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3035 results in Humanities award winners

Page 91 of 152

  • 75 - Feminism

  • from F
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 284-287

  • Summary

    Rawls was personally a feminist, and his theory of justice, justice as fairness, belongs to the category of liberal feminisms. (See Nussbaum 2003; Baehr 2004.) Understanding feminism as both the conviction that women are equal to men in value and entitled to all the rights and privileges of men, and also as the active effort to transform social reality to match that conviction, Rawls unequivocally embraced feminism. He educated and supported the professional careers of women philosophers on a scale that is both unprecedented and so far unsurpassed. Just by his teaching and mentoring alone, he did more to equalize the playing ield for women in philosophy than anyone else. But more important is the way he transformed social contract theory from its sexually tone-deaf and conservative history. (See Pateman 1988.) His introduction of a “veil of ignorance” that deprived parties to the social contract of knowledge of their gender quite self-consciously forced the theory to treat women as equal citizens.

    Rawls was surprised by the backlash from some feminists contending thatjustice as fairness perpetuated women’s subequal status, writing:

    I have thought that J. S. Mill’s landmark The Subjection of Women (1869) ...made clear that a decent liberal conception of justice (including what I called justice as fairness) implied equal justice for women as well as men. Admittedly, A Theory of Justice should have been more explicit about this, but that was a fault of mine and not of political liberalism itself. (CP 595 n.58)

  • 131 - Mill, John Stuart

  • from M
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 499-503

  • Summary

    Thanks to the publication of Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy, we now have a much better understanding of Rawls’s views on John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) and this strengthens the suggestion that Mill has always occupied a very special place in Rawls’s thinking. Rawls sees Mill as supporting versions of utilitarianism and liberalism that are congenial to his own thinking and that have even inspired the development of justice as fairness and helped sharpen its arguments. Nonetheless, we must conclude that there are real limits to the rapprochement.

    It is clear that, for Rawls, Mill is at a distance from the classical utilitarian doctrines of Bentham, Edgeworth, and Sidgwick (“the BES line” LHPP 375), even if he shares with Sidgwick a criticism of intuitionism and believes, like him, “that at some point we must have a single principle to straighten out and to systematize our judgments” (TJ 36). Even if Mill’s perfectionism has been understood as a form of intuitionism, Rawls sees him as searching for irst principles and an answer to the “priority problem” (LHPP 269).

  • 25 - Capabilities

  • from C
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 81-83

  • Summary

    In the late twentieth century, theorists’ attention was drawn to a new way of thinking about individuals’ relative level of advantage or well-being. Instead of assessing either of these on the basis of the resources (such as income and wealth) available to people or on the basis of what they have achieved (by way of satisfying their interests, preferences, or plans, as utilitarians would, or by way of functioning in one way or another, as Aristotle did), the new thought was to do so on the basis of what people are able to do or to be: on the basis, that is, of their capabilities. Amartya Sen (1982) introduced this idea of capabilities partly via a critique of Rawls’s reliance on the idea of primary goods, and speciically of his suggestion that income and wealth can serve to index inequalities for purposes of the difference principle. Consequently, it is sometimes thought that the “capabilities approach” that has grown up around Sen’s constructive suggestions and those of Martha Nussbaum is inimical to Rawls’s approach. Nussbaum, however, has recently written that since “for Rawls the primary goods are just one element in a highly complex overall theory, it is perhaps best not to invoke his theory” as a foil for the capability approach (2011, 56–57).

  • 211 - Stability

  • from S
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 804-810

  • Summary

    Rawls consistently maintains that a theory of justice must be shown to be stable. Rawls famously declares that justice is “the first virtue of social institutions” (TJ 3). But after explaining that the goal of his work is to vindicate this conviction by showing that there can be a set of just principles that could regulate the actions and institutions of a well-ordered society, Rawls goes on to note that such a conception of justice is “not the only prerequisite for a viable human community. There are other fundamental social problems, in particular those of coordination, efficiency, and stability” (TJ 5). Of these three, stability poses the most challenging problem for Rawls’s theory of justice.

    “It is evident,” continues Rawls, “that these three problems are connected with that of justice.” But Rawls’s two principles of justice address the first two problems directly, by explaining how the goals of coordination and efficiency are to be made consistent with the priority of justice. According to the first principle, individuals can justly coordinate their plans of action by recognizing a scheme of equal basic liberties which allow each person to pursue a conception of the good. According to the second principle, a society can justly pursue efficiency by permitting a scheme of competitive economic incentives, and their resulting inequalities, only to the extent that this scheme improves the situation of the worst off. But nothing in the two principles shows that Rawls’s proposed scheme of social cooperation must be stable – which for Rawls means that the scheme “must be more or less regularly complied with and its basic rules willingly acted upon; and when infractions occur, stabilizing forces should exist that prevent further violations and tend to restore the arrangement” (TJ 6).

  • 136 - Moral sentiments

  • from M
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 528-532

  • Summary

    Sentiments are ordered families of governing dispositions to feel and act in particular ways in response to particular circumstances. A person’s sentiments constitute an essential part of her enduring character. Sentiments may be natural or moral. The key difference is that to understand and explain the latter, but not the former, one must appeal to moral concepts, principles, or ideals. So, for example, a person who has a sense of justice necessarily has a moral sentiment, whereas a person who has a deep and abiding love for her child might have only a natural sentiment. Of course, many sentiments are complex, comprised of both natural and moral elements. Indeed, the love of others is often such a complex sentiment.

    Like sentiments, attitudes are also structured dispositions to feel and act in particular ways that may be natural or moral and simple or complex. But attitudes are not as regulative, enduring, or profound within a person’s character as sentiments. Feelings, which again may be natural or moral and simple or complex, are what a person’s sentiments or attitudes lead her to experience on particular occasions and in particular circumstances. Unlike attitudes and sentiments, they are episodic. Feelings, which are identical with neither the sensations nor the behaviors that often accompany and serve as indicators of them, express the underlying sentiments or attitudes that give rise to them.

  • 221 - Utilitarianism

  • from U
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 858-865

  • Summary

    Utilitarianism – in particular, classical utilitarianism – holds that a society is just when its major institutions are so arranged as to maximize the aggregate satisfaction of the rational desires of its members. Locating the good of society in the welfare of its individual members, utilitarianism has deep roots in the liberal philosophical tradition, being long associated with the defense of the importance of the liberty of the individual and of freedom of thought. It is a view whose initial plausibility and appeal is, Rawls suggests, undeniable (TJ 23).

    Many will ind this claim quite surprising. Utilitarian reasoning has, after all, a reputation for delivering conclusions about what justice requires that are often starkly at odds with our considered convictions. But the approach has certain virtues that make the idea that utilitarianism is the most rational way to assess the justice of a society’s basic institutional arrangement structure surprisingly compelling.

  • 10 - Arrow, Kenneth J.

  • from A
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 25-26

  • Summary

    Kenneth J. Arrow is an American Nobel-laureate welfare economist (b. 1921). He is the founder of modern social choice theory, and his General Possibility Theorem inluenced Rawls’s TJ. Arrow claims that there exists no collective decision-making rule that satisies four seemingly uncontroversial conditions that any democratic society should satisfy (Pareto, unrestricted domain, independence of irrelevant alternatives, and non-dictatorship). In Arrow (1973), he raises a set of the earliest, and still most fundamental, criticisms to Rawls’s TJ.

    First, Arrow argues that Rawls’s argument against John Harsanyi’s justiication of average utilitarianism is false. According to Rawls, in order for average utilitarianism to be chosen in the original position, Harsanyi and other defenders of average utilitarianism must assume that the attitude of the parties is riskneutral, whereas Rawls contends that the parties would have a risk-averse attitude and thus choose the two principles of justice. Arrow, however, argues that the von Neumann–Morgenstern function for assigning utilities under uncertainty can incorporate a risk-averse attitude into its determination of utility. Rawls’s principles of justice, including the priority of liberty, are perfectly consistent with a general form of utilitarianism and cannot be seen as a rival theory to utilitarianism. Second, Arrow criticizes Rawls’s notion of primary goods. Rawls believes that primary goods can avoid the problem of interpersonal comparison that utilitarianism would encounter. However, Arrow argues that if primary goods are used as the basis for interpersonal comparisons, then a healthy person and a chronically ill person, who requires many resources to maintain a normal level of functioning, will be deemed equally well off insofar as their possession of primary goods is at the same level.

  • 121 - Libertarianism

  • from L
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 452-456

  • Summary

    Libertarianism is the view that agents initially morally fully own themselves and have certain moral powers to acquire property rights in external things. It can be understood as a basic moral principle or as a derivative one. For example, it can be advocated as a natural rights doctrine (e.g. Nozick 1974) or defended on the basis of rule consequentialism (e.g. Epstein 1998; Shapiro 2007) or rule contractarianism (e.g. Narveson 1988; Lomasky 1987). For concreteness, I shall here interpret libertarianism as a natural rights doctrine. For a full discussion of libertarianism, see Vallentyne (2010). For critical discussion of Nozick’s version of libertarianism, see Vallentyne (2011).

    Although it has a long history (e.g. at least back to Locke 1960 [1689]), libertarianism was not widely discussed by political philosophers prior to Nozick (1974). Rawls, for example, does not explicitly discuss it at all in TJ and only briefly discusses it in PL (262–265). Nonetheless, Rawls’s discussion of the entitlement to one’s natural endowment is highly relevant to libertarianism’s assertion of self-ownership, and we shall focus on that issue.

    Philosophers, unfortunately, use “justice” to mean several different things. Rawls used this term to mean, roughly, the moral permissibility (rightness) of basic structures, or social institutions creating profound and unavoidable effects on individuals’ lives (TJ 3–6, 93–98). By contrast, Nozick (1974, e.g. 52), and libertarians generally, tend to use “justice” to mean, roughly, infringes no one’s rights. Thus, it’s not clear that they are addressing the same topic.

  • 165 - Primary goods, social

  • from P
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 643-647

  • Summary

    Rawls’s theory of justice concerns the scope of required equalities and permitted inequalities engendered by the basic social structure of a society: the distributive justice of “the way in which the major social institutions it together into one system, and how they assign fundamental rights and duties and shape the division of advantages that arises through social cooperation”(PL 258).Within this basic structure individuals act so as to secure an actual allocation of determinate goods to each participant. Arguments concerning this subject require an index of benefits and burdens that allows publicly accessible interpersonal comparisons of citizens’ well-being, in the relevant sense, among representative members of various social groups: “the idea is to find a practicable public basis of interpersonal comparisons in terms of objective features of citizens’ social circumstances open to view” (CP 454–455).

    Rawls’s answer is to focus on how the basic structure of society distributes social primary goods. These arise out of institutions – that is, legal powers and immunities:

    (a) First, the basic liberties as given by a list, for example: freedom of thought and liberty of conscience; freedom of association; and the freedom defined by the liberty and integrity of the person, as well as by the rule of law; and finally the political liberties; (b) Second, freedom of movement and choice of occupation against a background of diverse opportunities; (c) Third, powers and prerogatives of offices and positions of responsibility, particularly those in the main political and economic institutions; (d) Fourth, income and wealth; and (e) Finally, the social bases of self-respect.(CP 362–363)

  • 110 - Law, system of

  • from L
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 417-419

  • Summary

    “A legal system is a coercive order of public rules addressed to rational persons for the purpose of regulating their conduct and providing the framework for their social cooperation” (TJ 207).Of course, in any society there may be a number of systems of public rules regulating conduct and framing various cooperative undertakings. A legal system is distinct from these in several respects. A legal system is comprehensive in a way that other systems of public rules, typically subordinated to a legal system, are not. The legal system defines the basic institutional structure within which the activities governed by other systems of public rules take place (TJ 207). In the paradigm case a legal system has a territorially bounded core, namely a state, in a way that other systems of public rules need not. Of course, jurisdiction may extend in particular cases beyond this territorially bounded core, as when a state asserts its legal jurisdiction over some extraterritorial activity of its nationals. And there may be legal systems, e.g. international law, without a territorially bounded core in the form of a state (though in fact much and arguably the core of international law is bounded by the territories of the several states the voluntary undertakings of which give rise to it). Further, the authority of a legal system is typically final within the territorial boundaries of its jurisdiction. The authority of other systems of public rules is constrained by law. Finally, while many systems of public rules may be coercively enforced to some degree or other, they may be so only at the discretion of the legal system to which they are subordinate, and it will in turn typically claim or reserve exclusively for itself the most serious forms of coercion. Its claim to the exclusive use of these forms of coercion reflects the fact that among the interests it serves are some of the most fundamental of human interests, which is not necessarily true for other systems of public rules.

  • 192 - Rousseau, Jean-Jacques

  • from R
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 741-744

  • Summary

    Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) occupies a prominent place in the Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy. Rawls there often refers to his own thought and to the ways in which it was shaped by his engagement with Rousseau. Indeed, the influence of Rousseau on Rawls is extensive and yet for the most part unappreciated by historians of political thought. There are two important and related ways in which Rawls’s theory can be thought of as Rousseauian: (1) like Rousseau, Rawls believes that persons have a natural psychological need for recognition and for self-respect, that the denial of the former negates the possibility of the latter, and that these psychological needs are most effectively satisfied by egalitarian political institutions. And (2) like Rousseau, Rawls thinks that even the best-designed set of institutions must be supplemented by civic virtue; not the immersive patriotic virtue of the ancients, of course, but a modern, pluralism-compatible kind of virtue, the kind of virtue that conscientiously privileges the common good of the political community over the inevitable and ineradicable factional interests present within it.

  • 219 - The two principles of justice (in justice asfairness)

  • from T
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 845-850

  • Summary

    Rawls’s substantive conception of social justice, justice as fairness, includes two principles. They are an answer to this question: “viewing society as a fair system of cooperation between citizens regarded as free and equal, what principles of justice are most appropriate to specify basic rights and liberties, and to regulate social and economic inequalities in citizens’ prospects over a complete life?” (JF 41). The following are three key formulations of the two principles:

    FIRST PRINCIPLE

    Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.

    SECOND PRINCIPLE

    Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both: (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity. (TJ 266)

  • 129 - Maximin rule of choice

  • from M
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 493-495

  • Summary

    Maximin is a rule for making choices under conditions of uncertainty (or risk), that is, when one must select from a range of options, each one of which may result in various outcomes. Maximin says that one should identify the worst possible outcome for each option, and then select the option for which the worst outcome is least bad. It thus represents an extremely risk-averse or pessimistic standard of choice. Rawls recognizes that it is “clearly . . . not, in general, a suitable guide for choices under uncertainty” (TJ 133). However, he argues that because of the highly unusual features of the original position, it can be “useful as a heuristic device” (TJ 132) to think of the parties there selecting principles of justice on that basis.

    Although it is sometimes assumed that Rawls simply stipulates that the parties would accept maximin reasoning, this is not the case. As he pointed out in a 1974 article, such a stipulation “would indeed have been no argument at all” (CP 247).There are three main features of the original position that push the parties toward a very risk-averse choice, represented by maximin reasoning. First, the veil of ignorance prevents the parties from assigning probabilities to the various possible outcomes. They have no basis for estimating the likelihood that they will ind themselves in each of the various social positions when the veil is lifted. Indeed, because they are choosing fundamental principles of justice and not institutional arrangements directly, they do not have much of a basis for determining what the various social positions will be, let alone the likelihood that they will occupy any one in particular. Second, the parties are much more concerned with ensuring that certain basic interests are satisfied than they are with the prospects of additional gains above this level. Finally, the worst outcomes of some of their possible choices fall below this minimal level. That is, some of the conceptions that they might choose fail to ensure the protection of their basic interests.

  • 38 - Communitarianism

  • from C
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 119-125

  • Summary

    The term “communitarianism” refers to the writings of a number of political theorists who, in the 1980s and early 1990s, sought to critique what they saw as the excessively individualistic aspects of liberal theory in general, and of Rawls’s arguments in particular.

    Beyond this very general characterization, it is hard to identify a core set of substantive claims to which all of the theorists who have been described as communitarians subscribe. The claims of communitarians are addressed at diverse dimensions of the liberal project, from the putative metaphysical assumptions that lie at the basis of the liberal project, to the substantive policy prescriptions to which liberalism allegedly gives rise.

    While it is clearly not exhaustive, the following list of claims is at the heart of what came in the 1980s to be known as the “liberal/communitarian” debate.

  • (1) The metaphysics of the self. According to some communitarians, most notably Michael Sandel (Sandel 1982), liberals go wrong by placing a deicient conception of the moral and political agent at the core of their theories. Liberals, the argument goes, see the self as “unencumbered,” that is as related to its cultural and historical entanglements in a contingent rather than a constitutive manner. According to the view attributed to liberals by communitarians, the self is metaphysically “prior” to its ends, and to the conceptions of the good that are prevalent in its community.

  • 151 - Outlaw states

  • from O
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 586-587

  • Summary

    Outlaw states are one of four types of societies discussed in Rawls’s The Law of Peoples. The discussion occurs within the context of nonideal theory, where one concern of justice is how to bring noncomplying societies into compliance (LP 89–90). Outlaw states fail to comply with principle 4of the Law of Peoples, which states “a duty of non-intervention,” and with principle6, which requires societies “to honor human rights” (LP 37). Generally, Rawls distinguishes states from peoples by claiming that the former “as rational” are often “anxiously concerned with their power . . . and always guided by their basic interests” (LP 28). Outlaw states pursue their rational aims without limiting them by the reasonable constraints of the Law of Peoples. In contrast, “liberal peoples limit their basic interests as required by the reasonable” (LP 29).

    Due to their noncompliance, outlaw states are not to be tolerated and respected as members of international society (LP 81). Various constraints of the Law of Peoples, such as the duty to honor treaties (LP 37), do not apply with respect to outlaw states. Liberal and decent societies may subject them to political and economic and sanction for their failure to honor human rights and if these violations are sufficiently grave military intervention may be justified (LP 81). Moreover, if liberal peoples and decent societies “sincerely and reasonably believe that their safety and security are seriously endangered” they may fight just wars against outlaw states that fail to observe the duty of nonintervention (LP 90–91).War against outlaw states, then, is justified only if the human rights violations occurring are very grave or if the outlaw states pose a reasonable threat to the safety and security of liberal and decent peoples.

  • 39 - Comprehensive doctrine

  • from C
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 126-129

  • Summary

    A comprehensive doctrine is a set of beliefs afirmed by citizens concerning a range of values, including moral, metaphysical, and religious commitments, as well as beliefs about personal virtues, and political beliefs about the way society ought to be arranged. They form a conception of the good and inform judgments concerning “what is of value in life, the ideals of personal character, as well as ideals of friendship and of familial and associational relationships, and much else that is to inform our conduct, and in the limit to our life as a whole” (PL 13). Rawls argues that in a society with a history of democratic institutions citizens will come to afirm different and incompatible comprehensive doctrines. This fact presents a problem for a theory of justice because it suggests that citizens will fail to agree on principles of justice to govern their institutions if they rely exclusively on their separate and incompatible comprehensive doctrines. Rawls addresses this problem by distinguishing between two points of view citizens can adopt – a comprehensive point of view and a political point of view. The comprehensive view is grounded in a comprehensive doctrine, while a political view is “freestanding,” meaning that while it draws from reasonable comprehensive doctrines it does not afirm or deny any particular one. Thus, political liberalism articulates and defends a set of freestanding political values, rather than arguing for the truth of comprehensive values grounded in a particular comprehensive doctrine. The separation of comprehensive doctrines from freestanding political values allows Rawls to locate the source of stability in society in a consensus on political values, while allowing for a plurality of comprehensive doctrines.

  • 62 - Duty of assistance

  • from D
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 226-228

  • Summary

    Rawls discusses the duty of assistance in the article “The Law of Peoples” and the book The Law of Peoples. The duty is merely mentioned subsequent to the list of seven principles in “Peoples” (CP 541). It is stated as the eighth principle in LP (LP 37).

    Rawls distinguishes between ideal and nonideal theory. The former concerns relations between liberal and decent peoples – collectively referred to as “well-ordered peoples” – and the latter concerns relations between such societies and those which are neither liberal nor decent. Nonideal theory is directed towards the long-term goal of an international society comprising liberal and decent peoples (LP 89). The duty of assistance, like principles ive (the right of self-defense) and seven (the duty to observe restrictions in war), applies only in nonideal conditions. This contrasts with Rawls’s account of domestic justice in which strict compliance is assumed in the original position (TJ 125) and the principles selected are applicable only in ideal conditions. Rawls claims that, “Well-ordered peoples have a duty to assist burdened societies” (LP 106), which are lacking in the “political and cultural traditions, the human capital and know-how, and, often, the material and technological resources needed to be well-ordered” (LP 106).

  • 89 - Hedonism

  • from H
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 336-338

  • Summary

    There are three broad types of hedonism in the philosophical literature. Psychological hedonism is a thesis about human motivation. It claims that humans are exclusively driven by the attainment of pleasure and the avoidance of pain (usually, their own). This is an empirical thesis: a claim about how humans are. The other two types of hedonism are normative: they are concerned with what is good or valuable. Axiological hedonism is a thesis about the nature of the good in general. It claims that pleasure is the only thing that is intrinsically good (i.e. good for its own sake, rather than as a means to other goods). As one of its most famous defenders, Jeremy Bentham, wrote in 1789: “Now, pleasure is in itself a good: nay, even setting aside immunity from pain, the only good: pain is in itself an evil; and, indeed, without exception, the only evil.” Prudential hedonism, by contrast, is a thesis about the nature of individual welfare. It claims that well-being consists in the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain. The best life for an individual, as far as her own self-interest is concerned, is the one that has the greatest balance of pleasure over pain. It is possible to be a prudential hedonist without being an axiological hedonist, since one might claim that, while welfare is constituted by pleasure, things other than welfare – say, freedom, beauty or friendship – are intrinsically good.

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