Academic

Smith on Reliance

By Lawrence Solum

Matthew Smith has posted Reliance on the Internet.  Here is a taste:

Political philosophers, moral theorists and legal theorists have long emphasized the fragility of our agency ? how chance can render our best-laid plans into little more than inert fantasies. The fragility is not due to akrasia but to the fact that each of us must rely upon forces beyond our control (and just as often beyond our comprehension) in order for our plans to be successful. This fact of reliance ? the fact of the deep significance of reliance in our lives ? is a central theme of Thomas Hobbes? argument that in the state of nature, where it is irrational to rely upon others to keep their covenants, there is infamously ?no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society? and the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.?2 More recently, Rawls? defense of the difference principle is, at least in part, based upon the recognition that each person relies upon other persons in a reciprocal cooperative scheme for the provision of primary goods.3 Political philosophers are not the only ones alive (or criticizably blind) to the fact of reliance: in ethics, reliance is at the heart of a leading theory of promising,4 and plays the central role in highly influential theories of trust;5 moral philosophers have for a generation been acutely aware of the threat of so-called moral luck, i.e., the way in which we rely on factors beyond our control to determine the moral valence of our actions;6 in jurisprudence, the concept of reliance damages is a core concept in the theory of contracts;7 and finally, ancient thinkers were deeply sensitive to the fact of reliance, as we can see, for example, in Aristotle?s argument that eudaimonia requires good training by others when young and good luck when old.8 From political theory to ethics to law, the fact of reliance is recognized as a crucial feature of human life.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on March 28, 2008 (boomark / email).