The best account of the virtue of justice, I have long thought, is that offered by a certain type of contractarianism. This sort of approach seeks to base justice in mutual advantage. The implications it yields are clearly revisionist. As David Gauthier acknowledges, “No doubt there will be differences, perhaps significant, between the impartial and rational constraints supported by [contractarian morality]… and the morality learned from parents and peers, priests and teachers.” To many moral philosophers these sorts of revisionist implications are the basis for rejecting the whole approach.

Gregory S. Kavka has identified a particular source of these revisionist implications, and he has dubbed it “the problem of group egoism.” He notes that these sorts of contractarian theories “appeal, in one form or another, to reciprocity: compliance with moral constraints benefits you because it facilitates the cooperation (and like compliance) of others, and you – like everyone else – need such cooperation to get along in the world.” This approach, however, gives rise to this problem of group egoism.