Research On The Contemporary Utilitarian Conceptions Of Justice

Utilitarian theory had been the mainstream of Western political philosophy from the mid-nineteenth century to the sixties of twentieth century. However, more and more people begun to criticize the political philosophy of utilitarianism since John Rawls'great work A Theory of Justice's publication, and utilitarianism has gradually lost its mainstream status. One of the most important reasons is that social justice has become to be an important value in modern society, and it is argued that utilitarian theory especially the maximization of utility is not compatible with social justice. The main problems for the utilitarian conceptions of justice are as follows: First, the basis of utilitarian theory is not solid, as it can not provide a satisfactory utility theory; second, utilitarianism is not compatible with liberty and equality when it emphasizes on utility maximization; finally, utilitarianism can not provide a proper proof for the principles of social justice.If these three criticisms are successful, then it seems that we should expel utilitarianism from contemporary political philosophy. However, based on following three reasons, we believe that utilitarianism is still very attractive. First, when we consider the issues of social justice, an important factor that we can not ignore the positive or negative consequence, and the key point of utilitarianism is the consequences, so it considers the issues of social justice on this basis. Second, when we consider the issues of distributive justice, obviously, we can not meet the requirement of equality through the way of leveling, that is to say that we can not deprive the rich so as to make them equal to the poor, but we should meet a reasonable requirement of equality on the basis of promotion the interests of everyone, this is consistent with the utilitarian conceptions of equality. Third, and most importantly, the defenders argued that the critics of utilitarianism were referred to the over-simplified extreme utilitarianism; if we explain the theory of utilitarianism in a more sophisticated and complex way, and interpret it as institutional utilitarianism, we can make the utility maximization compatible with the requirements of social justice very well, moreover, we can respond all those three forceful criticisms. Therefore, we should further research on the contemporary utilitarian conceptions of justice.This dissertation is a comprehensive research on the contemporary utilitarian conceptions of justice. Through a comparative study of contemporary Western, mainly English-speaking world's utilitarian theories of justice, we want to study the rationality of contemporary utilitarianism as the basis of the principles of social justice, and try to understand whether utility maximization can be compatible with the principle of social justice.Firstly, we focus on three important concepts of the utilitarian conceptions of justice: utility, social justice and contemporary utilitarianism. For the concept of utility, there are three basic groups, namely, happiness, preference and objective welfare. The theories of utility that are based on happiness or objective welfare have fatal flaws, this makes them can not provide a reasonable basis for the contemporary utilitarian theories of justice. Most contemporary utilitarian insist on the theory of preference, they give the preference a rational limit, and they believe that the theory of rational preference can provide a solid foundation for the utilitarian principles of justice.For the concept of social justice, we limit our scope on the basic social institutions and social policies. In the social institutions, social justice shows as the protection of the value of liberty and equality. A just social institution should not only be able to protect everyone's liberty and rights from violation, but also can guarantee that everyone is equal, and any inequality between them should has a just reason.For the concept of contemporary utilitarianism, we divide it into two groups, and these are extreme utilitarianism and institutional utilitarianism; the former includes act utilitarianism, reductionist utilitarianism, motive utilitarianism and negative utilitarianism, the latter includes deontological utilitarianism, two-level utilitarianism, rule utilitarianism and narrowly-defined institutional utilitarianism. Then, we examine several different forms of combination between the utilitarian theory and the principles of social justice, and we obtain two groups of the principles of contemporary utilitarian justice, and these are the extreme utilitarian principles of justice and the institutional utilitarian principles of justice.Based on the research of the utilitarian concepts, then we discuss how to derive a principle of justice that is in accordance with the demands of intuitions, and the derivation which is based on direct utility maximization have obvious flaws. Moreover, extreme utilitarianism resort to the reductionist view of human nature to provide a theoretical support for their neglect of justice, but it still can not provide a sufficient convincing support. Therefore, we should abandon extreme utilitarianism, and turn to the institutional utilitarian conceptions of justice, which will be defended by us. If we make a comparison among the various forms for institutional utilitarianism and their conceptions of justice, we will find out that the theory of justice that is based on indirect utility maximization has obvious advantages compared to extreme utilitarianism which is based on direct utility maximization.However, institutional utilitarianism still have some flaws that are difficult to overcome, it makes us to propose a modified form of the institutional utilitarian conceptions of justice. These conceptions of justice believe that they can establish a social institution to meet the requirement of expected utility maximization, and at the same time, it can meet the requirements of social justice.When something can not be effectively measured and interpersonal compared by expected utility, the modified form of institutional utilitarianism insists that the individual) is the best judge of their own interests, so we need establish a social institution to protect the legitimate rights of individuals; these rights are mutually consistent in the level of the social institution and they have sufficient moral force. However, in some special cases, there are many conflicts between the rights of individuals, and the utility that they demonstrate is able to be compared, then, we need resolve these conflicts on the ground of expected utility maximization. For other things that can be measured and interpersonal comparison with the expected utility to some extent, we should distribute income based on the rational principle of distributive justice, and this principle asks us to ensure equality of income among persons, unless some inequality can ensure the optimality of the social institution. This requires that an unequal distribution of income should meet people's basic needs, provide equal opportunities, and distribute income according to the contribution. The basis of these principles of distributive justice is the expected utility maximization, and at the same time, it can accommodate very well with the requirements of equality, desert and need. Moreover, the modified form of institutional utilitarianism is also able to give a quite convincing explanation to the two following important issues of democracy- the equality between human rights and each social decision-making should consider everyone's requirements equally. One of the most important advantages of the modified form of institutional utilitarianism is that it is a consideration of the real world, thus it won't like the ideal theories of justice who will impair other equally important values at the expense of justice.Finally, the last important problem that we need study is how to prove the institutional utilitarian principle of justice. On the one hand, we can provide a strong contractual support for such proof through the restriction to the concept of rationality and some amendments of the rational choice theory; on the other hand, we supply a proof for institutional utilitarianism in the way of reflective equilibrium, that is to say that we compare institutional utilitarianism with other theories of justice, so that we can ascertain whether institutional utilitarianism can provide a more reasonable support for rights and equality than other theories of justice, and study the advantages that the institutional utilitarian conceptions of justice may have about the public policies when it compares with other conceptions of justice.In summary, through a systematic study of the advantages and disadvantages of the contemporary utilitarian conceptions of justice, and through a study of a modified institutional utilitarian conception of justice, we believe that the disadvantages that utilitarianism may have can not expel it completely, but its advantages is worthy doing further research and use it for reference.