ABSTRACT
Two prominent political theorists of the moderate left (Rawls) and the far-right (Nozick) in America have used theories of rationality to develop theories of how societies should be organized. Gauthier has done the same for ethics. These theories are designed to guide present political and moral choices. They presume that rationality requires system and justification; although they also presume that society is composed of individuals-Nozick and Gauthier are more radically libertarian than Rawls-but all have been led by these assumptions to offer models of society as a coherent whole. These models should serve as a standard for contemporary social policy, because they represent the best possible state of affairs. These efforts reveal how traditional demands for system and justification lead to utopian views, often as a consequence of individualist views. Among individualists they first lead to an extreme individualism in which society is deemed a mere collection of individuals who possess coherent, systematic views and who pursue their individual aims in accord with their calculations as to how these aims can best be achieved. This view then becomes its opposite, a view of society as a functioning system ordered by some systematic world view-just as it did for Weber-when all individuals are deemed to be acting on the basis of such a framework. The traditional demands in the name of rationality for coherence and justification lead to utopian visions which are useless and/or harmful in social planning. They are nevertheless constructed, because it seems reasonable to seek to maximize rationality. One way to do that is to make our choice of social ideals as rational as possible. And when one uses traditional standards to attempt to do that one is led to the construction of utopias which serve-or are designed to serve-as goals which societies should strive for and/or as standards by which societies should be judged. Although utopian models are not designed to describe reality, but rather some ideal state of affairs, they thus become a standard which should be based on rationality alone. Utopian models which are constructed to meet traditional standards of rationality create a gap between the utopian states and real societies. How, then, can this gap be bridged? Can utopian standards be used to guide reform now? Because the methods used to develop utopian models demand coherence and justification, they seem to possess a high degree of rationality. But utopian models achieve this appearance only by imagining systems in which the problems faced by real societies are already solved. When applied to real societies, they can at best be
used to judge the difference between some ideal and the reality. They do not show how to move from one to the other. The application of utopian models to guide social policy exhibits a low degree of rationality, because it is uncritical: applications fail to take account of the need for continued testing and appraisal of the use of standards in real situations. They offer no theories of how this is to be done. Because utopian models presume that the actions of individuals meet high standards of rationality, their conjectures both as to what would happen in real situations and what could occur under ideal conditions are wide of the mark. And their presumptions that ideals found in this way may spur us on and guide us to do better are wrong, because they lead in directions which may cause harm, by ignoring unintended consequences of (rational) actions. Examples of how this happens are found in the efforts of Rawls, Nozick and Gauthier to create models of society as guides for current social policy. They start with highly artificial situations in the hope that they will reveal to any rational person which policies are desirable and/or just. The use of artificial situations is used to remove from considerations irrelevant matters, so that only the core may be considered and decisions about right and wrong, about justice and injustice may be made on these essentials. On the face of it this seems circular. One would think that one would have to critically evaluate social systems to see what was crucial and what was not. But the traditional theory of rationality appears to offer a foundation for such choices. Society may be viewed as simply consisting of individuals who make transactions in accord with their plans. Rationality is deemed the mere pursuit of ends in accord with certain rules. How and what can one add to this situation? Rawls says we may add rules of justice; Nozick says nothing; Gauthier tries to construct a morality on this slim basis. What we can add to such a situation seems to be a paramount question. But it is not, since posing the question in this way is already misguided. Let us turn then to our three examples to illustrate the insurmountable difficulties facing any attempt to use traditional theories of rationality as frameworks for political theory and/or ethics. Rawls’s theory of justice Perhaps the most interesting and original aspect of Rawls’s book is his solution to the problem: How can one rationally justify a model of the best society? It is by no means obvious how this can be done. Although many philosophers hope to use empirical evidence to justify scientific theories, we do not have any good theory of how this can work. In the case of the theory of justice and/or moral theories, we have even less to go on. Rawls’s solution to this problem is to pose the problem of the choice of some theory of justice as a problem of rational decision-making. He asks how a person would construct the society when he is ignorant of the place he would have in this society. His ignorance should guarantee his impartiality, and thus the justice of his choice, and his rationality, that is, his use of decision theory, should guarantee its correctness.
