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Show Chapter X. Rawls's Instrumentalism I have just argued in Chapter IX.4 that the Instrumentalist strategy of moral justification is self-defeating. John Rawls and Richard Brandt have each utilized the Instrumentalist strategy in defense of their respective moral theories, by arguing that their theories would be chosen by a fully instrumentally rational agent concerned to further her own ends, whatever these might be, given the available information, whether limited (Rawls) or full (Brandt). However, the success of this strategy requires each to make further, controversial assumptions about the chooser's ends and motivations in the choice situation, in order to derive the favored moral theory. I address Rawls's theory in this chapter and Brandt's in the next. Common lines of early criticisms of Rawls's Theory of Justice1 made by, among others, Schwartz, Nagel, Gauthier, and Miller were alike in presupposing the continuity thesis, i.e. that the parties in the original position are psychologically continuous with members of the well-ordered society. To my knowledge, no later commentators on Rawls's writings have disputed this assumption. There is evidence in A Theory of Justice, The Dewey Lectures2, and other writings by Rawls both to confirm and to disconfirm this thesis. His late Political Liberalism3 appears to dispense with it - without, however, addressing the issue directly. If this thesis is true, then either the original position cannot generate any principles of justice at all; or else Rawls's special motivational assumptions about the parties in the original position, i.e. that they are overridingly concerned to develop and express their moral personalities, and secondarily, to advance their conceptions of the good, tautologically imply that they will choose the principles of justice, in order to distribute primary goods. In this case, it is vacuously true that an agent will choose what he has special motivation to choose, other things equal. But in order to justify this choice for us, we, too, must have that special motivation. But if we do, then the argument does not succeed in justifying this choice as instrumentally efficient whatever our ends, i.e. objectively. If we do not, then it does not succeed in justifying this choice for us at all. In either case, the Instrumentalist strategy fails. However, if the continuity thesis is false, then Rawls's early ambition to conceive moral justification on analogy with scientific justification must be reevaluated. Greater attention then must be focused on Rawls's conception of wide reflective equilibrium as a justificatory device, and Rawls is correct in maintaining the irrelevance of the question of personal identity to the construction of his moral theory. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1971). Henceforth references to this work are parenthecized in the text and denoted by "TJ". 2 John Rawls, The Dewey Lectures 1980, The Journal of Philosophy LXXVII (1980) 3 John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996) 1 |
