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Ethics – Normative Ethics: Doing the Right Thing – Chapter 14 – The SocialContract Tradition:
Problems and Prospects
The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good – Samuel
Jackson
Why Be Moral?
Hobbes discusses the views of the calculating amoralist, whom he terms the Fool. The
Fool admits that breaking his promises is unjust, but he doesn’t care about whether his
actions are just or not. Hobbes faces the challenges directly. He agrees with the Fool’s
basic assumption: that self-interest is the fundamental reason for acting. Thus Hobbes
has to show that acting morally is always likely to promote self-interest. That’s not so
easy.
Hobbes allows that sometimes people get away with injustice. But that doesn’t make it
rational to act unjustly. Unjust acts are rational only if they increase the likelihood of
personal gain. And Hobbes says that they never do. Though people can sometimes get
away with injustice, the chances of doing so are never good. So injustice is never rational.
One way to defend this is, is by divine wrath. But the Fool will claim there is no God. So
the threat of divine punishment isn’t going to work.
We can make the challenged hardest for Hobbes by considering a classic puzzle of
rationality: the free-rider problem. They are getting a free ride by exploiting the efforts
of others, without making any sacrifices themselves. This refusal to contribute to the
support of the common good seems highly unfair. But it also seems highly rational. They
are getting something for nothing, when they are not doing their fair share to support the
common good. How could that be irrational? Of course, if you already care about not
exploiting your fellow citizens, then it will be rational for you to make the needed
sacrifices to help support these common goods. But suppose you don’t feel this way, or
you do, but you are starting to wonder whether you are being a dupe. Hobbes doesn’t
assume that we are generous and public minded. He is trying to show the person who is
entirely self-interested why it would be a good bet, even for him, to do his fair share.
There are two things we might say on Hobbes’s behalf. First, we might argue, as he
himself did, that the risks of doing wrong always outweigh its potential benefits. But this
is simply mistaken. Since rationality, for Hobbes, is all about how much gain you can
reasonably expect from an action, injustice can sometimes be highly rational. What
Hobbes could say is that it is never rational to behave unjustly in a well-ordered society,
wherein the punishments are very severe if you get caught. However, in our imperfect
world, where enforcement isn’t foolproof, where punishments are sometimes pretty light,
it can indeed be rational to take a chance at injustice. But Hobbes might be able to show
something nearly as comforting. Compare two claims:
1. No matter who you are, or what circumstances you find yourself fin, it is always
rational to act justly.
2. It is always rational to be a just person – the sort of person who values fairness,
approves of just policies, tries to live an upright life, and becomes upset when
learning of injustice.
Hobbes cannot defend claim 1. But he might be able to defend claim 2. And if he can,
then he may also be able to show the following:
3. For just people, it is always rational to act justly.
Here is the best shot for Hobbes at defending claim 2. In the long run, just people are
more likely to do better for themselves than unjust people. The life of virtue has a lot
,going for it. Compare such a life with that of an immoral criminal. It is a life of great
insecurity. It isn’t rational to be the cheating type. If this is right, then it is rational to be a
virtuous person. And that is what claim 2 says. Further, if it is rational to be such a
person, it is rational to try to stay that way. Thus, for good people, it is rational to
continue to act justly and to resist the call to stray from the path of virtue. That is
precisely what claim 3 says.
However, this isn’t a complete success. When corruption is rampant and the powerful can
get away with most things, then virtue can be a recipe for disaster. Many end up paying
the ultimate price for their bravery. Hobbes takes a hard-eyed view of human nature, and
denies that virtue is its own reward. If the is right about that, then it pays to be good only
when that promises a longer life, a more secure existence, or a better chance at getting
what you want. It sometimes will. But now always. When it doesn’t, Hobbesian rationality
requires you make injustice your master.
The Role of Consent
A social contract differs from other contracts only in the extent of the duties it imposes
and the benefits it creates. But have we actually promised to live up to any social
contract? Some philosophers have tried to finesse this point by arguing that we actually
have agreed to obey the law. We have offered our tacit consent, which is expressed
through silence and a lack of opposition to the government. Tacit consent is a possibility.
But this is problematic. The fact that they remain where they are is no sign of their
consent. It’s simply evidence of a very practical decision. In many such cases, individual
protest is unlikely to lead to better times, and is very likely to lead to imprisonment,
torture, or an early death.
This it seems that many people have neither explicitly nor tacitly consented to the rules
that govern their society. The reasoning here is summarized by the Consent Argument:
1. We have duty to obey the law only if we have consented to do so.
2. Many have not given their consent to obey the law.
3. Therefore, many people do not have a duty to obey the law.
I have just given some reason to think that the second premise is true. Still, the argument
works only if the first premise is also true. An essential part of government is its power to
force its people to do what it says. But as a general matter, it is wrong to coerce people
without their consent. That is the strongest case for premise 1. Here is the strongest case
against it.
Suppose you hate your country and reject its basic laws. Does that mean that you have
no duty to obey its rules? That you are morally free to break laws against theft and
slander and battery and murder, just because you renounce your membership in the
social contract? That is the implication of premise 1. It is very hard to accept. It is also
very implausible to suppose that we are morally required to do only what we agree to do.
Contractarianism would be in deep trouble if it claimed that our moral duties applied only
to those who agreed to accept them. But it makes no such claim. The social contract that
fixes our basic moral duties is not one that any of us has actually consented to; rather, it
is one that we each would agree to were we all free and rational and seeking terms of
mutually beneficial cooperation. So the fact that we have never signed a social contract
or verbally announced our allegiance to one does not undermine the contractarian
project. Thus contractarianism isn’t a simple recipe to do whatever your society says.
Rather, it provides a way to evaluate society’s actual rules, by seeing how close (or how
far) they are to the ideal social code that would be adopted if we were freer, more equal,
and more rational than we are. If contractarianism is correct, this ideal social code is the
moral law.
Disagreement among the Contractors
, If the social contract theory is correct, then the moral rules are those that free, equal, and
rational people would agree to live by. But what happens if such people disagree with one
another? Rawls solved this problem by making every contractor a clone of every other.
Behind the veil of ignorance, all of your distinguishing features go away. No one is any
different from anyone else. And so there is no reason to expect any disagreement. But
Hobbes and contractarians won’t stand for this. Hobbes and his followers insist that he
moral rules are those that we, situated as we are, would rationally agree to, provided of
course that others would agree to live by them as well. On the one hand, Rawls’s view is
likely to be fairer. But Hobbes also has a point, in that we want to make it rational, if we
can, for everyone to live by the moral rules.
Let’s turn to the original problem: what should we say when the people choosing the
social rules disagree with one another? Perhaps Rawls is right, and there won’t be any
disagreement. But what if he’s wrong? If contractors disagree, then the actions or policies
they disagree about are morally neutral. They are neither required nor forbidden. That’s
because the moral rules are ones that all contractors would agree to. This could be pretty
bad. Or it might be just fine. It all depends on where the disagreement arises (if it ever
does). So, how much disagreement will there be? There is no easy way to know. We can
provide answers only after we know how to describe the contractors and their position of
choice. Answers to these questions will make a big difference in deciding on the specific
moral rules that a social contract theory favors. To get them, contractarians must defend
their own specific version of the theory against competing versions. That is a major
undertaking. Until it is done, we cannot know just what the moral rules are, or how much
contractual disagreement to expect.
The Scope of the Moral Community
Who has rights? Who deserves our respect? Utilitarians have their answer: anyone (or any
animal) who can suffer harm. Kantians have their answer: anyone who is rational and
autonomous. And contractarians have theirs: anyone whose interests are protected by
the rules that contractors will agree upon. The key to understanding them, however, lies
in the idea that the contractors are, above all, rational and self-interested. It’s easy to see
why they should be rational. But why assume that they are self-interested?
There is a two-part answer. First, the preliminary part: being self-interested is not the
same thing as being selfish. But the real question is whether we should think of the
contractors as also being generous, benevolent, and self-sacrificing. And the answer that
contractarians give is no. Why is that? Well, by assigning such virtues to the contractors,
social contract theorists could be accused of stacking the deck in favor of moral principles
that we already agree on. The attractions of proceduralism would be lost, since we would
be starting our moral inquiry by making substantive assumptions about what is right and
wrong. And we would also be making it much more difficult to show people why it is
rational for them to obey the moral rules, since some of us are not that virtuous. The
assumption, then, is that everyone is to some degree self-interested, and that it is
rational to be that way.
If you are choosing from a position of equality, are free, and highly rational, with a healthy
dose of self-interest, who will you assign rights to? The answer is: other people like you.
Contractors are the ones who will receive special treatment. Contractors have a few
defining features. First, they are both potential threats and potential benefactors. Second,
they are, fundamentally, our equals. And third, we must be unable to gain anything from
them without their consent. At first blush, it seems strange that membership in the moral
community should be limited to contractors. But it makes good sense, once we recall the
Hobbesian view of rationality. According to Hobbes, sacrifice requires compensation.
Now here is the crucial question: if we can get what we really want, without having to
sacrifice anything, then why should we make the sacrifice? If Hobbes is right, there is no
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