(Return to main path )

It's true that John Rawls and David Gauthier are both members of the contractarian tradition. But I think it is important to realize that they have very different philosophies and they use a hypothetical social contract in very different ways. Will Kimlicka has written about the differences between the two.

For Rawls, the contract device is tied to our 'natural duty of justice'. We have a natural duty to treat others fairly, for they are 'self-originating sources of valid claims'. People matter, from the moral point of view, not because they can harm or benefit us, but because they are 'ends in themselves'...and so are entitled to equal consideration....The contract device helps us determine the content of this natural duty, for it requires that each party take into consideration the needs of others 'as free and equal beings'. To ensure that the contract gives equal consideration to each of the contractors, Rawls's original position abstracts from differences in talent and strength that might create unequal bargaining power....

Mutual advantage theorists also use a contract device, but for opposite reasons. For them, there are no natural duties or self-originating moral claims. There is no moral equality underneath our natural physical inequality....

So there is nothing naturally 'right' or 'wrong' about one's actions, even if they involve harming others. However, while there is nothing inherently wrong in harming you, I would be better off by refraining from doing so if every other person refrains from harming me....While injury is not inherently wrong, each person gains in the long run by accepting conventions that define it as 'wrong' and unjust'....

While this contract, unlike Rawls's, is not an elaboration of our traditional notions of moral and political obligation, it will include some of the constraints that Rawls and others take to be 'natural duties' -- for example, the duty not to steal, or the duty to share the benefits of cooperation fairly amongst the contributors....

This sort of theory is aptly described by David Gauthier, its best-known proponent, as 'moral artifice', for it is an artificial way of identifying constraints on what people are naturally entitled to do. [Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy, p. 128-9.]

Kymlicka later adds the following comment to further emphasize the difference between Rawls and Gauthier.

[Rawls] devised his 'original position' to eliminate differences in bargaining power. Gauthier, however, is using the contract device to determine principles of mutual advantage, rather than principles of impartial morality, and so differences in bargaining power are central to his enterprise. The resulting conventions will accord rights to various people, but since these rights depend on one's bargaining power, mutual advantage contractarianism does 'not afford each individual an inherent moral status in relation to her fellows'.

It is hard to exaggerate the difference between these two versions of contractarianism. Rawls uses the device of a contract to develop our traditional notions of moral obligation, whereas Gauthier uses it ro replace them; Rawls uses the idea of the contract to express the inherent moral standiing of persons, whereas Gauthier uses it to generate an artificial moral standing; Rawls uses the device of the contract to negate differences in bargaining power, whereas Gauthier uses it to reflect them. In both premisses and conclusions, these two strands of contract theory are, morally speaking, a world apart. [Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy, p. 133.]