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A Contractualist Political Theory REASONABLE AGREEMENT: A CONTRACTUALIST POLITICAL THEORY Vittorio Bufacchi Ph.D. Thesis London School of Economics Government Department June 1994 UMI Number: U062719 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Disscrrlation Publishing UMI U062719 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 T\-\es£:£ POLITICAL f THESIS ABSTRACT Reasonable Agreement: A Contractualist Political Theory The thesis is a defence of contractualism in liberal political theory. My aim is to show that contractualism can play a crucial role in the political theory of liberalism if it applies to the meta-ethical level rather than the ethical level. In particular, 1 will argue that the contractualist concept of 'reasonable agreement' provides the foundation for a new comprehensive liberal political theory. The basic intuition behind the idea of reasonable agreement is that all principles and rules must be capable of being justified to everyone: these are principles and rules on which everyone could reach agreement, where the agreement is defined in terms of what no one could reasonably reject. The first introductory chapter will attempt to establish that contractualism reflects the ethical core of liberalism, and that the contractualist theory of reasonable agreement gives the best account of egalitarianism. This will be followed by six chapters, divided in two parts, and a brief conclusion. Part 1 presents the case for contractualism from a theoretical angle, providing a 3 conceptual analysis of reasonable agreement. Part II examines reasonable agreement from a political angle, providing an analysis of three key questions in political liberalism. The three chapters making up Part I deal with the theories of Rawls and Scanlon, the two major figures responsible for reviving the interest in contractualism in general, and 'reasonable agreement' in particular. Chapter 2 critically evaluates Rawls's contractualism, while Chapter 3 focuses on the moral theory of Scanlon. Chapter 4 attempts to build on the efforts of Rawls and Scanlon by further exploring and hopefully improving on their theory of reasonable agreement. I believe that the strength of reasonable agreement lies in its effort to raise contractualism from the ethical to the meta-ethical level, thus the three chapters in Part I evaluate two notions central to reasonable agreement: the idea of agreement and the concept of reasonableness. This brings us to the second part of the thesis, where the relationship between 'reasonable agreement' and political liberalism is investigated. Political liberalism is concerned with the political concepts that form the basis of a liberal society, namely, political obligation, social justice, and neutrality. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 examine how the egalitarian proposal of reasonable agreement applies respectively to these three liberal questions. The concluding chapter will provide a summary of the main arguments presented in the thesis. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1. THE CHALLENGE FACING LIBERALISM I. The Challenge Facing Liberalism II. Confronting the Challenge III. Scepticism and the Challenge Facing Liberalism IV. Four Accounts of Scepticism V. Scepticism and Reasonable Agreement VI. Conclusion PART I - REASONABLE AGREEMENT IN THEORY 2. RAWLS'S TWO SOCIAL CONTRACTS I. The Anatomy of a Social Contract II. Kant and Hobbes on the Social Contract III. Rawls on Social Cooperation IV. Rawls on Agreement V. Social Contracts and Theories of Justice VI. Conclusion 3. CONTRACTUALISM: METAPHYSICAL NOT POLITICAL I. The Idea of Agreement II. Contractualism and Moral Theory III. Scanlon's Critique of Utilitarianism IV. Scanlon's Critique of Rawls V. The Limits of Scanlon's Contractualism VI. Following in Scanlon's Footsteps 4. A THEORY OF REASONABLE AGREEMENT I. Some Preliminary Remarks II. Leaving Reasonableness Undetermined: Two Risks III. Defining Reasonableness IV. Reasonableness vs. Rationality V. Rethinking Reasonableness VI. Conclusion PART n - REASONABLE AGREEMENT AND POLITICAL LIBERALISM 5. POLITICAL OBLIGATION I. Fairness and Political Obligation II. Natural Duty to Justice and Political Obligation III. Reasonable Agreement and Political Obligation IV. Moral and Political Obligation SOCIAL JUSTICE: A COMPATIBILIST APPROACH I. What is Justice? II. Choicism and Anti-Brute Luck III. The Semi-Choicist Solution IV. The Principle of Responsibility and Justice as Fairness V. Cohen's Critique of the Difference Principle VI. Justice and Reasonable Agreement 7. ON LIBERAL NEUTRALITY I. Neutrality and Impartiality II. The Impossibility of Neutrality III. Neutrality and Reasonable Agreement IV. Neutrality and Illiberal Conceptions of the Good V. Neutrality and Illiberal States VI. Conclusion 8. CONCLUSION I. A Brief Summary II. Reasonable Agreement and the Challenge Facing Liberalism APPENDIX 'A'. Utilitarianism, Egalitarianism and Impartiality. BIBLIOGRAPHY INTRODUCTION In a review article of Charles Beitz's Political Equality. Russell Hardin makes the following claim: "Reasonable Agreement. These words are the 'open sesame' of much of contemporary political theory" (Hardin 1991, p.667). A reader not familiar with recent developments in moral and political philosophy will find Hardin's claim both surprising and puzzling. The reaction is understandable. Considering that the discipline of political theory in the western world spans over twenty-five centuries, the recent debate on the idea of reasonable agreement may appear insufficient to justify such bold claim from Professor Hardin. Yet 1 believe Hardin's affirmation ought to be taken seriously: his assertion is an acknowledgement of the recent widespread interest in the concept of reasonable agreement, and the belief that the concept of reasonable agreement has the power to shake liberal political theory at its very foundation. 1 share Hardin's conviction (minus his irony) that reasonable agreement is where the future of political theory lies. 1 should 7 also add that Hardin and I are not the only members of this club. Recently a growing number of influential political theorists^ have explicitly or implicitly stated their adherence to the idea of reasonable agreement. The aim of this thesis is to argue that the contractualist theory of reasonable agreement provides the best defence of the liberal project. By 'the liberal project' I am specifically referring to liberalism as a normative political philosophy, where political institutions are evaluated on moral grounds. It follows that saying that reasonable agreement gives the best defence of liberalism means that it gives the best moral evaluation of political institutions. While it will take all eight chapters to show that reasonable agreement can provide the moral foundations for a new comprehensive liberal political theory, the purpose of this introduction is to set out the strategy I will adopt in order to achieve my aim. The first step will be to locate the contractualist theory of reasonable agreement in the larger political and philosophical context of liberalism. Liberalism has hitherto been concerned with the problem of reconciling diversity with peaceful coexistence, and as we enter the 21th century, this problem defines the challenge facing liberalism. The first chapter comprises a detailed account of the challenge facing liberalism, as well as a brief account of why the theory of reasonable agreement is capable of dealing with ^ - Barry (1939b); Beitz (1989); De Marneffe (1990); Freeman (1990 & 1991), Nagel (1991), Scanlon (1982 & 1988a). 8 this challenge. I will also argue that the challenge facing liberalism can only be met by a theory which embraces the concept of scepticism, and reasonable agreement is such theory. Following this first chapter, the thesis will be divided in two parts. The three chapters making up Part I will explore the theoretical dimension of reasonable agreement. It hardly needs to be said that reasonable agreement is a member of the vast family of concepts stemming from the idea of a social contract, in particular the sort of contractualism advanced by Rawls in 1971. Thus the undisputed protagonist of Chapters 2, 3 and 4 will be the concept of contractualism. Chapter 2 critically evaluates Rawls's contractualism. Although Rawls is the major influence in the recent revival of contractualism, I believe there is a major weakness with his contractualism; namely, Rawls fails to apply contractualism to the meta-ethical level, where fundamental questions of moral intuitions and moral judgments are dealt with. Operating at the ethical level, where the rightness and wrongness of actions and practices is established, we find that Rawls's contractualism is constituted by the forced marriage of two conflicting social contract traditions: Hobbesian and Kantian. This defect has serious repercussions in Rawls's theory, thus Rawls's original position fails to capture the moral intuitions underpinning Rawls's theory of justice, furthermore it has led some liberal philosophers to doubt the validity of contractualism. Some
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