Abstract

As soon as we try to philosophize about morality, a tension arises. We are confronted with radically different conceptions of the best human life. Philosophers as dissimilar as Aristotle, Kant, and Bentham have tried to find a principle or a set of principles that could serve as the ground of morality. With such a foundation, it would be possible to adjudicate among these different conceptions and explain why one is better than another, by making reference to the "seamless whole" of human morality. Hampshire argues, persuasively, that this search is doomed to failure, at least if the basic principles are meant to have any substantive content. In particular, the virtues associated with innocence, and the virtues associated with experience, are incompatible: a person can't have both kinds at once, and most people achieve only some of only one set at any time in their lives. But if there are no foundational principles, then what is the alternative to complete relativism? A total moral skepticism? Hampshire suggests what he calls "minimum procedural justice" as a way of balancing competing conceptions of the good life as much as possible, without suggesting that the procedure can resolve all moral disagreements. Across the radical differences, there is one recognition that we all share: "[h]umanity is united in the recognition of the great evils which render life scarcely bearable...". Minimum procedural justice, a minimal fairness in negotiation, is required if these great evils are to be avoided. Furthermore, minimum procedural justice is the only concept that can play the role the substantive principles were to play.