ABSTRACT
Jan Narveson began his career as a utilitarian, but more recently he has been a powerful advocate of a form of contractarianism which he takes to provide the best available foundation for a practicable form of libertarianism or, as he prefers to call it, radical liberalism. In this chapter I explore the extent to which utilitarianism and contractarianism are compatible. I begin by distinguishing between two types of utilitarians: fundamentalist utilitarians and quasi-utilitarians. 1 1 then look briefly at two attitudes one might have toward the idea of a social contract and sketch two varieties of contractarian political theories: what I call social contractarianism and what I call market contractarianism. 2
