tice once and for all in an original position of equality. They must decide
by which principles their claims against one another are to be settled, and
he who is to judge between men serves as their agent. The fault of the
utilitarian doctrine is that it mistakes impersonality for impartiality.
The preceding remarks naturally lead one to ask what sort of theory of
justice would result if one adopted the sympathetic spectator idea but did
not characterize this spectator as conflating all desires into one system.
Hume’s conception provides one modus operandi for benevolence, but is
it the only possibility? Now love clearly has
among its main elements the
desire to advance the other person’s good as this person’s rational self-
love would require. Very often how one is to realize this desire is clear
enough. The difficulty is that the love of several persons is thrown into
confusion once the claims of these persons conflict. If we reject the
classical doctrine, what does the love of mankind enjoin? It is quite
pointless to say that one is to judge the situation as benevolence dictates.
This assumes that we are wrongly swayed by self-concern. Our problem
lies elsewhere. Benevolence is at sea as long as its many loves are in
opposition in the persons of its many objects.
We might try out here the idea that a benevolent
person is to be guided
by the principles someone would choose if he knew that he is to split, so
to speak, into the many members of society.
39
That is, he is to imagine
that he is to divide into a plurality of persons whose life and experiences
will be distinct in the usual way. Experiences and memories are to remain
each person’s own; and there is to be no conflation of desires and memo-
ries into those of one person. Since a single individual is literally to
become many persons, there is no
question of guessing which one; once
again the problem of taking chances does not arise. Now knowing this (or
believing it), which conception of justice would a person choose for a
society comprised of these individuals? As this person would, let us
suppose, love this plurality of persons as he loves himself, perhaps the
principles he would choose characterize the aims of benevolence.
Leaving aside the difficulties in the idea of splitting that may arise
from problems about personal identity, two things seem evident. First of
all, it is still unclear what a person would decide,
since the situation does
not offhand provide an answer. But secondly, the two principles of justice
now seem a relatively more plausible choice than the classical principle
39. This idea is found in Thomas Nagel,
The Possibility of Altruism
(Oxford, The Clarendon Press,
1970), pp. 140f.
166
The Original Position
of utility. The latter is no
longer the natural preference, and this suggests
that the conflation of persons into one is indeed at the root of the classical
view. The reason why the situation remains obscure is that love and
benevolence are second-order notions: they seek to further the good of
beloved individuals that is already given. If the claims of these goods
clash, benevolence is at a loss as to how to proceed, as long anyway as it
treats these individuals as separate persons.
These higher-order senti-
ments do not include principles of right to adjudicate these conflicts.
Therefore a love of mankind that wishes to preserve the distinction of
persons, to recognize the separateness of life and experience, will use the
two principles of justice to determine its aims when the many goods it
cherishes are in opposition. This is simply to say that this love is guided
by what individuals themselves would consent to in a fair initial situation
which gives them equal representation as moral persons. We now see why
nothing would have been gained by attributing
benevolence to the parties
in the original position.
We must, however, distinguish between the love of mankind and the
sense of justice. The difference is not that they are guided by different
principles, since both include a desire to give justice. Rather, the former is
manifest by the greater intensity and pervasiveness of this desire, and in a
readiness to fulfill all the natural duties in addition to that of justice, and
even to go beyond their requirements. The love of mankind is more
comprehensive than the sense of justice and prompts to acts of superero-
gation, whereas the latter does not. Thus we see that the assumption of
the mutual disinterestedness of the parties does not prevent a reasonable
interpretation of benevolence and of the love of mankind within the
framework of justice as fairness. The fact that we start out assuming that
the parties are mutually disinterested and have conflicting first-order de-
sires still allows us to construct a comprehensive account. For once the
principles of right and justice are on hand, they may be used to define the
moral virtues just as in any other theory. The virtues are sentiments, that
is, related families of dispositions and propensities
regulated by a higher-
order desire, in this case a desire to act from the corresponding moral
principles. Although justice as fairness begins by taking the persons in the
original position as individuals, or more accurately as continuing strands,
this is no obstacle to explicating the higher-order moral sentiments that
serve to bind a community of persons together. In Part Three I shall return
to these matters.
These remarks conclude the theoretical part of our discussion. I shall
167
30. Classical Utilitarianism
make no attempt to summarize this long chapter. Having set out the initial
arguments in favor of the two principles of justice
over the two forms of
utility, it is time to see how these principles apply to institutions and how
well they seem to match our considered judgments. Only in this way can
we become clearer about their meaning and find out whether they are an
improvement over other conceptions.
168
The Original Position
