grounded in utilitarianism risks violating that requirement, since it could
turn out that the maximally beneWcial principles will be ones that condone
the suVering of some by appeal to the greater beneWt accruing to others. By
contrast, an agreement account can be justiWed even to those who do least
well, since it aims to adopt only those principles that it would be reasonable
for all, including the losers, to agree to.
What, then, of compliance? Interestingly, it occurs in the chapter ofWhat
We Owe To Each Otherwhere Scanlon is defending the priority of imparti-
ality, and this draws our attention to a problem which survives the two-level
distinction discussed earlier. The initial problem, to recall, was whether
impartiality was too demanding: whether it required that individuals aban-
don or suppress their natural aVection for those close to them. And the claim
was that, properly understood, it does not require this. Impartiality, it was
noted, is a requirement on principles, not a requirement of everyday life.
Nonetheless, and as was also noted, the selection of impartial principles
might restrict, or set limits to, people’s ability to show greater concern for
those close to them. But the question that now arises is, ‘‘why should they
accept those limits?’’ Given that the requirements of impartiality might come
into conXict with personal ties of aVection, why might people be moved to act
on the impartial principle rather than from personal aVection?
Appeal to the agreement motive oVers an answer to this question. In
noting the lengths to which people will go to justify their behavior to others,
Scanlon is suggesting that morality in general, and impartial principles in
particular, are not merely a set of constraints on action imposed by the wider
society, but also a very common and strong source of motivation in individ-
uals themselves. Where Barry notes that justice as impartiality sets limits to
our entitlement to favor friends over strangers, Scanlon argues that this is not
merely an external imposition, but something we ourselves endorse intern-
ally. He writes:
The contractualist ideal of acting in accord with principles that others (similarly
motivated) could not reasonably reject is meant to characterize the relation with
others the value and appeal of which underlies our reasons to do what morality
requires. This relation, much less than personal friendship, might be called a rela-
tionship of mutual recognition. Standing in this relation to others is appealing in
itself—worth seeking for its own sake. A moral person will refrain from lying to
others, cheating, harming, or exploiting them, ‘‘because these things are wrong’’. But
for such a person these requirements are not just formal imperatives, they are aspects
of the positive value of a way of living with others. (Scanlon 1998 , 162 )
430 susan mendus