Metaethics is often dominated by both realist views according to which moral claims are made true by either non-natural or natural properties and by non-cognitivist views according to which these claims express desire-like attitudes. It is sometimes suggested that constructivism is a fourth alternative, but it has remained opaque just how it differs from the other views. To solve this problem, this article first describes a clear constructivist theory based on Crispin Wright’s anti-realism. It then outlines an argumentative strategy (...) that can be used to argue against constructivist views about practical reasons. The rest of the article explains how the outlined constructivist metaethical framework, reasons, and contractualism in normative ethics can still be used to create a new viable metaethical constructivist position about right and wrong. (shrink)

According to T. M. Scanlon’s anti-aggregation principle, it is wrong to save a larger number of people from minor harms rather than a smaller number from much more serious harms. This principle is a central part of many influential and anti-utilitarian ethical theories. According to the sequential-dominance principle, one does something wrong if one knowingly performs a sequence of acts whose outcome would be worse for everyone than the outcome of an alternative sequence of acts. The intuitive appeal (...) of the sequential-dominance principle should be obvious; everyone is knowingly made worse off if it is violated. In this paper, I present a number of cases where one is forced to violate either the anti-aggregation principle or the sequential-dominance principle. I show that these principles conflict regardless of whether one accepts a counterfactual or a temporal, worsening view of harm. Moreover, I show that this result holds regardless of how much worse a harm has to be in order to count as a much more serious harm. (shrink)

This paper argues that economics, over the past 200 years, has become steadily more anti-philosophical and that there are three stages in the development of economic thought. Adam Smith intended economics to be a descriptive social science, rooted in an understanding of the moral and psychological processes of an individual’s decision-making and its connection to society in general. Yet, immediately after Smith’s death, economists made a clean cut and invented a totally new discipline: they switched towards a physicalist understanding (...) of human nature. Humans, like atoms, follow a natural law: they are driven by an emotion (defined as a non-emotion, rationality), namely selfishness. Thus economics became a ‘natural’ science. In the 20th century, the second reinterpretation removed all traces of humanity from the study of economics and declared economics to be a formal science like mathematics and logics. The actor in Phase 3 economics is homo economicus syntheticus, a postulate whose only connection to real humanity is the word homo. The paper asks what the results of this dramatic relocation are and why Phase 3 economics still claims descent from Smithian economics, despite the massive differences. (shrink)

The world we inhabit is full of risks, many of which come about due to socially beneficial activities we undertake. Compensation is often invoked as a necessary element in the justification for why we are permitted to engage in these activities despite the risks they pose to ourselves and others. In this article, I discuss how Scanlonian contractualists ought to think about compensating the victims of socially beneficial yet risky practices that we engage with every day. I consider how two (...) prominent risk-sensitive accounts of contractualism, ex ante contractualism and ex post contractualism, ought to take compensation into account. My main point is that ex ante contractualism fails to deliver the conclusion that victims of risky social practices ought to receive a reasonable amount of compensation for the harm they eventually suffer. Roughly, this is so because ex ante contractualism cannot explain why these victims ought to prefer compensation for harm rather than mere compensation for risk. I call this the callousness objection to ex ante contractualism. I argue that the callousness objection provides us with a strong reason to favor ex post over ex ante contractualism. Furthermore, I expand on the implications that the possibility of compensation has regarding the demandingness of ex post contractualism. (shrink)

T.M. Scanlon’s contractualism holds that an action is morally wrong when and because it is ruled out by any set of principles for the general regulation of behaviour that no one could reasonably reject as a basis for informed, unforced, general agreement. This Contractualist Thesis offers a powerful normative ethical theory. Yet Scanlon’s case for it also comes from its help in answering a question that is more naturally classified as metaethical: what account can we give of what wrongness (...) is that explains its reason-giving force? Scanlon initially formulated his contractualist answer to that question as a reductive property-identification: the property of wrongness just is the property of being ruled out by principles for the general regulation of behaviour that no one could reasonably reject. In later work, he abandons the property-identification, while continuing to maintain that his contractualism supplies an “account of wrongness” that best explains its distinctive reason-giving force. But once a property-reduction is ruled out, what kind of claim could a contractualist “account of wrongness” be making that could indeed explain its reason-giving force? We distinguish four candidates and point out problems with three of them. We then offer a proposal for developing the fourth into a form that can address those problems. We argue that this provides the best prospect for a contractualist view that speaks to the concerns behind Scanlon’s question. But it does not deliver everything Scanlon is after; in particular, it falls short of a vindication of the Contractualist Thesis itself. (shrink)

This paper examines the efforts of contractualists to develop an alternative to aggregation to govern our duty not to harm (duty to rescue) others. I conclude that many of the moral principles articulated in the literature seem to reduce to aggregation by a different name. Those that do not are viable only as long as they are limited to a handful of oddball cases at the margins of social life. If extended to run-of-the-mill conduct that accounts for virtually all unintended (...) (in the sense of undesired) harm to others—noncriminal activities that impose some risk of harm on others—they would rule out all action. Moreover, because such conduct poses an irreducible conflict between freedom of action and freedom from expected harm, it can be regulated only by principles that accept the necessity of making precisely the sorts of interpersonal trade-offs that contractualism is foundationally committed to reject: trade-offs in which the numbers count, such that a risk of serious harm to one person can be justified by small benefits to the many. (shrink)

This essay begins by describing T.M. Scanlon’s contractualism according to which an action is right when it is authorised by the moral principles no one could reasonably reject. This view has argued to have implausible consequences with regards to how different-sized groups, non-human animals, and cognitively limited human beings should be treated. It has also been accused of being theoretically redundant and unable to vindicate the so-called deontic distinctions. I then distinguish between the general contractualist framework and Scanlon’s version (...) of contractualism. I explain how the general framework enables us to formulate many other versions of contractualism some of which can already be found in the literature. Understanding contractualism in this new way enables us both to understand the structural similarities and differences between different versions of contractualism and also to see the different objections to contractualism as internal debates about which version of contractualism is correct. (shrink)

This paper explores the moral and legal status of the right to strike from a contractualist perspective, broadly construed. I argue that rather than attempting to ground the right to strike in the principle of association, as is commonly done in the ongoing legal debate, it ought to be understood as the assertion of a second-order moral right to self-determination within economic life. The controversy surrounding the right to strike thus reflects and depends upon a more basic question of the (...) legitimate scope of reason giving. I conclude that the right to strike, understood as an assertion of a right to self-determination, enjoys presumptive or pro tanto legitimacy apart from the merits or demerits of particular strike demands. (shrink)

Age rationing is a central issue in the health care priority‐setting literature, but it has become ever more salient in the light of the Covid‐19 outbreak, where health authorities in several countries have given higher priority to younger over older patients. But how is age rationing different under outbreak circumstances than under normal circumstances, and what does this difference imply for ethical theories? This is the topic of this paper. The paper argues that outbreaks such as that of Covid‐19 involve (...) special circumstances that change how age should influence our prioritization decisions, and that while this shift in circumstances poses a problem for consequentialist views such as utilitarianism and age‐weighted consequentialism, contractualism is better equipped to cope with it. The paper then offers a contractualist prudential account of age rationing under outbreak circumstances. (shrink)

A difficult problem for contractualists is how to provide an interpretation of the contractual situation that is both subject to appropriately stringent constraints and yet also appropriately sensitive to certain features of us as we actually are. My suggestion is that we should embrace a model of contractualism that is structurally analogous to the “advice model” of the ideal observer theory famously proposed by Michael Smith (1994; 1995). An advice model of contractualism is appealing since it promises to (...) deliver a straightforward solution to the so-called “conditional fallacy.” But it faces some formidable challenges. On the face of it, it seems to be straightforwardly conceptually incoherent. And it seems to deliver a solution to the conditional fallacy at the cost of being vulnerable to what I shall call “the concessional fallacy.” I shall consider how, if at all, these challenges are to be met. I shall then conclude by considering what this might mean for the so-called “ideal/non-ideal theory” issue. (shrink)

A number of theorists have argued that Scanlon's contractualist theory both "gets around" and "solves" the non-identity problem. They argue that it gets around the problem because hypothetical deliberation on general moral principles excludes the considerations that lead to the problem. They argue that it solves the problem because violating a contractualist moral principle in one's treatment of another wrongs that particular other, grounding a person-affecting moral claim. In this paper, I agree with the first claim but note that all (...) it shows is that the act is impersonally wrong. I then dispute the second claim. On Scanlon's contractualist view, one wrongs a particular other if one treats the other in a way that is unjustifiable to that other on reasons she could not reasonably reject. We should think of person-affecting wronging in terms of the reasons had by the actual agent and the actual person affected by the agent's action. In non-identity cases, interpersonal justifiability is therefore shaped both by the reason to reject the treatment provided by the bad suffered and the reason to affirm the treatment provided by the goods had as a result of existing. I argue it would be reasonable for the actual person to find the treatment justifiable, and so I conclude that Scanlon's contractualist metaethics does not provide a narrow person-affecting solution to the non-identity problem on its own terms. I conclude that the two claims represent a tension within Scanlon's contractualist theory itself. (shrink)

In constructivist contractualist theories, such as Rawls’, principles of justice should mirror beliefs that we all, in some sense, share. One would then arrive at principles that everybody could, in that sense, accept. These principles should specify, among other things, to whom to distribute the relevant benefits and burdens and to whom to assign responsibility for the distribution. In addition to this classical assignment problem, however, constructivist contractualism must also deal with a new, and quite different, assignment problem sincewhat (...) to count as beliefs that weall share depends on how the set of people that make up the “we” is delimited. Thus, for constructivist contractualism, the questions of whom to assign a part in the justification procedure and whom to exclude, and how to justify these inclusions and exclusions, are of crucial importance. In this chapter we consider the inclusion or exclusion of future generations, and how this case illuminates a general problem for constructivist contractualism. (shrink)

This paper argues that T.M. Scanlon’s contractualism can provide a solution to the non-identity problem. It first argues that there is no reason not to include future people in the realm of those to whom we owe justification, but that merely possible people are not included. It then goes on to argue that a person could reasonably reject a principle that left them with a barely worth living life even though that principle caused them to exist, and that current (...) people could not justify creating people with barely worth living lives on the grounds that it caused those people to exist. (shrink)

Climate change is ‘a complex problem raising issues across and between a large number of disciplines, including physical and life sciences, political science, economics, and psychology, to name just a few’ (Gardiner 2006: 397). It is also a moral problem. Therefore, in this chapter, I will consider what kind of a contribution an ethical theory called ‘contractualism’ can make to the climate change debates. This chapter first introduces contractualism. It then describes a simple climate change scenario. The third (...) section explains what kind of moral obligations we would have in that situation according to contractualism. Finally, the last section discusses some of the advantages and problems of the sketched view. These discussions should help us to better understand contractualism and illustrate how contractualism could perhaps enable us to come to grips with some of the more difficult moral aspects of climate change. (shrink)

T. M. Scanlon’s contractualism is a meta-ethical theory that explains moral motivation and also provides a conception of how to carry out moral deliberation. It supports non-consequentialism – the theory that both consequences and deontological considerations are morally significant in moral deliberation. Regarding the issue of punishment, non-consequentialism allows us to take account of the need for deterrence as well as principles of fairness, justice, and even desert. Moreover, Scanlonian contractualism accounts for permissibility in terms of justifiability: An (...) act is permissible if and only if it can be justified to everyone affected by it. This contractualist thesis explains why it is always impermissible to frame an innocent person, why vicarious punishment is impermissible, and why there has to be a cap on sentences. Contractualism therefore allows us to take deterrence as a goal of punishment without the excess of utilitarianism. This paper further argue that the resulting view is superior to pure retributivism. Finally, it shows why legal excuses and mitigation can be justified in terms of the notion of negative desert. (For access to this paper: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/sJ2JBVXkztyFMGmxS7tS/full ) . (shrink)

Two generally recognized moral duties are to reciprocate benefits one has received from others and to compensate harms one has done to others. In this paper I want to show that it is not possible to give an adequate account of either duty – or at least one that corresponds to our actual practices – within a contractualist moral theory of the type developed by T. M. Scanlon (1982, 1998). This fact is interesting in its own right, as contractualism (...) is a leading contemporary contender among deontological moral theories, and the two duties I have mentioned are fairly standard ingredients of such theories. But it also serves to highlight a general problem with contractualism, at least in Scanlon’s version – namely its one-dimensional view of the keystone of any plausible deontological theory: the idea of respect for persons. (shrink)

T. M. Scanlon’s contractualism attempts to give an account of right and wrong in terms of the moral code that could not be reasonably rejected. Reasonable rejectability is then a function of what kind of consequences the general adoption of different moral codes has for different individuals. It has been shown that moral codes should be compared at a lower than 100% level of social acceptance. This leads to the counter-culture challenge. The problem is that the cultural background of (...) the individuals who have not internalized the majority code affects the consequences of the codes and furthermore there does not seem to be a non-arbitrary way of choosing the minority cultures. This chapter first surveys and critically evaluates different responses to this challenge. It then outlines a version of ‘Real World Contractualism’, which offers the best response to the counter-culture challenge. (shrink)

Most contractualist ethical theories have a subjunctivist structure. This means that they attempt to make sense of right and wrong in terms of a set of principles which would be accepted in some idealized, non-actual circumstances. This makes these views vulnerable to the so-called conditional fallacy objection. The moral principles that are appropriate for the idealized circumstances fail to give a correct account of what is right and wrong in the ordinary situations. This chapter uses two versions of contractualism (...) to illustrate this problem: Nicholas Southwood’s and a standard contractualist theory inspired by T.M. Scanlon’s contractualism. It then develops a version of Scanlon’s view that can avoid the problem. This solution is based on the idea that we also need to compare different inculcation elements of moral codes in the contractualist framework. This idea also provides a new solution to the problem of at what level of social acceptance should principles be compared. (shrink)

It is a truism that there are erroneous convictions in criminal trials. Recent legal findings show that 3.3% to 5%of all convictions in capital rape-murder cases in the U.S. in the 1980s were erroneous convictions. Given this fact, what normative conclusions can be drawn? First, the article argues that a moderately revised version of Scanlon’ s contractualism offers an attractive moral vision that is different from utilitarianism or other consequentialist theories, or from purely deontological theories. It then brings this (...) version of Scanlonian contractualism to bear on the question of whether the death penalty, life imprisonment, long sentences, or shorter sentences can be justified, given that there is a non-negligible rate of erroneous conviction. Contractualism holds that a permissible act must be justifiable to everyone affected by it. Yet, given the non-negligible rate of erroneous conviction, it is unjustifiable to mete out the death penalty, because such a punishment is not justifiable to innocent murder convicts. It is further argued that life imprisonment will probably not be justified (unless lowering the sentence to a long sentence will drastically increase the murder rate). However, whether this line of argument could be further extended would depend on the impact of lowering sentences on communal security. (shrink)

This paper is a defence of T.M. Scanlon's contractualism - the view that an action is wrong if it is forbidden by the principles which no one could reasonably reject. Such theories have been argued to be redundant in two ways. They are claimed to assume antecedent moral facts to explain which principles could not be reasonably rejected, and the reasons they provide to follow the non-rejectable principles are said to be unnecessary given that we already have sufficient reasons (...) not to do the acts that are forbidden by those principles. In this paper, I try to argue that neither one of these claims is true. (shrink)

This paper attempts to show how a reductionist approach to the metaphysics of personal identity might well be most compatible with a form of contractualism, not utilitarianism.

Moral Contractualism provides a compelling framework for understanding what we owe to each other and seems promising as a non-consequentialist intergenerational moral theory as well. However, the non-identity problem presents a critical challenge. Specifically, the question arises as to whether future individuals can have an objection against the principles allowing an act even if the future individual’s existence is contingent on this act and their lives will be worth living. A prominent response to this challenge is to understand the (...) objections of future individuals in a "non-comparative" way. The idea is that, whereas future persons cannot object that they are made worse off by our actions, they can complain that they are made badly off in some sense. It remains unclear how to best understand such a position within Moral Contractualism, whether it offers a coherent solution to the non-identity problem, and whether its substantial implications are convincing. This paper critically examines the possibilities and limitations of a non-comparative contractualist approach, concluding that non-comparative wellbeing-based objections above the threshold of a life worth living are not plausible. Consequently, a non-comparative response to the nonidentity problem referring to the well-being of future persons can, at best, provide a partial solution for Moral Contractualists. (shrink)

Rawls developed a contractualist theory of social justice and Scanlon attempted to extend the Rawlsian framework to develop a theory of rightness, or morality more generally. I argue that there are some good reasons to adopt a contractualist theory of social justice, but that it is a mistake to adopt a contractualist theory of rightness. I begin by illustrating the major shared features of Scanlon and Rawls’ theories. I then show that the justification for these features in Rawls’ theory, the (...) centrality of cooperative fairness to social justice, cannot be used to defend their use in Scanlon’s. Finally, I argue that Scanlon has not provided an adequate alternative defense of these features, and show that they create problems when contractualists try to explain major features of our common-sense morality. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 13, Issue 2, pp 135 - 160 A moral theory should tell us something about our obligations to future persons. It is therefore sometimes objected that contractualist moral theories cannot give a satisfactory account of such obligations, as there is little to motivate a contract with persons who can offer us almost nothing in return. I will argue that more recent “relational” forms of contractualism escape these objections. These forms of contractualism do, however, remain vulnerable (...) to Derek Parfit’s non-identity problem. Recent attempts to resolve this problem have looked to the role “generic reasons” and “standpoints” play in contractualist theories. I argue that these views provide an important line of response in cases where the deliberating agent has limited information about the identities of those their actions will affect, but that the non-identity problem is not such a case. I conclude by considering some remaining options for the relational contractualist. (shrink)

Familiar questions about whether or how far to impose risks of harm for social benefit present a fundamental dilemma for contractualist moral theories. If contractualism allows objections by considering actual outcomes, it becomes difficult to justify the risks created by most public policy, leaving contractualism at odds with moral commonsense in much the way utilitarianism is. But if contractualism instead takes a fully form by considering only expected outcomes, it becomes unclear how it recommends something other than (...) aggregative cost-benefit decision-making. Focusing on T.M. Scanlon's version, this paper develops this basic choice of interpretation and recommends the ex ante version. The paper explains how contractualism is inconsistent with John Harsanyibad aggregationgood aggregation” that is both unavoidable and fully appropriate in public life. (shrink)

How should contractualists seek to accommodate and respond to the existence of radical pluralism within contemporary liberal states? Ryan Muldoon has recently argued that a) the dominant Kantian liberal model of contractualism is hopelessly ill equipped to do so but that b) there is a particular kind of Hobbesian contractualism that can do much better. I raise some problems concerning the capacity of Muldoonian contractualism to respond appropriately to the problem of radical pluralism. I then propose a (...) very different kind of solution that involves embracing an advice model of contractualism. Keywords: contractualism; contractarianism; pluralism; diversity; disagreement . (shrink)

This article explores some aspects of what has been termed ‘new contractualism’ in social policy, using the Norwegian policy on poverty and social exclusion as an empirical example. An important purpose is to identify how the move to new contractualism implies new modes of controlling behaviour and to explore the ethical legitimacy of this approach. Firstly, contractualism is seen in relation to some dominating discourses in Norwegian and European social policy over the last 20–30 years, emphasizing the (...) importance of economic considerations concerning the financial sustainability of the welfare state. Secondly, the article explores some implications of contractual modes of thought for balancing rights and duties in the welfare state, concluding that the principle of a welfare contract is a euphemism for a polity that basically imposes more obligations on the recipients of welfare services. Thirdly, it elaborates on the tension field between the possible democratic benefits of contractualism and more paternalistic consequences. Although relational contracts may enhance client-influenced service provision, paternal outcomes are likely, owing to the fact that such contracts are often used as instruments for behaviour-changing efforts (e.g. to create an economically active citizen). (shrink)

The article is a critical discussion of "contractualism" in moral and political philosophy as developed by john rawls and applied by w. G. Runciman. It attempts to clarify the sense in which contractualism is a moral theory and to assess its powers as a normative account of moral criticism. It argues that the structure of contractualism suggests an attractive way of formulating rival moral theories but not a way of arguing for any moral theory, That this reduces (...) the force of a contractualist critique of utilitarianism, And that contractualism is incomplete as a normative account of moral criticism. (shrink)

In response to the charge that deontic ("argent-centered") restrictions are paradoxical, several recent writers suggest that such restrictions find support within T.M. Scanlon's contractualism. I suggest that this claim is only interesting if these restrictions are stronger than those supported by indirect consequentialism. I argue that contractualism cannot support restrictions any stronger than those supported by indirect consequentialism. The contractualists have mislocated the source of the paradox, which arises under any theory that defines right action in patient-focused terms. (...) Consequentialism and contractualism share this feature, so contractualism cannot support stronger deontic restrictions than consequentialism supports. (shrink)

I argue that T.M. Scanlon's contractualist account of morality has difficulty accommodating our intuitions about the moral relevance of the number of people affected by an action. I first consider the "Complaint Model" of reasonable rejection, which restricts the grounds for an individual's rejection of a principle to its effects upon herself. I argue that it can accommodate our intuitions about numbers only if we assume that, whenever we do not know who will be affected, each individual may appeal only (...) to the _expected effects on her. This assumption, I suggest, leads to counterintuitive results in cases where, although we do not know who will be affected, we do know that _someone will be. I then consider two proposals to supplement the complaint model with a direct appeal to aggregation. I argue that both are open to serious objections. (shrink)

The article investigates the resources of contractualist moral theory to make sense of the ethics of risk imposition. In some ways, contractualism seems well placed to explain how it can be reasonable to accept exposure to risk of harms whose direct imposition would not be acceptable. However, there are difficulties getting clear about what directness comes to here, especially given the difficulty of adequately motivating traditional views that assign ethical significance to what the agent intends as opposed to merely (...) foreseeing. The article considers two principles which might help the contractualist: the Redistribution Principle, which, while attractive, is perhaps somewhat too restrictive, and the Aim Consistency Principle, which grants ethical significance to the aims with which our actions are in principle consistent whatever our actual intentions may be. The article also considers the relative significance of ex ante and ex post perspectives from which to evaluate actions and principles. Key Words: contractualism • Doctrine of Double Effect • ethics • intention • justice • risk • T.M. Scanlon • utilitarianism. (shrink)

This essay explores the reasons for thinking that Scanlon's contractualist principle serves merely as a ?spare wheel?, an element that spins along nicely but bears no real weight, because it presupposes too much of what it should be explaning. The ambitions and scope of Scanlon's contractualism are discussed, as is Scanlon's thesis that contracualism will assess candidate moral principles individually rather than as sets. The final third of the paper critizes Scanlon's account of fairness and his approach to cases (...) where agents can save either one person or many people. (shrink)

One familiar criticism of utilitarianism is that it is too demanding. It requires us to promote the happiness of others, even at the expense of our own projects, our integrity, or the welfare of our friends and family. Recently Ashford has defended utilitarianism, arguing that it provides compelling reasons for demanding duties to help the needy, and that other moral theories, notably contractualism, are committed to comparably stringent duties. In response, I argue that utilitarianism is even more demanding than (...) is commonly realized: both act- and rule-utilitarianism are committed to extremely stringent duties to wild animals. In this regard, utilitarianism is more demanding (and more counter-intuitive) than contractualism. (shrink)

Geoffrey Rose’s prevention paradox points to a tension between two prima facie plausible moral principles: that we should save the greater number and that weshould save the most at risk. This paper argues that a novel moral theory, ex-ante contractualism, captures our intuitions in many prevention paradox cases, regardless of our interpretation of probability claims. However, it goes on to show that it might be impossible to square ex-ante contractualism with all of our moral intuitions. It concludes that (...) even if ex-ante contractualism cannot furnish an entire ethics of risk, it does identify important considerations for any such theory. (shrink)

We propose to discuss about the possession and expression of a capacity that empowers individuals to act as citizens. First, elements of Aristotelian politics are presented as arguments for civility as a capacity inherent in the social nature of human beings. Then, according a contractualist interpretations, the individual becomes a citizen to the extent that he forms an agreement with the other members of society. A first finding refers to the fact that with contractualism, the individual has lost the (...) inherence of his civic action and must define himself as a citizen if he meets the extrinsically given requirements Likewise, it is indicated that the expression of civility has been interfered with by an idea of individual freedom understood in negative terms. However, before returning to Aristotelian perspective, it is necessary to redefine the idea of freedom that guides civic interaction, advocating for a social and intrinsically motivated citizenship. Proponemos discutir sobre la posesión y expresión de una capacidad que faculta a los individuos para actuar como ciudadanos. Primero, se exponen aspectos de la política aristotélica como argumentos en favor de la civilidad como una capacidad inherente a la naturaleza social de los seres humanos. Luego, desde una interpretación contractualista, el individuo se convierte en ciudadano en la medida en que establece acuerdos con los demás miembros de la sociedad. Así, una primera constatación se refiere a que, con el contractualismo, el individuo ha perdido la inherencia de su acción cívica y es definido como ciudadano en la medida en que cumple requisitos dados extrínsecamente. Asimismo, se indica que la expresión de civilidad se ha visto interferida por una idea de libertad individual entendida en términos negativos. Sin embargo, antes de retomar una perspectiva aristotélica, es necesario redefinir la idea de libertad que guía la interacción cívica, abogando por una ciudadanía social e intrínsecamente motivada. (shrink)

Contractualism/Contractarianism collects, for the first time, both major classical sources and central contemporary discussions of these important approaches to philosophical ethics. Edited and introduced by Stephen Darwall, these readings are essential for anyone interested in normative ethics.

This article provides a critical introduction to contractualism as a moral or ethical theory, that is, as a theory of the rightness and wrongness of individual conduct – focusing specifically on the influential 'Kantian' version of contractualism due to T. M. Scanlon. I begin by elucidating the key features of Scanlon's contractualism: justifiability to others; reasonable rejectability; the individualist restriction; and mutual recognition. I then turn to discuss both its appeal and the main objections that have been (...) raised to it – objections concerning our duties to the cognitively limited and impaired, aggregation, demandingness, normativity and explanatory adequacy. I conclude by mentioning some contractualist alternatives to Scanlon's theory. (shrink)

I argue that, in order to address the ideal world problem while remaining faithful to our concept of morality, Contractualists should no longer determine which actions I must perform by seeing whether they accord with certain principles for the general regulation of behavior. Instead, I argue, Contractualists should determine whether it is right or wrong for me to perform an action by evaluating any maxim that might be reflected by my action. I call the resulting view “Maxim Contractualism.” It (...) states that an agent’s action is morally required just in case any maxim that he might adopt that involves not performing that action is one that someone could reasonably reject. Finally, I argue that, although Act Contractualism also provides us with the materials to solve the Ideal World Problem, it is a worse solution because it cannot account for the fact that, sometimes, what would happen if I performed an action over time is relevant to whether I am permitted to perform that action right here, right now. (shrink)

This article explores Darwall’s second-­‐personal account of morality, which draws on Fichte’s practical philosophy, particularly Fichte’s notions of a summons and principle of right. Darwall maintains that Fichte offers a philosophically more appealing account of relations of right than Kant. Likewise, he thinks that his second-­‐personal interpretation of morality gives rise to contractualism. I reject Darwall’s criticism of Kant’s conception of right. Moreover, I try to show that Darwall’s second-­‐personal conception of morality relies on a Kantian form of (...) class='Hi'>contractualism. Instead of accepting Darwall’s claim that contractualism depends upon a second-­‐personal account of morality, I will argue that contractualism provides the foundations not only for second-­‐personal moral relations, but also for first-­‐personal moral authority. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall argue that both cognitivism and liberal contractualism defend a pre-moral conception of human desire that has its origin in the Hobbesian and Humean tradition that both theories share. Moreover, the computational and syntactic themes in cognitive science support the notion, which Gauthier evidently shares, that the human mind ¿ or, in Gauthier¿s case, the mind of ¿economic man¿ ¿ is a purely formal mechanism, characterized by logical and mathematical operations. I shall conclude that a (...) single conception of human behaviour runs through the various dominant psychological, moral and political theories of analytic inspiration. (shrink)

Kantian respect for persons is based on the special status and dignity of humanity. There are, however, at least three distinct kinds of interpretation of the principle of respect for the dignity of persons: the contractualist conception, the substantive conception and the direct conception. Contractualist theories are the most common and familiar interpretation. The contractualist assumes that some form of consent or agreement is the crucial factor that is required by respect for persons. The substantive conceptions of dignity, on the (...) other hand, treat the concept of dignity as a substantive value that justifies a deontological conception of respect for persons. A third conception of respect for the dignity of persons, the conception that I favor, focuses directly on the special value of our rational nature. According to this consequentialist conception, we respect the dignity of persons by promoting the flourishing of rational nature. (shrink)

This article examines the way that for-profit businesses should take into account the interests of the citizens in the liberal democratic societies in which they operate. I will show how a contractualist version of stakeholder theory identifies the relevant moral interests of both shareholders and citizen stakeholders, and provides a method for giving their interests appropriate consideration. These include (1) the interests that individuals have with respect to private property, (2) the interests citizens have in receiving equitable consideration in the (...) political process, and (3) citizens' interests which give them the collective right to determine the legal and economic structure of their societies. Using this contractualist analysis, I argue that corporations should consciously take into account the interests of citizen stakeholders when there is no other social mechanism for protecting their interests as citizens. (shrink)

A discussion of T M Scanlon's contractualism as a foundational account of the nature of morality. The article discusses how contractualism provides an account of moral truth and objectivity that is based in an idealization of moral reasoning. It then develops contractualism's account of moral motivation to show how it provides a way to understand obscure but central aspects of Kantian views: the claims that moral reasons are of a special kind, and that moral motives have a (...) basis in practical reason. This account is contrasted with human conceptions of moral motivation, which are argued to be incapable of accounting for the stringency of moral reasons and obligations. (shrink)