greater sum of advantages enjoyed by others. Since each desires to protect his interests, his capacity to advance his conception of the good, no one has a reason to acquiesce in an enduring loss for himself in order to bring about a greater net balance of satisfaction. In the absence of strong and lasting benevolent impulses a rational man would not accept a basic structure merely because it maximized the effects on his own basic algebraic sum of advantages irrespective of its permanent is incompatible with rights and interests. Thus it seems that the principle of utility advantage. It the of social cooperation among equals for mutual appears to be inconsistent with the idea of reciprocity implicit in the notion of a well-ordered society. Or, at any rate, so I sball argue,