John Rawls · Philosophy
Rawls’s deepest objection to the theory he set out to replace: utilitarianism, by summing satisfactions across a whole society, treats many distinct people as if they were one, and so ‘does not take seriously the distinction between persons’ - which is why it can justify sacrificing some for the greater sum of others.
You learned that Rawls’s central charge against utilitarianism is that it extends to a whole society the principle of choice appropriate for one person, ‘conflating’ many persons into one, and so does not take seriously the distinction between persons. Explain the objection, and what Rawls put in uti…
Leads to John Stuart Mill.
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