Abstract

There is a problem within contractarian ethics that I wish to resolve. It concerns individualpreferences. Contractarianism holds that morality, properly conceived, can satisfy individualpreferences and interests better than amorality or immorality. W hat is unclear, however, iswhether these preferences are those individuals actually hold or those that they should hold. The goal of my thesis is to investigate this question. I introduce a version of contractarian ethicsthat relies on ind ividual preferences in a manner more stringent than has been in the literatureto date.