Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

get a lot less attention than utilitarianism in its traditional forms.

Sometimes utilitarianism is spoken of as trying to maximise welfare. It’s not clear whether this approach is any better than the types of 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.

The further step is to try to aim for a fair society, rather than just the sum of everyone’s individual happiness. The fairness here might be considered as fairness with respect to the law, that is, justice and fairness in terms of the distribution of goods. We each have a narrative of how we’d like our lives to turn out, it might be suggested, and this rarely if ever involves simply maximising pleasure. Instead, we will often include the well-being of others and the general good in our understanding of what makes for a rewarding and fulfilled life. We would have to rely then on narrative (and accept that it is only provisional) in order to provide the underlying ethical sensibilities to give us even a start at a theory of distribution — and then a full theory of justice.

It’s only reasonable to point out that all the ideas we’ve considered start with an assumed morality. In utilitarianism this is often not defined. In theories concerning fair distribution and justice it is mainly what will best serve the life goals of the individual (but assumes that these will be benign — if not actually positive — for the individual and for the rest of society at large).

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