Chapter ǴǺ: Rights, Contract, and Utility in Policy Espousal ȃȈȂloving thing in the situation is the right and good thing” (quotations from
pp.ȈȄ,Ȃȅ,ȅȄrespectively).
No wonder critics reject utilitarianism understood as something like
that. It betrays remarkable arrogance to take it for granted that the actor
in the individual case, tacitly endowed with the omniscience of the act-
utilitarian or act-agapeic philosopher himself, can foresee all the immedi-
ate and remote and all the direct and indirect consequences of his actions,
even including those working through reinforcing or undermining princi-
ples and habits and through affecting persons’ moral characters, and can
assess the good and bad values of all these consequences and strike a bal-
ance. As Peter S. Prescott (ȀȈȆȂ) has said, “what was recently called ‘situa-
tion ethics’ can be defined as action based on invincible trust in one’s own
moral perspective.”
An extreme act-utilitarianism or situation ethics might indeed coun-
tenance framing and executing an innocent man to pacify an angry mob
and so avoid worse outrages—to mention the example so routinely trot-
ted out (for example, by McCloskeyȀȈȅȈ, p.ȀȇȀ; compare RothbardȀȈȆȂ,
pp.ȁȃ–ȁȄ, on the execution of all redheads to delight the rest of the popu-
lation).
şśřő ōŚşţőŞş Šś ŠŔő ŏŞŕŠŕŏş
John Rawls comments perceptively on this sort of attack on a strawman
version of utilitarianism. Rawls (ȀȈȄȄ/ȀȈȅȇ), writing before McCloskey
(ȀȈȅȈ) and before his own book ofȀȈȆȀ, attributed the standard horrible
example to E.F. Carritt. Rawls (ȀȈȄȄ/ȀȈȅȇ, pp.Ȇȅ–Ȇȇ) also answered the
question, raised in a similar vein, whether it is acceptable to break one’s
promise when the consequences of doing so appear good on balance. Ļe
very point of promising “is to abdicate one’s title to act in accordance with
utilitarian and prudential considerations in order that the future may be
tied down and plans coordinated in advance.... Ļe promisor is bound
because he promised: weighing the case on its merits is not open to him.”
Ļe institution of promising and promise-keeping itself has obvious util-
itarian advantages. Ļat the promisor’s obligation may be overridden in
exceptional hard cases does not mean that the obligation does not exist
at all.
How conducive to happiness would a society be, Rawls (ȀȈȄȄ/ȀȈȅȇ)
asks in effect, in which truth and rights were treated as contemptuously
as in the hackneyed horrible example? More specifically, in what context