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Stein on Utilitarianism & the Separateness of Persons

By Larry Solum

Mark S. Stein (Harvard Law School, Petrie-Flom Center) has posted <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1584032">Utilitarianism and Conflation</a> (Polity, Vol. 35, No. 4, pp. 479-90, July 2003) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:<ul> A common charge against utilitarianism is that it fails to respect the separateness of persons. The most straightforward meaning of the "separateness" charge is that utilitarianism conflates people, treating them as if they were not separate, as if they were parts of one person. In this article, I consider whether such a conflation of many people into one can serve as a satisfactory theory of distributive justice. A surprisingly strong argument can be made that conflation is the way to treat people with equal respect. Ultimately, however, I decide that conflation is not a satisfactory theory of distributive justice - because it is inconsistent with utilitarianism. Unlike utilitarianism, conflation does not properly register those human interests, such as the interest in security, that derive from the separateness of persons. Moreover, if conflation is based on a theory of prudence that does not mirror utilitarianism, there will be additional divergences between conflation and utilitarianism.</ul> <span href="http://" style="color: #0000bf; "><strong>Interesting & recommended.</strong></span>

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on April 05, 2010 (boomark / email).