The Demandingness of Scanlon’s Contractualism

Abstract

Utilitarianism has long faced the objection that it is unreasonably demanding. One of the reasons why Kantian contractualism has been seen as an appealing alternative is that it seems to be able to avoid utilitarianism’s extreme demandingness, while retaining a fully impartial moral point of view. I will argue that contractualist moral obligations to help others when their basic interests are at stake are just as demanding as utilitarian obligations. My discussion will focus on Thomas Scanlon’s formulation of contractualism, since I take it to be the most fully developed and powerful version of contractualism as an account of individual moral obligations. There are two main contexts in which such obligations arise. The first context is that of emergency situations; two central features of emergencies are that persons’ basic interests are at stake, and an agent is in a position to give help. The term ‘emergency’ is also generally used to refer to short-term and rare episodes. The steady state of chronic malnutrition that kills millions each year does not count as an emer-