A theory of Justice: Revised Edition

What Nietzsche Means
(Cambridge, Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1941), pp. 40–42, 369–376. Particularly striking is Nietzsche’s statement: “Mankind must
work continually to produce individual great human beings—this and nothing else is the task . . . for
the question is this: how can your life, the individual life, retain the highest value, the deepest
significance? . . . Only by your living for the good of the rarest and most valuable specimens.”
Untimely Meditations: Third Essay: Schopenhauer as Educator,
sec. 6, cited from J. R. Hollingsdale,
Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy
(Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1965),
p. 127.
286
Distributive Shares

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allows for a range of interpretations and seems to express a far more
reasonable view than the strict perfectionist theory.
51
Before considering why the principle of perfection would be rejected, I
should like to comment on the relation between the principles of justice
and the two kinds of teleological theories, perfectionism and utilitarian-
ism. We may define ideal-regarding principles as those which are not
want-regarding principles.
52
That is, they do not take as the only relevant
features the overall amount of want-satisfaction and the way in which it is
distributed among persons. Now in terms of this distinction, the princi-
ples of justice as well as the principle of perfection (either variant) are
ideal-regarding principles. They do not abstract from the aims of desires
and hold that satisfactions are of equal value when they are equally
intense and pleasurable (the meaning of Bentham’s remark that, other
things equal, pushpin is as good as poetry). As we have seen (§41), a
certain ideal is embedded in the principles of justice, and the fulfillment
of desires incompatible with these principles has no value at all. More-
over we are to encourage certain traits of character, especially a sense of
justice. Thus the contract doctrine is similar to perfectionism in that it
takes into account other things than the net balance of satisfaction and
how it is shared. In fact, the principles of justice do not even mention the
amount or the distribution of welfare but refer only to the distribution of
liberties and the other primary goods. At the same time, they manage to
define an ideal of the person without invoking a prior standard of human
excellence. The contract view occupies, therefore, an intermediate posi-
tion between perfectionism and utilitarianism.
Turning to the question whether a perfectionist standard would be
adopted, we may consider first the strict perfectionist conception, since
here the problems are more obvious. Now in order to have a clear sense,
this criterion must provide some way of ranking different kinds of
achievements and summing their values. Of course this assessment may
not be very exact, but it should be accurate enough to guide the main
decisions concerning the basic structure. It is at this point that the princi-
51. For this kind of view, see Bertrand de Jouvenal, 
The Ethics of Redistribution
(Cambridge, The
University Press, 1951), pp. 53–56, 62–65. See also Hastings Rashdall, 
The Theory of Good and Evil
(London, Oxford University Press, 1907), vol. I, pp. 235–243, who argues for the principle that
everyone’s good is to count for as much as the like good of anyone else, the criteria of perfection
being relevant in determining when persons’ goods are equal. The capacity for a higher life is a
ground for treating men unequally. See pp. 240–242. A similar view is implicit in G. E. Moore,
Principia Ethica,
ch. VI.
52. The definition is from Barry,