Consequentialism in Rawls's Original Position — Epoche C1
Two families of ethical theory The argument of this essay concerns a boundary, so the boundary must first be drawn carefully. Consequentialism is the family of ethical theories holding that the rightness of an act or institution is determined entirely by the goodness of its outcomes: to decide what to do, identify the option whose consequences are best. Utilitarianism is its most famous member, taking the good to be welfare — happiness, or the satisfaction of preferences — summed or averaged across everyone affected. Deontology (from the Greek deon , duty) is the opposing family: some acts are right or wrong in virtue of their intrinsic character or the principles they instantiate, not their results — a promise binds even when breaking it would produce slightly more happiness. Contractualism, the tradition to which John Rawls belongs, grounds principles neither in outcomes nor in intrinsic duties directly, but in agreement: right principles are those that suitably situated persons would agree to, or — in T. M. Scanlon's later formulation — those that no one could reasonably reject. Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971) revived this social-contract tradition, descending from Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Kant, precisely as a systematic alternative to the utilitarianism that had dominated Anglophone political thought; and his theory is standardly taught as the great deontological counterweight: justice grounded in the fairness of a choosing procedure, not in the goodness of social outcomes. The contention here is that this standard filing is too clean — that the procedure itself is saturated with disciplined attention to outcomes, and that seeing this changes what the theory teaches. The machinery of the original position Rawls asks: what principles for the basic structure of society — its constitution, economy and major institutions — would be chosen in an original position of equality? The parties in this hypothetical situation are rational agents, each concerned to advance their own interests, deliberating behind a veil of ignorance : they do not know their class position, natural talents, sex, generation, religion or particular conception of the good life — though they do know the general facts of economics, psychology and social organisation. The veil's function is to make bias impossible: since no one knows which member of society they will turn out to be, no one can tailor the principles to favour their own position, and whatever is chosen is chosen impartially. What do the parties want, given that they do not know what, in particular, they will want? Rawls answers with the primary goods : things it is rational to want whatever else one wants, because they are all-purpose means to any plan of life — rights and liberties, powers and opportunities, income and wealth, and (an item the compressed version of this essay omitted, though Rawls himself came to call it perhaps the most important) the social bases of self-respect. The parties choose principles by asking which distribution of primary goods best serves their unknown future selves. Rawls argues they would choose two principles, in strict order of priority: first, each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of basic liberties compatible with a like scheme for all; second, social and economic inequalities are permissible only if they are attached to positions open to all under fair equality of opportunity and work to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society. This last clause is the celebrated difference principle . The reasoning behind it is a rule from decision theory called maximin : when choosing among options under uncertainty, rank each option by its worst possible outcome, and pick the option whose worst outcome is best — maximise the minimum. Rawls does not claim maximin is generally rational; he claims the original position has three special features that make it so here, and each is worth stating, because the argument turns on them. First, the veil deprives the parties of any basis for assigning probabilities to being this or that member of society, so expected-value calculation loses its footing. Second, the parties care greatly about securing a satisfactory minimum and comparatively little about gains above it — a guaranteed decent life matters more than a gamble on a splendid one. Third, some rejected options carry outcomes one could not accept at all: under aggregate-maximising principles, one might turn out to belong to an oppressed minority whose misery is outweighed by others' gains. Under these conditions, choosing as if one's worst enemy would assign one's social place is sound insurance. The consequentialist residue Now inspect this machinery with the boundary question in mind, and its outcome-orientation becomes conspicuous at every joint. Rawls himself never claimed otherwise: in §6 of A Theory of Justice he writes that 'all ethical doctrines worth our attention take consequences into account in judging rightness', adding that one which did not would simply be irrational. His considered self-description is narrower than the textbook label: justice as fairness is deontological only in the specific sense that it does not define the right as maximising a prior-specified good. That leaves ample room for consequences to work inside the theory — and work they do, in at least three places. First, the maximin argument is outcome-driven through and through. Its second and third conditions are claims about which results the parties must secure and which results would be intolerable; the difference principle is selected because of the quality of the worst lives it permits. 'Maximise the minimum' is not the abandonment of optimisation but a species of it — an optimisation problem with an unusual objective function, chosen because unbuffered aggregation exposes individuals to unacceptable outcomes. Second, the primary goods are selected by a calculation about consequences: they are i