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 Let me go
on, because Gauthier's views are complicated and
I think much more subtle than a lot of people's.
I don't know how to classify him. Here's a short
outline of his views:
- There are conditions under which morality
would have no place, no application at all.
Those conditions are met by a perfectly
competitive market. That might sound as though
Gauthier is going to come out as a
libertarian, but he doesn't. He stresses that in the world as it is those
conditions are not met, nor are they even
approximated. Instead, transactions in the
real world are loaded with what economists
call "externalities." These are ways in which
some people receive goods and services for
which they pay nothing while others are able
to pass along costs to people who have no
choice but to pay them.
- As a way of dealing with externalities,
people agree to cooperate. Cooperation offers
people a whole new range of benefits that they
cannot receive without it.
- People "bargain" in an initial position in
order to agree on the terms of cooperation.
The principle they agree upon is what Gauthier
calls the principle of "minimax relative
concession." This principle tells us, roughly, that
if several people are bargaining, it is
rational for them to reach agreement on a
compromise that minimizes the "relative
magnitude" of the largest concession that
any of them has to make.
The relative magnitude is the ratio of the
concession they make (in bargaining) to the
largest concession they could make (if they
received nothing more than what they would get
in the initial bargaining position).
- The people who bargain in the initial
position all have certain initial endowments.
In order for it be rational to comply with an
agreement reached by bargaining in the initial
position, the parties who bargain must have
acquired their initial endowments without
violating what Gauthier calls "the proviso."
The proviso basically states that no one has
acquired his or her initial endowments by
making others worse off.
- Gauthier believes that the bargain would
result in people accepting certain constraints
on what he calls "straight-forwardly"
maximizing their self-interest. These
constraints are impartial rules; and because
they are impartial, they are properly referred
to as moral rules.
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