Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-rnpqb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-27T21:02:48.388Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Social Contract: The Only Game in Town

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2016

JAN NARVESON
JAN NARVESON*
Affiliation:
University of Waterloo
*
*<jnarveso@uwaterloo.ca>
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

David Gauthier once said that the social contract offers ‘the only game in town’ if we hope for a rational morality. I argue that he’s correct. Morality consists of rules notionally directed at everyone everywhere. Only individual people are rational, and they have varying interests. The social contract proposes principles that everyone would, in view of their social and environmental circumstances, agree to as constraining their separate pursuits of their ends. There is no other rational way to understand morals, and so it is indeed the only game in town.

David Gauthier a dit un jour que le contrat social constitue la seule option permettant de parvenir à une morale rationnelle. Je soutiens qu’il a raison. La morale se compose de règles notionnelles visant tout le monde, partout. Seuls les individus sont rationnels, et ils ont des intérêts divers. Le contrat social propose des principes auxquels chacun, compte tenu de sa situation sociale et environnementale, consent bien qu’ils limitent les activités par lesquelles chacun poursuit ses buts. Il n’existe aucun autre moyen rationnel de comprendre la morale; c’est donc bien la seule option possible.

Keywords

morals (morality)interactionsocial contractconstrained maximizationoptimalgame theory
Type
Special Topic: Gauthier’s Contractarian Project
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , December 2016 , pp. 695 - 711
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aristotle 1912 Nichomachean Ethics, Ross translation. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Gauthier, David 1975 “Reason and Maximization,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 4 (3): 411–433.Google Scholar
Gauthier, David 1984 “Justice as Social Choice,” in Morality, Reason and Truth, edited by Copp, David, 251–269. Totowa: Rowman & Allanheld.Google Scholar
Gauthier, David 1986 Morals by Agreement, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gauthier, David 1990 Moral Dealing: Contract, Ethics, and Reason, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Gauthier, David 1991 “Why Contractarianism?,” in Contractarianism and Rational Choice: Essays on David Gauthier’s Morals by Agreement, edited by Vallentyne, Peter, 15–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gauthier, David 2013 “Twenty-Five On” Ethics 123 (4): 601–24.Google Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas 1651/1950 Leviathan, NY: Everyman.Google Scholar
Narveson, Jan 1976 “A Puzzle about Economic Justice in Rawls’ Theory,” Social Theory and Practice 4 (1): 1–27.Google Scholar
Narveson, Jan 1978 “Rawls on Equal Distribution of Wealth,” Philosophia 7 (2): 281–292.Google Scholar
Narveson, Jan 2004 “Maxificing: Life on a Budget; or, If You Would Maximize, Then Satisfice!,” in Satisficing and Maximizing: Moral Theorists on Practical Reason, edited by Byron, Michael, 59–70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Viminitz, Paul 2013 “Morals by Agreement versus Morals by Treaty,” a conference paper delivered at the conference celebrating the 25th anniversary of publication of Morals by Agreement at York University (May 2013).Google Scholar