Can Utilitarianism Be Deontological? A Response to Kymlicka

Abstract

In his A Theory of Justice, Rawls claims that the defects that some conceptions of justice, such as utilitarianism or perfectionism, have at a normative level are due to the fact that, because of their teleological character, they do not give priority to what is right as opposed to what is good. Kymlicka has questioned this statement. His strategy has been to provide an interpretation of utilitarianism which respects the priority of what is right. This would prove that the defects at a normative level ascribed to utilitarianism by Rawls do not respond to its teleological character. The classification of doctrines into deontological or teleological would lack the relevance that Rawls ascribes to them. This article aims at proving that Kymlicka's argument to point out the triviality of the classification is not successful because he fails to provide a deontological interpretation of utilitarianism.