Derek Parfit's book, ON WHAT MATTERS, published in two volumes in 2011, acquired a third volume from his posthumous writings, in 2017 (he died on the very first day of that year).
The book was much anticipated, generating both discussion groups and an academic conference in advance of its 2011 publication.
Parfit's thesis, in short, is that there are three distinct moral theories and that, if each is pursued rigorously, it ends up in concord with the other two. Kantian deontology, utilitarianism, and contractualism are all different paths on different slopes of the same mountain. They lead to the same behavior: that is, the paths come together at the summit.
That's a bold claim. Decoded (in accord with pragmatism) it means that the differences turn out to be merely conceptual not practical. A right-thinking Kantian and a right-thinking proponent of either of the other views will do the same thing at the notorious trolley switch.
Today I will merely say a few words about the "contractualist" path up the alleged mountain. The inclusion of this path on the metaphorical mountain will sound odd to some readers. These days if philosophers set up a deontology/consequentialist contrast, the "third way" they usually include would be Aristotelian "virtue ethics." There is none of that for Parfit. The third way for him is contractualism.
Also (related), ethicists tend to regard the "contractualist" approach to their field as specialized: it is a theory about the bases of social institutions, the state, and revolution. It is not a theory of ethics as such.
For Parfit, however, contractualism is the third way up the mountain. Scanlon, in a 1998 book, WHAT WE OWE TO EACH OTHER, paved the way for him here, generalizing social contract theory into contract theory, sans adjective.
It isn't all that surprising to think of Scanlon meeting Kant at the top of the mountain. Scanlon had some indebtedness to Kant even at the bottom of the mountain.
There is an important difference though. At least Scanlon thinks it an important difference, Parfit evidently not. Scanlon, thinking through what we owe each other according to a hypothetical contract, says that "an act is wrong if its performance under the circumstances would be disallowed by any set of principles for the general regulation of behavior that no one could reasonably reject as a basis for informed, unforced, general agreement."
That is a complicated statement and I won't try to parse it now. But the gist seems to be that if I believe Sam (a stranger, with whom I have no real-world contractual relation) did some wrong to me, I am asserting that his action would be disallowed by any principles we could reasonably have imagined entering into if we had not been strangers.
What does this have to do with Kant? Scanlon is talking of real people, in particular social circumstances, who know their own lives. I have my life, the stranger has his, and the two collide in some way. I am expected to prove that a self-justifiable explanation he offers me is irrational, that "reasonable" people must "reject". This might involve a much more concrete inquiry than Kant has in mind, one much more focused on circumstances. More phenomenal, less noumenal.
To be more clear, bring John Rawls into the picture. Rawls posited a "veil of ignorance" in the contracting position. Scanlon posits none The people engaged in the hypothetical reasoning he has in mind know who they are. If Rawls is getting Kant right, then Scanlon would seem to be importantly different from Kant.
But I'll stop trying to sort it all out. Certainly my formation of my own views on ethical and meta-ethical matters are utterly independent of such historical byways as whether Rawls is or is not getting Kant right.
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