Contractualism
The right rules are those that no one could reasonably reject.
What it claims
Contractualism locates the legitimacy of moral principles in the possibility of agreement among persons. On Scanlon's formulation, for an act to be wrong is for someone to be able to reasonably reject a principle that permits it, where that someone is informed and seeking uncoerced general agreement. Rawls derived principles of justice through the device of the original position: the principles that would be chosen behind a veil of ignorance.
Nearby positions
Goes together with
Key thinkers
Thomas Hobbes · Jean-Jacques Rousseau · John Rawls · T. M. Scanlon · David Gauthier