The dissertation has two aims. First, to explain why normative theories of politics, economics, and group decisions depend on ethics. Second, to refute the view that they need not. This latter view has recently been defended by Rawls, Hampshire, Williams, and Habermas.
The view that all such theories necessarily depend on some normative ethical theory I call “the Dependence Thesis.” The dissertation defends the Thesis by an argument I call “the Argument from Claims about Interest-Affecting Normative Requirement.”
Chapter One defends the Argument’s first premise, which offers a conception of normative ethical theories. This premise holds that any such theory essentially claims that certain normative requirements range over all actions, ways of life, character traits, or policies, actualizing which would advance or set back persons’ interests.
Chapter Two defends the Argument’s second premise, which offers a conception of normative theories of politics, economics, and group decision. This premise holds that any such theory essentially claims that certain normative requirements range over some actions, ways of life, or policies, actualizing which would advance or set back persons’ interests (namely, those which make, break, or preserve the general arrangements of a group’s affairs).
Chapter Three defends the final premise, which holds that any theory making claims of the kind mentioned in the second premise depends on some theory making claims of the kind mentioned in the first premise. The Chapter examines the structures of theories.
Chapter Four defends the Dependence Thesis against objections from the anti-theory position in ethics; from a view of the aim of politics, defended by Hampshire and Williams; from Rawls’s criterion of public justification; and from Habermas’s view that genuinely democratic lawmaking cannot be controlled by moral principles.
Chapter Five applies the Thesis and tests it against hard cases. It uses the Thesis to resolve the monism-dualism debate in political philosophy. That debate concerns whether there is a fundamental principle for regulating political institutions that does not apply to personal conduct. The Chapter shows that there can be such principles, but that all such principles are shaped by normative ethical theories. The Chapter then shows that three famous normative theories, widely held not to depend on any normative ethical theory, in fact do so. The three theories are Rawls’s political conception of justice as fairness, the normative part of Gerard Debreu’s general equilibrium theory, and the normative part of Buchanan and Tullock’s public choice theory of decision rules.
Here are links to the dissertation's analytical table of contents, Introduction, and Conclusion.