Inequalities Not Conceded Yet

Gauthier's thinking about the social contract continues to develop vigorously. Had I aimed my criticisms at the stage of his thinking that he had reached at the time of his reply to them, rather than at earlier stages already in print, I would have organized my argument differently. Yet the earlier stages were interesting enough—and remain so—to deserve attention for their own sake. Moreover, my criticisms, even as they stand, have some effects that transcend those stages. They undermine the assumption that there is some uniquely attractive principle, whether Gauthier's principle of maximin relative advantage or any other, for determining what bargain is going to be struck on entering the social contract. They also, I persist in thinking, expose the difficulty of bringing home the maximum claims, as matters requiring respect, to agents who may lose out by accepting them as such matters

Argument (complex analysis) · Economics · Epistemology · Inequality · Law and economics · Positive economics · Sociology · Economic Theory and Institutions · Mathematics · Medicine · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Psychology

• Public Goods and Public Welfare

  W Irwin Gillespie, John Head et al.•Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue…•1977

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