International Ethics is concerned with relationship between different states, or between individuals who are members of different states. Its scope includes:
The utilitarian point of view holds that actions can be judged as good or bad depending on their consequences for human well-being. A strictly utilitarian approach to creating a political organisation would require that the aggregate benefits of policies and organisations are maximised, even if this is at the expense of some members of the society being disadvantaged. So, for example, if by having 20% of the populating as slaves we find that their consequent unhappiness is outweighed by the increased happiness of the remaining 80%, then a policy to achieve this would have moral value (and may be the "best" policy, if the consequent aggregate happiness is greater than that obtained when no-one is enslaved).
Utilitarianism proposes the same framework for approaching all types of moral questions, whether that be my own behaviour in a private case, or the behaviour of an international organisation seeking to negotiate trade agreements: maximise utility.
Rawls rejects the utilitarian argument, instead proposing a system which is based on fairness. His argues that a just society must be one that is established in such a way as to be fair to all members of the society, and would have structures and rules that would be agreed on by all those members. Rawls also regards the problem of international justice to require a separate approach; this will be a theme of the course: "What are the justifications for making a distinction between justice within a state and justice between states?".
Rawls says that the choice of a fair set of principles requires that "no one should be advantaged or disadvantaged by natural fortune or social circumstances...it should be impossible to tailor principles to the circumstances of one's own case." He makes use of the Original Position: a thought experiment in which parties make decisions without the knowledge of how those decisions will directly influence themselves or the people they care about. In the original position, a veil of ignorance prevents someone from knowing anything about their own personal situation: for example, I don't know how wealthy I am, my social class, racial origin or gender.
The choices made by parties in this position, says Rawls, will be for principles that are most fair. This is similar to the idea of dividing a cake between two people: person A cuts the cake knowing that person B will choose who gets which portion, and so has an incentive to make the cut as fairly as possible. Rawls says that the principles arrived at from the original position would be "those which a person would choose for the design of a society in which his enemy is to assign him his place"
From the Original Position, Rawls argues that two principles of justice would be agreed to. These are:
Rawls believed that the "social lottery" means that some people have advantages which are not related to their natural abilities and inclinations; for example, someone born to a poor family may be less likely to receive a good education compared with someone in a rich family. If two such people apply for a particular job, then one of them would have an unfair advantage. A practical implication of this idea would be public funding of education.
Rawls does also consider the "natural lottery" of talents, which means that some people have innate abilities that put them in an advantageous position. He says that this is also unfair, and that "we may want to adopt a principle which ... mitigates the arbitrary effects of the lottery itself", although it is not clear how this is done. Note though that the parties operating behind the "veil of ignorance" are unaware of their own natural abilities.
The difference principle stands in contrast to the utilitarian view that the best result is achieved by maximising utility. For example, for three parties A, B and C:
| A | B | C | |
|---|---|---|---|
| i) | £10 | £10 | £10 |
| ii) | £50 | £20 | £5 |
| iii) | £30 | £20 | £15 |
The difference principle focuses on the least well off member, but Rawls claims that "it seems plausible that if the least advantaged benefit so do others". He uses the term chain connection to describe the way that different parties' expectations are linked to one another.
The two principles are lexically ordered, meaning that the first principle always takes priority over the second; for example it would not be acceptable to remove the right to vote of any member of society, even if by so doing we could increase the wealth of everyone.
Rawls concedes that there may be cases when this method yields principles which are not in accordance with our "considered convictions of justice". In these cases, he says we should either revise our opinions or modify the account of the original position, so that we end up with "reflective equilibrium", when "at last our principles and judgements coincide".
Rawls does allow that liberties be restricted, but "only when it is essential to change the conditions of civilization so that in due course these liberties can be enjoyed."
When it comes to justifying his principles of liberty and fairness, Rawls is coherentist: he says "I do not claim for the principles of justice proposed that they are necessary truths or derivable from such truths...its justification is a matter of the mutual support of many considerations, of everything fitting together into one coherent view." (On Justice as Fairness, III).
Perhaps Rawls is open to the criticism that the "considered convictions of justice" are products of our culture. For example, he says "we are confident that religious intolerance and racial discrimination are unjust". Although this seems true, someone five hundred years ago might not have had the same confidence. Bear-baiting is now widely regarded as morally reprehensible, but this has not always been the case. How are we to know whether the convictions we hold now are absolutely right and won't change? I think that the process of "reflective equlibrium" might address this issue, but it seems to me that any theory of justice that Rawls ends up with may be seen as culturally biased.
Another, perhaps more subtle way that culture influences the decisions we might believe would be reached from the Original Position is that in a society such as our own, inequality is not regarded as a bad thing. Rawls himself says that a system which distributes goods unequally is preferable to one which distributes equally, provided everyone is better off. Essentially he is saying that absolute benefits are more important than relative benefits. But while we may think (and are encouraged by a capitalist system to think) that absolute benefits are what we want, research appears to show that happiness is a function of relative prosperity. See, for example, Happiness: has social science a clue?, and the book "The High Price of Materialism" (review).