# Glaucon’s Problem Morals by Agreement by David Gauthier **URL:** **By** David Boonin **Published:** June 1, 1987 --- “Glaucon’s problem is one that has long haunted moral philosophers and it is likely to continue doing so.” Justice, declares Thrasymachus in Plato’s _Republic_, is nothing but the advantage of the stronger.¹ When the strong can take advantage of the weak, they will do so, and this is all that can be said on the subject. Thrasymachus reluctantly abandons this position at the end of Book I, unable to defend himself against the pestering questions of Socrates. But the dialogue does not end with his resignation because Glaucon has a problem: he remains unconvinced. Glaucon picks up the argument at the outset of Book II, and it is here that the implications of Thrasymachus’s attack on Socrates are most explicitly revealed. The life of the unjust man, Glaucon fears, is preferable to that of the just man. If, like the Lydian shepherd Gyges, we could be granted magical immunity from detection, we would all choose the path of injustice. Far from being a noble ideal, then, justice is simply a compromise between the best life — that of committing injustice with impunity — and the worst life — that of suffering injustice without compensation. If we find ourselves at any particular time abiding by the dictates of justice, it is simply because we are too weak to do otherwise. David Gauthier’s _Morals by Agreement_ covers many of the areas familiar to readers of contemporary political philosophy, but if it has a single focus, it is providing an answer to Glaucon. Gauthier writes in the contractarian tradition of Hobbes (and, indeed, of Glaucon), and he readily concedes at the outset that “the genuinely problematic element in a contractarian theory is not the introduction of the idea of morality, but the step from hypothetical agreement to actual moral constraint.” Gauthier wishes to demonstrate not merely the rationality of moral principles, but the rationality of moral behavior. > Our claim is that in certain situations involving interaction with others, an individual chooses rationally only in so far as he constrains his pursuit of his own interest or advantage to conform to principles expressing the impartiality characteristic of morality. To choose rationally, one must choose morally. Gauthier begins by defending a subjective theory of value and good. Value he takes to be a measure of individual preference, and what is good, he says, “is good ultimately because it is preferred, and it is good from the standpoint of those and only those who prefer it.” Starting from this strongly subjectivistic and relativistic foundation, he traces out its implications in a world of rational actors, with special attention to the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” paradox, in which utility-maximizing individuals fail to maximize their utility (that is, to achieve their preferred states). From these highly restrictive and “nonmoral” premises, Gauthier proposes to generate morally binding restraints on individual behavior. All of this serves, then, as preface to Gauthier’s considerations of morality. Morality, he states, “arises from market failure.” It is in those situations in which the pursuit of individual gain does not insure mutual benefit that moral constraints arise. A perfect market that produced an optimal distribution of goods, Gauthier contends, would be a “morally free zone.” There would be no need to constrain the individual pursuit of utility in a world in which such pursuit perfectly coincided with the pursuits of others. Gauthier develops this argument in conjunction with his treatment of bargaining and cooperation. “Where the invisible hand fails to direct each person, mindful only of her own gain, to promote the benefit of all,” he notes, “cooperation provides a visible hand.” The argument is at its most technical here, and it is in this context that Gauthier defends his principle of “minimax relative concession.” This principle states that in a bargaining situation that requires concession by some or all participants, an outcome will be selected only if the greatest relative concession it requires is as small as possible.² Gauthier is concerned to establish the rationality of this narrow principle, but for the purposes of the present discussion, it will suffice to say that he demonstrates the rationality of cooperation in general. If rationality is understood as utility-maximization, then it is clear that it will often be rational to enter into cooperative ventures with others. To the extent that such cooperation necessarily entails placing fair and impartial restrictions on individual pursuits, rationality will recommend morality. But will there actually be rational reasons to cooperate? It is one thing to make a promise, after all, but quite another to keep it. This, of course, is the heart of Glaucon’s problem. It is also, as Gauthier has emphasized throughout his text, the traditional weakness of contractarian moral theory. If cooperation arises through the actions of utility-maximizing individuals, then won’t that same utility-maximizing propensity ensure its demise? Gauthier thinks not, and his reason for so thinking is neatly summarized in his claim that a rational man “makes a choice about how to make further choices; he chooses, on utility-maximizing grounds, not to make further choices on those grounds.” Several important points are embedded in this claim. The first point to be brought out is that Gauthier views man as the creator of his own character. Initially, as a rational being, man is guided by a disposition to maximize his utility. Presumably this disposition is in some sense innate, and is not the result of a conscious choice on man’s part. Yet through developing an understanding of the dynamics of social interaction and cooperation, man is led to abandon this disposition for a new one. Gauthier is quite explicit on this point: “At the core of our rational capacity is the ability to engage in self-critical reflection. The fully rational being is able to reflect on his standard of deliberation, and to change that standard in the light of reflection.” The very manner in which we choose, in other words, is itself an object of choice. And we choose it, as we choose everything else, in attempting to maximize our utility. With this understanding of man in mind, the conclusion of Gauthier’s argument is quite straightforward. When deciding whether, for example, to be honest or dishonest, we do not decide on a case-by-case basis, attempting in each instance to maximize our utility. To do so, we recognize, would earn us a reputation for dishonesty and would thus preclude us from participation in many valuable forms of cooperation. This is the crucial point in Gauthier’s argument: the disposition we choose will affect the situations in which we may expect to find ourselves. Because of this, we recognize that adopting the disposition to be honest only when it is clearly in our interest to do so is itself clearly not in our interest. We choose, therefore, to adopt a disposition to act honestly. And as a result of our choice, we are no longer able to take advantage of those cases where our dishonesty would be rewarded. Once we choose our new disposition, it seems, there is no going back to the old one. Gauthier’s argument may well prove the strongest argument for moral compliance that the contractarian can make. Whether it is strong enough, however, is by no means clear. One direction the moral skeptic may follow in attempting a rebuttal to Gauthier’s argument is to agree that, as rational, self-critical beings, we possess the ability to choose new dispositions, but to argue that Gauthier has chosen the wrong one. The skeptic may concede that once we choose the disposition to be honest, or, more plainly, once we are in fact disposed to be honest, we will not be the sort of people who take advantage of others when the opportunity arises. We could, however, recognize this as a lost opportunity to exploit others before we adopt such disposition, and perhaps choose to adopt a modified disposition instead. We could adopt a disposition always to be honest in certain sorts of situations but to be occasionally (and prudently) dishonest in others. It may be objected that this is no disposition at all, but merely the old case-by-case utility maximization in a new disguise. Yet I see no reason why our dispositions must be all-or-nothing propositions, strategies to be implemented independently of context. I may have, for example, a disposition to loan money to friends but not to strangers, or a propensity to be polite at church functions but not in the classroom. The new, less-than-completely-honest disposition may, of course, still prevent me from being dishonest in some cases where my dishonesty would in fact have paid off. The point is that I may get away with ripping off a few people here and there while still adopting a disposition sufficiently “honest” to protect my reputation. I may thus secure the benefits of honesty without incurring all of the costs. There is another direction in which criticism may be aimed at Gauthier, and it is an attack that the text may be less prepared to withstand. Rather than arguing that his justification for moral behavior is too weak, it may be objected that it is too strong. If the behavior Gauthier advocates can be derived purely from nonmoral premises, after all, why talk about morality at all? While Gauthier recognizes in the first paragraph of his book that “ ‘were duty no more than interest, morals would be superfluous,’ ” in framing his justification for moral constraints as the rational choice of utility-maximizing individuals he seems to equate duty and interest. “If moral appeals are entitled to some practical effect, some influence on our behaviour,” he writes, “it is not because they whisper invitingly to our desires, but because they convince our intellect.” But in trying to convince the intellect of Glaucon, Gauthier is ultimately forced to do so through Glaucon’s desires. As Gauthier himself writes, “duty overrides advantage, but the acceptance of duty is truly advantageous.” After a great deal of effort, Gauthier may simply have illuminated the amoral dimensions of rules, failing to do full justice to their morality. The alternative to ignoring Glaucon is to attempt to produce nonmoral reasons for behaving morally. As the preceding discussion has indicated, and as Gauthier would surely agree, the problems inherent in such an approach are great. One faces the difficulty of providing the reasons on the one hand, and of preserving the distinctive features that characterize morality on the other. For those who seek to answer Glaucon in this way, David Gauthier’s _Morals by Agreement_ is an excellent place to start. It is unlikely, however, to be a good place to end. > Glaucon’s problem is one that has long haunted moral philosophers and it is likely to continue doing so. There are at least two ways of addressing it. The first is to ignore it, and this may not, on reflection, be such a misguided response. If Glaucon’s question ultimately is “why should I be moral?” the answer, after all, may simply be that there are no reasons, that there could be no reasons. That a given act is moral is itself the reason it should be done. Perhaps this is part of what we mean by morality. ## Notes ¹_Republic_ 338c ²“The relative magnitude of a concession is the proportion its absolute magnitude bears to the difference between the utility of the person’s claim and his utility in the initial bargaining position.” _David Boonin received a B.A. from Yale University in 1986 and will begin graduate studies in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh in the fall._