By JOSEPH CARLSMITH
ABSTRACT: The Fool offers a famous objection to Hobbesian ethics: if practical rationality is rooted in self-interest, then isn’t it rational to abandon ethical reasoning when doing so “conduces to one’s benefit”? In this paper, I examine Hobbes’ reply to the Fool as it reveals the limitations of the moral theory presented in Leviathan. I begin by sketching out the reply and two traditional ways of interpreting it – the “case-by-case” interpretation and the “rule-commitment” interpretation. I argue that for empirical reasons both these interpretations fail to answer …

By Cuong Q. Nguyen
American political philosopher John Rawls developed a concept of justice as fairness in his influential work, A Theory of Justice, to answer the existing question: what is just or right with respect to the allocation of goods in society.  This conception of justice as fairness borrows elements from Kantian philosophy to justify the method of morally evaluating political and social institutions.  Rawls argues that individuals would intrinsically support the proposal of distributive justice for a variety reasons.  Primarily, Rawls suggests that individuals in a given society would …