The Reasonable and the Rational
§ 1
What is it that distinguishes the reasonable from the rational? In everyday speech we are aware of a difference and common examples readily bring it out. We say: "Their proposal was perfectly rational given their strong bargaining position, but it was nevertheless highly unreasonable, even outrageous." Rather than define the reasonable directly, I specify two of its basic aspects as virtues of persons.
Persons are reasonable in one basic aspect when, among equals say, they are ready to propose principles and standards as fair terms of cooperation and to abide by them willingly, given the assurance that others will likewise do so. Those norms they view as reasonable for everyone to accept and therefore as justifiable to them; and they are ready to discuss the fair terms that others propose. The reasonable is an element of the idea of society as a system of fair cooperation and that its fair terms be reasonable for all to accept is part of its idea of reciprocity. As I have said (1:3.2) the idea of reciprocity lies between the idea of impartiality, which is altruistic (as moved by the general good), and the idea of mutual advantage understood as everyone's being advantaged with respect to one's present or expected situation as things are.
Reasonable persons, we say, are not moved by the general good as such but desire for its own sake a social world in which they, as free and equal, can cooperate with others on terms all can accept. They insist that reciprocity should hold within that world so that each benefits along with others.
By contrast, people are unreasonable in the same basic aspect when they plan to engage in cooperative schemes but are unwilling to honor, or even to propose, except as a necessary public pretense, any general principles or standards for specifying fair terms of cooperation. They are ready to violate such terms as suits their interests when circumstances allow.
§ 2
Reasonable and rational agents are normally the units of responsibility in political and social life and may be charged with violations of reasonable principles and standards. The rational is, however, a distinct idea from the reasonable and applies to a single, unified agent (either an individual or corporate person) with the powers of judgment and deliberation in seeking ends and interests peculiarly its own. The rational applies to how these ends and interests are adopted and affirmed, as well as to how they are given priority. It also applies to the choice of means, in which case it is guided by such familiar principles as: to adopt the most effective means to ends, or to select the more probable alternative, other things equal.
Yet rational agents are not limited to means-ends reasoning, as they may balance final ends by their significance for their plan of life as a whole, and by how well these ends cohere with and complement one another. Nor are rational agents as such solely self-interested: that is, their interests are not always interests in benefits to themselves. Every interest is an interest of a self (agent), but not every interest is in benefits to the self that has it. Indeed, rational agents may have all kinds of affections for persons and attachments to communities and places, including love of country and of nature; and they may select and order their ends in various ways.
What rational agents lack is the particular form of moral sensibility that underlies the desire to engage in fair cooperation as such, and to do so on terms that others as equals might reasonably be expected to endorse. I do not assume the reasonable is the whole of moral sensibility; but it includes the part that connects with the idea of fair social cooperation. Rational agents approach being psychopathic when their interests are solely in benefits to themselves.
§ 3
In justice as fairness the reasonable and the rational are taken as two distinct and independent basic ideas. They are distinct in that there is no thought of deriving one from the other; in particular, there is no thought of deriving the reasonable from the rational. In the history of moral thought some have tried to do this. They think the rational is more basic, for who does not endorse the (or an) idea of rationality (for there are several) as specified by such familiar principles as those above? They think that if the reasonable can be derived from the rational, that is, if some definite principles of justice can be derived from the preferences, or decisions, or agreements of merely rational agents in suitably specified circumstances, then the reasonable ia at last put on a firm basis. The moral skeptic has been answeres.
Justice as fairness rejects this idea. It does not try to derive the reasonable from the rational. Indeed, the attempt to do so may suggest that the reasonable is not basic and needs a basis in a way the rational does not. Rather, within the idea of fair cooperation the reasonable and the rational are complementary ideas. Each is an element in this fundamental idea and each connects with its distinctive moral power, respectively, with the capacity for a sense of justice and the capacity for a conception of the good, They work in tandem to specify the idea of fair terms of cooperation, taking into account the kind of social cooperation in question, the nature of the parties and their standing with respect to one another.
As complementary ideas, neither the reasonable nor the rational can stand without the other. Merely reasonable agents would have no ends of their own they wanted to advance by fair cooperation; merely rational agents lack a sense of justice and fail to recognize the independent validity of the claims of others. Only as the result of philosophy, or a subject in which the rational has a lote place (as in economics or social decision theory), would anyone think it necessary to derive the reasonable from the rational, moved by the thought that only the latter was intelligible. It seems likely that any plausible derivation must situate rational agents in circumstances in which they are subject to certain appropriate conditions and these conditions will express the reasonable. As we saw in 1:4, in the fundamental case of social cooperation within the basic structure of society, the representatives of citizens as reasonable and rational agents must be situaed reasonably, that is, fairly or symmetrically, with no one having superior bargaining advantages over the rest. This last is done by the veil of ignorance. To see justice as fairness as trying to derive the reasonable from the rational misinterprets the original position.
It may not be possible to prove that the reasonable cannot be derived from the rational. A negative statement of this kind is simply a conjecture. The best one may be able to do is to show that the serious attempts (Gauthier's is an example) to derive the reasonable from the rational do not succeed, and so far as they appear to succeed, they rely at some point on conditions expressing the reasonable itself. If sound, these remarks suggest that in philosophy questions at the most fundamental level are not usually settled by conclusive argument. What is obvious to some persons and accepted as a basic idea is unintelligible to others. The way to resolve the matter is to consider after due reflection which view, when fully worked out, offers the most coherent and convincing account. About this, of course, judgments may differ.
§ 4
A further basic difference between the reasonable and the rational is that the reasonable is public in a way the rational is not. This means that it is by the reasonable that we enter as equals the public world of others and stand ready to propose, or to accept, as the case may be, fair terms of cooperation with them. These terms, set out as principles, specify the reasons we are to share and publicly recognize before one another as grounding our social relations. Insofar as we are reasonable, we are ready to work out the framework for the public social world, a framework it is reasonable to expect everyone to endorse and act on, provided others can be relied on to do the same. If we cannot rely on them, then it may be irrational or self-sacrificial to act from those principles. Without an established public world, the reasonable may be suspended and we may be left largely with the rational, although the reasonable always binds in foro interno, to use Hobbes's phrase.
Finally, as we have seen, the reasonable (with its idea of reciprocity) is not the altruistic (the impartial acting solely for the interests of others) nor is it the concern for self (and moved by its ends and affections alone). In a reasonable society, most simply illustrated in a society of equals in basic matters, all have their own rational ends they hope to advance, and all stand ready to propose fair terms that others may reasonably be expected to accept, so that all may benefit and improve on what every one can do on their own. This reasonable society is neither a society of saints nor a society of the self-centered. It is very much a part of our ordinary human world, not a world we think of much virtue, until we find ourselves without it. Yet the moral power that underlies the capacity to propose, or to endorse, and then to be moved to act from fair terms of cooperation for their own sake is an essential social virtue all the same.
zurück zu John Rawls: Political Liberalism
