil Government, Treatise 2. Spelling is modernized; some section titles are added by the editor.
Questions for Review
1. In the state of nature, what are the two main rights that we have concerning punishment of others?
2. According to Locke, why are we justified in killing a thief even though the thief has not overtly threatened our lives?
3. What is the one great reason for us to put ourselves into society and thereby leave the state of nature?
4. In creating our own property, Locke argues that we don’t need permission from everyone else to take and use those things that are held in common. What is his reasoning?
5. Who is at fault for the harm that comes from civil war?
Questions for Analysis
1. Locke’s four natural rights are those of life, health, liberty and possessions. Jefferson’s list of rights consists of life, liberty and happiness. Is one of these lists more fundamental or better than the other? Explain.
2. Locke argues that when we form political societies for the benefit of protection, we must give up some of our liberty. Describe the kinds of freedoms that we relinquish.
3. Might Locke’s conception of property acquisition justify the exploitation of land owned by indigenous tribal people?
4. Criticize Locke’s defense of revolution.
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#3
Liberty of Speech and Action
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) was the author of Utilitarianism (1763), excerpted earlier in this collection. Four years before the publication of that work Mill he published On Liberty (1859), which is one of the boldest defenses of personal freedom. Society wrongly restricts people’s conduct in one of two ways: through political tyranny involving actual punishment, and the tyranny of the majority which the public suppresses unpopular views through public opinion. Mill’s position is that no such coercion is justified except to prevent harm to others. Coercion aimed at preventing harm to oneself is not justified. As a utilitarian, Mill aims that the justification for his view of liberty is general utility—the greatest good for the greatest number—and not any abstract notion of rights. Mill thus notes different ways that freedom opinion contributes to the mental well-being of humankind. Even people’s actions, and not simply their thoughts, should be free, so long as they don’t harm others. The reason, he argues, our current state of knowledge is far from complete, and people possess mostly half-truths. We thus need different experiments of living to test various ideas. Mill stresses that harm to others is the sole justification for social and political coercion. What, though, of offensive conduct? Mill suggests that coercion on the grounds of offence is also unjustified. Religious groups in particular have imposed restrictions based on the offensiveness of various actions, and if we allow restrictions by one religious group, we make ourselves vulnerable to restrictions by other groups.
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTORY
Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant -- society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it -- its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.
[The Principle of Liberty]
... The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. ...
It is proper to state that I forego any advantage which could be derived to my argument from the idea of abstract right as a thing independent of utility. I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being. Those interests, I contend, authorize the subjection of individual spontaneity to external control, only in respect to those actions of each, which concern the interest of other people. ...
...This, then, is the appropriate region of human liberty. It comprises, first, the inward domain of consciousness; demanding liberty of conscience, in the most comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological. The liberty of expressing and publishing opinions may seem to fall under a different principle, since it belongs to that part of the conduct of an individual which concerns other people; but, being almost of as much importance as the liberty of thought itself, and resting in great part on the same reasons, is practically inseparable from it. Secondly, the principle requires liberty of tastes and pursuits; of framing the plan of our life to suit our own character; of doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow; without impediment from our fellow-creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them even though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong. Thirdly, from this liberty of each individual, follows the liberty, within the same limits, of combination among individuals; freedom to unite, for any purpose not involving harm to others: the persons combining being supposed to be of full age, and not forced or deceived.
No society in which these liberties are not, on the whole, respected, is free, whatever may be its form of government; and none is completely free in which they do not exist absolute and unqualified. The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental or spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest. ...
CHAPTER 2: OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION
... If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ...
... But it is not the minds of heretics that are deteriorated most, by the ban placed on all inquiry which does not end in the orthodox conclusions. The greatest harm done is to those who are not heretics, and whose whole mental development is cramped, and their reason cowed, by the fear of heresy. Who can compute what the world loses in the multitude of promising intellects combined with timid characters, who dare not follow out any bold, vigorous, independent train of thought, lest it should land them in something which would admit of being considered irreligious or immoral? Among them we may occasionally see some man of deep conscientiousness, and subtile and refined understanding, who spends a life in sophisticating with an intellect which he cannot silence, and exhausts the resources of ingenuity in attempting to reconcile the promptings of his conscience and reason with orthodoxy, which yet he does not, perhaps, to the end succeed in doing. No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize, that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. ...
We have now recognized the necessity to the mental well-being of mankind (on which all their other well-being depends) of freedom of opinion, and freedom of the expression of opinion, on four distinct grounds; which we will now briefly recapitulate.
First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.
Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any object is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.
Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience. ...
CHAPTER 3: ON INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEING
Such being the reasons which make it imperative that human beings should be free to form opinions, and to express their opinions without reserve; and such the baneful consequences to the intellectual, and through that to the moral nature of man, unless this liberty is either conceded, or asserted in spite of prohibition; let us next examine whether the same reasons do not require that men should be free to act upon their opinions—to carry these out in their lives, without hindrance, either physical or moral, from their fellow-men, so long as it is at their own risk and peril. This last proviso is of course indispensable. No one pretends that actions should be as free as opinions. On the contrary, even opinions lose their immunity, when the circumstances in which they are expressed are such as to constitute their expression a positive instigation to some mischievous act. An opinion that corndealers are starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn-dealer, or when handed about among the same mob in the form of a placard. Acts of whatever kind, which, without justifiable cause, do harm to others, may be, and in the more important cases absolutely require to be, controlled by the unfavorable sentiments, and, when needful, by the active interference of mankind. The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people. But if he refrains from molesting others in what concerns them, and merely acts according to his own inclination and judgment in things which concern himself, the same reasons which show that opinion should be free, prove also that he should be allowed, without molestation, to carry his opinions into practice at his own cost. That mankind are not infallible; that their truths, for the most part, are only half-truths; that unity of opinion, unless resulting from the fullest and freest comparison of opposite opinions, is not desirable, and diversity not an evil, but a good, until mankind are much more capable than at present of recognizing all sides of the truth, are principles applicable to men’s modes of action, not less than to their opinions. As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others; and that the worth of different modes of life should be proved practically, when any one thinks fit to try them. It is desirable, in short, that in things which do not primarily concern others, individuality should assert itself. Where, not the person’s own character, but the traditions of customs of other people are the rule of conduct, there is wanting one of the principal ingredients of human happiness, and quite the chief ingredient of individual and social progress. ...
CHAPTER 4: OF THE LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL
What, then, is the rightful limit to the sovereignty of the individual over himself? Where does the authority of society begin? How much of human life should be assigned to individuality, and how much to society?
Each will receive its proper share, if each has that which more particularly concerns it. To individuality should belong the part of life in which it is chiefly the individual that is interested; to society, the part which chiefly interests society.
Though society is not founded on a contract, and though no good purpose is answered by inventing a contract in order to deduce social obligations from it, every one who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit, and the fact of living in society renders it indispensable that each should be bound to observe a certain line of conduct towards the rest. This conduct consists, first, in not injuring the interests of one another; or rather certain interests, which, either by express legal provision or by tacit understanding, ought to be considered as rights; and secondly, in each person’s bearing his share (to be fixed on some equitable principle) of the labors and sacrifices incurred for defending the society or its members from injury and molestation. These conditions society is justified in enforcing, at all costs to those who endeavor to withhold fulfillment. Nor is this all that society may do. The acts of an individual may be hurtful to others, or wanting in due consideration for their welfare, without going the length of violating any of their constituted rights. The offender may then be justly punished by opinion, though not by law. As soon as any part of a person’s conduct affects prejudicially the interests of others, society has jurisdiction over it, and the question whether the general welfare will or will not be promoted by interfering with it, becomes open to discussion. But there is no room for entertaining any such question when a person’s conduct affects the interests of no persons besides himself, or needs not affect them unless they like (all the persons concerned being of full age, and the ordinary amount of understanding). In all such cases there should be perfect freedom, legal and social, to do the action and stand the consequences.
It would be a great misunderstanding of this doctrine, to suppose that it is one of selfish indifference, which pretends that human beings have no business with each other’s conduct in life, and that they should not concern themselves about the well-doing or well-being of one another, unless their own interest is involved. Instead of any diminution, there is need of a great increase of disinterested exertion to promote the good of others. But disinterested benevolence can find other instruments to persuade people to their good, than whips and scourges, either of the literal or the metaphorical sort. ... But neither one person, nor any number of persons, is warranted in saying to another human creature of ripe years, that he shall not do with his life for his own benefit what he chooses to do with it. ...
What I contend for is, that the inconveniences which are strictly inseparable from the unfavorable judgment of others, are the only ones to which a person should ever be subjected for that portion of his conduct and character which concerns his own good, but which does not affect the interests of others in their relations with him. Acts injurious to others require a totally different treatment. Encroachment on their rights; infliction on them of any loss or damage not justified by his own rights; falsehood or duplicity in dealing with them; unfair or ungenerous use of advantages over them; even selfish abstinence from defending them against injury—these are fit objects of moral reprobation, and, in grave cases, of moral retribution and punishment.
[Offensive Conduct]
To come somewhat nearer home: the majority of Spaniards consider it a gross impiety, offensive in the highest degree to the Supreme Being, to worship him in any other manner than the Roman Catholic; and no other public worship is lawful on Spanish soil. The people of all Southern Europe look upon a married clergy as not only irreligious, but unchaste, indecent, gross, disgusting. What do Protestants think of these perfectly sincere feelings, and of the attempt to enforce them against non-Catholics? Yet, if mankind are justified in interfering with each other's liberty in things which do not concern the interests of others, on what principle is it possible consistently to exclude these cases? or who can blame people for desiring to suppress what they regard as a scandal in the sight of God and man?
No stronger case can be shown for prohibiting anything which is regarded as a personal immorality, than is made out for suppressing these practices in the eyes of those who regard them as impieties; and unless we are willing to adopt the logic of persecutors, and to say that we may persecute others because we are right, and that they must not persecute us because they are wrong, we must beware of admitting a principle of which we should resent as a gross injustice the application to ourselves.
The preceding instances may be objected to, although unreasonably, as drawn from contingencies impossible among us: opinion, in this country, not being likely to enforce abstinence from meats, or to interfere with people for worshipping, and for either marrying or not marrying, according to their creed or inclination. The next example, however, shall be taken from an interference with liberty which we have by no means passed all danger of. Wherever the Puritans have been sufficiently powerful, as in New England, and in Great Britain at the time of the Commonwealth, they have endeavored, with considerable success, to put down all public, and nearly all private, amusements: especially music, dancing, public games, or other assemblages for purposes of diversion, and the theatre. There are still in this country large bodies of persons by whose notions of morality and religion these recreations are condemned; and those persons belonging chiefly to the middle class, who are the ascendant power in the present social and political condition of the kingdom, it is by no means impossible that persons of these sentiments may at some time or other command a majority in Parliament. How will the remaining portion of the community like to have the amusements that shall be permitted to them regulated by the religious and moral sentiments of the stricter Calvinists and Methodists? Would they not, with considerable peremptoriness, desire these intrusively pious members of society to mind their own business? This is precisely what should be said to every government and every public, who have the pretension that no person shall enjoy any pleasure which they think wrong. But if the principle of the pretension be admitted, no one can reasonably object to its being acted on in the sense of the majority, or other preponderating power in the country; and all persons must be ready to conform to the idea of a Christian commonwealth, as understood by the early settlers in New England, if a religious profession similar to theirs should ever succeed in regaining its lost ground, as religions supposed to be declining have so often been known to do.
Questions for Review
1. Describe Mill’s notion of “tyranny of the majority.”
2. What are the three kinds of liberty that are necessary for a free society?
3. What are the four ways that freedom of opinion contributes to the mental well-being of society?
4. What does Mill mean by “experiments in living” and why are they important?
5. How should people express their concern (or benevolence) towards others?
Questions for Analysis
1. What would Mill’s attitude be regarding our freedom to take recreational drugs, publish pornography, or play Russian roulette? Explain
2. Are there any actions that are so offensive that they should be suppressed, even though they don’t technically harm anyone?
3. Criticize Mill’s view that “experiments in living” ultimately make society happier than it would be if such conduct was suppressed.
4. Mill defends liberty on utilitarian grounds. Describe how a social contractarian such as Hobbes or Locke might also defend an equally broad conception of liberty.
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#4
Justice as Fairness
JOHN RAWLS
From “Justice as Fairness (1958)
American philosopher John Rawls (1921–2002) was a professor of political philosophy at Harvard University, and is most remembered for his landmark book A Theory of Justice (1971). He presents there a social contract theory whereby negotiators arrive at basic principles of justice. There are two main parts to his theory. First is the initial contract situation, which he calls the “original position.” This involves a hypothetical community of rational and self-interested people who assume to be ignorant about their actual position in society, particularly how rich or powerful they are. They step behind a “veil of ignorance” as Rawls calls it, which assures that they and their neighbors will not create rules which gives them special benefits. These negotiators are not trying to start a brand new social system, but instead only aim to reform their current system. The second part of Rawls’s theory involves the specific principles of justice that these negotiators will arrive at. Since the initial negotiating situation is fair, the principles of justice themselves will reflect that fairness. There are two such fair principles of justice. First, each person will have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberties compatible with similar liberty for others. This establishes a base-level of equality for everyone; that is, behind the veil of ignorance, it is reasonable to stipulate that everyone should be equal. The second principle sets the rules for any social and economic inequalities that might arise in society. They must (a) be reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and (b) be attached to positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity. For example, there might be some benefit that we all receive by allowing some jobs to pay more money, such as with physicians or scientists. However, these jobs must be won in a fair competition. The following selections are from Rawls’s article “Justice as Fairness” (1958), which is where he first laid out his theory.
[INTRODUCTION]
1. It might seem at first sight that the concepts of justice and fairness are the same, and that there is no reason to distinguish them, or to say that one is more fundamental than the other. I think that this impression is mistaken. In this paper I wish to show that the fundamental idea in the concept of justice is fairness; and I wish to offer an analysis of the concept of justice from this point of view. To bring out the force of this claim, and the analysis based upon it, I shall then argue that it is this aspect of justice for which utilitarianism, in its classical form, is unable to account, but which is expressed, even if misleadingly, by the idea of the social contract.
To start with I shall develop a particular conception of justice by stating and commenting upon two principles which specify it, and by considering the circumstances and conditions under which they may be thought to arise. The principles defining this conception, and the conception itself, are, of course, familiar. It may be possible, however, by using the notion of fairness as a framework, to assemble and to look at them in a new way. Before stating this conception, however, the following preliminary matters should be kept in mind.
Throughout I consider justice only as a virtue of social institutions, or what I shall call practices. The principles of justice are regarded as formulating restrictions as to how practices may define positions and offices, and assign thereto powers and liabilities, rights and duties. Justice as a virtue of particular actions or of persons I do not take up at all. It is important to distinguish these various subjects of justice, since the meaning of the concept varies according to whether it is applied to practices, particular actions, or persons. These meanings are, indeed, connected, but they are not identical. I shall confine my discussion to the sense of justice as applied to practices, since this sense is the basic one. Once it is understood, the other senses should go quite easily.
Justice is to be understood in its customary sense as representing but one of the many virtues of social institutions, for these may be antiquated, inefficient, degrading, or any number of other things, without being unjust. Justice is not to be confused with an all-inclusive vision of a good society; it is only one part of any such conception. It is important, for example, to distinguish that sense of equality which is an aspect of the concept of justice from that sense of equality which belongs to a more comprehensive social ideal. There may well be inequalities which one concedes are just, or at least not unjust, but which, nevertheless, one wishes, on other grounds, to do away with. I shall focus attention, then, on the usual sense of justice in which it is essentially the elimination of arbitrary distinctions and the establishment, within the structure of a practice, of a proper balance between competing claims.
Finally, there is no need to consider the principles discussed below as the principles of justice. For the moment it is sufficient that they are typical of a family of principles normally associated with the concept of justice. The way in which the principles of this family resemble one another, as shown by the background against which they may be thought to arise, will be made clear by the whole of the subsequent argument.
[TWO PRINCIPLES OF JUSTICE]
2. The conception of justice which I want to develop may be stated in the form of two principles as follows: first, each person participating in a practice, or affected by it, has an equal right to the most extensive liberty compatible with a like liberty for all; and second, inequalities are arbitrary unless it is reasonable to expect that they will work out for everyone’s advantage, and provided the positions and offices to which they attach, or from which they may be gained, are open to all. These principles express justice as a complex of three ideas: liberty, equality, and reward for services contributing to the common good.
The term “person” is to be construed variously depending on the circumstances. On some occasions it will mean human individuals, but in others it may refer to nations, provinces, business firms, churches, teams, and so on. The principles of justice apply in all these instances, although there is a certain logical priority to the case of human individuals. As I shall use the term “person,” it will be ambiguous in the manner indicated.
The first principle holds, of course, only if other things are equal: that is, while there must always be a justification for departing from the initial position of equal liberty (which is defined by the pattern of rights and duties, powers and liabilities, established by a practice), and the burden of proof is placed on him who would depart from it, nevertheless, there can be, and often there is, a justification for doing so. Now, that similar particular cases, as defined by a practice, should be treated similarly as they arise, is part of the very concept of a practice; it is involved in the notion of an activity in accordance with rules. The first principle expresses an analogous conception, but as applied to the structure of practices themselves. It holds, for example, that there is a presumption against the distinctions and classifications made by legal systems and other practices to the extent that they infringe on the original and equal liberty of the persons participating in them. The second principle defines how this presumption may be rebutted.
*[ It might be argued at this point that justice requires only an equal liberty. If, however, a greater liberty were possible for all without loss or conflict, then it would be irrational to settle on a lesser liberty. There is no reason for circumscribing rights unless their exercise would be incompatible, or would render the practice defining them less effective. Therefore no serious distortion of the concept of justice is likely to follow from including within it the concept of the greatest equal liberty.]
The second principle defines what sorts of inequalities are permissible; it specifies how the presumption laid down by the first principle may be put aside. Now by inequalities it is best to understand not any differences between offices and positions, but differences in the benefits and burdens attached to them either directly or indirectly, such as prestige and wealth, or liability to taxation and compulsory services. Players in a game do not protest against there being different positions, such as batter, pitcher, catcher, and the like, nor to there being various privileges and powers as specified by the rules; nor do the citizens of a country object to there being the different offices of government such as president, senator, governor, judge, and so on, each with their special rights and duties. It is not differences of this kind that are normally thought of as inequalities, but differences in the resulting distribution established by a practice, or made possible by it, of the things men strive to attain or avoid. Thus they may complain about the pattern of honors and rewards set up by a practice (e.g., the privileges and salaries of government officials) or they may object to the distribution of power and wealth which results from the various ways in which men avail themselves of the opportunities allowed by it (e.g., the concentration of wealth which may develop in a free price system allowing large entrepreneurial or speculative gains).
It should be noted that the second principle holds that an inequality is allowed only if there is reason to believe that the practice with the inequality, or resulting in it, will work for the advantage of every party engaging in it. Here it is important to stress that every party must gain from the inequality. Since the principle applies to practices, it implies that the representative man in every office or position defined by a practice, when he views it as a going concern, must find it reasonable to prefer his condition and prospects with the inequality to what they would be under the practice without it. The principle excludes, therefore, the justification of inequalities on the grounds that the disadvantages of those in one position are outweighed by the greater advantages of those in another position. This rather simple restriction is the main modification I wish to make in the utilitarian principle as usually understood. When coupled with the notion of a practice, it is a restriction of consequence, and one which some utilitarians, e.g., Hume and Mill, have used in their discussions of justice without realizing apparently its significance, or at least without calling attention to it. Why it is a significant modification of principle, changing one’s conception of justice entirely, the whole of my argument will show.
Further, it is also necessary that the various offices to which special benefits or burdens attach are open to all. It may be, for example, to the common advantage, as just defined, to attach special benefits to certain offices. Perhaps by doing so the requisite talent can be attracted to them and encouraged to give its best efforts. But any offices having special benefits must be won in a fair competition in which contestants are judged on their merits. If some offices were not open, those excluded would normally be justified in feeling unjustly treated, even if they benefited from the greater efforts of those who were allowed to compete for them. Now if one can assume that offices are open, it is necessary only to consider the design of practices themselves and how they jointly, as a system, work together. It will be a mistake to focus attention on the varying relative positions of particular persons, who may be known to us by their proper names, and to require that each such change, as a once for all transaction viewed in isolation, must be in itself just. It is the system of practices which is to be judged, and judged from a general point of view: unless one is prepared to criticize it from the standpoint of a representative man holding some particular office, one has no complaint against it.
[THE ORIGINAL POSITION]
3. Given these principles one might try to derive them from a priori principles of reason, or claim that they were known by intuition. These are familiar enough steps and, at least in the case of the first principle, might be made with some success. Usually, however, such arguments, made at this point, are unconvincing. They are not likely to lead to an understanding of the basis of the principles of justice, not at least as principles of justice. I wish, therefore, to look at the principles in a different way.
Imagine a society of persons amongst whom a certain system of practices is already well established. Now suppose that by and large they are mutually self-interested; their allegiance to their established practices is normally founded on the prospect of self-advantage. One need not assume that, in all senses of the term “person,” the persons in this society are mutually self-interested. If the characterization as mutually self-interested applies when the line of division is the family, it may still be true that members of families are bound by ties of sentiment and affection and willingly acknowledge duties in contradiction to self-interest. Mutual self-interestedness in the relations between families, nations, churches, and the like, is commonly associated with intense loyalty and devotion on the part of individual members. Therefore, one can form a more realistic conception of this society if one thinks of it as consisting of mutually self-interested families, or some other association. Further, it is not necessary to suppose that these persons are mutually self-interested under all circumstances, but only in the usual situations in which they participate in their common practices.
Now suppose also that these persons are rational: they know their own interests more or less accurately; they are capable of tracing out the likely consequences of adopting one practice rather than another; they are capable of adhering to a course of action once they have decided upon it; they can resist present temptations and the enticements of immediate gain; and the bare knowledge or perception of the difference between their condition and that of others is not, within certain limits and in itself, a source of great dissatisfaction. Only the last point adds anything to the usual definition of rationality. This definition should allow, I think, for the idea that a rational man would not be greatly downcast from knowing, or seeing, that others are in a better position than himself, unless he thought their being so was the result of injustice, or the consequence of letting chance work itself out for no useful common purpose, and so on. So if these persons strike us as unpleasantly egoistic, they are at least free in some degree from the fault of envy.
Finally, assume that these persons have roughly similar needs and interests, or needs and interests in various ways complementary, so that fruitful cooperation amongst them is possible; and suppose that they are sufficiently equal in power and ability to guarantee that in normal circumstances none is able to dominate the others.
This condition (as well as the others) may seem excessively vague; but in view of the conception of justice to which the argument leads, there seems no reason for making it more exact here.
Since these persons are conceived as engaging in their common practices, which are already established, there is no question of our supposing them to come together to deliberate as to how they will set these practices up for the first time. Yet we can imagine that from time to time they discuss with one another whether any of them has a legitimate complaint against their established institutions. Such discussions are perfectly natural in any normal society. Now suppose that they have settled on doing this in the following way. They first try to arrive at the principles by which complaints, and so practices themselves, are to be judged. Their procedure for this is to let each person propose the principles upon which he wishes his complaints to be tried with the understanding that, if acknowledged, the complaints of others will be similarly tried, and that no complaints will be heard at all until everyone is roughly of one mind as to how complaints are to be judged. They each understand further that the principles proposed and acknowledged on this occasion are binding on future occasions. Thus each will be wary of proposing a principle which would give him a peculiar advantage, in his present circumstances, supposing it to be accepted. Each person knows that he will be bound by it in future circumstances the peculiarities of which cannot be known, and which might well be such that the principle is then to his disadvantage. The idea is that everyone should be required to make in advance a firm commitment, which others also may reasonably be expected to make, and that no one be given the opportunity to tailor the canons of a legitimate complaint to fit his own special conditions, and then to discard them when they no longer suit his purpose. Hence each person will propose principles of a general kind which will, to a large degree, gain their sense from the various applications to be made of them, the particular circumstances of which being as yet unknown. These principles will express the conditions in accordance with which each is the least unwilling to have his interests limited in the design of practices, given the competing interests of the others, on the supposition that the interests of others will be limited likewise. The restrictions which would so arise might be thought of as those a person would keep in mind if he were designing a practice in which his enemy were to assign him his place.
The two main parts of this conjectural account have a definite significance. The character and respective situations of the parties reflect the typical circumstances in which questions of justice arise. The procedure whereby principles are proposed and acknowledged represents constraints, analogous to those of having a morality, whereby rational and mutually self-interested persons are brought to act reasonably. Thus the first part reflects the fact that questions of justice arise when conflicting claims are made upon the design of a practice and where it is taken for granted that each person will insist, as far as possible, on what he considers his rights. It is typical of cases of justice to involve persons who are pressing on one another their claims, between which a fair balance or equilibrium must be found. On the other hand, as expressed by the second part, having a morality must at least imply the acknowledgment of principles as impartially applying to one’s own conduct as well as to another’s, and moreover principles which may constitute a constraint, or limitation, upon the pursuit of one’s own interests. There are, of course, other aspects of having a morality: the acknowledgment of moral principles must show itself in accepting a reference to them as reasons for limiting one’s claims, in acknowledging the burden of providing a special explanation, or excuse, when one acts contrary to them, or else in showing shame and remorse and a desire to make amends, and so on. It is sufficient to remark here that having a morality is analogous to having made a firm commitment in advance; for one must acknowledge the principles of morality even when to one’s disadvantage. A man whose moral judgments always coincided with his interests could be suspected of having no morality at all.
Thus the two parts of the foregoing account are intended to mirror the kinds of circumstances in which questions of justice arise and the constraints which having a morality would impose upon persons so situated. In this way one can see how the acceptance of the principles of justice might come about, for given all these conditions as described, it would be natural if the two principles of justice were to be acknowledged. Since there is no way for anyone to win special advantages for himself, each might consider it reasonable to acknowledge equality as an initial principle. There is, however, no reason why they should regard this position as final; for if there are inequalities which satisfy the second principle, the immediate gain which equality would allow can be considered as intelligently invested in view of its future return. If, as is quite likely, these inequalities work as incentives to draw out better efforts, the members of this society may look upon them as concessions to human nature: they, like us, may think that people ideally should want to serve one another. But as they are mutually self-interested, their acceptance of these inequalities is merely the acceptance of the relations in which they actually stand, and a recognition of the motives which lead them to engage in their common practices. They have no title to complain of one another. And so provided that the conditions of the principle are met, there is no reason why they should not allow such inequalities. Indeed, it would be short-sighted of them to do so, and could result, in most cases, only from their being dejected by the bare knowledge, or perception, that others are better situated. Each person will, however, insist on an advantage to himself, and so on a common advantage, for none is willing to sacrifice anything for the others.
These remarks are not offered as a proof that persons so conceived and circumstanced would settle on the two principles, but only to show that these principles could have such a background, and so can be viewed as those principles which mutually self-interested and rational persons, when similarly situated and required to make in advance a firm commitment, could acknowledge as restrictions governing the assignment of rights and duties in their common practices, and thereby accept as limiting their rights against one another. The principles of justice may, then, be regarded as those principles which arise when the constraints of having a morality are imposed upon parties in the typical circumstances of justice.
[CLARIFICATION]
4. These ideas are, of course, connected with a familiar way of thinking about justice which goes back at least to the Greek Sophists, and which regards the acceptance of the principles of justice as a compromise between persons of roughly equal power who would enforce their will on each other if they could, but who, in view of the equality of forces amongst them and for the sake of their own peace and security, acknowledge certain forms of conduct insofar as prudence seems to require. Justice is thought of as a pact between rational egoists the stability of which is dependent on a balance of power and a similarity of circumstances. While the previous account is connected with this tradition, and with its most recent variant, the theory of games, it differs from it in several important respects which, to forestall misinterpretations, I will set out here.
First, I wish to use the previous conjectural account of the background of justice as a way of analyzing the concept. I do not want, therefore, to be interpreted as assuming a general theory of human motivation: when I suppose that the parties are mutually self-interested, and are not willing to have their (substantial) interests sacrificed to others, I am referring to their conduct and motives as they are taken for granted in cases where questions of justice ordinarily arise. Justice is the virtue of practices where there are assumed to be competing interests and conflicting claims, and where it is supposed that persons will press their rights on each other. That persons are mutually self-interested in certain situations and for certain purposes is what gives rise to the question of justice in practices covering those circumstances. Amongst an association of saints, if such a community could really exist, the disputes about justice could hardly occur; for they would all work selflessly together for one end, the glory of God as defined by their common religion, and reference to this end would settle every question of right. The justice of practices does not come up until there are several different parties (whether we think of these as individuals, associations, or nations and so on, is irrelevant) who do press their claims on one another, and who do regard themselves as representatives of interests which deserve to be considered. Thus the previous account involves no general theory of human motivation. Its intent is simply to incorporate into the conception of justice the relations of men to one another which set the stage for questions of justice. It makes no difference how wide or general these relations are, as this matter does not bear on the analysis of the concept.
Again, in contrast to the various conceptions of the social contract, the several parties do not establish any particular society or practice; they do not covenant to obey a particular sovereign body or to accept a given constitution. Nor do they, as in the theory of games (in certain respects a marvelously sophisticated development of this tradition), decide on individual strategies adjusted to their respective circumstances in the game. What the parties do is to jointly acknowledge certain principles of appraisal relating to their common practices either as already established or merely proposed. They accede to standards of judgment, not to a given practice; they do not make any specific agreement, or bargain, or adopt a particular strategy. The subject of their acknowledgment is, therefore, very general indeed; it is simply the acknowledgment of certain principles of judgment, fulfilling certain general conditions, to be used in criticizing the arrangement of their common affairs. The relations of mutual self-interest between the parties who are similarly circumstanced mirror the conditions under which questions of justice arise, and the procedure by which the principles of judgment are proposed and acknowledged reflects the constraints of having a morality. Each aspect, then, of the preceding hypothetical account serves the purpose of bringing out a feature of the notion of justice. One could, if one liked, view the principles of justice as the “solution” of this highest order “game” of adopting, subject to the procedure described, principles of argument for all coming particular “games” whose peculiarities one can in no way foresee. But this comparison, while no doubt helpful, must not obscure the fact that this highest order “game” is of a special sort. Its significance is that its various pieces represent aspects of the concept of justice.
Finally, I do not, of course, conceive the several parties as necessarily coming together to establish their common practices for the first time. Some institutions may, indeed, be set up de novo; but I have framed the preceding account so that it will apply when the full complement of social institutions already exists and represents the result of a long period of development. Nor is the account in any way fictitious. In any society where people reflect on their institutions they will have an idea of what principles of justice would be acknowledged under the conditions described, and there will be occasions when questions of justice are actually discussed in this way. Therefore if their practices do not accord with these principles, this will affect the quality of their social relations. For in this case there will be some recognized situations wherein the parties are mutually aware that one of them is being forced to accept what the other would concede is unjust. The foregoing analysis may then be thought of as representing the actual quality of relations between persons as defined by practices accepted as just. In such practices the parties will acknowledge the principles on which it is constructed, and the general recognition of this fact shows itself in the absence of resentment and in the sense of being justly treated. Thus one common objection to the theory of the social contract, its apparently historical and fictitious character, is avoided.
[FAIRNESS]
5. That the principles of justice may be regarded as arising in the manner described illustrates an important fact about them. Not only does it bring out the idea that justice is a primitive moral notion in that it arises once the concept of morality is imposed on mutually self-interested agents similarly circumstanced, but it emphasizes that, fundamental to justice, is the concept of fairness which relates to right dealing between persons who are cooperating with or competing against one another, as when one speaks of fair games, fair competition, and fair bargains. The question of fairness arises when free persons, who have no authority over one another, are engaging in a joint activity and amongst themselves settling or acknowledging the rules which define it and which determine the respective shares in its benefits and burdens. A practice will strike the parties as fair if none feels that, by participating in it, they or any of the others are taken advantage of, or forced to give in to claims which they do not regard as legitimate. This implies that each has a conception of legitimate claims which he thinks it reasonable for others as well as himself to acknowledge. If one thinks of the principles of justice as arising in the manner described, then they do define this sort of conception. A practice is just or fair, then, when it satisfies the principles which those who participate in it could propose to one another for mutual acceptance under the aforementioned circumstances. Persons engaged in a just, or fair, practice can face one another openly and support their respective positions, should they appear questionable, by reference to principles which it is reasonable to expect each to accept.
It is this notion of the possibility of mutual acknowledgment of principles by free persons who have no authority over one another which makes the concept of fairness fundamental to justice. Only if such acknowledgment is possible can there be true community between persons in their common practices; otherwise their relations will appear to them as founded to some extent on force. If, in ordinary speech, fairness applies more particularly to practices in which there is a choice whether to engage or not (e.g., in games, business competition), and justice to practices in which there is no choice (e.g., in slavery), the element of necessity does not render the conception of mutual acknowledgment inapplicable, although it may make it much more urgent to change unjust than unfair institutions. For one activity in which one can always engage is that of proposing and acknowledging principles to one another supposing each to be similarly circumstanced; and to judge practices by the principles so arrived at is to apply the standard of fairness to them. . . .
Source: John Rawls, “Justice as Fairness,” Philosophical Review Vol. 67, 1958, pp. 164-194. Section titles have been added.
Questions for Review
1. Rawls states that his conception of justice is restricted here to only social institutions or “practices”, and not people. Explain what he means.
2. What are Rawls’s two principles of justice, and what do they mean?
3. In what ways are people “rational” in original position?
4. Rawls states that his theory does not assume any particular theory of human motivation. Explain his point.
5. In what way is justice a matter of “fairness”?
Questions for Analysis
1. Rawls states that “The second principle [of justice] defines what sorts of inequalities are permissible; it specifies how the presumption laid down by the first principle may be put aside.” Explain.
2. Regarding his second principle of justice, Rawls states that “every party must gain from the inequality.” Explain what this means and discuss whether this is realistic.
3. Describe Rawls’s view of how people are “rational” in the original position, and discuss whether it is realistic.
4. Rawls believes that the notion of “fairness” regarding the just distribution of wealth is similar to the notion of fairness in fair games, fair competition, and fair bargains. Explain what he means and discuss whether he is correct.