Contractualism and Compensation for Risk Impositions

Abstract

The world we inhabit is full of risks, many of which come about due to socially beneficial activities we undertake. Compensation is often invoked as a necessary element in the justification for why we are permitted to engage in these activities despite the risks they pose to ourselves and others. In this article, I discuss how Scanlonian contractualists ought to think about compensating the victims of socially beneficial yet risky practices that we engage with every day. I consider how two prominent risk-sensitive accounts of contractualism, ex ante contractualism and ex post contractualism, ought to take compensation into account. My main point is that ex ante contractualism fails to deliver the conclusion that victims of risky social practices ought to receive a reasonable amount of compensation for the harm they eventually suffer. Roughly, this is so because ex ante contractualism cannot explain why these victims ought to prefer compensation for harm rather than mere compensation for risk. I call this the callousness objection to ex ante contractualism. I argue that the callousness objection provides us with a strong reason to favor ex post over ex ante contractualism. Furthermore, I expand on the implications that the possibility of compensation has regarding the demandingness of ex post contractualism.