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Kantian and Utilitarian Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 1978

David A. Lloyd Thomas
David A. Lloyd Thomas*
Affiliation:
Bedford College, University of London
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Extract

It has been claimed that decisions reached democratically have the consent of those subject to them. It will be shown that arguments for this view rest on either a Kantian or a utilitarian conception of consent. When the distinct nature of these arguments is kept clearly in mind, it becomes apparent that little remains of any of them. Nothing remains of the argument based on the Kantian conception, at least in so far as it is used to support the view that democratic government rests on the consent of the governed. Though something remains of the arguments based on the utilitarian conception, what remains is not what they often are thought to establish. The spurious plausibility of consent arguments for democracy is due to switches between the Kantian conception of consent and the utilitarian.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , September 1980 , pp. 395 - 413
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1980

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References

1 See my “E Pluribus Unum”, Canadian Journal of Philosphy, Supplementary Volume 3 (1977), pp. 62–64.

2 Though Hobbes is not conventionally thought of as a utilitarian, perhaps the most economical statement of the core of this viewpoint is in Leviathan, Chapter VI.

3 Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, translated by Paton, H. J. as The Moral Law, (London: Hutchinson, 1956), p. 96.Google Scholar

4 See Nozick, Robert Anarchy, State, and Utopia, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974), pp. 42ff.Google Scholar

5 Some of these considerations are discussed more fully in my “Liberalism and Utilitarianism”, Ethics, forthcoming.

6 For example, by Rawls, John in A Theory of Justice, (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1972). pp. 26–27.Google Scholar

7 Honderich, Ted Three Essays on Political Violence, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1976), p. 41.Google Scholar

8 Kant, op. cit., p. 96.

9 See John Rawls, op. cit., p. 507ff (on the notion of ‘moral personality’).

10 Wolff, Robert Paul In Defense of Anarchism, (New York: Harper ' Row, 1970), p. 72.Google Scholar

11 See Robert Nozick, op. cit., pp. 290–292.

12 Singer, Peter Democracy and Disobedience, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), p. 47.Google Scholar

13 Peter Singer apparently opts for (i) in view of what seems to be presupposed in his discussion of the obligations of members of the organization ‘Resist’ (op. cit., p. 54).

14 For his account of ‘fair compromise’, see Peter Singer, op. cit., pp. 30ff..

15 Peter Singer, op. cit., p. 59.

16 This argument is suggested by Jack Lively in Democracy, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975), pp. 17ff..

17 Downs, Anthony in An Economic Theory of Democracy, (New York: Harper and Row, 1957),Google Scholar has attempted to show that this is also true, in the long run, of a two-party representative system. He says (p. 68) “We conclude that in a two-party democracy, government policies at root follow whatever a majority strongly desires, and the range of deviation from its aspirations is relatively small”.

18 See Wolff, R. P. The Poverty of Liberalism, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), p. 35Google Scholar (footnote).