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The Social Contract as an Analytic, Justificatory, and Polemic Device

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

David Keyt
David Keyt*
Affiliation:
University of Washington
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Extract

John Rawls, in his distinguished revival and animation of the theory of the social contract, maintains that “the procedure of contract theories provides … a general analytic method for the comparative study of conceptions of justice ” (p. 121). As a corollary, he holds, secondly, that “if one interpretation [of the contractual situation] is philosophically most favoured, and if its principles characterize our considered judgments, we have a procedure for justification as well ” (p. 122). Finally, Rawls uses the social contract as a critical or polemic device; he is prepared to reject a conception of justice if the contractual situation associated with it contains objectionable features.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , December 1974 , pp. 241 - 252
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1974

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References

1 A Theory off Justice (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1971), to which all page references refer.

2 Rawls undoubtedly thought this point too obvious to need stating. That his way of deriving classical utilitarianism is not the only way is mentioned between parentheses on p. 26.

3 This slightly surprising proposition is a consequence of the view that reasonableness is transferred from the premises to the conclusion of a valid deductive argument. If this view is correct, the conclusion may be more reasonable than the premises from which it is derived but never less. Similarly, the truth of the conclusion of a valid deductive argument cannot be less probable than the truth of the conjunction of its premises.

4 See footnote 3 above.

5 For helpful comments on earlier drafts I am indebted to Robert Coburn, Lawrence Crocker, Timothy Flanagan, and especially to Rawls himself. The present version differs considerably from two earlier ones on which Rawls gave me his comments, so mistakes of interpretation may have crept in. One should not suppose that either my interpretation of his theory or my criticism of it has his sanction.