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Rationality Triumphant: Gauthier's Moral Theory*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Gregory S. Kavka
Gregory S. Kavka
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine
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Extract

Among major contractarian theorists, David Gauthier has the most ambitious philosophical aims. John Rawls has recently made clear that his theory of justice is not intended to provide a timeless and culturally invariant account of justice derived from the theory of rational choice. Yet Gauthier, in his rightly acclaimed and widely influential writings, attempts to provide just such an account of morality and distributive justice. With this new publication of a collection of his most important articles from the past two decades following, by four years, the appearance of his systematic treatise on ethics (Morals by Agreement) we are now in a good position to assess Gauthier's moral theory.

Type
Critical Notices/Études critiques
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , Spring 1993 , pp. 347 - 357
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1993

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References

Notes

1 See, e.g., Rawls, John, “Justice as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 14, 3 (Summer 1985): 223–51.Google Scholar

2 At one point (p. 327), Gauthier criticizes Rawls for pursuing thisproject. Since that passage was written, Rawls has indicated this never was his project, and Gauthier has adopted the project.

3 See, however, MBA, chap. 9.

4 These three main ideas are supposed to solve what Gauthier calls the “three core problems” of his theory (MBA, p. v).

5 For fuller discussion, which outlines some of the complications in the notion of constrained maximization, see MBA, chap. 6, and Gauthier, David, “Maximization Constrained: The Rationality of Cooperation,” in Paradoxes of Rationality and Cooperation, edited by Campbell, Richmond and Snowden, Lanning (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1985), pp. 75–93.Google Scholar

6 An influential version of the claim can be found in Schelling, Thomas, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960Google Scholar), chap. 1.

7 Nelson, Alan, “Economic Rationality and Morality,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 17, 2 (Spring 1988): 159–61.Google Scholar

8 Frank, Robert H., Passions Within Reason (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988Google Scholar), chap. 3 and appendix.

9 See Kavka, Gregory S., “The Reconciliation Project,” in Morality, Reason, and Truth, edited by Copp, David and Zimmerman, David (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1984), p. 297Google Scholar.

10 Schelling, Strategy of Conflict; Kavka, Gregory S., “Some Paradoxes of Deterrence,” Journal of Philosophy, 75, 6 (June 1978): 285–302CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lewis, David, “Devil's Bargains and the Real World,” in The Security Gamble, edited by MacLean, Douglas (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1984), pp. 141–54Google Scholar; and Parfit, Derek, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 12–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Kavka, Gregory S., “The Toxin Puzzle,” Analysis, 43, 1 (January 1983): 33–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 A useful discussion of this distinction, set in a more general game-theoretic context, is Klein, Daniel B., “A Game-Theoretic Rendering of Promises and Threats,” in Irvine Economics Papers, No. 90–91–21 (Irvine, CA: School of Social Sciences, University of California, Irvine, May 1991Google Scholar).

13 Klein, “Game-Theoretic Rendering,” pp. 9–10, offers a different sort of example of a threat that is a promise.

14 Recent unpublished work by Gauthier suggests he favours this proposal.

15 It is unclear why Gauthier speaks of “externalities”rather than using the more general notion of "market failure.” For discussion of the latter, see Cowen, Tyler, ed., The Theory of Market Failure (Fairfax, VA: George Mason University Press, 1988Google Scholar).

16 See Sugden, Robert, “Contractarianism and Norms,” Ethics, 100, 4 (July 1990): 768–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Schelling, Strategy of Conflict, chap. 3.

17 See, e.g., Buchanan, James, The Limits of Liberty (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1975Google Scholar); Narveson, Jan, The Libertarian Idea (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1988), pp. 154–55, 177Google Scholar; Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971) p. 136Google Scholar; and Kavka, Gregory S., Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 189Google Scholar.

18 Cf. Nozick's, Robert criticisms, in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), pp. 192–97Google Scholar, of Rawls for treating asymmetrically the “strains of commitment” on the advantaged and the disadvantaged.

19 In writing this critical notice, I have benefited from discussions with the members of my Spring 1991 seminar on contractarian moral theories at the University of California, Irvine, and from comments on an earlier draftby Tyler Cowen, Dan Klein, Chris Morris and Howard Sobel.