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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 497 Instrumentalism in moral justification determine a noticeable portion of the content and strategies of reasoning in both theories. Section 3 shows that in a description of the ideal Utilitarian community that lacks the publicity condition, it is a requirement of social stability that members conceal their adherence to Utilitarianism. Section 4 shows that unfortunately, adding in the publicity condition renders the very conception of such a society incoherent, hence fails to solve the free rider problem even for the ideal case. Section 5 concludes that the failure of the publicity condition for both non-ideal and ideal cases leaves the consistent Utilitarian unable to form psychologically normal and satisfying human relationships, and necessitates a permanent policy of free riding. Hence just as Hobbes' conception of the good society foundered on the problem of the clandestine free rider, Sidgwick's founders on the problem of the public free rider. Both problems are symptoms of the Humean conception of the self they presuppose. A Kantian solution to the free rider problem is offered in Volume II, Chapter IV.8. 1. Hobbes versus Sidgwick on Publicity All normative moral and political theories in the Anglo-American analytic tradition must confront the challenge of solving the problem of the free rider first introduced by Thomas Hobbes. A free rider is one who enjoys the benefits of others' compliance with a rule but violates it for the sake of personal advantage. If everyone were to behave as the free rider does, the rule would lose its social legitimacy and soon there would be no benefits to enjoy; this form of counterfactual reasoning is the basis of what Onora O'Neill calls Kant's contradiction in conception test.2 Since anyone can, in fact, reason as does the free rider, the social tolerance of or accommodation to free riding is an incentive to free riders that threatens the continued existence of those benefits for everyone. So the challenge for a normative theory of the good society is to find a solution to the threat of destabilization that the free rider represents. Hobbes himself characterizes the free rider as a "fool," who hath said in his heart, there is no such things as justice; … seriously alleging, that every man's conservation, and contentment, being committed to his own care, there could be no reason, why every man might not do what he thought conduced thereunto: and therefore also to make, or not make; keep, or not keep covenants, was not against reason, 2 Onora Nell [née O'Neill], Acting on Principle: An Essay in Kantian Ethics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), esp. Chapter Five. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
