Sources & Extracts

Review this excerpt and then go back to the main thread.

Nicholas Rescher, in Distributive Justice, concluded that the principle of utility could not serve as the complete basis for a theory of justice. It had to be supplemented by other principles. He says, for example:

The standpoint at which we have thus arrived supports the charge of shortcomings that we had earlier found it necessary to make against the utilitarian standard for assessing distributions. The principle is involved in an internal fission which leads to the need for further choices in its application in certain cases. These choices, being choices that arise in the application of the utilitarian principle, cannot be settled by the principle itself. They require an outside appeal -- to such concepts as equity or fairness in accommodating claims -- and in this way point to the fact that the utilitarian standard must be viewed as representing one factor among others. It simply will not do to regard the principle of utility as an ultimate and complete basis for a theory of distributive justice. Furthermore, we have found the direction in which one must look to find those necessary further factors of distributive justice, namely, considerations of equity in the accommodation of claims. [Distributive Justice, p. 43]