David Gauthier's Answer to Why Be Moral

David Gauthier's Answer to Why Be Moral

ABSTRACT: In this paper I argue that David Gauthier’s answer to the Why be moral? question fails. My argument concedes the possibility of constrained maximization in all the senses Gauthier intends and does not rely on the claim that it is better to masquerade as a constrained maximizer than to be one. Instead, I argue that once a constrained maximizer in the guise of "economic man" is transformed through an affective commitment to morality into a constrained maximizer in the guise of the "liberal individual," then a purely rational justification for morality must become invisible to the latter. If I can show this, then I can show that rational justification can have no motivational power for the "liberal individual" and that Gauthier fails to answer the problem of moral motivation.

I begin by making what I take to be a crucial distinction. This distinction separates two levels at which a contract theory may operate. At the first level the contractarian theory is directed at the question of moral motivation. That is, it takes the idea of agreement to be the source of motivation to be or become moral. The agreement thus serves to bring into the moral domain agents who, prior to the agreement, were not moral agents. At the second level the contractarian theory is directed at the question of the content and justification of our most general normative principles and values. That is, it takes the idea of agreement to be the source of both content and justification. For convenience I will describe a theory which is contractarian at both levels as complete, and a theory which is contractarian at only one level as partial.

The problem of moral motivation, when understood as a problem of enticing non-moral agents into the moral domain, is a specific problem only for a contractarian theory which is complete or which is partial at level one. A contractarianism which is partial at level two has no special obligations, qua contractarian theory, to answer the Why be moral? question. In other words, such a theory does not offer, and does not aim at offering, a contractarian answer to the Why be moral? question since it is not concerned with moral-non-moral distinction. The early Rawls (1971) and Gauthier (1975,1986) both offer complete theories, while the later Rawls (1980) and Thomas Scanlon (1982) offer theories which are partial at level two (I will drop the ‘at level two': this can be assumed unless I indicate otherwise).