124 The Nature of Political TheoryIf one adds these critical points together, then it is hard so see what utilitarianism
has to offer political theory except permanent conceptual poverty and confusion.
No one agrees on what utility means. There is no substantive utilitarian theory of
justice or rights. Utility can justifyanypolicy or ideological doctrine, once the the-
orist has blindly accepted the inexplicable foundational utility premise. Utilitarians
themselves desperately refine and wriggle around the qualitative domain, but are con-
tinually undermined by their own consequentialist logic. The notion that inexplicable
preferences or interests can be aggregated or compared is never explained, except by
ad hominemappeals to what might ‘appear to be’ happening in actual public policy.
No clear evidence though is adduced for this claim. Thus, maximum happiness or
welfare remains a remote metaphysical or magical abstraction. It is a fiction which
keeps utilitarians happy (and obviously maximizes their welfare in universities), but
is useless for the mass of humanity. Finally, there is no clear relation between anyone
having a desire, interest, or preference and having something they ‘ought’ to pursue.
It is not explained therefore why having a preference entails that ‘I ought to prefer it’.
In sum, utility despite its lurking presence in many debates about justice and rights,
is virtually useless, except on a very simple level in bureaucratic activity.
Justice as Impartiality
The other major dimension of rationalist contractual argument is justice as impar-
tiality. Whereas justice as mutual advantage (qua Gauthier or Buchanan) is more
Hobbesian in character, justice as impartiality is more neo-Kantian. The latter has
been the most written about component of justice argument and its most well-known
exponent is John Rawls. The primary motive of this theory is not self-interest, rather
the belief is that what happens to other people matters in and of itself. Thus, indi-
viduals shouldnotlook at the world solely from their own point of view, but rather
should seek a wider rational and more consensual basis of agreement. Justice as impar-
tiality is thus interested in the content of agreements. This draws justice distinct from
bargaining power. Justice is not necessarily to one’s advantage, it is rather concerned
with deliberation by those who share rational beliefs in impartiality and universaliz-
ability. In sum, it implies that justice is the outcome of a rational agreement between
discrete individuals in a hypothetical situation, or original position, where constraints
are placed upon the character of reasoning that can be used.
The basic idea in Rawls is startlingly simple, namely, to identify a fair arrangement
in society for all parties to agree to without knowing how it will affect them. The
idea is to cut out the possibility of arbitrariness in decisions about justice. This is
the basis of Rawls’ objection to desert accounts. It might, for example, be claimed
that ability is a natural endowment which should be a basis for desert. But natural
endowments are not things the agent is personally responsible for. If the agent is not
responsible for them, then they cannot be a basis for desert. Endowments are genet-
ically arbitrary, therefore they are irrelevant for distribution. Further, any assessment
of desert, premised on moral worth or services performed, would inevitably reflect