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I want to make two critical points about about Gauthier and the other contractarians who attempt to derive moral rules from mutual advantage.

The first point has been made by many critics. The whole idea of the contractarian tradition as it is presented by Gauthier, Narveson, and Lomasky is that it is mutually advantageous for people in a hypothetical state of nature to agree to certain moral rules (including moral rights) that would limit how they treat each other. OK, fine. That may often be true. But it isn't true for everyone. It is true mainly for strong, capable, independent individuals. They may find it mutually advantageous to agree to certain rules. But what about the weak, the less capable, the disabled, and the dependent? I see no reason at all why the strong and capable will find it advantageous to limit how they treat (read "exploit" or "abuse") those groups. But that is exactly where morality and justice and rights matter the most. It seems to me that the whole contractarian enterprise is seriously deficient in this regard.

My second point is taken from the writing of Virginia Held, someone I have referred to before. Her criticism is similar to what I said above.

Held doesn't believe that contractual relationships are a good model for social relationships in general. She doesn't deny that there are areas of social life in which voluntary contracts between individuals are appropriate. Her point is that there are large parts of life where the contractual model doesn't work.

For example, take the relationship between mother and child. It isn't based on a contract and it never can be. (For one thing, the child never enters the relationship voluntarily.) Nor is it based on careful calculations of self-interest on both sides. And when you think about it, the relationship of mother and child is only one example that doesn't fit the contractarian scheme. There are sick people and elderly people and large numbers of women who have never fitted well into the contractarian model. It only works well for highly independent, rationally self-interested men. So why use it?

I think Held wants to turn things around. She's asking how we would think about society and morality if we take the relationship between mother and child as a model. Using the mother-child model, how would we change how we think about the rest of life?