Week 4: Contractualism

Essay question

Is contractualism a plausible moral theory?

Key readings

• Ashford, Elizabeth & Tim Mulgan, Contractualism, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall, 2012.
• Parfit, Derek, Justifiability to Each Person, Ratio, vol. 16, no. 4, (December, 2003), pp. 368-390.
• Scanlon, T. M. What We Owe to Each Other, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998, pp. 189-247.
• Stratton-Lake, Philip, Scanlon’s Contractualism and the Redundancy Objection, Analysis, vol. 63, no. 1 (January, 2003), pp. 70-76.

Further reading

• Ashford, Elizabeth, The Demandingness of Scanlon’s Contractualism, Ethics, vol. 113, no. 2 (January, 2003), pp. 273-302.
• Brand-Ballard, Jeffrey, Contractualism and Deontic Restrictions, Ethics, vol. 114, no. 2 (January, 2004), pp. 269-300.
• Otsuka, Michael, Saving Lives, Moral Theory, and the Claims of Individuals, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 34, no. 2 (Spring, 2006), pp. 109-135.
• Ridge, Michael, Saving Scanlon: Contractualism and Agent-Relativity, The Journal of Political Philosophy, vol. 9, no. 4 (December, 2001), pp. 472-481.