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Show Chapter X. Rawls's Instrumentalism 418 true, on the one hand, that it does not, in practice, maximize the satisfaction of individual desire for all or even most citizens; and, on the other, that it was, after all, the most rational choice under the circumstances in which it was chosen. If those circumstances themselves have special significance to the agents who abide by it now, then the instrumental reasoning that generated it then may survive retrospective scrutiny. The social contract would still be instrumentally justified even though it did not have the best consequences in practice, because the particular circumstances and instrumental reasoning that generated it then would themselves have intrinsic value for us now. The metaethics of Social Contract Theory as traditionally conceived, then, has certain identifying characteristics. First, it includes a characteristically Humean conception of the self. It conceives of human agents as motivated by the desire to pursue and achieve self-interested goals and values, in whatever these may consist. These goals are conceived as prior to and independent of established political and legal institutions, and as instrumentally justifying those institutions. Human agents are thus conceived as expressing themselves through their capacity for instrumental, means-end reasoning, i.e. their ability to seek out and exploit the most efficient means available for satisfying their desires. In these ways, human agents are also conceived as more or less equal in physical and mental abilities, such that each has a certain minimum degree of strength and calculating ability, such that deficiencies of one are usually compensated by excesses of the other. Second, the metaethics of Social Contract Theory traditionally includes a preconditioning set of circumstances - the "state of nature" - that, by generating the social contract, thereby justifies it. By definition, these preconditioning circumstances are such that the agreed-upon social arrangements that constitute implementation of the contract are not yet in place. Since individuals are nevertheless motivated to pursue the satisfaction of their desires, these preconditioning circumstances are characterized by confusion, conflict, and mistrust, and this thwarts or obstructs each individual's ability to satisfy his desires. Third, there is, of course, the social contract itself. Using instrumental reasoning, each individual in the preconditioning circumstances concludes that mutual cooperation with other similarly self-interested agents is the best means for her to pursue her own self-interested goals. Each therefore agrees on terms of mutual cooperation - laws, social norms, and moral rules coordinating expectations and behavior, and providing for sanctions and means of enforcing them - which each also thereby agrees to obey. In order to implement this agreement, individuals voluntarily abdicate a certain amount of personal freedom and power available in the preconditioning circumstances to a mutually agreed-upon governing authority. The function of this governing authority is to regulate and insure obedience to these norms © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
