Torsión uniforme en celdas múltiples de pared delgada

I can think of three virtues of contractarianism, which also seem to be the reasons why contemporary contractarians endorse this approach. First, contractarianism does not justify political principles by strange, non-natural properties or objects; nor does it credit human beings with what J. L. Mackie calls ‘magical power’ which is capable of discerning some moral truths out there’.⁹ Instead, it takes the normative principle as a ‘contract’, a product of human volition, that we commend to the extent that we would choose it when we are placed in an idealised choice situation. This characteristic is a virtue because it is compatible with the scientific, secular outlook in the modern world.

Here it is important to note the difference between the modern outlook and the ancient outlook. In the ancient times, people usually conceived of the world as purposely ordered.¹⁰ Everything was subjected to an order that different elements in

9 Mackie (1990: 38-42).

10 Taylor (1975: 6).

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creation expressed and embodied a certain order of purposes. This order gave all beings innate purposes which would guide what they ought to do. The way people treated each another was somehow inscribed in the universal realm. Since this purposive order was independent of people’s subjective will, people could only recognise their given purposes and pursue them faithfully.

This outlook changed radically following the Enlightenment. Because of the emergence of modern science, represented by the scientific theories of Newton and Galileo, people began to understand the order of the world as a mechanistic, non-purposive order. This is, in Max Weber’s words, the ‘disenchantment of the world’, which is the feature of modernity. ‘The new notion of objectivity rejected the recourse to final causes; it was mechanistic in the sense of relying on efficient causation only’.¹¹ In the new world order, people are not given any objective, final purpose of life.¹² The natural scientific order no longer tells people what they ought to do. The purposes of life do not exist objectively, but rather are determined by the subjective will of individuals. Therefore, unlike the ancient worldview that the whole world was governed by an independent purposive order, in the modern age, the factual world is explained by science, but science says nothing about what people should do.

This change in outlook influences the justification of political principles. The ancient approach to political justification took the political order to be a part of the cosmic order; thus a justified political principle was independent of what people thought. It

11 Taylor (1975: 10).

12 In a more accurate wording, it does not mean that no one conceives the world order as purposive during or after Enlightenment. Indeed, a purposive interpretation of history is still prevalent in the writings of Enlightenment thinkers, such as Kant (See Kant 1991b: 108-109). However, the purposive order in their mind is no longer an independent world order which exists regardless of the will of individuals. Rather, this purposive order comes from the projection of the wills of individuals. That is to say, the purposive order is not an order which is discovered by individuals, but rather a way of individuals to conceive the world.

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could be justified by an external metaphysical order which was indifferent to the subjective will of the individual. However, this approach encounters severe difficulties in the modern world. The assumption that there is some external metaphysical truth out there which can be discovered by us and can guide our actions is incompatible with the scientific, natural worldview.

Hence contractarianism became the mainstream of political theory after the seventeenth century, since the justificational approach to contractarianism does not rely on any metaphysical properties which are indifferent to the subjective will of individuals. Contractarianism justifies principle by showing that it is the constraint which would be chosen by us in an idealised choice situation. In this approach, political principles come from the creation of individuals which represent the disposition of their subjective wills.¹³ Political authority is not something that can be derived from some sort of innate authority possessed by a set of supposedly superior persons, nor something that is derived from God. Instead, political authority should be a creation of the people who constitute it. Thus Michael Oakeshott is right to call contractarianism a doctrine of ‘will and artifice’.¹⁴ Contractarians take the subjective will of people as the starting point for reflection on society. They deny ‘an independent realm of moral facts and a special faculty of reasoning to ascertain them’.¹⁵ It is this naturalistic virtue which attracts some theorists to adopt this

13 Indeed, the feature of ‘anti-natural authority’ of the social contract can even be traced back to the earlier history of political thought. One of the examples of this is the ‘nature and convention’ debate among the Greek philosophers. As Sir Ernest Barker observes, early Greek philosophers normally had two approaches to explaining the existence of law, one accepted their own laws as unalterable law by nature, if not divine; the other argued that law was just a product of customs and conventions, the existence of political authority being based on the consent of ruled. The sophists of the latter camp, though they did not adopt contractual language, had very similar ideas on the formation of political organization to the modern social contract theorists. For a discussion of distinction between the

‘nature’ and ‘convention’ schools, see Barker (1960: 53). For the interpretation that the idea of consent-based political authority is actually implicit in the ‘convention’ school, see Kahn (1981).

14 Oakeshott (1975: 25).

15 Freeman (1991: 285). Although Freeman is only talking about the feature of Scanlon’s contract theory here, it is also the common feature of contemporary contractarianism.

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approach, for example, David Gauthier, who believes that a normative constraint cannot be independent of the subjective will of people.

If, independent of a person’s actual desires and aims, there were objective values, and if, independent of their actual purposes, they were part of an objectively purposively order, then we might have reason to insist on the inadequacy of the [ancient approach.]…But the supplanting of teleology in our physical and biological explanations closes this possibility, as it closes the possibility of religious explanation.¹⁶

Hence, contractarianism is an attractive approach to justifying political principles because it justifies principles in a way which is compatible with a modern scientific worldview, without relying on any questionable external metaphysical assumptions.

No wonder some contractarians even believe that their approach can provide the

‘only plausible foundation’ of normative principle in the modern world.¹⁷

16 Gauthier (1991a: 98). Similar emphasis can also be seen in Rawls (1999a: 398), Rawls (1980: 350), Hampton (1986: 273) and Barry (1995a: 5).

17 Gauthier (1991a: 91).

48 2.2.2 The virtue of public justifiability

Secondly, contractarianism shows a respect for the choices of rational/reasonable individuals. Contractarians emphasise that political authority is unjustified unless it represents an agreement which is publicly acceptable to everyone in a society. This characteristic shows a basic normative commitment of contractarianism, that is, all persons should have equal moral standing. No-one is naturally superior or inferior to another. If we all have equal moral standing, then no-one, or no group, could have authority over others unless this authority is acceptable to others. An unjustified authority imposed on an individual represents disrespect for the freedom of this individual. As Gough points out, ‘the ultimate raison d'être for the contract theory, all through its history, has been to reconcile the apparently conflicting claims of liberty and law’.¹⁸

It does not mean that contemporary contractarians believe that a justified principle must be based on the voluntary consent of people, since sometimes the voluntary consent of people may not represent a rational/reasonable choice. Indeed, as I mentioned in Chapter 1, contemporary contractarians rarely take voluntary consent as the source of normativity.¹⁹ Nevertheless, contemporary contractarians still insist on the importance of public justifiability. Since a political principle frequently has a significant impact on the lives of people, contractarians argue that such an influential rule cannot be imposed on people arbitrarily. Even though it is unrealistic to show that a principle is a wholly voluntary scheme, contractarians believe that, at least, a principle should show that rational individuals would voluntarily accept its ruling. As John Rawls says, a political society should not be taken as a straightforwardly voluntary scheme. Nevertheless, a political society which is governed by

18 Gough (1957: 254). Similar point can also be found in Rawls (1999a: 115).

19 See, for example, Scanlon (1998: 170-171), Scanlon (2008: 2-4) and Rawls (1999a: 98-99).

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contractarian principles has a virtue, for it represents a voluntary scheme which is rational to free and equal persons.

No society can, of course, be a scheme of cooperation which men enter voluntarily in a literal sense; …Yet a society satisfying the principles of justice as fairness comes as close as a society can to being a voluntary scheme, for it meets the principles which free and equal persons would assent to under circumstances that are fair. In this sense its members are autonomous and the obligation they recognise self-imposed.²⁰

Some contractarians even believe that this emphasis on the importance of acceptability is the central virtue in the long tradition of contractarianism.²¹ One of the examples is T. M. Scanlon, who believes that no normative principle can be imposed on people unless it can be demonstrated that it is acceptable to these people.

Fundamental economic and political institutions cannot be justified simply on the ground that those to whom they apply have consented to their authority. Nonetheless, in order to be justifiable, institutions must give individuals the power to shape many of their particular obligations through the choice they make. The fact that an individual has chosen a certain outcome, or could have avoided it by choosing differently, is often an important reason why that outcome is legitimate.²²

[A]ccording to my version of contractualism, one needs to make claims about the reasons that individuals have for accepting or rejecting certain principles as standards of conduct…This

20 Rawls (1999a: 12).

21 Freeman (2007b: 6).

22 Scanlon (2003a: 5).

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emphasis on what principles others have reason to accept (or reject), and on our reasons for caring about this, led me to call my view ‘contractualist.’²³