A lot, it appears. My philosophy colleague Jason Bridges kindly gave permission to share this little experiment he ran on the newest version of the best-known large-language-model. Here was the prompt Professor Bridges gave: “Write a 1000 word essay on Scanlon’s version of contractualism, arguing that although it attempts to register the moral importance of claims made by others, it fails to take full account of how our moral reasons derive from other people encountered as particular human beings.”
And here is the alarmingly competent essay the LLM produced:
Contractualism and the Moral Significance of Others: A Critical Appraisal
T. M. Scanlon’s contractualism, most fully developed in What We Owe to Each Other (1998), is among the most influential moral theories of the late twentieth century. It aims to explain the content and authority of morality by appealing to the idea of justifiability to others on grounds no one could reasonably reject. For Scanlon, an act is morally wrong if and only if it would be disallowed by a set of principles that no one could reasonably reject as a basis for informed, unforced general agreement. This framework is striking in its ambition: it seeks to capture the normative significance of living with others as free and equal persons, while avoiding both the aggregative calculus of utilitarianism and the metaphysical demands of Kantian idealism.
At first glance, contractualism seems uniquely well suited to register the moral importance of the claims other people make upon us. The very criterion of rightness turns on the standpoint of “others” whose reasonable rejection must be considered. Scanlon insists that when we deliberate about what principles we can justify to one another, we are acknowledging their status as beings with reasons of their own. Morality, on this view, is not merely a code of individual virtue but a relation—a “relation of mutual recognition” grounded in the idea that justification is owed to each person.
Yet despite its attractions, Scanlon’s version of contractualism fails to give full account of the way our moral reasons actually derive from other people encountered as particular human beings. In what follows, I will argue that the very structure that makes contractualism appealing—its search for principles that no one could reasonably reject—also abstracts away from the concrete presence of others, and in doing so diminishes the depth of the moral claims they press upon us.
1. The Abstraction of the Reasonable Rejection Test
The heart of Scanlon’s view is the “reasonable rejection” test: an act is wrong if any person could reasonably reject the principle that permits it. Reasonableness, for Scanlon, is not subjective preference but a judgment constrained by facts about human psychology and the burdens imposed by principles when adopted as a system. We are to imagine an idealized deliberation among persons motivated to find principles for mutual governance that each could accept.
This procedure treats individuals as formally equal participants in a hypothetical exchange of reasons. Its elegance lies in this neutrality. But it also requires us to bracket the thick particularities of actual people—their faces, histories, voices, and the contingencies that shape their needs. In the deliberative standpoint of Scanlonian contractualism, the other is primarily a generic person, not this child with a tremor in her hands, not that neighbor whose losses have etched themselves into his speech. The very requirement that principles be acceptable to all rational agents prescinds from the singularity through which we often apprehend moral urgency.
Of course, Scanlon is aware of this worry. He stresses that our reasons include not only generic interests but also specific attachments and relationships. We can, for example, reject a principle permitting indifference to a friend’s suffering because friendship itself gives rise to reasons. Yet these relational reasons enter the contractualist calculus only as types of claims any person might have, not as the unrepeatable presence of a particular friend whose suffering grips us. The structure of mutual justification converts the face-to-face encounter into an abstract template.
2. Moral Motivation and the Encounter with the Other
Consider the phenomenology of a moral demand: the cry of someone in pain, the look of need in a stranger’s eyes, the silent reproach of a neglected friend. Such experiences motivate not primarily because we have run a test of reasonable rejection, but because we are addressed by a particular person whose vulnerability presses upon us. Emmanuel Levinas famously describes this as the “face” of the Other—a summons that precedes deliberation and cannot be captured in terms of contract or reciprocity.
Scanlon might reply that his theory does not purport to explain motivation but to identify the content of moral requirements. Yet if a moral theory cannot accommodate the sources of moral salience, it risks explaining away the very phenomenon it seeks to illuminate. When I feel compelled to aid the stranger before me, my reason is not merely that no one could reasonably reject a principle of assistance. It is that this person stands before me, in need, and thereby generates a reason that is not fungible or merely hypothetical.
Moreover, the motivational gap matters for normative authority itself. If morality’s force stems from our relation to others as free and equal, then erasing their concrete particularity undermines the basis of that authority. We do not live alongside “rational agents” in the abstract; we live alongside neighbors, children, elders, lovers. Their moral standing is not exhausted by their capacity for reason-giving. To insist that all justification be acceptable to an idealized audience risks missing the depth of our responsibility to the singular human other.
3. The Limits of Impersonal Justification
Another way to see the problem is to ask whether certain wrongs can be fully captured by Scanlonian principles. Take the callous betrayal of a lifelong companion, or the casual humiliation of someone whose trust we once earned. These wrongs strike us as egregious not merely because they violate a principle anyone could not reasonably reject, but because they desecrate a history of shared experience. The moral claim here is irreducibly personal. It matters who inflicted the harm and to whom it was done.
Scanlon tries to accommodate such cases by recognizing “personal reasons” tied to relationships. But again, these are treated as kinds of reasons any rational agent might have. The moral force of betrayal, however, is not just that friendship-as-such generates reasons. It is that this friendship, with its memories and intimacies, calls for fidelity. A principle protecting “friends in general” cannot fully register the moral gravity of violating this friend.
Similarly, consider moral growth through love or care. Our reasons to nurture a child or comfort a grieving partner often precede and exceed what could be captured by impersonal principles. We respond to their unique voice, their irreplaceable presence. Contractualism, in abstracting to the space of generic justification, leaves this dimension underdescribed.
4. Toward a More Particularist Moral Vision
Recognizing these limits need not entail abandoning the insights of contractualism. Scanlon is surely right that morality involves living with others on terms they cannot reasonably reject, and that mutual justification is central to respecting persons as equals. But we need a complementary account of moral reasons that honors the singular encounter.
Such an account might draw from phenomenological ethics (Levinas, Iris Murdoch) or from contemporary particularism, which emphasizes that the moral relevance of features depends on context and cannot always be codified into universal principles. It would affirm that while general principles guide us, many of our most important reasons arise from the concrete reality of other people whose claims we apprehend in their individuality.
Conclusion
Scanlon’s contractualism offers a profound and influential picture of morality as a system of principles no one could reasonably reject—a vision that rightly highlights the importance of justification to others. Yet its very strength is its weakness. By locating moral authority in the abstract standpoint of mutual justification, it underplays the ways our reasons are generated by particular human beings encountered in their singular presence. Our deepest obligations—to care, to protect, to respond—are not merely the upshot of an idealized contract, but are awakened in the immediacy of the other’s call. To do full justice to the moral importance of persons, any adequate ethical theory must move beyond the elegant but impersonal framework of Scanlonian contractualism and embrace the lived, irreducible concreteness of human encounter.
So, readers, what are you going to do?
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