"John Rawls is well known for contrasting Kantian with utilitarian ethics by claiming that utilitarianism does not take seriously enough the differences between persons (Rawls, TJ 27). This way of looking at the contrast makes Kantian ethics appear “individualistic” by comparison with utilitarianism, though this is highly misleading. A better way to look at the contrast is to point out that Kantian ethics places a higher priority on human community – it values the conditions of rational cooperation among persons, and their sharing of common ends, more than it does the aggregate welfare of individuals considered in isolation. Hence, the point that Kantian ethics really has in mind in taking seriously the differences between persons is that this is necessary in order to develop a conception of ethical norms based on a true idea of human community (instead of reducing the common deliberation of different people to the deliberation of a single individual agent)."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Allen W. Wood, Kantian Ethics (2008), Ch. 4. The Moral Law
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
A Theory of Justice
A Theory of Justice is a work of political philosophy and ethics by John Rawls. It was originally published in 1971 and revised in both 1975 (for the translated editions) and 1999.
73 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by A Theory of Justice →
Related Quotes
"A second serious weakness of the original edition was its account of primary goods. These were said to be things that…"
"During much of modern moral philosophy the predominant systematic theory has been some form of utilitarianism."
"We sometimes forget that the great utilitarians, Hume and Adam Smith, Bentham and Mill, were social theorists and eco…"
"What I have attempted to do is to generalize and carry to a higher order of abstraction the traditional theory of the…"
"This is a long book, not only in pages."
"Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and e…"
"Being first virtues of human activities, truth and justice are uncompromising."
"A set of principles is required for choosing among the various social arrangements which determine this division of a…"
"Now let us say that a society is well-ordered when it is not only designed to advance the good of its members but whe…"
"In the revisions I made in 1975 I removed certain weaknesses in the original edition. These I shall now try to indica…"