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The Gauthier Enterprise*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

James M. Buchanan
James M. Buchanan
Affiliation:
Center for Study of Public Choice, George Mason University
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Extract

I take it as my assignment to criticize the Gauthier enterprise. At the outset, however, I should express my general agreement with David Gauthier's normative vision of a liberal social order, including the place that individual principles of morality hold in such an order. Whether the enterprise is, ultimately, judged to have succeeded or to have failed depends on the standards applied. Considered as a coherent grounding of such a social order in the rational choice behavior of persons, the enterprise fails. Considered as an extended argument implying that persons should (and possibly must) adopt the moral stance embodied in the Gauthier structure, the enterprise is, I dunk, largely successful. Considered as a set of empirically falsifiable propositions suggesting that persons do, indeed, choose as the Gauthier precepts dictate, the enterprise offers Humean hope rather than Hobbesian despair.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , Spring 1988 , pp. 75 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1988

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References

1 Gauthier, David, Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). Subsequent references will be by page numbers in the text.Google Scholar

2 Cf. Hayek, F.A., Lam, Legislation, and Liberty, especially Vol. III, The Political Order of a Free People (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979).Google Scholar

3 There are, of course, other approaches to explanation that do not rely on evolutionary processes and that do not involve incorporating behavior within the rational choice framework, as this is normally defined. These approaches usually involve redefinitions of the arguments in individual utility functions. For one such recent effort in this direction, see Dennis Mueller, “Rational Egoism versus Adaptive Egoism as a Fundamental Postulate for a Descriptive Theory of Human Behavior,” Presidential Address, Public Choice Society, Baltimore, Maryland, March 1986 (Mimeographed, University of Maryland, 1986).

4 See Russell Hardin's paper in this issue, which largely concentrates on such issues.

5 Only after I completed a draft of this paper did my colleague, Viktor Vanberg, point out to me that an earlier criticism of a paper by Gauthier contains essentially the same argument that I have presented in this Section, even to the extent of utilizing the same examples. See, Ullman-Margalit, E., The Emergence of Norms (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), pp.41–45.Google Scholar

6 See my, “Moral Community, Moral Order, or Moral Anarchy,” included in my book, Liberty, Market and State (Brighton, England: Wheatsheaf Books, 1985), pp.108–121.Google Scholar

7 Cf. Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984).Google Scholar

8 Critics have suggested that a disposition toward cooperative behavior, whether rationally or evolutionarily grounded, describes the behavior of persons generally, quite independendy of the setting of interaction. The prisoners do not confess; the duopolists maximize joint profits. In this view, it becomes inappropriate to evaluate the results of such behavior against any notion of generalized “optimality” of “efficiency” for a more inclusive group. If this line of defense is taken, however, “cooperation,” as such, may or may not be judged a character trait deserving of positive evaluation in all settings. Resolution of the dilemma present in subgames may create a dilemma in more inclusive games.

9 See, “The Samaritan's Dilemma,” Freedom in Constitutional Contract (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1977), pp.169–180;Google Scholar“The Punishment Dilemma”, Ch. 8 in The Limits of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), pp.130–146.Google Scholar

10 I have limited the discussion to behavior that involves the threat of punishment for individual departure from a pattern of cooperative behavior. A more inclusive treatment would, of course, include moral indoctrination of the ordinary sort, designed to instill feelings of guilt and shame in those persons who might be otherwise inclined to defect.

11 “The Ethical Limits of Taxation,” Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Vol. 86 (1984), pp.102–114; “Secession and the Sharing of Surplus,” with Roger Faith (mimeographed 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 For related discussion, see Buchanan, James M. and Tollison, Robert, “The Homogenization of Heterogeneous Inputs,” American Economic Review, vol. 71 (March 1981), pp.23–30;Google Scholar also, my paper, “Coercive Taxation in Constitutional Contract”(mimeographed, Center for Study of Public Choice, George Mason University, September 1985).

13 See, Smith, Adam, Lectures on Jurisprudence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), p.538.Google Scholar

14 I am indebted to my colleague, David Levy, for discussion on these points.