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1 Several of Rawls' critics have argued that when you get down to specifics his alleged alternative is not substantially different from utilitarianism. R. M. Hare ([6], 154–5; 241–52) presents the most sustained arguments to this effect, and Arrow ([1], 255–7) and Gordon ([5], 275–8) also level this charge. (The numbers in brackets refer to the critical studies listed at the end of this article.)
2 Cf. Hare [6], 144–8. Hare also maintains that Rawls' attempt to compare moral philosophy to linguistics is vitiated by the fact that linguistics does not yield substantial conclusions as moral philosophy does. It is quite right to test a linguistic theory against what people actually say when they are speaking carefully, for linguistic intuitions are indeed authoritative for what is correct in a language. But, Hare argues, the only moral theories that can be checked against people's actual moral judgments are anthropological theories about what people think one ought to do, not moral principles about what one ought to do. Chi this same issue, see Nagel [8], 221.
3 R. Nisbet gets considerable rhetorical mileage out of his assimilation of Rawls' methodology to the “hypothetical history” of the eighteenth-century philosophes, but his claim that this is “the true nature of Rawls's method of proof” seems strained given the prevalence of ideal observer theories in ethics and the role of idealization in science (Nisbet [9] 110–12).
4 Raphael [11], 123.
5 That these conditions on the original position are neither uncontroversial nor weak has been argud by many of Rawls' critics. With regard to the condition on motivation in particular, critics of both the right and the left focus on the concept of the individual involved and see a substantive liberalism where Rawls sees only a methodological minimalism. Rawls claims, however, that the actual principles of justice that he derives are not simply a function of the mutual disinterest assumption (as opposed to altruism) because the combination of it and the “veil of ignorance” achieves the same results as altruism. It's just that his theory is far stronger and more workable given the weaker assumption. If the principles account for our considered judgments and his deduction is sound, then his theory is to be preferred over one with altruistic foundations in virtue of the canons of parsimony. The objector would have to show that the stronger assumptions would yield substantively different principles of justice which better accounted for our considered judgments. See Rawls, pp. 148–9.
6 Fisk ([4], 18) and Teitelman ([12], 547) push the critique much deeper to argue that the deduction of those values associated with liberal capitalist democracy is not invalid but fundamentally circular. It is really a function of an uncritical acceptance of an individualistic conception of human nature in the characterization of the people in the original position.
7 Rawls, p. 154. This derivation of the maximin criterion has been subject to sustained criticism by Barry ([2], 87–107) and Nagel ([8], 229–32). Barry emphasizes the crucial role in the deduction played by uncritical psychological assumptions such as his views on risk-taking, whereas Nagel maintains that the argument ultimately depends on covert egalitarian premises. For a further critique of the difference principle from the point of view of a Marxist analysis of social conflict see R. Miller [7].
8 Nosick [10] has argued that Rawls has not gone far enough in his rejection of utilitarianism. Both Rawls and the utilitarians rest satisfied with end-state principles of justice whereas what is called for are historical process principles which Nosick attempts to provide in his “entitlement theory of justice.”
9 Rawls, pp. 195–201. It is Rawls' expressed intention in this part to show that his principles of justice define a workable political conception and give rise to reasonable aproximations to our considered judgments. This he tries to accomplish by dealing with the issues of constitutional, legislative and judicial design. Barry ([2], 134–53), however, argues that his attempt to illustrate the workableness of his account is vitiated by his restriction to ideal (strict compliance) as opposed to nonideal theory. For if the participants are singlemindedly concerned with justice the rules for decision making are otiose, whereas if they are not, the rules are too weak for the system to be workable.
10 Feinberg ([3], 268–75) maintains that Rawls' brilliant account of civil disobedience is more a function of his acute moral intuition than of his elaborate contract theory of justice.