Cooperative Capacities of the Rational: Revising Rawls’s Account of Prudential Reasoning

John Rawls characterizes political rationality as narrowly self-regarding and therefore incapable of motivating political other-regard, self-moderation, or cooperative behavior. He ascribes these cooperative properties solely to reasonable, or principled, reasoning. This article evaluates Rawls’s account of rationality by investigating his characterization of the democratic modus vivendi, which builds upon this account: Rawls asserts that the democratic modus vivendi is inherently unstable because it lacks the cooperative properties of the reasonable. These critiques entail positive claims about rational democratic equilibrium that are contradicted by formal accounts of self-enforcing democracy. The article demonstrates that the democratic modus vivendi can achieve robust stability because the rational can express the cooperative properties that Rawls reserves to the reasonable. By working within Rawls’s seminal account of political reasoning to revise the properties he ascribes to rationality, this article offers a novel motivation for theoretical engagement with the rational and its role in political cooperation.

Conclusion

The Conclusion suggests a general partition of areas of philosophical interest into those which are more like mathematics and those which are more like morality. In the former category are questions of possibility, grounding, essence, logic, and mereology. In the latter are questions of epistemology, political philosophy, aesthetics, and prudential reasoning. The chapter argues that the former questions are like the question of whether the Parallel Postulate is true, qua a pure mathematical conjecture. By contrast, practical questions are immune to deflation in this way. The conclusion is that the objective questions in the neighborhood of questions of modal metaphysics, grounding, nature, and so forth are practical. Practical philosophy should, therefore, take center stage.

Eudaimonism and Anti-Eudaimonism

This chapter explores the greatest controversy in existing scholarship on Cyrenaic ethics, which is the school's “anti-eudaimonism.” On the basis of Anniceris' formulation of the end many scholars have asserted that Cyrenaics are not “eudaimonists,” meaning their ethics does not center on the pursuit of happiness through cultivation of the virtues. The chapter suggests that this is incorrect for most Cyrenaics, and misleading even for Anniceris. However, it has led to philosophically interesting speculation about why the Cyrenaics would reject eudaimonism. Explanations have focused on personal identity, the subjectivity of value, and prudential reasoning. The chapter shows that each of these explanations relies on unsustainable interpretations of particular pieces of evidence.

Rhetoric of Counsel in Thomas Elyot's Pasquil the Playne

Pasquil the Playne, a dialogue written by the English Humanist Thomas Elyot (1490–1546), was inspired by Elyot's unsuccessful experience as a counselor to Henry VIII. Seizing on this biographical context, historians have read the dialogue as a product of Elyot's disillusionment, identifying Elyot with the blunt, truth-telling Pasquil. In contrast this paper reads Pasquil the Playne as a multi-voiced Lucianic dialogue, which gives expression to several perspectives on the rhetoric of counsel. This reading problematizes questions of appropriateness (prepon) and right timing (kairos) in giving advice to a prince. Moreover, Elyot exploits the open-ended spirit of the Lucianic dialogue to attempt to develop in the reader the prudential reasoning (phronesis) essential to wise counsel.

Is it Rational to Maximize?

Most versions of utilitarianism depend on the plausibility and coherence of some conceptionof maximizing well-being, but these conceptions have been attacked on various grounds. This paper considers two such contentions. First, it addresses the argument that because goods are plural and incommensurable, maximization is incoherent. It is shown that any conception of incommensurability strong enough to show the incoherence of maximization leads to an intolerable paradox. Several misunderstandings of what maximization requires are also addressed. Second, this paper responds to the argument that rationality is not a matter of maximizing, but of expressing proper attitudes. This ‘expressivist’ position is first explicated through the elaboration of several paradoxes. It is then shown how, through an application of economic and strategic thinking, these paradoxes can be dissolved. The paper then concludes with some reflections on the indispensability of calculation for moral and prudential reasoning.

Public Policy-Making as Practical Reasoning

Public policies can be understood as practical judgments which involve both self-regarding prudential reasoning and other-regarding moral reasoning. A general model of decision-making that has an adequate concept of policy rationality should have a place for both kinds of practical reasoning. Two paradigms of decision-making have dominated contemporary studies of public policy-making, but neither meets this test. Pluralist-exchange models assume that the reasons backing policy decisions are always self-regarding. Elitist-planning models assume they are exclusively other-regarding. Because each of the paradigms separately produces only partial models of decision-making, they must be used together to provide a full account of public policy-making.