JUSTICE AND RATIONALITY: DOUBTS ABOUT THE CONTRACTARIAN AND UTILITARIAN APPROACHES LANNING SOWDENAND SHELDONWEIN In this paper we examine the contractarian and utilitarian approaches to justice. We take the influential work of John Rawls and John Harsanyi as representative of these two theories. First, we briefly outline the salient features of each theory, pointing out where they differ and where they have common assumptions. What we emphasize is that both theories can be seen as an attempt to show that justice will arise from considerations of how rational individuals would choose in a certain choice situation. We then go on to consider an objection to this kind of approach to the problem of justice. Our point, put briefly, is that the choice of rational individuals in the sort of situation envisaged by these two theories does not guarantee just arrangements unless certain further assump- tions are made, and these additional assumptions are not ones which are justified by the general approach itself. While our objection is, as we hope to show, of the first importance for both Rawls and Haxsanyi, it ~ one that has not received attention in the vast literature on their work. However, our objection is not entirely new; a similar problem received thorough attention by moral philosophers at Oxford during the fifties and sixties. Our aim is to resurrect this problem. !I Both Rawls I and Harsanyi 2 seem to hold that we can judge the extent to which a society is just and, indeed, determine what arrangements and practices ought to be adopted by considering what would be chosen by rational individuals in a certain choice situation. This shared commitment to the idea that justice can be derived from placing rational individuals in a particular choice situation is indicative of a deep similarity between the two theories. Moreover, 127