The Struggle for Moral Authority ? A rational choice answer to the question of why human beings engage in political struggle
(2005)Department of Political Science
- Abstract
- Given the assumptions of rational choice, this essay explicates the distributive consequences of different ethical positions and how the relationship between eth-ics and distributions provides a rationale for a struggle for moral authority for the purpose of procuring distributive shares. The argument provides a partial answer to the question of why there is political struggle in all human societies. It is pre-sented first by clarifying the relationship between individual acts and their dis-tributive consequences in a hypothetical state where morals do not exist. Ethical considerations is then introduced as a constraint on choice for the purpose of clari-fying how different ethics alter individual utility functions and hence what acts... (More)
- Given the assumptions of rational choice, this essay explicates the distributive consequences of different ethical positions and how the relationship between eth-ics and distributions provides a rationale for a struggle for moral authority for the purpose of procuring distributive shares. The argument provides a partial answer to the question of why there is political struggle in all human societies. It is pre-sented first by clarifying the relationship between individual acts and their dis-tributive consequences in a hypothetical state where morals do not exist. Ethical considerations is then introduced as a constraint on choice for the purpose of clari-fying how different ethics alter individual utility functions and hence what acts people choose to undertake. Subsequently the distributive consequences appear to be variant under different ethical constraints. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/1332631
- author
- Hansson, Andre
- supervisor
- organization
- year
- 2005
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- keywords
- ethics, distributions, economic theory, moral theory, moral authority, Social sciences, Samhällsvetenskaper
- language
- English
- id
- 1332631
- date added to LUP
- 2005-01-09 00:00:00
- date last changed
- 2005-02-14 00:00:00
@misc{1332631,
abstract = {{Given the assumptions of rational choice, this essay explicates the distributive consequences of different ethical positions and how the relationship between eth-ics and distributions provides a rationale for a struggle for moral authority for the purpose of procuring distributive shares. The argument provides a partial answer to the question of why there is political struggle in all human societies. It is pre-sented first by clarifying the relationship between individual acts and their dis-tributive consequences in a hypothetical state where morals do not exist. Ethical considerations is then introduced as a constraint on choice for the purpose of clari-fying how different ethics alter individual utility functions and hence what acts people choose to undertake. Subsequently the distributive consequences appear to be variant under different ethical constraints.}},
author = {{Hansson, Andre}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{The Struggle for Moral Authority ? A rational choice answer to the question of why human beings engage in political struggle}},
year = {{2005}},
}