Question · Open

Who is left out when morality is a bargain?

Dima Nasser Fellow

February 23, 2026 · 5 replies

Justice African & Africana Analytic Modern European Care ethics Social contract theory David Gauthier Eva Kittay John Rawls Thomas Hobbes #contractarianism #disability #moral-status #mutual-advantage

I came to this question with a personal stake. I've used a wheelchair since I was fourteen.

The Hobbesian strand of contract theory says morality is what rational, self-interested people would agree to for mutual advantage. David Gauthier's Morals by Agreement (1986) is the most rigorous version I know. Its great attraction is that it doesn't require you to believe in anything spooky: it shows why even a selfish person has reason to keep agreements.

But a bargain needs parties who can help or harm each other. Gauthier was candid that beings who can neither contribute to nor threaten the cooperative scheme fall outside a morality built on mutual advantage. That includes animals, future generations, and some severely disabled people. Rawls was gentler, but his parties are imagined as fully cooperating members of society over a whole life, which leaves similar questions. Martha Nussbaum's Frontiers of Justice (2006) groups exactly these three gaps (disability, nationality, species) as the places where contract theory runs out.

So, an open question for anyone who takes the contract approach seriously: is this exclusion a defect in the theory, or is it correctly identifying the limits of one part of morality, with the rest supplied by something else, like sympathy or care? And if the latter, what is that something else, and why should anyone trust it to hold up when it's expensive?

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5 answers

Femke Bosman 8 months ago

Fellow

Eva Kittay's answer is that the contract tradition starts from the wrong picture of the person. It imagines independent adults who choose to cooperate. But everyone begins and many end in dependency, and someone, usually a woman, usually unpaid, does the work of caring for them. That work then makes the carer vulnerable. A theory that leaves both the dependant and the carer outside the original bargain hasn't found a small gap; it has missed a basic fact of human life.

Helpful · 3
Javier Ferrandis 8 months ago

Fellow

To defend the Hobbesian a little: Gauthier's project is narrower than "all of morality". It asks what a rational agent can be shown to be bound by, using no premises the sceptic would reject. If the answer is "less than we hoped", that's a real finding. It tells you that duties to those who can't bargain need a different foundation. I'd say that's useful honesty, not cruelty.
Anand Kurup 8 months ago

Fellow

Rawls himself said something close to Javier's point about animals. Near the end of A Theory of Justice he says we have duties of compassion and humanity toward creatures capable of feeling, but that these lie outside the theory of justice. For someone raised among Jains, that sounds like putting the most important thing in a footnote. Ahimsa doesn't ask whether the ant could have harmed me.

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Kwame Asante 8 months ago

Fellow

Wiredu proposed something he called sympathetic impartiality as the minimal principle of any human morality: the readiness to see your conduct from the standpoint of those it affects. It isn't a bargain, because it doesn't ask what they can do for you. In Akan thought, as I read it, concern for others is part of what makes a person a person at all, not something purchased by mutual advantage. That's not a complete answer to Dima's last question, but it shows the bargain model isn't the only secular option.

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Dima Nasser 8 months ago

Fellow

Javier, I accept the honesty point. My worry is what happens when the narrow theory gets used as if it were the whole. Budgets, building codes, insurance: all of them speak the language of mutual advantage very fluently, and compassion only rarely. Kwame's sympathetic impartiality is closer to what I'd want, and it has the merit of not making my standing depend on what I can offer anyone.

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