Morals by Agreement

Abstract
This book defends the traditional conception of morality as a rational, impartial constraint on the pursuit of individual interest or benefit. The principal obstacle faced by this conception is that the received account of rationality in economics and the social sciences identifies it with the maximization of individual interest (or more technically, utility); how then can a constraint on the pursuit of interest be rational? The key to meeting this obstacle is found in the recognition that in many situations, if each person seeks directly to maximize her utility, the outcome is sub‐optimal—i.e. at least one alternative would benefit everyone. This suggests that we think of morality in a contractarian way, i.e. as the object of a universal rational bargain in which all agree to constrain their pursuit of interest by acting on a principle that would yield optimality, i.e. an outcome such that no alternative would benefit everyone.

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