Saving Scanlon: Contractualism and Agent‐Relativity
Saving Scanlon: Contractualism and Agent‐Relativity
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拯救斯坎伦：契约论和主体相对论
DOI：
10.1111/1467-9760.00137
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发表时间：
2001
影响因子：
1.8
通讯作者：
M. Ridge
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
M. Ridge
T·M·斯坎隆的契约主义认为：“如果一个行为在某种情况下的表现会被任何一套没有人能合理拒绝的行为的一般规则所禁止，那么该行为就是错误的……”。1这一理论描述了道德的人际关系方面--斯坎伦所说的“我们彼此欠对方的道德”--与最广义的道德截然相反。这一理论意在解释不法行为本身的性质。2Scanlon的批评者几乎一致反对，就合理拒绝而言，理解错误只是经历了一个无益的本轮。西蒙·布莱克本、科林·麦金和菲利普·佩蒂都独立提出了这一反对意见。批评者的理由大致如下：如果我们从合理拒绝的角度来理解错误，那么我们最好把拒绝的原因理解为明显的道德原因--否则，这一理论将不再被看做是对和错的道德理论。然而，如果我们事先帮助自己形成了道德理性的概念，那么契约机制看起来就没有用了。因为一旦我们知道了所有的道德原因是什么，我们就可以将错误理解为被道德原因的平衡所禁止的属性。我们可以补充说，错误的行为将被任何人都无法合理拒绝的原则所禁止。然而，很难看出加入这一点将如何提供进一步的启发，至少批评者是这样认为的。基本思想是，只要允许动作的原则因为这样的动作具有特征F而被合理地拒绝，
T. M. SCANLON'S contractualism holds that``an act is wrong if its performance under the circumstances would be disallowed by any set of principles for the general regulation of behavior that no one could reasonably reject...''. 1 The theory provides an account of morality's interpersonal aspectsÐ what Scanlon calls the morality of``what we owe to each other''Ðas opposed to morality in the broadest sense. The theory is intended to be an account of the property of wrongness itself. 2Scanlon's critics have been virtually unanimous in objecting that understanding wrongness in terms of reasonable rejectability is simply to go through an unhelpful epicycle. Simon Blackburn, Colin McGinn and Philip Pettit have all independently raised this objection. The critics reason roughly as follows: If we understand wrongness in terms of reasonable rejectability, then we had better understand the reasons for rejection as distinctively moral reasonsÐ otherwise the theory will no longer seem plausible as a moral theory of right and wrong. If, however, we antecedently have helped ourselves to a conception of moral reasons, then the contractualist machinery looks otiose. For once we know what all the moral reasons are, we can understand wrongness as the property of being forbidden by the balance of moral reasons. We could add that wrong actions would be forbidden by principles nobody could reasonably reject. It would, however, be hard to see how adding this would provide any further illumination, or so the critics maintain. The basic idea is that whenever principles allowing an action are reasonably rejectable because such actions have feature F,