Contractualism, reciprocity, compensation
Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 2 (3):1-23 (2008)
| Abstract | Two generally recognized moral duties are to reciprocate benefits one has received from others and to compensate harms one has done to others. In this paper I want to show that it is not possible to give an adequate account of either duty – or at least one that corresponds to our actual practices – within a contractualist moral theory of the type developed by T. M. Scanlon (1982, 1998). This fact is interesting in its own right, as contractualism is a leading contemporary contender among deontological moral theories, and the two duties I have mentioned are fairly standard ingredients of such theories. But it also serves to highlight a general problem with contractualism, at least in Scanlon’s version – namely its one-dimensional view of the keystone of any plausible deontological theory: the idea of respect for persons. | |||||||||
| Keywords | Scanlon contractualism moral duties | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,672 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesLeif Wenar (2003). What We Owe to Distant Others. Politics, Philosophy and Economics 2 (3):283-304.
Nicholas Southwood (2008). A Deliberative Model of Contractualism. Politics, Philosophy and Economics 7 (2):183-208.
Pamela Hieronymi (2011). Of Metaethics and Motivation: The Appeal of Contractualism. In R. Jay Wallace, Rahul Kumar & Samuel Richard Freeman (eds.), Reasons and Recognition: Essays on the Philosophy of T. M. Scanlon. Oxford University Press.
Brad Hooker (2003). Contractualism, Spare Wheel, Aggregation. In Matt Matravers (ed.), Scanlon and Contractualism. Frank Cass.
Matthew Talbert (2006). Contractualism and Our Duties to Nonhuman Animals. Environmental Ethics 28 (2):201-215.
Nicholas Southwood (2009). Moral Contractualism. Philosophy Compass 4 (6):926-937.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads72 ( #11,662 of 549,049 )Recent downloads (6 months)5 ( #15,099 of 549,049 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
