Contractarianism With a Human Face

Abstract

Contractarianism with a Human Face reinterprets the social contract, not as a model to generate a unique set of rules of justice, but as a dynamic process for making comparative institutional evaluations. An institutional reorientation allows contractarians to abandon the untenable assumption of a homogeneous model of agency (be it austere rational choice or Rawlsian reasonableness), replacing it with diverse agents living under institutions all can rationally endorse, and to which they have different reasons to comply. Contractarianism With a Human Face is a contractarian theory that differs from all other contractarian theories because it rejects the search for a unique answer to the question of what is justice. It does not flee from diversity, but instead finds new solutions to old problems through broadening the contractual model and the agents that make it up. This version of contractarianism has a human face in the sense that it starts from the diversity, disorder, and complexity of human life and seeks to find rules that we can all live under. Not by eliminating that diversity, but by embracing it. In so doing, however, it fundamentally changes the shape of contractarian theory. By rejecting the search for a unique "solution" to what rules of justice are justified, Contractarianism With a Human Face becomes a project of evaluating contingent and evolving institutions and constitutional rules. Rationality and justice are reconciled, at least partially, though human history.