Contractarianism was originally
used by philosophers like John Locke and Thomas Hobbes to account for the
legitimacy of political authority. If people could be thought of as agreeing in a kind of social
contract to the establishment of some form of government , then that form
of government could not be thought of as tyrannical or oppressive. This does not imply that governments are established by real contracts,
real agreements among citizens; the social contract is a theoretical idea, not an historical one.
To say that a government satisfies the requirements of the social
contract doctrine is to say that people, who were not under a government,
would find it rational to give up the primitive freedom that they would have
outside of states, and agree freely to be subject to this kind of government. For this reason, social contract doctrines usually start from some
imaginary “state of nature,” which lacks governmental institutions, and
try to show the sort of political constraints it would be reasonable for
people in that imaginary situation to contract into.
It is this theoretical, imaginary
feature of the social contract doctrine that makes it suitable as a basis for
morality as well as for political institutions. Just as one can ask what form of government it would be
rational for people to agree to, one can ask what moral constraints it would
be rational for them to agree to. Indeed,
it is a short-step from Kantian moral theory to contractarian moral theory.
Kant himself defended a kind of moral contractarianism at certain
points, and John
Rawls, the most important of twentieth-century contractarian
moral philosophers, considers his own view a Kantian one. What Rawls has added to contractarianism is, first of all, replacement
of the “state of nature” (an imaginary situation without governmental
institutions) by the “original position” (an imaginary situation in which
people must decide on basic moral principles).
Rawls has insisted that the decision in the original position is to
be taken behind an imaginary “veil of ignorance,” which keeps the people
in the original position ignorant of all facts about their own situations,
though they retain general knowledge of history, economics, politics and so
forth. The effect of the veil of ignorance is that people deciding in the
imaginary original position cannot tailor moral principles to their own
situations--rather they must imagine that they could be in anyone’s shoes
and decide on principles in light of what would be best for anyone. For example, not knowing whether they are rich or poor, they cannot
decide on, say, taxation or welfare policies because they know that they will
personally benefit from such policies. They
have to decide what would be better from the standpoint of anyone, or
everyone, in the society. This
feature highlights the moral, rather than self-interested, nature of the
decision that is to be made in the original position.
The basic idea of contractarian
moral theory is that, inasmuch as morality requires people to forego the
pursuit of their self-interest (to avoid acts that would benefit themselves at
a cost to others, such as lying or cheating or stealing and the like), a
rationally defensible morality must provide benefits to people that make it
rational for them to conform to the constraints of morality. This dovetails with Kantian morality because it gives
pride of place to the notion that treating people morally is treating them in
ways that they could rationally and freely endorse. What contractarianism adds to this is a focus on the sacrifices that
morality requires and the benefits it must provide to make moral obligation
reasonable for free people.
Contractarianism can be viewed as
combining the best of Kantianism and of utilitarianism.
Where a Kantian moral philosophy emphasizes treating people in ways
they can accept, contractarianism tries to spell out the benefits that
morality offers which make it reasonable for one to accept it. This requires that the benefits be of a very general nature--such as
liberty, personal security, provision of general means to pursue one’s
goals--that just about anyone can be expected to regard as benefits. In this way, contractarian moral theory shares with utilitarianism the
focus on important and widely desired benefits. On the other hand, contractarians insist that people would not agree to
be sacrificed for the well-being or others or for the aggregate good of
society. Thus, contractarianism
shares with Kantianism a stronger basis for protecting people’s individual
rights than utilitarianism can provide.
The standard test of morality for a
contractarian will be whether a proposed moral standard is such that, even
with the constraints it places on people’s pursuit of their self-interest,
it would be rational for all people, thought of a deciding together as so many
individuals, and not knowing how they in particular will be affected, to agree
to be subject to that standard. To
see the plausibility of this approach consider the light it sheds on practices
such as racism or sexism. Ask
yourself if you would agree to either of these behind a veil of
ignorance--that is, not knowing which race or sex you are. Without such knowledge, forced to judge as if one could be anyone,
people will not agree to racism or sexism, since they might well be seriously
disadvantaged by either. This
shows the unfairness of racism and sexism very clearly since it shows that
these are policies that could only be chosen by members of the favored race or
sex--thus such policies only exist because they have been forced on the
disfavored ones.
The problems with contractarianism
come from the difficulty of determining what people would all agree to as good
behind a veil of ignorance, given the actual disagreements that people have
over what is good and what is worth sacrificing for. For example, at least some people, say deeply religious
fundamentalists, would not find liberty a benefit that would make it worth
their while to refrain from claiming the right to stop others from acting in
ways that they regard as sinful. On
the other hand, the fact that contractarian morality can combine
utilitarianism’s emphasis on concrete benefits with Kantianism’s refusal
to allow the sacrifice a few for the benefit of the rest has made
contractarianism an extremely popular and powerful moral theory among moral
philosophers here at the end of the twentieth century.
