scanlon's contractualist theory of morality
6, n° 4, 1977, p. 293-316. To access this article, please, Vol. If you have to save the larger group, it is because this additional person may, on their own behalf, reasonably reject a principle of drawing lots as being indifferent to their distress. The utilitarian, however, departs from this path as soon as he becomes a consequentialist: it is then no longer satisfying an. Southwood offers a contractualist explanation of the foundations of morality. ©2000-2021 ITHAKA. It is thus the external restrictions the theorist imposes on their reasoning, by incorporating them into the choosing conditions, that reduce the range of considerations they may call on in choosing one principle over another. Instead, Scanlon aligns himself with a tradition stretching back to Rousseau, in that he suggests moral principles are valid provided they may be reasonably agreed upon by individuals moved by a common desire, namely they are all seeking to act solely in a way that could be justified to others. Thus it is objections relating to personal interests that need to be taken into account, not moral beliefs in the validity of any given behavior, otherwise the contractualist test of reasonable non-rejectability would be circular, for it would allow into the deliberation the very type of judgement we are seeking to test. Scanlon laid out a “contractualist” theory of our moral duties to others. 13), Scanlon consistently uses the phrase ‘right to rely’ in scare-quotes, … Led by Tepsis Center of Excellence, Politika is an international showcase of research. As this brief synopsis makes plain, Scanlon sees contractualism as a systematic response to a range of philosophical problems; the same theory that lays bare the structure of the morality of right and wrong is also meant to illuminate the authority of moral considerations in The contractualism of American philosopher Thomas Scanlon is a non-consequentialist theory of interpersonal morality, first set out in the seminal 1982 article “Contractualism and Utilitarianism” 1. The standards of reasoning utilitarians recommend we respect for ranking different states of affairs and selecting the best among them leads us to defend counterintuitive conclusions and justify questionable moral principles. As things stand at this stage, your moral obligation is to help one or other of the two people indifferently. 79, 2005, p. 255-284. See, for example, Scanlon, supra note 1, at 153. 34, no. Initially at least, that seems to match most people’s moral intuition. For example, Scanlon's idea of moral motivations are too dependant on the psychological faculty of 'desires'. Thus even if contractualism is able to defend in non-consequentialist terms moral judgements matching our intuitions in the case of Jones and that of the two islands, we may doubt its capacity to handle situations involving a choice between saving, on the one hand, several individuals from major harm, and, on the other, sparing one other person significantly more substantial harm, at least when we are not dealing with irrelevant utilities. Contractualism, as a distinctive account of moral reasoning, was originally advanced by T. M. Scanlon in his widely admired paper "Contractualism and Utilitarianism" (1982) and was later elaborated on in detail in his book What We Owe to Each Other (1998). Essays in Political Philosophy, Cambridge (MA), Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 125-126. Contrary to what John M. Taurek argues in “Should the Numbers Count?”, Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 3, 2000, p. 288-293, and the insightful reply by Rahul Kumar, “Contractualism on saving the many”, Analysis, vol 61, no. The value of human or rational life, is thus central to this sphere of interpersonal morality, . Mentioned in Rahul Kumar, “Reasonable Reasons in Contractualist Moral Argument”, Ethics, vol. Contractualist morality is action-guiding for an agent only to the extent that he or she possesses the master virtue of practical wisdom. Scanlon deploys examples to reject the idea that there is a single line of conduct to adopt irrespective of the values in question11. This means it must be such that it could be made by an individual on their own behalf, and, further, that it should refer to how the interests of any person who found themselves in their position would be affected by the action under appraisal. Because of the time needed to reach the two islands in turn before they are covered by the waves, you cannot reasonably hope to come to the assistance of all three individuals. For a demand made of others to be acceptable from the perspective of moral theory, it must be such that all those concerned – the person acting, the person acted upon, and any third parties who may be affected by a principle authorizing individuals to make such demands of one other – can accept it, or, in Scanlon’s formulation, which we shall examine shortly, that none of them can reasonably reject it. First, Scanlon’s idea of “justification to others” based on “reasonable rejection” provides a convincing unified explanation for both the way moral principles are determined and the reason agents have for acting morally. This erroneous interpretation is put forward by Stephan Darwall in “Contractualism, Root and Branch: A Review Essay”. But unlike Rawls – who briefly envisages the possibility of expanding his theory of justice as fairness to the field of interpersonal morality (in which case it would become a theory of rightness as fairness26) – Scanlon refuses to have recourse to the veil of ignorance in modelling the choice of principles for his contractualist theory27. ), Norms, Values, and Society, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1994, p. 205-16. I believe the source of these complications lies in Scanlon's hesitation to define the concept of reasonableness, therefore Chapter 4 will be devoted to a detailed analysis of this concept. Historical essays are welcome, provided they have significant implications for contemporary theory. He will therefore recommend that we satisfy the preferences of the greatest number even though, taken individually, they are trivial in comparison to the intensity of Jones’s suffering. . So while certain consequentialists may develop a theory that, in ranking the various states of affairs, grants importance to distributive considerations, this option is not available to utilitarians, who thus recommend that the match continue to be broadcast35. Contractualist theory then identifies the kind of considerations we need to take into account, and the standards of reasoning which need to be followed, in formulating principles that are not reasonably rejectable. Stipulating for example that the promises with which we bind ourselves in adequate conditions ought to be respected unless we have a particular justification. As with other values, the question is: in what does the value of human life consist, and what does respecting it imply? A number of theorists have argued that Scanlon's contractualist theory both "gets around" and "solves" the non-identity problem. Thomas M. Scanlon, “Contractualism and Utilitarianism”, in A. Sen, B. Williams (eds. Suppose you are the fortunate owner of a small yacht and are out sailing. Axel Honneth, “Recognition as Ideology”, in B. See Thomas M. Scanlon, “Rights, goals, and fairness”. What matters is thus not the possibility of reaching a concrete agreement with others about the permissibility of my action, but the fact that the latter be ideally justifiable to them16. Moral Landscape: A New Pro-Contractualist Picture of Ethical Theory Bruno Russell - The University of Southampton pp. In comparison to the hour-long suffering that Jones would be spared, the interest the TV spectators have at stake is derisory. Thomas M. Scanlon, “Rawls’ Theory of Justice”, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, vol. Abstract. For were he to do so, this would lead him to depict morality as a compromise between conflicting interests it would nevertheless be in each individual’s best interest to accept. Should we stop the broadcast to help him, or on the contrary should we leave him to suffer until the match is over? Scanlon, fails by the second. For it does not seek to provide a theory of objectivity for all judgements that could be described as “moral”. Instead, it is a matter of knowing in what way an individual assumed to be predisposed to the principles of mutual justifiability should reason in order to arrive at knowledge of such principles. You can only rescue one of the two groups. It starts by presenting the objectives motivating contractualism, and then explains the reasons why this theory conceives of the underpinnings of morality in terms of interpersonal justifiability, insisting on what distinguishes moral contractualism from the political theories put forward by advocates of the social contract, from Hobbes to Rawls. 105, no. The utilitarian, however, departs from this path as soon as he becomes a consequentialist: it is then no longer satisfying an individual’s needs that matters, but bringing about the state of affairs with the greatest aggregate utility7. Since taking account of the reasons that others may put forward to dispute the permissibility of my behavior comes down to wondering if my behavior may be justified to them, it follows that the criterion for the moral validity of my action is its interpersonal justifiability. , since that would amount to acting as if this other person were not present, and thus not taking their demand on you into account. For Scanlon the question is not, therefore, to know which, The contractualist test of reasonable non-rejectability, In Scanlon’s theory, an action is morally wrong if and only if any set of principles authorizing it, under the present circumstances or in any similar situation, could be reasonably rejected by people moved by regulating their behavior on general principles intended as the basis for an informed, unforced agreement between individuals sharing this motivation. Hence contractualist theory about this narrow domain does not seek to produce moral appraisal of our relationship to nature and animals, or to art and sexuality, even though it makes perfect sense to make moral judgements about how we relate to these values, as when it is said to be immoral to torture an animal for pleasure. The guiding ideal of interpersonal … Not far off are two little islands about to be submerged by the rising tide, with one person on one, and two on the other. Scanlon’s answers to these and other questions are presented in a theory of right and wrong that gets some support from particular moral intuitions but which is also deeply unifying, foundational and systematic. 112, No. For contractualism takes the same starting point as the utilitarian project, namely the idea that what matters, from the perspective of morality, is to satisfy others’ needs, and how my action affects their interests by furthering or harming their interests. The uncertainty thus imposed on the contracting parties in the Rawlsian “original position” determines the conditions of fairness under which each is meant to rationally choose the principles on which they could all reasonably agree. To check this, let us go back to the example of the yacht and the two islands: given that you cannot help everybody, should you help the two people, or the single individual? at 191ff. . None may thus reasonably demand on their own behalf that Jones be made to suffer a further hour of electrocution. this approach, we will focus on Thomas Scanlon’s contractualist moral theory. Some doubt that we may really conclude that the largest number of people should be saved without thereby having to combine the demands of several individuals for them to collectively outweigh the demands of the individual person, . So, due to their insistence, as just seen, on impersonal considerations, consequentialist theories are unable to explain our concern for the demands of morality. Thomas M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, Cambridge (MA), Harvard University Press, 1998, p. 5. 61, n° 2, 2001, p. 165-170. As both a moral and a political theory, contem porary contractualism has had a slew of defenders and critics from a variety of perspectives.5 This is not the place to offer another general defense of con tractualist theory. Whatever resources contractualism has for answering these criticisms, it is even more doubtful that non-aggregative reasoning could arrive at the conclusion that we should, say, save ten people threatened with severe handicap rather than prevent the death of another individual (in the event that all cannot be saved). Ethics publishes both theory and the application of theory to contemporary moral issues. It is clear that Scanlon thinks the worry articulated in the previous paragraph - that the pursuit of certain crucial human goods is precluded by the contractualist account of moral motivation - is unjustified, given that contractualist ‘principles could reasonably be rejected on the ground that they left no room for valuing other things that are important in our lives’ (What We Owe To Each Other, 160). He summarises his account thus: But Scanlon’s version of contractualism is not just concernedwith determining which acts are right and wrong. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, Cambridge (MA), Harvard University Press, 1998, p. 4, 106, 153. , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982, p. 103-128. , Cambridge (MA), Havard University Press, 1998. , Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 178-192. , rather, for example, than with demands others may make of me on their own behalf. The choice of principles of justice behind the veil of ignorance thus corresponds to the choice of mutually disinterested individuals seeking to maximize their utility in a state of uncertainty as to which social group they will belong to once the veil is removed. The question is to know what the fact of being concerned with respecting others, when we are effectively thus concerned, adds to our life. On this topic see Axel Honneth, “Recognition as Ideology”, in B. The choice of principles of justice behind the veil of ignorance thus corresponds to the choice of mutually disinterested individuals seeking to maximize their utility in a state of uncertainty as to which social group they will belong to once the veil is removed. It should be noted that Scanlon initially defended this type of position granting importance to considerations of distribution. It would not be reasonable of me to seek, for example, to grant myself an unfair advantage in sharing out the fruits of social cooperation by choosing principles of justice that tend to favor the interests of white men, simply because I happen not to be a black woman. Equality and Division: Values in Principle”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes. point of view.1 I will argue that contractualist moral obligations to help others when their basic interests are at stake are just as demanding as utilitarian obligations. When I am moved by promoting aggregate well-being, I am more concerned with the quality of a state of affairs – one that by definition is impersonal, since no single individual enjoys the sum of benefits produced – than with how my action affects others. For – in contrast to the idea that valuing a thing implies there is only one sort of behavior we may rationally adopt towards it, namely promoting the number of occurrences of the object of our value judgement – it is in fact the distinctive properties endowing an entity with singular value that should guide us in our enquiry about the nature of this value, and about what respecting it requires of us. Cover of What We Owe to Each Other, by Thomas M. Scanlon. Furthermore, the logic of Scanlon's contractualist argument is predisposed to circularity. I begin by elucidating the key features of Scanlon’s contractualism: justifiability to others; reasonable rejectability; the individualist restriction; … Thus living morally is an integral part of the good life, at least for those who are truly concerned with the legitimate demands others may make on them. Thus the justificatory theory offered in response to the first objective – that is to say, the standards of reasoning identified as needing to be met to ensure the objectivity and validity of our judgements about what we owe others and what we may demand of them – needs to be such that we can see we have good reason to be concerned with interacting with others as prescribed or authorized by the moral principles that the theory holds to be valid. If you have to save the larger group, it is because this additional person may, on their own behalf, reasonably reject a principle of drawing lots as being indifferent to their distress. The uncertainty thus imposed on the contracting parties in the Rawlsian “original position” determines the conditions of fairness under which each is meant to rationally choose the principles on which they could all reasonably agree. That is also why it is the ideal justifiability of my action that counts, far more than any effective agreement on its moral status. They argue that it gets around the problem because hypothetical deliberation on general moral principles excludes the considerations that lead to the problem. In the following sections we shall see what ideal justifiability consists in. Reflection upon a particular account may, for instance, have conse-quences for a person’s standing judgments … In contrast, the reasoning in Scanlon’s theory that enables us to alight on principles that cannot be reasonably rejected is devised as that which a person who is seriously disposed to act justifiably to others would adopt of their own accord, and which, as such, would attach importance to satisfying others’ needs. In addition, the limitations just mentioned are invitations to help refine a moral theory to which this brief overview cannot do full justice. 6, no. For an illuminating distinction between "political" utilitarianism based on satisfying the needs of individuals, and the consequentialist utilitarianism of philosophers concerned with promoting values intrinsic to states of things (aggregate well-being), see Véronique Munoz-Dardé, “Equality and Division: Values in Principle”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, vol. When I ask how to act, this recognition involves taking the reasons of others into account, together with the way in which they may, from their own viewpoint, appraise the reasons for acting I am envisaging following. Scanlon. If the principle authorizing my action is contested by others out of pure selfish interest or lack of regard for the reasons which drove me to act as I do, then this is not such to establish that this principle is unjustifiable. 3, Symposium on T. M. Scanlon's What We Owe to Each Other (April 2002), Access everything in the JPASS collection, Download up to 10 article PDFs to save and keep, Download up to 120 article PDFs to save and keep. This is essentially Scanlon’s move in narrowing the scope of his theory to the domain of ‘what we owe to each other’. Essays in Political Philosophy, Cambridge (MA), Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 125-126. Respecting it would not produce the best consequences precisely because this principle does not bother itself with the distribution of goods and harms among individuals: provided that the sum total of good produced in a state of affairs is greater than the sum total of good produced in a more equal situation, utilitarianism judges that the first state of affairs must be preferred over the second, So while certain consequentialists may develop a theory that, in ranking the various states of affairs, grants importance to distributive considerations, this option is not available to utilitarians, who thus recommend that the match continue to be broadcast. My argument concentrates on two claims. (Seen from this angle, contractualism has far more in common with utilitarianism than with ethical egoism or libertarianism.) The fact that an action may be justifiable to others does not mean, however, that the moral validity of the principle authorizing me to treat them as I do is grounded simply in their psychological disposition to accept such or such a justification for this action. 79, 2005, p. 255-284. – if one additional person is to have the power to break the tie stipulating that we should rescue indifferently either one or the other of the two groups of at least two people, it is because we have previously aggregated the demands of the people in each of these two groups so as to establish it is even possible to break a tie. This item is part of a JSTOR Collection. A utilitarian will reason that the sum of the individual utilities of the viewers is such that the level of aggregate well-being would be less overall if we rescue Jones rather than allowing the broadcast to continue. And, unlike Rawls, his primary concern is not with the principles of justice to be respected by the main institutions of our democracies. At the very least, then, Scanlon’s contractualism seems to be a fairly comfortable fit with virtue ethics — more so, it seems to me, than with deontology or consequentialism. It would not be reasonable of me to seek, for example, to grant myself an unfair advantage in sharing out the fruits of social cooperation by choosing principles of justice that tend to favor the interests of white men, simply because I happen not to be a black woman. Various interpretations of this line of reasoning have been put forward in the literature. Subscribe/Renew. But it is important to insist first on the appeal of relationships of mutual justifiability. If the principle authorizing my action is contested by others out of pure selfish interest or lack of regard for the reasons which drove me to act as I do, then this is not such to establish that this principle is unjustifiable. Rawls uses this method to prevent the choice of principles of justice being biased by morally arbitrary factors such as class, gender, or religion. When I am moved by promoting aggregate well-being, I am more concerned with the quality of a state of affairs – one that by definition is impersonal, since no single individual enjoys the sum of benefits produced – than with how my action affects others. Stephan Darwall, The Second-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability, Cambridge (MA), Harvard University Press, 2006. It requires that we concern ourselves with considerations – such as the value attached to maximizing the happiness of the greatest number – that are, for Scanlon, far removed from what really motivates our moral sensibility, namely, as we shall see, our concern for others’ interests and for the quality of interpersonal relationships regulated by the ideal of mutual justifiability. For an action to be justifiable, the principle authorizing it should be such that nobody could reasonably reject it. For the contractualist, the happiness I experience on fulfilling my moral duties is on a par with my concern with the interests of others. The distinctive contribution of Scanlon’s contractualism to substantive morality is the Greater Burden Principle, which dictates that we choose among competing complaints by a maximin rule: those who stand to suffer the most under a … Further, is it really possible to defend the judgement according to which you should steer your yacht towards the island with the greatest number of people without thereby having to fall back on consequentialist reasoning? . Suppose you are the fortunate owner of a small yacht and are out sailing. Various interpretations of this line of reasoning have been put forward in the literature. Rawls developed a contractualist theory of social justice and Scanlon attempted to extend the Rawlsian framework to develop a theory of rightness, or morality more generally. Although Scanlon uses the term “contractualism” to connect his moral theory to the contract tradition – or explicitly to Rousseau. To know if our moral judgements are valid, we need to see to what extent the actions they authorize, recommend, or prohibit comply with such principles. In this paper, I examine the influential account of contractualist moral theory offered recently by T. M. Scanlon in What We Owe to Each Other. The first is to specify the subject matter of our moral judgements, and so identify the standards of reasoning we need to respect to ensure these judgements can be true – in the same way as algebraic theory defines the rules of calculation we use to be able to formulate adequate judgements about the realm of numbers, . It requires that we concern ourselves with considerations – such as the value attached to maximizing the happiness of the greatest number – that are, for Scanlon, far removed from what really motivates our moral sensibility, namely, as we shall see, our concern for others’ interests and for the quality of interpersonal relationships regulated by the ideal of mutual justifiability. Thomas M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, Cambridge (MA), Harvard University Press, 1998, p. 171-177. By admitting solely demands that others may make on their own behalf, and not the impersonal value of states of affairs, Scanlon’s contractualism avoids these difficulties.