A claim of social contract theory is that being just (fair, good, moral) tends to satisfy long-term self-interest better than being unjust. Do you agree or disagree with this claim? Explain your answer either way.

 

Answer:

Like every moral theory, it must answer two questions: what demands does morality make upon us, and why should we feel obliged to obey these demands? Much of the appeal of the social contract approach to ethics is that it seems to provide simple and related answers to both of these questions: the demands of morality are fixed by agreements people make to regulate their social interaction, and we must obey these demands because we have agreed to them. Thus, it tends to satisfy long-term personal interests better than being unjust.

However, the appearance of simplicity is misleading, as different theories offer widely divergent explanations of the content and normative force of the alleged "agreement". Contractualist morality urges us to join with others in acting in a way that everyone, together with others, can freely and rationally defend as a common moral standard (Diggs, 1982, p. 104).

But unless we put limits on what we consider to be a reasonable and free agreement, almost any theory can be defined as contractual, because almost any theory aims to provide a common moral standard that people can reasonably and freely subscribe to. To defend a theory is, in part, to try to show that its demands are reasonable and that people should freely accept them. If we have to put limits on contractualist ethics, we have to put limits on the kind of reasons we can appeal to when formulating agreements and the kind of conditions under which they are made.

But these kinds of reasons and conditions make a moral theory characteristically contractual and beneficial because of its quality of fairness in the long term, since social justice makes it possible to judge the regressive consequences for humanity of capitalism in its neoliberal phase and to begin to imagine other possible worlds with more solidarity.