(きそくこうりしゅぎ rule utilitarianism)
It may be helpful to draw an analogy between this theory [ie. rule-utilitarianism] and the application of laws to particular cases. Laws are general, and they are made by legislators, undoubtedly with utilitarian considerations in minde. But when judges apply the law, they do not construe their job as one of deciding particular cases by appeal to utilities (as if act-utilitarianism were the principle judges shold follow); they regard their job as one of following the direction of the general law for the particular case. Now, morality is an informal analogue of law, and the rule-utilitarian is saying that we should decide particular cases by following general prescriptions but that whether a given general prescription should be adopted depends roughly on the utility of its being generally obeyed.
---Richard B. Brandt
I have argued elsewhere the objections to rule-utilitarianism as compared with act-utilitarianism. Briefly they boil down to the accusation of rule worship: the rule-utilitarian presumably advocates his principle because he is ultimately concerned with human happiness: why then should he advocate abiding by a rule when he knows that it will not in the present case be most beneficial to abide by it? The reply that in most cases it is most beneficial to abide by the rule seems irrelevant. And so is the reply that it would be better that everybody should abide by the rule than that nobody should. This is to suppose that the only alternative to `everybody does A' is `no one does A'. But clearly we have the possibility `some people do A and some don't'. Hence to refuse to break a generally beneficial rule in those cases in which it is not most beneficial to obey it seems irrational and to be a case of rule worship.
David Lyons has recently argued that rule-utilitarianism ... collapses into act-utilitarianism. His reasons are briefly as follows. Suppose that an exception to a rule R produces the best possible consequences. Then this is evidence that the rule R should be modified so as to allow this exception. Thus we get a new rule of the form `do R except in circumstances of the sort C'. That is, whatever would lead the act-utilitarian to break a rule would lead the ... rule-utilitarian to modify the rule. Thus an adequate rule-utilitarianism would be extensionally equivalent to act-utilitarianism.
---J.J.C. Smart
功利原理を、 個々の行為ではなく、規則に適用する立場。
たとえば、「嘘をついてはならない」という規則が功利原理に適っているなら、 この規則が適用される個々の行為はどんな場合でも常に不正になる。 すなわち、たとえある特定の嘘をつく行為が社会一般の幸福を促進する としても、その行為は規則に反しているから不正になるのである。
ハーサニ先生によると、 「規則功利主義とは、《功利主義の基準は、第一に、個々の行為ではなく、 むしろこれらの行為を律している基本的一般的規則に 適用されなければならない》という見解である」。 (Amartya Sen & Bernard Williams ed., Utilitarianism and beyond, Cambridge UP, 1982, p. 41)。
アンソニー・クイントンによると、
はっきりこの立場を述べたのは、
R.F. Harrodの`Utilitarianism Revised'(1936年)とされる。
そのあと、J.O. Urmsonが`The Interpretation of the
Moral Philosophy of J.S. Mill' (1953)で、
実は子ミルがこの立場を取っていたと主張した。
このあとしばらく、規則功利主義は悪しき規則崇拝だと批判して
行為功利主義を支持したスマート
(J.J.C. Smart)や、規則功利主義を支持したブラント(R.B. Brandt)らの間で、
論争が続いた。
(see Anthony Quiton, Utilitarian Ethics,
Open Court Publishing, 1989, pp. 108-9)。
11/18/99; 11/19/99; 27/Oct/2003
上の引用は以下の著作から。