Scanlon

I, like Erma, do not understand the inclusion of section IV (Life and Death). I think it is interesting, but I fail to see how it fits into the larger argument about rule utilitarianism and rights.

I really appreciated Scanlon’s discussion of majoritarianism and rights on pages 140-141. He writes: “On a subjective theory, these values will be determined by the existing individual preferences in the society in question. I would maintain, however, that prevailing preferences are not an adequate basis for the justification of rights” (140). In other words, Scanlon argues that the will of the majority may not be the best way to justify a right. I’ve thought (and I’m not sure if this was prompted by something else we read this semester or just my own wandering thoughts) that rights, to some extent, must be countermajoritarian because they protect a sphere of one’s life from interference by another. In that manner, it seems like rights act as a shield to protect us from majority tyranny. If our protection from the tyranny of the majority is grounded in the preferences in the majority, it would seem that rights are worthless.

I think that this critique of majoritarianism runs implicitly throughout parts of the article, and it comes back again in full force when he writes the following: “On the view I propose, a central concern of most rights is the promotion and maintenance of an acceptable distribution of control over important factors in our lives” (148). In other words, Scanlon’s view of rights is dependent upon the idea that rights allow individuals to maintain control over certain aspects of their lives; rights allow individuals areas of solace from the whims of the majority.

I also appreciated the care he devoted to the discussion of equality on page 143. Until we discussed equality as a contested concept in a political theory class last semester, I had never stopped to think that what is equal may not be the same to every person. For example, if we were to divide a cake amongst members of the class, how do we determine what is an equal and fair portion? I think his three points on 143 helped me to gain a more structured way to think about equality and distributions.