Between economics and philosophy: a reappraisal of the Rawls‒Harsanyi debate

This article revisits the debate between John Rawls and John Harsanyi by drawing on newly explored archival materials. Traditionally viewed as a short-lived, technical disagreement of the 1970s over the rational criterion for choice under uncertainty—the maximin versus average utility rules—their exchange in fact spanned nearly four decades, from their first encounter in 1964 to the late 1990s. The paper reconstructs this dialogue to reveal its ethical and philosophical depth, showing that what began as a technical dispute gradually evolved into a confrontation over the moral foundations of justice. The paper traces four stages of this evolving relationship, emphasizing Harsanyi’s later overlooked “philosophical turn” and his continuing attempts to defend utilitarianism against Rawls’s egalitarianism. By revealing all the facets of their exchange, the study enriches our understanding of the modern dialogue between economics and philosophy and of the enduring opposition between utilitarian and egalitarian conceptions of social justice.