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Gauthier's Liberal Individual*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2010
Extract
David Gauthier's recent and elegant Morals by Agreement sets itself the task of deriving morality from the non-moral premises of the theory of rational choice. Gauthier uses the device of a social contract to demonstrate the rational basis of a morality emphasizing rights against force and fraud, private property and the keeping of contracts. Gauthier's social contract is supposed to demonstrate the basis of a morality that is both categorical and enforceable. If his argument is successful, it will demonstrate both the demands that morality may rightly make on each of us, and the moral demands that we may rightly hold each other to.
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- Information
- Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , Winter 1989 , pp. 63 - 76
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- Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1989
References
1 Gauthier, David, Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).Google Scholar
2 Gauthier's reasons for doubting the possibility of objective value draw on the recent work of Gilbert Harman (in The Nature of Morality [Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1977]Google Scholar), and J. L. Mackie (in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong [Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1977]). Both arguments have been widely criticized. I shall not rehearse those criticisms, as the difficulties for Gauthier that I wish to draw attention to lie elsewhere.
3 Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, ed. Macpherson, C. B. (Harmondsworth. Middlesex: Penguin, 1968), 203 ff.Google Scholar
4 See especially Chapter 2.
5 A parallel with theoretical rationality may help here. In order to characterize two people as disagreeing, one must assume that they share at least minimal beliefs in various logical truths. In particular, without ascribing acceptance of the law of noncontradiction to both, one cannot make sense of their views conflicting. Yet the fact that they both share this belief ensures that the belief alone is not sufficient to settle any disputes between them. A more complete discussion of this point can be found in my “Foundationalism in Political Theory”, Philosophy and Public Affairs 16/2 (Spring 1987)Google Scholar and in Richmond Campbell's review of Morals by Agreement, Philosophical Quarterly 38/152 (July 1988)Google Scholar. The same argument can be extended to any attempt to ground an account of rational agency in any sort of conceptual truth.
6 John Rawls asks a similar question of the hypothetical contract described in his A Theory of Justice, and suggests “the conditions embodied in the description of the original position are ones that we do in fact accept. Or if we do not, then perhaps we can be persuaded to do so by philosophical reflection” (A Theory of Justice [Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1971], 21).Google Scholar
7 Wayne Sumner has pointed out that advantages to mutually indifferent agents may not be readily applicable to those who do care about others. First of all, those with malevolent motives (who pose the most serious threat to moral community) will be unmoved by the argument—the racist unwilling to make even advantageous agreements with Blacks or Jews does not care about whether they are advantageous. Even those more benevolently inclined may find that their particular personal attachments sometimes undermine compliance. If one cares enough about particular people, the benefits to them that immorality might bring may outweigh the disadvantages to oneself of immorality. Those who are partial may find the burdens of impartiality unbearable. See Sumner, Wayne, “Justice Contracted”, Dialogue 26/3 (Autumn 1987).Google Scholar
8 Gauthier describes such agents as “translucent” rather than “transparent”, because their dispositions can be reliably, but not infallibly, ascertained (174). Gauthier also maintains that an agent's preferences may not be read directly off of his or her behaviour (27). I confess bewilderment on this point; if behaviour does not reveal preference, how can an agent's public behaviour be a reliable index of motive, particularly if the agent has something to gain by disguising true motives?
9 Hume, David, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, quoted in Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, 181.Google Scholar
10 It is important to distinguish this point from the problem raised by Mary Gibson in her article “Rationality”. Gibson argues that rational agents have an interest in systematically subverting one another's rationality, because competing agents stand to benefit from one another's weaknesses. Citing the role of advertising and socialization, she suggests that there are many cases in which those weaknesses are fostered as a part of a deliberate strategy. Thus she argues that rational agents will often seek to undermine the rationality of others. Gauthier rejects Gibson's argument. He points out that the interest that rational agents take in the reliability of those with whom they co-operate ensures that they will take an interest in fostering at least a minimal degree of rationality. But an interest in the rationality of others does not ensure that the rational agent will take an interest in other agent's not taking an interest in one another's interests. Though the rational agent may be interested in promoting another agent's rationality to a level that it ensures that person's reliability and ability to keep agreements, the rational agent takes no corresponding interest in the content of that agent's preferences. See Gibson, Mary, “Rationality”, Philosophy and Public Affairs 6/2 (1977).Google Scholar
11 Suppose the Law firm of Dewey and Howe offers to make a young lawyer, Susan Cheetham, a full partner because of a perceived need to make up for sexist hiring policies in the past. If she is a rational agent of the sort Gauthier describes, she will accept the offer because it advantages her, even if, as an agent taking no interest in the interests of others, she thinks affirmative action programmes are silly. Thus she will be rational to take advantage of the offer to join the new firm of Dewey, Cheetham, and Howe.
12 “The rich man may feast on Caviar and Champagne, while the poor woman starves at his gate” (218).
13 Jean Hampton offers an example of such a cartel: Gang leaders are able to maintain discipline without appeal to moral incentives, because they can both offer spoils and threaten sanctions. See Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 183 ff.Google Scholar
14 In the coming centuries, perhaps all non-contractual moralities will dissolve under the weight of skeptical arguments like those presented in the second Chapter of Morals by Agreement. Gauthier has advanced this claim in “Is Morality Possible?”, The Model Train Inaugural Lecture (Erindale College, University of Toronto, December 1987). Even if this (contentious) claim is true, it is of little interest to any agent concerned to advance his or her own ends, unless aiding the forward march of history should happen to be one of those ends. If they do, rational agents will s'rike different bargains than they do now. The possibility of the eventual demise of others' views can carry no more weight in the actual deliberations of currently living rational agents than can the eventual demise of the parties themselves.
15 David Copp has pointed out to me that this is not strictly speaking true; the argument can be understood as addressed to rational agents that find themselves in the circumstances Gauthier describes. Trouble is, actual circumstances depart from those, leaving the rational agent with no reason to take an interest.
16 In formulating this point in this way, I am indebted to two important essays by Scanlon, T. M.: “Nozick on Rights, Liberty, and Property”, Philosophy and Public Affairs 6/1 (Fall 1976)Google Scholar, and “Contractualism and Utilitarianism”, in Sen, Amartya and Williams, Bernard, eds., Utilitarianism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17 Several people have suggested that the argument works if we supposed that “economic man” is uniquely worthy. As we shall see, the liberal individual is an augmented version of economic man. who is capable of affect as well as preference. Economic man has all of the weaknesses of the liberal individual, as well as being incapable of affect; thus I focus on the problems faced by the latter.
18 It is sometimes supposed that an ideal contract can provide the minimal content of morality, to which additional commitments can be added. The difficulty with this view is that the constraints imposed by the ideal contract may preclude measures, such as redistribution, that might plausibly be supposed to be demanded by the non-contractual parts of morality. There is no reason to assign priority to the demands imposed by the ideal contract in such cases.
19 Wayne Sumner makes a parallel point in “Morality Contracted”. Sumner uses the example of marriage, which on Gauthier's view must be justified by appeal to such advantages as tax breaks and joint tennis memberships. Love can play no justifying role.
20 Gauthier is willing to allow virtually any extreme of either in an “essentially just society”.
21 For a discussion of the parallel phenomenon of adaptive preference, see Elster, Jon, Sour Grapes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
22 The difference between Rawls's and Gauthier's use of a contract between mutually indifferent rational agents is worth noting: Rawls's argument is designed to avoid presupposing any particular conception of the good (whether it succeeds is another matter, which I leave for another occasion), and thus to insure that its the compatibility of its conclusions with a variety of competing conceptions. The contract is a vivid way of underscoring the “strains of commitment”—the requirement that principles be acceptable to all. whatever their assets or conception of the good. The parties to the contract are characterized so as to leave both their ends and the structure of their practical reasoning as open as possible. Gauthier's contract, in contrast, is supposed to show that its preferred set of arrangements are advantageous to all on the basis of their self-regarding preferences. This advantage can only be demonstrated if the agents really do reason in this way. Thus the flaws in the liberal individual's character permeate the entire project.
23 Hobbes, , Leviathan, 205.Google Scholar