Since it appeared in 1971, John Rawls's A Theory of Justice has become a classic. The author has now revised the original edition to clear up a number of difficulties he and others have found in the original book. Rawls aims to express an essential part of the common core of the democratic tradition--justice as fairness--and to provide an alternative to utilitarianism, which had dominated the Anglo-Saxon tradition of political thought since the nineteenth century. Rawls substitutes the ideal of the (...) social contract as a more satisfactory account of the basic rights and liberties of citizens as free and equal persons. "Each person," writes Rawls, "possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override." Advancing the ideas of Rousseau, Kant, Emerson, and Lincoln, Rawls's theory is as powerful today as it was when first published. (shrink)

Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition. This reissue makes the first edition once again available for scholars and serious students of Rawls's work.

The following values have no corresponding Zotero field: PB - JSTOR.

I take as my starting point the “one very simple principle” proclaimed by Mill in On Liberty … “That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do (...) or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right.”. (shrink)

Wherever a government or state is concerned with the welfare of its citizens, there will probably also exist policies which compel the individual citizen to undertake or abstain from activities which affect that citizen alone. The set of theories behind such policies is collectively known as ‘paternalism’. It is not hard to understand why this term has developed strong pejorative overtones. Policies of this type appear to offend a fundamental tenet of liberal societies: namely, that the individual is best placed (...) to know what is in his or her interests. Paternalistic policies imply, and are concerned with correcting, failures of precisely this kind of judgement. And yet, at the same time, there is a popular consensus that compelling people to wear a seat belt when driving a car is a reasonable restriction of personal liberty. Paternalism may be difficult to accept in principle, but it is equally difficult to avoid in practice. Not surprisingly, the literature reveals a long heritage of debate in a wide range of academic disciplines. This debate reveals a failure to make progress in two areas in particular. First, analyses of paternalism often confuse policies which are actually concerned with correcting failures of market exchange — in particular, those concerned with insufficient or imperfect information — with those which are genuinely paternalistic. One objective of this paper will be to clarify the difference between these two kinds of policy. (shrink)

Though the Revised Edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawlsıs view, so much of the extensive literature on ...

It is my view that one essential difference between persons and other creatures is to be found in the structure of a person's will. Besides wanting and choosing and being moved to do this or that, men may also want to have certain desires and motives. They are capable of wanting to be different, in their preferences and purposes, from what they are. Many animals appear to have the capacity for what I shall call "first-order desires" or "desires of the (...) first order," which are simply desires to do or not to do one thing or another. No animal other than man, however, appears to have the capacity for reflective self-evaluation that is manifested in the formation of second-order desires. (shrink)

Challenging, with several powerful arguments, some of our deepest beliefs about rationality, morality, and personal identity, Parfit claims that we have a false view about our own nature. It is often rational to act against our own best interersts, he argues, and most of us have moral views that are self-defeating. We often act wrongly, although we know there will be no one with serious grounds for complaint, and when we consider future generations it is very hard to avoid conclusions (...) that most of us will find very disturbing. (shrink)

This article concentrates on the critique by John Rawls and Derek Parfit of the use of a discount rate in economics. In a presentation of the basic economics underlying the use of a discount rate, the inherently problematic nature of people’s preferences with respect to time are highlighted. The second part discusses the role of the discount rate in economic optimal growth models. An outline of the economic theory of optimal growth is provided, pointing out how Rawls’s analysis of justice (...) between generations fits nicely into this economic discussion, thus explaining his interest in the discount rate. For Rawls the basic problem with the discount rate is that one variable is caught between two objectives: guaranteeing an efficient and at the same time a fair solution. Finally Derek Parfit’s analysis of the use of discount rates is examined. Parfit points out that a discount rate is often used as a crude rule of thumb which wrongly represents our reasons for discounting. The article concludes with a discussion of a study undertaken by a number of respected economists for the IPCC which exhibits all the mistakes that Parfit warns us against. (shrink)

This Hackett edition, first published in 1981, is an unabridged and unaltered republication of the seventh edition as published by Macmillan and Company, Limited. From the forward by John Rawls: In the utilitarian tradition Henry Sidgwick has an important place. His fundamental work, The Methods of Ethics, is the clearest and most accessible formulation of what we may call 'the classical utilitarian doctorine.' This classical doctrine holds that the ultimate moral end of social and individual action is the greatest net (...) sum of the happiness of all sentient beings. Happinesss is specified by the net balance of pleasure over pain, or, as Sidgwick preferred to say, as the net balance of agreeable over disagreeable consciousness.... (shrink)

One of the most influential of the Victorian philosophers, Henry Sidgwick also made important contributions to fields such as economics, political theory, and classics. An active promoter of higher education for women, he founded Cambridge's Newnham College in 1871. He attended Rugby School and then Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained his whole career. In 1859 he took up a lectureship in classics, and held this post for ten years. In 1869, he moved to a lectureship in moral philosophy, the (...) subject where he left arguably his greatest mark when he produced this work, regarded as his masterpiece. Published in 1874, the book argues the utilitarian approach to ethics, and a systematic and historically sensitive approach to ethical research that influenced utilitarian philosophers well into the twentieth century. It remains a valuable introduction to the philosophy, practice and history of ethics. This reissue includes the 1877 supplement. (shrink)

The international discussion on the greenhouse problem is constantly confronted with arguments about historical responsibility. Consider for instance the 1991 Beijing declaration on Environment and Development which states that “[...] the developed countries bear responsibility for the degradation of the global environment. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, the developed countries have over-exploited the world's natural resources through unsustainable patterns of production and consumption, causing damage to the global environment, to the detriment of the developing countries.”The notion of historical responsibility became (...) even more central to the discussion when, in the context of the Kyoto negotiations in 1997, Brazil launched a proposal in which it used cumulative emissions from 1840 until today as the point of reference for defining the abatement targets for the countries taking part in the negotiations. The obvious effect was that the entire economic burden connected to the greenhouse problem was shifted to the industrialized countries. Although the Brazilian proposal has been heavily criticized, mainly on methodological grounds, the historical responsibility claim has certainly not disappeared; on the contrary, it has risen to the forefront and remains the main argument used by non-industrialized countries to claim that the greenhouse problem is essentially a problem of the rich countries.The contributions one can read in this issue are the result of a workshop on Historical Responsibility and the Greenhouse Problem, held last year at the University of Leuven. All of them are rooted in an ongoing, mostly Anglo-American, discussion about our relation towards past and future generations that knows two defining moments: the publication of Rawls’ A Theory of Justice in which the issue of what should be done for future generations was explicitly tackled and Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons that incited a flurry of articles on intergenerational responsibility.The first contribution, “An ‘Ideal’ Normative Theory for Greenhouse Negotations?” , is divided into two parts, a scientific one in which the present state of our understanding of the greenhouse problem is presented, and a second part which develops, in a Rawlsian spirit, an ideal normative theory of how we should handle the greenhouse problem. Let me quickly review the basic scientific facts with respect to the greenhouse problem :- We know that the Earth’s climate has changed considerably since the pre-industrial era; that this is at least partly due to human intervention; and that the effect will speed up if we continue to develop according to current economic and demographic trends.- The environmental impact of the rise in average temperature will be: an rise in sea level ; a drastic change in agricultural conditions; a shift in vegetation and wildlife conditions which could exterminate several species; and an increase of extreme climate conditions .- The economic costs connected to these environmental changes are unevenly distributed with the bulk of the burden concentrated in developing countries.The second part of this paper develops a normative framework. Their moral point of departure is that a normative framework should start from a preferential option for the poor on the basis of which they argue that the greenhouse problem is essentially a problem of distributive justice, not one of historical injustice or corrective justice. Underlying this is the strong belief that the present distribution of resources is grossly unjust, and that this injustice validates the conclusion that even if the rich did not cause the problem, they still have to solve it. According to the authors, the distributive justice argument not only overrides historical injustice, but even makes redundant the entire question of historical responsibility. Given their fundamental ethical idea of priority to the fate of the poor , it is absurd to impose on poor people in the ‘rich North’ part of the burden for misery in other parts of the world.The second article, “Compensating Wrongless Historical Emissions” , at first sight openly disagrees with this and opens the door for compensation demands based on an argument from historical responsibility. This text is firmly rooted in Parfit’s approach to the problem of future generations and concentrates mainly on the question what it means to harm future living people.Meyer refutes Parfit’s contingency argument which entails that the contingency of future people upon the actions that influence their interests makes it impossible for these future people to claim compensation for past harms which only can be the case if we believe that attributing interests to future people requires us to make reference to individual persons. As an alternative, he formulates a certain decency threshold, a baseline, below which we feel no human person, whoever she might be, should ever sink, as an alternative. This threshold gives rise to what he calls the subjunctive threshold view of harm. According to this view an action at time t1 harms someone only if the agent thereby causes a person to fall below some specified threshold. A weakness in Meyer’s solution to the problem is the exact specification of this threshold. It is clear that a specific threshold reflects existing social, economic and cultural conditions. As we are very unsure of the living conditions of generations far removed, it also becomes rather difficult to state with any precision what duties present people could be said to have towards future people.In his contribution “Historical Emissions and Free-Riding” Axel Gosseries tackles the problem of historical injustice from a completely different angle. His problem is that of transgenerational free-riding. Consider two communities, the US and Bangladesh, and two generations. With greenhouse pollution, as with ozone depletion due to CFK exhaustion, the long lifetime of the chemical particles involved allows for a direct causal relationship between the acts of the past generation and the harm suffered by the current generation. The question Gosseries asks is: should current US citizens not pay some compensation to current Bangladeshi people, even though current US citizens are not themselves morally responsible for the actions of their ancestors? The argument in favor of compensation rests on the fact that the current US generation benefited from the past emissions, and is thus a transgenerational free-rider on the actions of their ancestors.Through his discussion of different arguments pro and con Gosseries builds his argument that there is room for moral accountability without admitting moral responsibility. The intermediary step is the fact that the current generation benefits from the harmful acts of the previous generation, and now knows that these acts were harmful for the poor community but beneficial for themselves. Stated differently, the problem is that the current US generation keeps the benefits that come with the emission of greenhouse gases, while the current Bangladeshi people forgo these benefits, but carry a large part of the burden that was directly caused by the harmful actions of the previous US generation.If this is the case, and the current US community is well aware of this, then this community is a free-rider: they benefit from a positive externality made possible through costs to others without paying anything in return.In his long commentary on the article by Gosseries, Geert Demuijnck disagrees. He points out that the argument which Gosseries develops is embedded in a libertarian framework, and that in such a framework a claim for compensation can only be justified if one starts from a situation that was basically just. It is only when you start from a legitimate distribution of property rights that the libertarian can claim that harm was done to property rights and that a form of compensation should be granted. If, however, you do not know whether property rights were justly distributed at the start, the entire exercise collapses and there are no claims for compensation to be made. Gosseries misses this point. Demuijnck’s own position comes very close to that of Eyckmans and Schokkaert. He too rejects the relevance of historical injustices, and believes we should better concentrate on the distribution of current emissions and current GDP per capita. Again, it is distributive justice which is considered to be of primary interest: the rich should pay because they are rich, not because they polluted.Finally, in the last article “Discounting the Future” I discuss the notion of a discount rate. Suffice it to say that the standard use of a discount rate makes all distant valuations dwindle. Far-off costs and benefits no longer enter the picture. This might be crucial when you discuss problems with a long-term horizon like the greenhouse problem or the costs of nuclear energy or the merits of conserving cultural heritage. If far-off costs and benefits do not count, then future generations might be left with lots of nuclear waste, few resources and a severely degraded natural environment. Not surprisingly an entire literature has developed concentrating on the link between the discount rate and the fate of future generations. But the discount rate could also influence our judgment of the past. Think about restitution for past wrongdoings: aboriginals in Australia, the Maori in New Zealand, the Inuit in Canada, Japanese-Americans interned during the Second World War — all claim monetary restitution. When confronted with problems stretching over time, the choice of a discount rate greatly influences the final results.This thematic issue of Ethical Perspectives on historical responsibility and the greenhouse problem certainly does not come up with a definite consensus on the matter. There are two articles which claim that the historical responsibility argument is irrelevant in normative discussions about the greenhouse problem, or is at least strongly dominated by distributive justice arguments that look at present emissions and at the present distribution of wealth. Yet two other texts claim that it is possible to demand compensation for past harm and that these demands can make a difference. But despite this disagreement, there are also some significant agreements. Everybody rejects the notion of moral responsibility for past emissions; all agree that the level of moral analysis is, in the end, that of the individual and not of states or any other aggregate; all agree that Parfit’s non-identity problem does not threaten our responsibility towards the past or towards the future; all believe that a distributive policy based on historical responsibility arguments or one based on distributive justice arguments grounded in the present situation will not imply a seriously different policy. Burdens and benefits will have to be distributed in more or less the same way in order to be equitable. These are, I believe, valuable insights that give us a somewhat better grasp of the normative nature of the greenhouse problem. (shrink)