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.But that would misunderstand the way in which the motivations of the parties worksin combination with the veil of ignorance constraint.It would work equally well to supposethat the parties are trustees for an individual citizen and her interests (about whom theveil of ignorance prohibits further knowledge) and gave no weight to their own interests.The arguments from the original position would be exactly the same in both cases.Onthis point, see Darwall 1980: 340 343.Rawls notes this point himself (2001: 84 85).Copyright © 2009 The President and Fellows of Harvard College A Foundation for Contractualism 309(1996b: 432, see also 434, 438, 440).Here again, it seems clear that weshould take FA to be governed by FRE.In general, then, FRE, which isthe most clearly contractualist version of the CI, also seems to be its mostfundamental procedural version.And this procedural idea, in turn, isgrounded in the most fundamental idea to which we are committed fromthe second-person standpoint: FH and the equal dignity of free and ra-tional persons.The Basis for Rational Acceptance or Reasonable Rejectionin ContractualismAn ideal of moral community as mutually accountable free and rationalpersons can also provide a basis from which to argue within contractualistprocedures, namely, through interests individuals have as such members.This is perhaps clearest in Thomas E.Hill Jr. s version of Kantian Con-structivism (1989), which includes a less restrictive veil of ignorance thanRawls s and considers what principles ideal legislators could accept whenthey attempt to specify more precisely the equal dignity of persons.Andeven though Rawls s standard of rational choice in the original positionis instrumentalist and morally neutral, it is harnessed to a conception ofthe fundamental aims of the parties that privileges highest-order in-terests they have as mutually accountable free and rational persons inexercising their two moral powers, namely, their capacity for a senseof justice (or, in rightness as fairness, to hold themselves and one an-other morally accountable) and their capacity to form, revise, and ra-tionally to pursue a conception of the good (Rawls 1980: 525).Scanlon is less concerned to provide a unified account of the groundsfor reasonable acceptance or rejection, but he does say that the range ofreasons which are taken to be relevant comes from the parties aim of finding principles that others who share this aim could not reasonablyreject (1998: 192; see also Kumar 2003).The shared aim, fully spelledout, is to find principles that, now to use my vocabulary, free and rationalpersons concerned to live mutually accountably on terms of equal respectcould not reasonably reject.It is hard to see what could be relevant tothis other than interests that free and rational persons can be presumedto have in living self-directed lives on terms of mutual respect with others,that is, something like the highest-order interests in exercising theirCopyright © 2009 The President and Fellows of Harvard College 310 A Foundation for Contractualism moral powers to which Rawls refers.13 In whichever of these ways thecontractualist approach is specifically developed, therefore, the idea ofmutually accountable free and rational persons (to which we are com-mitted from the second-person standpoint) can be appealed to within itto help assess whether candidate principles of moral obligation can berationally accepted or reasonably rejected.A natural example is the in-terest in freedom from arbitrary direction by others to which we appealedin the argument of Chapter 10.This is evident in Fichte s principle ofright ( I must in all cases recognize the free being outside me as a freebeing, i.e., I must limit my freedom through the concept of the possibilityof his freedom [2000: 49]) and in Kant s universal principle of right ( Any action is right if it can coexist with everyone s freedom in accor-dance with a universal law, or if on its maxim the freedom of choice ofeach can coexist with everyone s freedom in accordance with a universallaw [1996c: 230].Contractualism and Rule-ConsequentialismWe can help consolidate these points by considering Parfit s recent claim(2004) that Kantian Contractualism (KC) implies rule-consequen-tialism, the view that we should comply with whatever principles thegeneral acceptance of which would have the best consequences.KC holds,again, that we ought to act on the principles that everyone could ra-tionally choose. KC rules out act-consequentialism for familiar conse-quentialist reasons.The consequences that matter from the standpoint ofcontractualist choice are those of a principle s universal acceptance bothin practical reasoning and through mutual accountability.And conse-quentialists widely accept that things most likely go better overall wheneveryone accepts and regulates themselves interpersonally by principlesother than act-consequentialism.14 That, after all, is what lies behind Mill srule-utilitarian theory of justice.Actually Parfit does not claim that rationality requires a choice of13.Kumar 2003 can be interpreted somewhat along these lines.14.This is a point about the acceptance-utility or acceptance-consequences of can-didate principles, as opposed to their conformance-utility or conformance-consequences. See, for example, Lyons 1965.In Parfit s terms, act-consequentialism is indirectly collectively self-defeating, and possibly also self-effacing (1984: 27 43).Seealso Hare 1981.Copyright © 2009 The President and Fellows of Harvard College A Foundation for Contractualism 311principles whose acceptance would make things go best overall (that is,effectively, a choice of rule-consequentialism).What he argues, veryroughly, is that rationality always permits choosing whatever leads to thebest outcomes, impartially considered, and that in this instance rationalitypermits everyone to choose principles whose acceptance would be optim-ific, that is, principles with which compliance is mandated by rule-consequentialism.We need not worry about the details of Parfit s argument, since whatwe have already enables us to formulate a contractualist response.Theargument s major problem is that it ignores the form that principles ofright have on a contractualist theory, namely, their role in mediatingmutual respect through mutual accountability.The contractualist can ac-knowledge the existence of impartial outcome-given reasons in general,and she can also agree arguendo, without threatening anything she iscommitted to, that it can be rational for an individual to sacrifice self-interest in order to further impartially better outcomes.But, consistentlywith this, she can nonetheless deny that such a ranking of outcomes itselfprovides a reason of the right sort for principles of moral obligation orright.Principles of right are not simply standards for individual choice;they lay out what we have standing to demand from one another byholding each other accountable.To be a reason of the right kind to war-rant a principle of right, therefore, a consideration must relate to interestswe are entitled to presuppose from within a second-person standpoint,as members of a community of independent, mutually accountable, free,and rational persons.This, of course, is Strawson s Point transposed to the issue betweenrule-consequentialism and contractualism.The desirability of outcomes,taken by itself, is a reason of the wrong kind to ground claims of moralresponsibility, and, consequently, claims of moral obligation.The basis ofchoice that Parfit mentions is not this crude, however [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]
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.But that would misunderstand the way in which the motivations of the parties worksin combination with the veil of ignorance constraint.It would work equally well to supposethat the parties are trustees for an individual citizen and her interests (about whom theveil of ignorance prohibits further knowledge) and gave no weight to their own interests.The arguments from the original position would be exactly the same in both cases.Onthis point, see Darwall 1980: 340 343.Rawls notes this point himself (2001: 84 85).Copyright © 2009 The President and Fellows of Harvard College A Foundation for Contractualism 309(1996b: 432, see also 434, 438, 440).Here again, it seems clear that weshould take FA to be governed by FRE.In general, then, FRE, which isthe most clearly contractualist version of the CI, also seems to be its mostfundamental procedural version.And this procedural idea, in turn, isgrounded in the most fundamental idea to which we are committed fromthe second-person standpoint: FH and the equal dignity of free and ra-tional persons.The Basis for Rational Acceptance or Reasonable Rejectionin ContractualismAn ideal of moral community as mutually accountable free and rationalpersons can also provide a basis from which to argue within contractualistprocedures, namely, through interests individuals have as such members.This is perhaps clearest in Thomas E.Hill Jr. s version of Kantian Con-structivism (1989), which includes a less restrictive veil of ignorance thanRawls s and considers what principles ideal legislators could accept whenthey attempt to specify more precisely the equal dignity of persons.Andeven though Rawls s standard of rational choice in the original positionis instrumentalist and morally neutral, it is harnessed to a conception ofthe fundamental aims of the parties that privileges highest-order in-terests they have as mutually accountable free and rational persons inexercising their two moral powers, namely, their capacity for a senseof justice (or, in rightness as fairness, to hold themselves and one an-other morally accountable) and their capacity to form, revise, and ra-tionally to pursue a conception of the good (Rawls 1980: 525).Scanlon is less concerned to provide a unified account of the groundsfor reasonable acceptance or rejection, but he does say that the range ofreasons which are taken to be relevant comes from the parties aim of finding principles that others who share this aim could not reasonablyreject (1998: 192; see also Kumar 2003).The shared aim, fully spelledout, is to find principles that, now to use my vocabulary, free and rationalpersons concerned to live mutually accountably on terms of equal respectcould not reasonably reject.It is hard to see what could be relevant tothis other than interests that free and rational persons can be presumedto have in living self-directed lives on terms of mutual respect with others,that is, something like the highest-order interests in exercising theirCopyright © 2009 The President and Fellows of Harvard College 310 A Foundation for Contractualism moral powers to which Rawls refers.13 In whichever of these ways thecontractualist approach is specifically developed, therefore, the idea ofmutually accountable free and rational persons (to which we are com-mitted from the second-person standpoint) can be appealed to within itto help assess whether candidate principles of moral obligation can berationally accepted or reasonably rejected.A natural example is the in-terest in freedom from arbitrary direction by others to which we appealedin the argument of Chapter 10.This is evident in Fichte s principle ofright ( I must in all cases recognize the free being outside me as a freebeing, i.e., I must limit my freedom through the concept of the possibilityof his freedom [2000: 49]) and in Kant s universal principle of right ( Any action is right if it can coexist with everyone s freedom in accor-dance with a universal law, or if on its maxim the freedom of choice ofeach can coexist with everyone s freedom in accordance with a universallaw [1996c: 230].Contractualism and Rule-ConsequentialismWe can help consolidate these points by considering Parfit s recent claim(2004) that Kantian Contractualism (KC) implies rule-consequen-tialism, the view that we should comply with whatever principles thegeneral acceptance of which would have the best consequences.KC holds,again, that we ought to act on the principles that everyone could ra-tionally choose. KC rules out act-consequentialism for familiar conse-quentialist reasons.The consequences that matter from the standpoint ofcontractualist choice are those of a principle s universal acceptance bothin practical reasoning and through mutual accountability.And conse-quentialists widely accept that things most likely go better overall wheneveryone accepts and regulates themselves interpersonally by principlesother than act-consequentialism.14 That, after all, is what lies behind Mill srule-utilitarian theory of justice.Actually Parfit does not claim that rationality requires a choice of13.Kumar 2003 can be interpreted somewhat along these lines.14.This is a point about the acceptance-utility or acceptance-consequences of can-didate principles, as opposed to their conformance-utility or conformance-consequences. See, for example, Lyons 1965.In Parfit s terms, act-consequentialism is indirectly collectively self-defeating, and possibly also self-effacing (1984: 27 43).Seealso Hare 1981.Copyright © 2009 The President and Fellows of Harvard College A Foundation for Contractualism 311principles whose acceptance would make things go best overall (that is,effectively, a choice of rule-consequentialism).What he argues, veryroughly, is that rationality always permits choosing whatever leads to thebest outcomes, impartially considered, and that in this instance rationalitypermits everyone to choose principles whose acceptance would be optim-ific, that is, principles with which compliance is mandated by rule-consequentialism.We need not worry about the details of Parfit s argument, since whatwe have already enables us to formulate a contractualist response.Theargument s major problem is that it ignores the form that principles ofright have on a contractualist theory, namely, their role in mediatingmutual respect through mutual accountability.The contractualist can ac-knowledge the existence of impartial outcome-given reasons in general,and she can also agree arguendo, without threatening anything she iscommitted to, that it can be rational for an individual to sacrifice self-interest in order to further impartially better outcomes.But, consistentlywith this, she can nonetheless deny that such a ranking of outcomes itselfprovides a reason of the right sort for principles of moral obligation orright.Principles of right are not simply standards for individual choice;they lay out what we have standing to demand from one another byholding each other accountable.To be a reason of the right kind to war-rant a principle of right, therefore, a consideration must relate to interestswe are entitled to presuppose from within a second-person standpoint,as members of a community of independent, mutually accountable, free,and rational persons.This, of course, is Strawson s Point transposed to the issue betweenrule-consequentialism and contractualism.The desirability of outcomes,taken by itself, is a reason of the wrong kind to ground claims of moralresponsibility, and, consequently, claims of moral obligation.The basis ofchoice that Parfit mentions is not this crude, however [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]