Author Description

There Is At Least Some Initial Plausibility In The View That Political Philosophy, In So Far As It Is A Moral Commentary On Political Matters, Should Be Based On Concern For Human Happiness Or For Human Interests: What Is Important, We May Feel, Is The Happiness, Or The Fulfilment Of The Interests, Of All The Human Beings Involved. That Is, We May Adopt Some Kind Of Utilitarian Moral Theory, And Evaluate Political Institutions And Principles Of Political Action By Considering To What Extent They Tend To Promote The General Happiness Of All The People Whom They Affect. But Recently Attention Has Been Focused Very Much On The Two Basic Evaluative Concepts Of Justice And Rights, Which Seem, At Least On The Surface, To Be Closely Related To One Another And To Be Radically Different From The Concept Of The General Happiness. There Is Both A Theoretical And A Practical Reason For This. The Theoretical One Is That The Utilitarian Approach Seems To Commit Us To Some Kind Of Calculus In Which The Happiness And Misery, Or Alternatively The Satisfaction And Frustration Of Interests, Of All The People In Question Are Thought Of As Being Measured And Aggregated.