Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

contrasted with we should seek pleasure. This contrast was noted in Chapter 18.) Utilitarians move swiftly between the two. Utilitarianism is conflicted, as if we are individually motivated to seek happiness why would we then make sacrifices to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people? This is to contrast personal self-interest with the ‘greater good’.

Sometimes utilitarianism is spoken of as trying to maximise welfare, and this is given the title of ‘object utilitarianism’. It’s not clear whether this approach is any better than the rule utilitarianism spoken of above, and it would seem to be vulnerable to the same problems. But it is a useful step to our next morality theme.

In his A Theory of Justice John Rawls promotes basically a theory of distributive justice based on a reasonable and impartial distribution of goods. He asks us to imagine a ‘veil of ignorance’ when deciding what would be a fair way of organising a society (so that there will not be personal prejudice in decision making). We are therefore not able to know what our own lives might be like in advance — we might be poor, ignorant or disabled, for instance. The hope is that this would lead to a fairer distribution of resources within society. Rawls made a few assumptions about people’s initial ethical and moral position however, and he more or less assumed that people will have life goals of the narrative kind, such as we explored in the previous chapter in relation to virtue ethics. But such life goals will often include caring for others, and contributing to the greater good. It’s a step up from utilitarianism — or closer to the ‘object

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