lMVE6030
The Good Society and Its Educated Citizens
Topic 3-A (Lectures 4 & 5)
Communitarian’s Idea of Good Society
A. Michael Sandel’s Critique on Rawls’ Deontological Liberalism
1. Rawls’ deontological liberalism
a. Michael Sandel published a book entitled Liberalism and the Limits of Justice
in 1982. The book is a direct critique on Rawls’ work A Theory of Justice. The
focus of Sandel’s critique is on the assumption on which Rawls has built his
theory of justice. Sandel characterizes the assumption as deontological
liberalism.
b. By deontological liberalism, according to Sandel’s interpretation, it refers to
Rawls’ stance of assigning liberalism such a deontological and significant
status that it becomes the Categorical Imperative of all ethical concerns. This
can be evident in the following two theses stipulated by Rawls.
c. The thesis of the priority of the right over the good:
i. According to the two principles stipulated by Rawls, fair distribution of
primary goods among members of a given polity is “the first virtue of
social institutions”. (Rawls, 1971, P.3)
ii. Definition of primary social goods: Rawls suggests that “the primary
social goods, to give them in broad categories, are rights and liberties,
opportunities and powers, income and wealth.”
iii. Rawls’ “theory of the good”: Rawls further specifies that rights, liberty
and opportunities are considered to be primary because they could
provide “reasonably favorable circumstances” for rational individuals to
carry out and fulfil their “rational long-term plan of life.” These
specifications presupposed that “each individual has a rational plan of
life drawn up subject to the conditions that confront him” and “a man is
happy when he is more or less successfully in the way of carry out this
plan.” (Rawls, 1971, P. 93)
In contrast with utilitarian’s theory of the good, which assumes that
utilities generated from material goods are considered to be primary
because they are capable of satisfying human desire, Rawls’ liberal
theory of the good assumes that since “men’s rational plans do have
different final ends” (P. 93), as a result even identical goods may
generate total different degree of utility or satisfaction for them. Hence
material goods and the utility generated from them are not “primary” in a
sense that they are not universally taken to be valuable or useful to
every individuals. Instead, rights to basic liberties and opportunities to
power and wealth will provide each individual will the “primary” means to
pursue their rational plan of life of his own choice.
iv. Accordingly, Rawls suggests, “We should therefore reverse the relation
between the right and the good proposed by the teleological doctrines
and view the right as prior.” (Rawls, 1971, p. 560)
d. The thesis off the priority of liberty:
i. According to the lexical order that Rawls has assigned to the two
principles of justice, we can see that between the primary goods defined
by Rawls, it is the basic liberties (specified in the first principle) which
have priority over the opportunities to power and wealth (stipulated in the
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second).
The ground for the priority of liberty: The ground of Rawls’ assignment of
priority to basic liberty rests primarily on the Kantian conceptions of
“autonomy” and “will” of human agents. Immanuel Kant writes
“Everything in nature works in accordance with laws. Only a rational
being has the power to act in accordance with his ideas of laws ― that is,
in accordance with principles ― and only so has he a will. Since reason
is required in order to derive actions from laws, the will is nothing but
practical reason. If reason infallibly determines the will, then in a being of
this kind the actions which are recognized to be objectively necessary
are also subjectively necessary ― that is to say, the will is then a power
to choose only that which reason independently of inclination recognizes
to be practically necessary, that is, to be good.” (Kant, 2008[1785], P.5)
iii. Based on the Kantian conceptions of autonomy and will of human agent,
Rawls assumes that “as free and equal rational beings”, each of us will
see “themselves as primarily moral persons with an equal right to
choose their mode of life.” In order to pursue their own rational plan of
life to the full, they are inclined if not bounded to set “their fundamental
interest in liberty” and simultaneously they have to endorse their fellow
agents with their liberty in “fair” terms. As a result and in the long run
Rawls confidently asserts that free and equal agent they would
“acknowledge the two principles of justice and their ranked serial orders.”
(Rawls, 1971, P. 563)
2. Sandel’s communitarian critiques on Rawls’ deontological liberalism
a. Rawls’ flaws on the conception of the person
i. Voluntaristic connection between a person’s plans of life and the self: On
Rawls’ conception of the person, one can always voluntaristically make
choices among plans of life and conceptions of good. However, to the
communitarians, “establishing one’s own end is not a matter of choosing
from a menu of available possibilities, but one of discovering what one’s
end really are or ought to be.” (Mulhall and Swift, 1996, P. 50) And this
discovery process is deeply embedded in the sociocultural milieu which
one is born with and/or has to live with.
ii. Disconnection between a person’s plans of life and identity: In connection
to Rawls’ voluntaristic conception of choices of one’s end and/or plan of
life, such choices can hardly be a constitutive part of one identity, that is,
these ends and plans of life could not have been owned permanently and
continuously by oneself because they are subject to changes in
accordance with one’s preferences or desires. However, to Sandel or
communitarians in general, the process of personal identification is in
essence a social interacting process. It is a balance, negotiation or even
conflict between one’s self-aspirations and the social obligation to family,
tribe, social class, nation, or any social bondage to which one belong.
iii. Disconnection between personal identity and sense of community and
common good: Accordingly, “Rawls’ conception of the self commits him
to an impoverished understanding of political community. …On Rawls’
view a sense of community describe a possible aim of antecedently
individuated selves, not an ingredient of their identity. Essentially
communal goods thereby find their place only as one type of contender
amongst many.” (Mulhall and Swift, 1996, P. 52) To the communitarians,
a community can be conceived as a home in which one can attach one’s
ii.
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sense of belonging, attribute one’s vocation for life and one’s meaning
of existence.
b. Rawls’ flaws on the conception of community
i. A society is but a field of cooperation between antecedently individuated
rational choosers of ends based primarily on their independent
preferences and personal desires.
ii. The value of society is defined simply by its capacity to guarantee
individual freedom in realization of personal preferences and desires
iii. Apart from the fulfillment of individual freedom, a society is excluded from
any possibility of constituting any forms of common good, such as
fraternity or common and care.
B. Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism
1. Alasdair MacIntyre, a globally renowned Scottish philosopher, published his
work After Virtue in 1981. It is a work not focused specifically Rawls’ A Theory
of Justice but a comprehensive critique on liberalism espoused in modern
society since the project of the Enlightenment. And the work presents a
comprehensive thesis on moral philosophy from the communitarian
perspective.
2. MacIntyre begins his thesis by criticizing the moral doctrine, which he calls
emotivism. To MacIntyre, “emotivism is the doctrines that all evaluative
judgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but
expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling, insofar as they
are moral or evaluative in character. …But moral judgment, being expression
of attitude or feeling, are neither true nor false; and agreement in moral
judgment is not to be secured by any rational method, for there are none. It is
to be secured, if at all, by producing certain non-rational effects on the
emotions or attitudes of those who disagree with one. We use moral judgments
not only to express our own feelings attitudes, but also precisely to produce
such effects in others.” (MacIntyre, 2007[1981], P. 11-12)
3. MacIntyre then traces this emotivistic orientation prevailing in current moral
debates back to of current contemporary back to the Enlightenment project and
more specifically to moral philosophies of “Kierkegaard, Kant, Hume, Smith
and their contemporaries” of the Enlightenment. (P.51)
a. Kant’s motto of the Enlightenment:
"Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is
man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from
another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of
reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from
another. Sapere aude (Dare to know)! 'Have courage to use your own
reason!' - that is the motto of enlightenment." (Kant, 1996/1784)
b. Accompany with the historical events of Reformation and Scientific
Revolution, moral philosophers of the Enlightenment such as Immanuel Kant
endowed humans with the capacity to reason practically and morally of their
plan of life, ends of life or in MacIntyre’s words “human telos”.
i. As a result, the moral issue of human telos confronting modern man had
practically changed from the project of “man-as-he-could-be-if-he
realized-his-essential nature” to that of “man-as-he-happen-to-be”. (2007,
P. 52)
ii. Furthermore, the whole project of ethics, which was supposed “to enable
man to pass from his present state (or untutored human nature) to his
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true end (or notion of man-as-he-could-be-if-he realized-his-telos)” was
left in disarray since the Classical characters of human telos were
replaced with the enlightened minds of free-will and autonomy, who could
make choices on “man-as-he-happen-to-be” or even
“man-as-he-feel-happy-to-be).
4. MacIntyre’s project of After Virtue
a. Confronted with the prevailing emotivism in current moral discourse or more
specifically the modern mobile psyches endowed with free-will and
autonomy but striped off the human telos; MacIntyre set him to the pursuit
after the long lost concept of virtue, which can trace back to Aristotle writings.
b. To begin with, MacIntyre underlines in retrospect that “we have at least three
very different conceptions of a virtue to confront: a virtue is a quality which
enables an individual to discharge his or her social role (Homer); a virtue is a
quality which enables an individual to move towards the achievement of the
specifically human telos, whether natural or supernatural (Aristotle, the New
Testament and Aquinas); a virtue is quality which has utility in achievement
earthly and heavenly success.” (P. 185)
b. MacIntyre suggests that “the complex, historical, multi-layered character of
the core concept of virtue” can be logically developed in three stages.
“The first stage requires a background account of what I shall call a practice,
the second an account of what I have …characterized as the narrative order
of a single human life and the third an account …of what constitutes a moral
tradition. Each latter stage presupposes the earlier, but not vice versa. Each
earlier stage is both modified by and reinterpreted in the light of, but also
provides an essential constituent of each later stage. The progress in the
development of the concept is closely related, although it does not
recapitulate in any straightforward way, the history of the tradition of which it
forms the core.” (Pp. 186-87)
c. The concept of practice
i. “By a ‘practice’ I am going to mean any coherent and complex form of
socially established cooperative human activity through which goods
internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to
achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and
partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human
powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and
goods involve, are systematically extended. …The game of football is,
and so is chess. Bricklaying is not a practice; architecture is. Planting
turnips is not a practice; farming is. So are enquiries of physics,
chemistry and biology, and so is the work of the historian, and so are
painting and music.” (P.187) So are practices of modern professions
such as doctors, lawyers and teachers.
ii. Taken professional practices in Anglo-American societies as examples,
a ‘practice’ embodies a number of definitive features
- The notion of “goods internal to the practice”: It is suggested that
participants in a ‘practice’ will more or less experience intrinsic
meaning and reward, i.e. internal good, from the cooperative activities
and practice. Hence, participants are supposedly motivated not by
some material rewards or value external to the activities themselves.
- Authority of the standards and paradigms operative in the practice:
There are definitive standards and paradigms developed and
accumulated within a practice. And an authority of assessing such
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standards and paradigms will be established and universally
recognized by practitioners within a practice.
- A framework of reasoning: A framework of due course handling
disputes among practitioners on standards or/and paradigms of a
practice will develop and be observed by its members.
- A form of life and vocation: Accordingly, members of a practice may
develop a communal form of life and a sense of vocation among
themselves.
iii. Virtue of practice: By locating the notion of virtue with the context of
practice. MacIntyre proposes following tentative definition of a virtue:
“A virtue is an acquired human quality the possession and exercise
of which tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are
internal to practices and the lack of which effectively prevents us
from achieving any such goods.” (MacIntyre, 2007, p. 191, emphasis
original)
These internal goods to a “practice” include
- Truthfulness and trust: It refers to the disposition and capacity of
remain truthful to the definitive standard and paradigm established
with a practice. At the same time, it expects the practitioners to trust
their fellow practitioners, as well as the prevailing authority and
reasoning framework within a practice. Finally, the practitioners of a
professional practice are also required to be truthful and trustworthy to
their clients as well as the general public.
- Justice: “Justice requires that we treat others in respect of merit or
desert according to uniform and impersonal standards: to depart from
the standards of justice in some particular instance defines our
relationship with the relevant person as in some way special or
distinctive.” (P. 192)
- Courage: “We hold courage to be a virtue because the care and
concern for individuals, communities and causes which is so crucial
to so much in practices requires the existence of such a virtue. If
someone says that he cares for some individual, community or cause,
but is unwilling to risk harm or danger on his, her or its own behalf, he
puts in question the genuineness of his care and concern. Courage,
the capacity to risk harm or danger to oneself, has its role to human
life because of this connection with care and concern.” (P. 192)
iv. The relativity of virtue to code of practice: “I take it then that from the
standpoint of those types of relationship without which practices cannot
be sustained trustfulness, justice and courage ― and perhaps some
others ― are genuine excellences, are virtues in the light of which we
have to characterize ourselves and others, whatever our private moral
standpoint or our society’s particular codes may be. For this recognition
that we cannot escape the definition of our relationships in terms of such
goods is perfectly compatible with the acknowledgement that different
societies have and have had different codes of truthfulness, justice and
courage.” (p. 192)
d. Concept of narrative:
i. After virtue in practical pluralism in modern society: By locating his
conception of virtue in terms of practices within the context of modern
society, which are filled with varieties of value orientations, codes of
practices and forms of life, MacIntyre underlines that it is practically
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ii.
iii.
iv.
v.
vi.
implausible to maintain a comprehensive virtue for one’ life as a whole,
as the Aristotelians pledge. MacIntyre characterizes this modern
situation in three ways:
- “Multiplicity of goods”, “too many conflict and too much arbitrariness”
in modern society (P. 201)
- “Without an overriding conception of the telos of a whole human life,
conceived as unitary, …individual virtues remain partial and
incomplete.” (P. 202)
- Inability to maintain the virtue of integrity and one’s identity in
consistency and continuity
To reconcile this modern-man dilemma of “liquidation of the self into a
set of demarcated areas of role-playing”, (P. 205) MacIntyre suggests
that modern men or more specifically “modern agents” have to
constitute and impute “narrative” to all those multiplicity of goods, variety
of telos of life, conflicts of role expectations and to integrate them as
much as possible into an intelligible, meaningful or even morally
defensible whole, i.e. a storyline.
A narrative is therefore a literal device invited by human beings to
organize all the discrete incidents in life into a sequential (chronological),
intelligible and accountable whole, i.e. a storyline. As MacIntyre
underlines,
“Man is in his action and practice…essentially a story-telling animal. He
is not essentially, but becomes through his history, a teller of stories that
aspire to truth. But the key question for man is not about their own
authorship; I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can
answer the prior question ‘of what story or stories do I find myself a
part?’ We enter human society …with one or more imputed
characters …and we have to learn what they are in order to be able to
understand how other respond to us and how our responses to them are
apt to be construct.” (P. 216)
It is only in this process of construction of one’ own narrative that a man
can practically become an “agent” that is, in Jerome Bruner’s terms, the
"empowered protagonist" (1987, P. 19) who possess both the will and
ability to set the course of actions and to fulfill the plan of life for oneself.
In an article entitle “Life as Narrative” Bruner stipulates that "stories are
about the vicissitudes of human intention." (1987, P.18) And "story
structure (especially self narrative) is …composed of …an Agent, an
Action, a Goal, a setting, an Instrument―and Trouble. Trouble is what
drives the drama, and it is generated by a mismatch between two or
more of the five constituents." (p. 18)
In analytical narrative studies, a number of constituting devices
commonly used by narrators have been identified. They include
- Selective appropriations of events (Somers, 1994)
- Temporal and chronological sequence (White, 1987; Somers, 1994)
- Emplotment (White, 1987; Somers, 1994; Ricouer, 1991a, 1991b)
- The closure (White, 1987)
In a process of self narrative, though one cannot be the author of the
story but one can never the least be the narrator and the main character
or even hero of the storyline. In other words, he can narrate one’s
life-story in a way to make it an intelligible and accountable unity. An in
fact, MacIntyre underlines that unity, intelligibility and accountability are
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three of the essential constituents of a narrative.
vii. The end result of all these narrating efforts according to MacIntyre is the
emergence as well as constitution of the personal identity. In his own
words, “the concepts of narrative, intelligibility, and accountability
presuppose the applicability of the concept of personal identity, just as it
presupposes their applicability and just as indeed each of these three
presupposes the applicability of the other two. The relationship is one of
mutual presuppositions.” (P. 218)
“Unity of human life is the unity of a narrative quest. …The only criteria
for success or failure in a human life as a whole are the criteria of
success or failure in narrated or to-be-narrated quest.”
ix. Accordingly, MacIntyre provide a second definition of his concept of
virtue. “The virtues therefore are to be understood as those dispositions
which will not only sustain practices and enable us to achieve the goods
internal to practices, but which will also sustain us in the relevant kind of
quest for the good, by enabling us to overcome the harms, dangers,
temptations and distractions which we encounter, and which will furnish
us with increasing self-knowledge and increasing knowledge of the
good.” (P. 219)
e. The concept of tradition:
i. The contextuality of virtue: Building on the concepts of practice and
narrative, MacIntyre proceed to the third stage of his quest for virtue. He
emphasizes that such a quest and constitution of one’s own virtue could
never take place in a individuated and asocial context. In MacIntyre’s
own words,
“I am never able to seek for the good or exercise the virtue only qua
individual. This is partly because what is to live the good life concretely
varies from circumstance to circumstance even when it is one and the
same conception of good life and the same set of virtues which are
being embodies in a human life. …It is not just that different individuals
live in different social circumstances; it is also that we all approach our
own circumstance as bearers of a particular social identity. I am
someone’s son or daughter, someone else’s cousin or uncle; I am a
citizen of this or that city, a member of this or that guild or profession; I
belong to this clan, that tribe, this nation. Hence what is good for me has
to be the good for one who inhabits these roles. As such, I inherit form
the past of my family, my city, my tribe, my nation, a variety of debts,
inheritances, rightful expectations and obligations. These constitute the
given for my life, my moral starting point. This is in part what gives my
life its own moral particularity.” (MacIntyre, 2007, P. 220)
ii. Historicity of the social identity and moral self: Having located the quest
for virtue within particular contexts and role-sets, MacIntyre further his
pursuit by injecting the historical dimension into the quest for virtue.
“I am born with a past; and to try to cut myself off from that past, in the
individualist mode, is to deform my present relationships. The
possession of an historical identity and the possession of a social
identity coincide. …Notice also that the fact that the self has to find its
moral identity in and through its membership in communities such as
those of the family, the neighborhood, the city and the tribe does not
entail that the self has to accept the moral limitations of the
particularities of those forms of community. Without those moral
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particularities to begin from there would never be anywhere to begin; but
it is in moving forward from such particularity that the search for the
good, for the universal, consists. Yet particularity can never be simply
left behind and obliterated.” (2007, P. 221)
iii. Identity, virtue and tradition: Apart from the contetxuality and historicity,
the concept of self identity and moral self are also essentially embedded
in the notion of tradition.
“What I am, therefore, is in the key part what I inherit, a specific past that
is present to some degree in my present. I find myself part of a
history …whether I like it or not, whether I recognize it or not, one of the
bearers of a tradition. It was important …to notice that practices always
have histories and that at any given moment what a practice is depends
on a mode of understanding it which has been transmitted often through
many generations. And thus, insofar as the virtue sustains the
relationships required for practices, they have to sustain relationship to
the past ― and to the future ― as well as in the present.” (2007, P.221)
iv. Concept of a living tradition: In contrast to the liberals’ conception of
tradition which is an embodiment of conservativism and stifling to
reasoning and progress, MacIntyre underlines the concept of living
tradition:
“A living tradition…is an historically extended, socially embodied
argument, and an argument precisely in part about goods which
constitute that tradition. Within a tradition the pursuit of goods extends
through generations, sometime through many generations. Hence the
individual’s search for his or her good is generally and characteristically
conducted within a context defined by those traditions of which the
individual’s life is part, and this is true both of those goods which are
internal to practice and of the goods of a single life.” (P. 222)
C. John Rawls’ “Political Conception of Justice”: A Response to Communitarian’s
Critiques
1. In 1993, twenty-two years after the publication of A Theory of Justice, John
Rawls published his second major work entitled Political Liberalism. It is a
collection of revised articles, which Rawls produced through the years in
respond to critiques in different occasions.
2. In comparison with his stance taken in A Theory of Justice, John Rawls has
simply revised his conception just to be a “political conception of justice”.
(Rawls, 1993, P. 223) I his own words,
“In saying a conception of justice is political I …mean three things: (i) that it is
framed to apply solely to the basic structure of society, its main political, social
and economic institutions as a unified scheme of social cooperation; (ii) that it
is presented independently of any wider comprehensive religious or
philosophical doctrine; and (iii) that it is elaborated in terms of fundamental
political ideas viewed as implicit in the public political culture of democratic
society.” (Rawls, 1993, 223, my numbering; see also Rawls, 1993, Pp. 11-15)
3. The conception of public justifiability and political constructivism
a. The essence of the elaboration of the conception of justice as political is
that Rawls has made a number of concessions in his original theory of
justice
i. The sphere of deliberation is no longer covering the society as a whole,
but it only confines to public or more specifically political sphere.
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ii. The participants in the deliberation are no long free and equal choosers
in all aspects of their lives, but confine to the role of citizens in civil
democratic polity.
iii. The subjects to be deliberated are also confined to public goods and
their distributions among citizens of a given polity.
b. Accordingly, Rawls has also located his theory of justice within particular
institutional and cultural contexts, namely the political in institution of
constitutional and liberal democracy and the political culture of a
“reasonable” public who can come to a “stable” “overlapping consensus”.
c. The conception of political construtivism: In connection to these
concessions, Rawls suggests that “Justice as fairness is best presented in
two stages. In the first stage it is worked out as a freestanding political (but
of course moral) conception for the basic structure of society. Only with this
done and its content ― its principles of justice and ideals ― provisionally on
hand do we take up, in the second stage, the problem whether justice as
fairness is sufficiently stable.” (Pp.140-41)
d. Replacement of the original position with the constructivism of the political
culture of public reasonability: This two-stage conception of political
constructivism may be construed in the context of criticism on Rawls
hypothetical conception of original position and veil of ignorance. It serves
as the precondition of the deliberation of the theory of justice as fairness.
“Given the fact of reasonable pluralism, citizens cannot agree on any moral
authority, whether a sacred text, or institution. Not do they agree about the
order of moral values, or the dictates of what some regard as natural law.
We adopt, then, a constructivist view to specify the fair terms of social
cooperation as given by the principles of justice agreed to by the
representativeness of free and equal citizens when fairly situated. The
bases of this view lie in fundamental ideas of the political culture as well as
in citizens’ shared principles and conceptions of practice reason. Thus, if
the procedure can be correctly formulated, citizens should be able to accept
its principles and conceptions along with their reasonable comprehensive
doctrine. The political conception of justice can then serve as the focus of
an overlapping consensus.” (P. 97)
4. Rawls become a communitarian liberal
Taken together all the concessions and reformulations Rawls has made in
Political Liberalism, we may conclude that his political liberalism stipulated in
his two principles of justice have been embedded into a concrete political
community within which
a. the institutional practices of public reasonability of a constitutional-liberal
democracy have been firmly in place;
b. the narrative of citizenship of civil-constitutional democracy has been
commonly shared by its citizens
c. the culture of democratic reasonability from which overlapping
consensuses have been reached from generation to generation and has
been a tradition.
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MVE6030
The Good Society and Its Educated Citizens
Topic 3-B (Lectures 4 & 5)
Liberals’ Reformulation of the Idea of Justice
A. Ronald Dworkin’s Search for the Foundation of Liberal Equality
Ronald Dworkin (1931-2013), one the prominent scholars in political philosophy
and jurisprudence (the philosophy of law) in the US, has formulated a liberal
theory of justice, which differs substantively from Rawls’s. He aims to constitute
an ethical foundation for comprehensive conception of justice for the liberals,
whom he has characterized as ethical liberal.
1. Dworkin’s critiques on Rawls’ contractarianism: Dworkin first of all points to
Rawls’ liberal theory of justice lacking any ethical foundation.
a. Dworkin’s critique on Rawls’s strategy of discontinuity: disagrees with
Rawls’s compromise suggested in Political Liberalism that his idea of justice
is but a “political conception”, that is, the idea of justice “is presented
independently of any wider comprehensive religious or philosophical
doctrine.” (Rawls, 1993, P. 233) Dworkin accurses Rawls of adopting a kind
of “strategy of discontinuity”, which separate the political conception of
justice from “personal perspective of our ethical ideal”. (Dworkin, 1995, Pp.
199-209) Rawls’ two principles of justice are confined to be applicable only
within the political domain; as a result, Rawls’ theory of justice is voided of
any ethical foundation or conception of good live.
b. Dworkin’s critique on Rawls’s contractarianism: Dworkin further criticizes
that if we follow Rawls formulation of justice as political conception and
understand the idea of justice “as constructed just for politics, in the way a
contract is constructed for some special commercial occasion, then no
question can arise about the consistency of that political perspective with
anyone ‘s personal ethical perspective. Someone can agree to occupy an
artificial, purpose-built political perspective without subscribing to its
principles as his own, just as he can agree to be bound by a contract without
accepting that its terms are perfectly fair or even reasonable.” (Dworkin,
1995, P. 204)
c. Dworkin’s critique on Rawls’ contractarianism of ignorance: Finally, Dworkin
also underlines that “In Rawls’s version of the social contract…each party
negotiates to advance the interest of people he represents, by of whose
actual concrete interests he is nearly wholly ignorant.” (Dworkin, 1995, P.
278) In other words, persons under Rawls contractarianism of veil of
ignorance are striped off any capacity of ethical reasoning and reflectivity.
2. Dworkin’s models of “critical ethical value” inquiry (value inquiry)
a. Distinction between volitional and critical well-beings: To Dworkin, ethical
value enquiry is the effort to address the question: “what kind of goodness
does a good life have?” (Dworkin, 1995 P.229) Dworkin makes a distinction
of two types of “well-being” i.e. good life. They are the volitional and critical
well-being
i. Volitional well-being: “Someone’s volitional well-being is improved and
just for that reason, when he has or achieves what in fact he wants.”
Hence, volitional interests are concerned with getting what one wants.
And fulfillments of one’s wants and/or desires are the sole interest of the
volitional well-being.
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ii.
Critical well-being: It involves taking into consideration not only what one
wants but critically reflecting whether the wants in point and their
fulfillments are ethically and morally right. Improvement of critical
well-being will entail statement such as “my life is not worse life to have
lived―I have nothing to regret, still least to take shame in.” (P. 230) In
other words, critical well-being involves one’s inner self, self-worth,
self-respect, dignity, self- guilt, and self-shame.
In light of this distinction, Dworkin underlines that “our project of finding a
liberal ethics as a foundation for liberal politics must concentrate on critical
as distinct from volitional well-being. We need an account of what people’s
critical interests are that will show why people who accept that account and
care about their own and other people’s critical well-being will be led
naturally toward some form of liberal polity and practice.” (Dworkin, 1995,
P.233).
b. The components of critical-ethical-value inquiry
According to Dworkin, persons adhere to critical well-being are confronted
by a series of “puzzles”. In order to resolve the critical question of whether
one’s life is intrinsically good, a human agent has to inquire into each of
them. The puzzles includes
i. Significance: Thinking of one’s critical well-being, a person has to first of
all attribute some meaning, meaningfulness, or even importance to his
daily living or even his life. One must inquire into questions: “In what
sense of from what perspective could that be important? How can it
matter what happens in the absurdly tiny space and time of a single
human life? Or even in the tiny episode of all sentient life taken
together? ….How can we reconcile these two ideas: that life is nothing
and that how we live is everything?” (Dworkin, 1995, P. 234-5)
ii. Transcendent or indexed? Having identified the significance and
importance of one’ critical well-being, a person then has to decide
whether these “ethical values are transcendent, that is, that the
components of a good life are always and everywhere the same.”
Conversely, one may opt for the ethical stance that “there is no such
things as the single good life for everyone, that ethical standards are in
some way indexed to culture and ability and resource and other aspect
of one’s circumstance, so that the best life for a person in one situation
may be very different from the best life for someone else in another.”
(Dworkin, 1995, P.235)
iii. Ethics and morality (limitations and parameters): Having addressed the
dilemma between transcendent or indexed, the third puzzle is “what is
the connection between self-interest and morality?” (Dworkin, 1995,
P.235) Or more specifically, what is ethical value relate to moral value?
Dworkin in his more recent work has made the distinction between
ethics and morality as follow
“I use the term ‘ethical’ and ‘moral’ in what might seem a special way.
Moral standard prescribe how we ought to treat others; ethical standard,
how we ought to live ourselves. …But we would then have to recognize
the distinction I draw …in order to ask whether our desire to lead good
lives for ourselves provides a justifying reason for our concern with what
we owe to others.” (Dworkin, 2011, P.191)
In other words, in pursuing one’s well-being (either critical or volitional)
should one solely consider one own interests or take into account of
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11
other fellow human’s interests? More generally, in pursuing one's
well-being, should the circumstances (including moral as well as
physical circumstances) in which one find himself be taken as limitation
or parameters?
iv. Additive or constitutive? The fourth component of critical value inquiry
elevates our inquiry to the level on how and on what ground should we
judge whether some else’s life is a good and decent life. According to
Dworkin, there are two ways to answer this question. One way is simply
ask whether some desirable attributes, which we count as components
of a good life, have been found manifested in the behaviors and/or
relationship of someone whom we are to pass our judgments. Dworkin
has characterized this way of evaluating good life as additive, that is, we
are simply looking for some explicit, objective and additive attributes of
good life demonstrated by someone in his behaviors or relationship. The
second way is ask further whether the good deed or decent relationship
demonstrated are consciously endorsed and actively pursued by the
person under evaluation. Dworkin called this evaluation constitutive, that
is, the good deed and decent relationship have to be a constitutive part
of one’s ethical and moral consciousness and not just some explicit and
objective acts one happen to engage accidentally.
v. Ethics and community: Dworkin suggests that “the final set of puzzles …
raise the question of the unit of ethical value, that is, of the entity whose
life ethnics aims to make good.” (Dworkin, 1995, P. 238)
Once again, Dworkin has suggested two distinct way to in inquire into
this issue. On the one hand, we can reside our critical well-being and
ethics in general entirely on oneself, that is, “each of us has ultimate
responsibility for deciding what kind of life is right for him.” (Dworkin,
1995, P. 238) Hence the unit of ethical evaluation is entirely personal.
One the other hand, we can identify that “the most fundamental ethical
unit is collective not individual, that the question of whether my life is
going well is subordinate to the question whether, for some group of
which I am a member, our life is going well. …This supposes that a
community has an ethical life of its own and that the critical success of
any individual’s life depends to some degree on the critical success of
the life of his community. …Some people …feel a personal failure when
their own nation acts unjustly and wickedly, even when they have played
no part in the injustice and have even tried to prevent it.” (Dworkin,
1995, P. 239)
c. Models of critical ethical value: Having posited these five puzzles and
worries about the ethical life and well-being of human beings, Dworkin
juxtapose two different ways to resolve these ethical puzzles. He
categorizes these two models of critical value as “model of impact” and
“model of challenge”.
i. Model of impact: The model “holds that the value of good life consists in
its product, that is its consequences for the rest of the world.” (Dworkin,
1995, P. 240) Accordingly, a life can be evaluated by the value it brings
to the objective states of affairs of the world. “A life can achieve more or
less value …not because it is intrinsically more valuable to live one’s life
rather than another, but because living in one way can have better
consequences.” (Dworkin, 1993, P. 242) Dworkin’s model of impact may
be conceived as similar to consequentialist model of ethics, or more
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specifically, closely related utilitarianism, which bases its ethic value on
the amount of utility that a life could bring to the material world.
ii. Model of challenge: The model “argues that the value of good life lies in
the inherent value of a skillful performance of living.” (Dworkin, 1995, P.
241) It basically adopts Aristotle’s and MacIntyre’s concept of virtue and
views “a good life has the inherent value of skillful performance. So it
holds that events and achievements and experiences can have ethical
value even when they have no impact beyond the life in which they
occur. …Living a life is itself a performance that demands skill, that is the
most comprehensive and important challenge we face, and that our
critical interests consist in the achievements, events, and experiences
that mean that we have met the challenge well.” (Dworkin, 1995, P. 244)
d. Guiding framework for inquiry of critical ethical values: By juxtaposing the
two models of ethical values against the five constituent issues in critical
value inquiry, Dworkin has construct a framework guiding the inquiry of
critical ethical values: (see Table I)
3. Justice as parameter in the model of challenge: Set off from the model of
challenge, Dworkin’s approach to the humans’ pursuit of their critical well-being
takes on the idea of justice one of the prominent parameter that human agents
must account for along his course of challenge.
a. Two internal problems of Rawls’ Second Principle of Justice (the Different
Principle): The precedent criticisms of Rawls theory of Justice waged by
communitarians mainly concentrate on the external problems of the theory,
i.e. its ontological and communal assumptions. However, Dworkin has
revealed two internal problems of the theory within the tradition of liberalism.
(see also Kymlicka 2002, Ch. 3). According to the Second Principle of justice,
inequality of primary goods should only be distributed unequally to the
benefits of the least advantaged, however, Rawls has failed to address the
causes contributing to the state of least advantaged and least well-off which
people found themselves. Dworkin has made three distinctive causes of the
least well-off.
i. People are least well-off because of unequal share of natural
endowments, such as talent, heath, physical ability, etc. Dworkin
characterizes them as personal resources.
ii. People are least well-off because of unequal share of socioeconomic
endowments, such as socioeconomic backgrounds, cultural-linguistic
background, or even racial and/or ethnical backgrounds, which are
disadvantageous in a given society. Dworkin called them impersonal
resources.
iii. Given equal shares in resources, people may end up being least well-off
because of costly or even unwise choice, such as gambling or wasteful
life-styles; or voluntary choice, such as religious belief.
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Table I: Dworkin’s Guiding Framework for Inquiry of Critical Ethical Values
Significance
(Substance of
goodness in
life)
Model of Impact
Goodness is evaluated by the
objective impact on the state affairs
of the world that a life can produce,
e.g. increase total utility in the world.
Transcendent
or indexed
(Point of
reference)
In this model "ethical value must be
transcendent … because it is very
implausible that the objective value
of state of affairs depends on their
time or location." (1995, P. 249)
Limitations &
parameters
In producing impacts on the world,
circumstantial conditions are taken
as limitations which will not be taken
into account in ethical evaluation.
(Circumstances)
Additive or
constitutive
(Criterion)
"Ethical value is additive rather than
constitutive on the impact model,
because ethical value is a matter of
the objective value a life adds to the
universe."
Ethics and
community
(Unit of
Evaluation)
In facing dilemma between ethics as
social or individual, the model of
impact adopt more or less the game
theory perspective. Individuals are
strategically related in their pursuits
of producing greatest impacts. For
example, in the well known
game-theory model of "prisoners'
dilemma … individuals each acting
rationally to advance his own
interests will together do what is
worse for each." (Dworkin, 1995, P.
274) However, Dworkin suggests
that each may "do better to ask, not
how he could have the maximum
impact, but how some group might,
and then to do his part in that group'
project." (ibid) Hence, it changes the
situation to the model of "stag hunt".
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Model of Challenge
Goodness is measured by the
delivery of performance and
exercise of skills in face of
challenge in life in disregard of its
impact on external world.
For the model of challenge, "ethical
value is indexed rather than
transcendent." (1995, P. 250) It is
because the value of one's
performance and skills
demonstrated in confronting
challenges depend on the particular
"circumstances" in which one find
himself.
In meeting the challenge in life, the
circumstances one faced is taken
as parameter, that is, they are
conditions and variables which may
affect one's performance and must
be taken into account in ethical
evaluation.
In the model of challenge, the virtue
put forth by the performer in
meeting the challenge is evaluated
by the subjective ethical value that
the performer ascribe to his effort
and skills. "For intention is part of
performance: we do not give credit
to a performer for some feature of
his performance he was struggling
to avoid, or world not recognize,
even in retrospect, as good or
desirable." (1995, P.264)
For the model of challenge, since
the ethical value of one's
performance in meeting the
challenge in life is "indexed" by the
circumstances in which one is
embedded, taking in account of his
social and communal
circumstances is a natural part in
evaluating the goodness of one's
llife.
14
b. Injustice in the Second Principle: In Rawls’ Second Principle, there is no
distinction to these three types of least well-off. And they are given
indiscriminating compensation to their amount of primary goods.
i. For Type (i) least disadvantaged, a blanket and non-discriminating
compensations with the other types of least well-off is itself unjust. Given
their disadvantages in natural endowments, they may need more
compensation in order to be able to develop and research to the similar
level of well-being as those having average level of natural endowments.
ii. Apart from the amount of compensation, to Type (i) least disadvantaged,
the content of the compensation is also essential. In Rawls’ Second
Principle compensation only comes as welfare (i.e. end result in the form
of primary goods) but numbers of political philosophers have argued that
they should also come at the commencing stage of their developments,
as resources (Dworkin, 1995), as capacity (Sen, 1995) and as Access
(Cohen, 2011).
iii. For Type (ii) least advantaged, they should of course be compensated in
the form of both as resource and as welfare.
iv. As for Type (iii) least advantaged, especially those of costly and/or
unwise choosers, Dworkin argues that it is unjust to compensate them.
Hence, as Will Kymlicka aptly put it “Rawls himself leaves too much room for
the influence of natural inequality, and at the same time leaves too little room
for the influence of our choice.” (2002, P. 70)
4. Dworkin’s theory of justice of liberal equality: To address the internal problems
of Rawls’ Second Principle, Dworkin construct his theory of justice in a series of
articles. (1995, see also 1981a & b, 1987a &b, 1989)They theory can
presented diagrammatically as follow.
W.K. Tsang
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15
And Dworkin claims that his model of “liberal equality represents equality,
liberty and community as fused together in an overall political ideal.” (Dworkin,
1995, P. 226)
B. Amartya Sen’s Contributions to the Theoretical Discourse of Justice
Amartya Sen, and Indian economist and philosopher, the Nobel Laureate in
economic sciences in 1998, and an internationally renowned philosopher, has
published extensively on the concept of justice. He has summarized his decades
long contributions to the discourse of the theory of justice in his recent book The
Idea of Justice (2009),
1. Two of the main theses of Sen’s idea of the justice are generated from two of
the fundamental critiques on Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. They are
a. Replacement of distributive justice of “primary goods” with distributive justice
of “capabilities”; and
b. Replacement of “transcendental institutionalism” with “realization-focused
comparison” in the perspectives of justice studies.
2. The capability approach to justice:
a. Sen begins his critique on Rawls’ theory of justice by taking issue with Rawls’
focusing his two principles of justice solely on fair distributions of primary
goods. In a lecture delivered in 1979 entitled “Equality of What?” Sen argues
that “there is, in fact, an element of ‘fetishism’ in the Rawlsian framework.
Rawls takes primary goods as the embodiment of advantage.” Sen
underlines that “judging advantage purely in terms of primary goods leads to
a partially blind morality.” (Sen, 1980, P. 216)
i. In relation to Rawls’ first principle of justice, which sets priority to the fair
distribution of basic liberty, Sen writes recently that “it has argue that the
total priority of liberty is too extreme. Why should we regard hunger,
starvation and medical neglect to be invariably less important that the
violation of any kind of personal liberty? …It is indeed possible to accept
that liberty must have some kind of priority, but total unrestrained priority
is almost certainly an overkill. There are, for example, many different
types of weighting schemes that can give partial priority to one concern
over another.” (Sen, 2009, P. 65)
ii. As in connection with the second principle of justice and more
specifically difference principle, Rawls’ problem of focusing mainly on
the fair distribution outcomes of primary goods for the benefits of the
least advantaged is much more evident. Sen suggests that “in the
difference principle, Rawls judges the opportunities that people have
through the means they possess, without taking into account the wide
variations they have in being able to convert primary goods into good
living. For example, a disable person can do far less with the same level
of income and other primary goods than can an able bodied human
being. A pregnant woman needs, among other things, more nutritional
support than another person who is not bearing a child. The conversion
of primary goods into the capacity to do various things that a person may
value doing can vary enormously with differing inborn characteristics (for
example, propensities to suffer from some inherited diseases), as well
as disparate acquired features or the divergent effects of varying
environmental surroundings (for example, living in a neighbourhood with
endemic presence, or frequent outbreaks, of infectious diseases). There
is, thus, a strong case for moving from focusing on primary goods to
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actual assessment of freedoms and capabilities.” (Sen, 2009, P. 65-66)
b. Conceptualization of capability:
i. A shift of the informational focus of studies of justice: Sen begins his
construction of the capability approach to justice with his conception of
“informational focus”. He suggests that “ Any substantive theory of ethics
and political philosophy, particularly any theory of justice, has to choose
an informational focus, that is, it has to decide which features of the
world we should concentrate on in judging a society and in assessing
justice and in justice.” (Sen, 2009, P. 231) Sen points out that there have
been various informational focuses at work in the studies of justice, for
examples utilitarianism focuses on utility and its entailed satisfaction,
Rawls focuses on the holdings of primary goods, and Dworkin focuses
on resource holdings with reference to “liberal equality”, etc. (Sen, 1993,
p. 30) Instead, Sen bases his theory of justice on the informational focus
of capabilities and freedoms.
ii. The conception of “functioning”: Sen underlines that the most primitive
notion in the capability approach is the idea of “functionings”. He
conceptualizes that “functionings represent parts of the state of a person
─in particular the various things that he or she manages to do or be in
leading a life. …Some functionings are very elementary, such as being
adequately nourished, being in good health, etc., and may be strongly
valued by all, for obvious reasons. Others may be more complex, but still
widely valued, such as achieving self or being socially integrated.
Individual may, however, differ a good deal from each other in the
weights they attach to these different functionings.” (Sen, 1993, P. 31)
iii. The conception of capability: Accordingly, “the capability of a person
reflects the alternative combinations of fuctionings the person can
achieve, and from which he or she choose one collection.” (Sen, 1993, P.
31) In short, “capability is our ability to achieve various combinations of
functionings that we can compare and judge against each other in terms
of what we have reason to value.” (Sen, 2009, P. 233)
iv. Distinction between well-being and agency: One of the important
features of the capability approach to justice is to focus not on the
quantity of utility or primary goods to be distributed but on the ability to
achieve “things we may value doing or being”. That is, the assessment
of justice is basically rested on the fair distribution of capabilities through
which members of a society can achieve “what we have reason to value.”
Furthermore, these “things we value doing or being” can analytically be
differentiated into two categories: (1) “the promotion of the person’s
well-being”, and (2) “the pursuit of the person’s overall agency goals.”
(Sen, 1993, P. 35) Accordingly, the idea of capability can be
conceptualized into capability of “agency achievement” and capability of
“well-being achievement” (Sen, 1993, P. 37) Sen has specifically given
priority to the former over the latter. It is because “overall agency goals”
would usually include promotion of one’s well-being. Moreover, in some
critical situations, human agents may choose the achievement of their
agency goals at the expanses of their well-beings. For example, under
foreign invasion, civil soldiers may willing to risk their lives in defending
their country. Hence, to provide the freedom and capability for a person
to achieve his or her agency goal is more fundamental than providing
him or her the capability of maintaining his or her well-being.
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17
v. Distinction between achievement and freedom to achieve: Sen has
further conceptualized the idea of capability with another conceptual
distinction, that is, the distinction between the capability of actually attain
something and the capability of being free to attain the thing valued.
(Sen 2009, P. 235-238) Once again has assigned the priority to the latter
over the former. Sen underlines that such a distinction and prioritization
is important to the capability approach because “it is oriented towards
freedom and opportunities, that is, the actual ability of people to chose to
live different kinds of lives within their reach, rather than confining
attention only to what may be described as the culmination─or
aftermath─of choice.” (Sen, 2009, P. 237)
vi. In summary, the conceptualization of the idea of capability in Sen
capability approach to justice can be presented in the follow table.
Well-being Achievement
Agency Achievement
Actual
Achievement
Well-being Achievement
Agency Achievement
Freedom to
achieve
Well-being Freedom
Agency Freedom
(Adopted from Sen, 1993, P. 35)
Obviously, within Sen’s capability approach to justice the concept of
capability is focused on primarily “agency-freedom” conceptualization
rather than the other three alternatives.
c. Capability, society and public reasoning: Having rested the concept of
capability on the “agency-freedom” footing, Sen further points out the
dilemma between the individualism and communitarianism built in his
concept of capability. That is, within the “agency-freedom” based concept of
capability, we have to decide whether the capability should rest primarily on
individual or on community. To resolve this dilemma, Sen has provided the
following two additional qualifications to his capability approach to justice.
i. Capability and society: Sen has specifically underlines that “identifying
the capability approach as methodological individualism would be
significant mistake.” (Sen, 2009, P. 244) He goes on indicating that “It is
hard…to envision cogently how persons in society can think, choose or
act without being influenced in one way or another by the nature and
working of the world around them. …To note the role of ‘thinking,
choosing and doing’ by individuals is just the beginning of recognizing
what actually does happen, …but we cannot end there without an
appreciation of the deep and pervasive influence of society on our
‘thinking, choosing and doing’. When someone thinks and chooses and
does something, it is, for sure, that person─and not someone else─who
is doing these things. But it would be hard to understand why and how
he or she undertakes these activities without some comprehension of
his or her societal relations.” (Sen, 2009, P. 245) Hence, Sen has
explicated at length how the concept of capability should be construed in
correspondence with the concept of identity, which in Sen’s
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conceptualization is pluralistic, multiple and diverse in nature. (Sen,
2009, P. 247; Sen, 2006)
ii. Capability and public reasoning: Having located the concept capacity at
the social rather than individual level, Sen are facing yet another
problem. That is can a consensus be researched by a society at a given
point in time the conception of capabilities and their ranking? Though
Sen has categorically refuted to work out “some fixed list of relevant
capabilities,” (Sen, 2009, P. 242) yet he does compromise that “the
approach of capability is entirely consistent with a reliance on partial
rankings and on limited agreements. …The main task is to get things
right on the comparative judgements that can be reached through
personal and public reasoning, rather than to feel compelled to opine on
every possible comparison that could be considered.” (Sen, 2009, P.
243) Hence, Sen believes that it is only through what he called
“interactive public reasoning” that we may be able to obtain “a better
understanding of the role, reach, and significance of particular
functionings and their combination.” (Sen, 2009, P. 242)
3. Perspective of realization-focused comparison in the studies of justice: In his
book The Idea of Justice (2009), Sen writes in the introductory chapter, “There
are two basic, and divergent, lines of reasoning about justice among leading
philosophy.” (P.5) “The distance between the two approaches, transcendental
institutionalism, on the one hand, and realization-focused comparison, on the
other, is quite momentous.” (P. 7)
a. By Transcendental institutionalism, it refers to the approach in political
philosophy “led by the work of Thomas Hobbes in the seventeenth century,
and followed in different ways by such outstanding thinkers as
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, concentrated on identifying just institutional
arrangements for society. This approach…has two distinct features.” (Sen,
2009, P. 5)
i. “First, it concentrates its attention on what it identifies as perfect justice,
rather than on relative comparisons of justice and injustice. …The
inquiry is aimed at identifying the nature of ‘the just’, rather than finding
some criteria for an alternative being ‘less unjust’ than another.” (PP.
5-6)
ii. “Second, in searching for perfection, transcendental institutionalism
concentrate primary on getting the institutions right, and it is not directly
focused on actual societies that would ultimately emerge. …It is
important …to note here that transcendental institutionalists in search of
perfectly just institutions have sometime also presented deeply
illuminating analyses of moral and political imperative regarding socially
appropriate behavior. This applies particularly to Immanuel Kant and
John Rawls, both of whom have participated in transcendental
institutional investigation, but have also provide far-reaching analyses of
requirements of behavioural norms.” (P. 6-7)
b. Realization—focused comparison: It refer to “comparative approaches that
were concerned with social realization (resulting from actual institutions,
actual behavior and other influences). …They were all involved in
comparisons of societies that already existed or could feasibly emerge,
rather than confining their analyses on transcendental searches for a
perfectly just society. Those focusing on realization-focused comparisons
were often interested primarily in the removal of manifest injustice from the
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world that they saw.” (Sen, 2009, P. 7)
c. Sen has categorically alleged his work with the perspective of
realization-based comparison. In his own words, “this book (i.e. The Idea of
Justice) is an attempt to investigate realization-based comparisons that
focus on the advancement or retreat of justice. It is, in this respect, not in
line with the strong and more philosophically celebrated tradition of
transcendental institutionalism that emerged in the Enlightenment period
(led by Hobbes and developed by Locke, Rousseau and Kant, among
others), but more the ‘other’ tradition that also took shape in about the
same period or just after (pursued in various way by Smith, Condorcet,
Wollstonecraft, Bentham, Marx, Mill, among others) (Sen, 2009, P. 8-9)
C. Michael Walzer’s Concepts of Complex Equality and Spheres of Justice:
Walzer, a prominent political philosopher in the US, published a book entitle
Spheres of Justice in 1983, to criticize Rawls’ ambition to construct a, if not the,
theory of justice and at the same time outline his theory of complex equality and
spheres of justice.
1. Pluralistic conception of distributive justice:
a. Walzer begins with the argument that “to search for unity is to
misunderstand the subject matter of distributive justice.” (Walzer 1983, P. 4)
b. Instead he underlines, “Different political arrangements enforce, and
different ideologies justifiy, different distributions of membership, power,
honor, ritual eminence, divine grace, kinship and love, knowledge, wealth,
physical security, work and leisure, rewards and punishments, and a host of
goods more narrowly and materially conceived―food, shelter, clothing,
transportation, medical care, commodities of every sort, and the odd things
(printings, rare books, postage stamps) that human beings collect. And this
multiplicity of goods is matched by a multiplicity of distributive procedures,
agents, and criteria.” (Walzer, 1983, P. 3)
3. Membership of distributive community: According to Walzer’s formulation
distribution could only take place within definitive community and distribution
could also be undertaken among eligible and entitled members.
a. In his own words, “human society is a distributive community. …It is
important that: we come together to share, divide, and exchange. We also
come together to make the things that are shared, divided, and exchanged;
but that very making―work itself―is distributed among us in a division of
labor.” (Walzer, 1983, P. 3)
b. Accordingly, the first and most important question in distributive justice is:
How is the distributive community is constituted? Who are members who are
entitled to share, divide, and exchange? Who are the non-members who are
excluded from the distributive game? In short, how membership is defined?
c. Walzer has listed of matrix of membership commonly found in human
society for our reference.
i. enemy,
ii. stranger,
iii. refugee,
iv. guest worker,
v. resident in a territory,
vi. citizen of a sovereign state,
vii. national of a nation,
viii. member of ethnic group,
W.K. Tsang
The Good Society and its Learnt Citizens
20
ix. neighbor,
x. clansman,
xi. family member, etc.
d. Walzer underlines that “the distribution of membership is not pervasively
subject to the constraints of justice.” (Walzer, 1983, P. 61) In fact, throughout
human history, we have witnessed numerous arbitrary and accidental
assignments of membership among socioeconomic, political and cultural
communities.
e. In conclusion, we can see that Walzer is basically in line with Sen in the
approach to the studies justice, which are pluralistic, multiple and diverse in
perspective, incrementally comparative in method, and historical and
sociocultural in context. Such a perspective is of course less attractive,
encompassing and deontological as the transcendental institutionalism
appeal to offer. Nevertheless, it treat the idea of justice as something
attainable, manageable and closed to human live rather than some
metaphysical utopian concept.
Topic 3-C (Lectures 4 & 5)
From Distributive to Relational (Difference-recognition) Justice
A. Iris Young’s Theory of Relational Justice
1. In 1990, Iris Young published her work entitled Justice and the Politics of
Difference, in which she criticizes that the theoretical discourse about justice
has been dominated by the distributive paradigm. Instead she put forth her
theory of relational justice.
2. “Contemporary theories of justice are dominated by a distributive paradigm,
which tends to focus on the possession of material goods and soical positions.
This distributive focus, however, obscures other issues of institutional
organization at the same time that it often particular institutional and practices
as given.” (Young, 1990, P. 8)
3. “Justice should refer not only to distribution, but also to the institutional
conditions necessary for the development and exercise of individual capacities
and collective communication and cooperation. Under the conception of justice,
injustice refers primarily to two forms of disabling constraints, oppression and
domination. While these constraints include distributive patterns, they also
involve matters which cannot easily be assimilated to the logic of distribution:
decision making procedures, division of labor, and culture.” (Young 1990, P. 39)
Hence, the concept of justice should also apply to the social relational domain,
which strives for social relations guaranteeing
a. Self-development: It refers to value of “developing and exercising one’s
capabilities and expressing one’s experiences (Young, 1990, P. 37).
Conversely, it stands against the injustice manifested in the form of
“oppression, the institutional constraint on self-development” (ibid)
b. Self-determination: It refers to value of “participating in determining one’s
action and the conditions of one’s action” (Young, 1990, P. 37) Conversely,
it stands against the injustice of “domination, the institutional constraint on
self-determination. (ibid)
4. Oppression as injustice
a. “Oppression consists in systematic institutional processes which prevent
some people from learning and using satisfying and expansive skills in
socially recognized settings, or institutionalized social processes which
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inhibit people’s ability to play and communicate with others or to express
their feelings and perspectives on social life in contexts where others can
listen.” (Young, 1990, P. 38) Accordingly, young has specified five “faces of
oppression” (Pp. 39-65)
b. Exploitation: “The injustice of exploitation consists in social processes that
bring about a transfer of energies from one group to another to produce
unequal distributions, and in the way in which social institutions enable a
few to accumulate while they constraint many more.” (Young, 1990, p.53)
These exploitation social institution may appears in class, gender and/or
racial relation.
c. Marginalization: “Marginalization is perhaps the most dangerous form of
oppression. A whole category of people is expelled from useful participation
in social life and thus potentially subjected to severe material deprivation
and even extermination.” (p. 53)
“Even if marginals were provided a comfortable material life within
institutions that respected their freedom and dignity, injustices of marginality
would remain in the form of uselessness, boredom, and lack of self-respect.”
(p.55)
d. Powerless: It is a status in which “the powerless lack the authority, status,
and sense of self.” (p.57) As a result, they will experience “inhibition in the
development of one’s capacities, lack of decisionmaking power in one’s
working life, and exposure to disrespectful treatment because of the status
one occupies.” (p.58)
e. Cultural imperialism: “Cultural imperialism involves the universalization of a
group’s experience and culture, and its establishment as the norm. Some
groups have exclusive or primary access to … the means of interpretation
and communication in a society. … This, then, is the injustice of cultural
imperialism: that the oppressed group’s own experience and interpretation
of social life finds little expression that touches the domanint culture, while
that same culture imposes on the oppressed group its experience and
interpretation of social life.” (p.59-60)
f. Violence: “Members of some groups live with the knowledge that they must
fear random, unprovoked attacks on their persons or property, which have
no motive but to damage, humiliate, or destroy the person. (p.61)
5. Domination as injustice
a. “Domination consists in institutional conditions which inhibit or prevent
people from participating in determining their actions or the conditions of
their action Persons live within structures of domination if other persons or
groups can determine without reciprocation the conditions of their action,
either directly or by virtue of the structural consequences of their action.
Thorough social and political democracy is the opposite of domination.”
(Young, 1990, P. 38)
b. “Justice…requires…participation in public discussion and process of
democratic decisionamking. All persons should have the right and
opportunity to participate in the deliberation and decisionmaking of the the
institutions to which their actions contribute or which directly affect their
actions. …Democracy is both an element and a condition of social
justice. …Democracy is also a condition for a public’s arriving at decisions
whose substance and implications best promote substantively just
outcomes. …The argument for this claim relies on Habermas’s conception
of communicative ethnics.” (Pp. 91-92)
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.
c. Habermas’ communicative rationality and ethics
i. Communicative rationality
- “An assertion can be called rational if the speakers satisfies the
conditions necessary to achieve the illocutionary goal of reaching an
understanding about something in the world with at least one other
participant in communication.”(Habermas, 1984, P.11)
- Definition of communicative rationality: “Concept of communicative
rationality carries with it connotation based ultimately on the central
experience of the unconstrained, unifying, consensus-bringing force
of argumentative speech, in which different participants overcome
their merely subjective view and, owing to the mutuality of rationally
motivated conviction, assure themselves of both the unity of the
objective world and the intersubjectivity of their lifeworld.”(Habermas,
1984, P.10)
ii. Communicative ethics (also termed argumentative ethics or discourse
ethics): It refers to the principles that communicatively rational
participants in an argument are willing to observe in conducting their
argumentative claims with the aim of arriving at a mutually acceptable
consensus on the subject matter under discussion or even dispute.
Habermas suggests that these communicative ethics are the normative
bases for the constitution of the ideal communicative situation in which
unrestrained communications can be conducted and mutually
acceptable consensuses are to be researched. These principles include
(Habermas, 1979, P.68; Habermas, 1988, P.23; Forester, 1989)
- Truth and efficacy: This set of principles applies primarily to
statements or argumentative claims relate to the validity of cognitive
propositions or instrumental plans of actions. It requires speakers
engaging in a discourse to put forth cognitive propositions concerning
the natural world that are true and the instrumental (mean-end) plans
of actions that are practical efficacious
- Rightness: This principle applies mainly to argumentative claims
relate to the validity of moral and practical prescriptions. It requires
speakers in discourse to yield statements that are in compliance with
the general norms of the community in which the discourse takes
place or refers to.
- Relevancy and/or legitimacy: This set of principles applies specifically
to argumentative claims made in evaluative and more specifically
public evaluative context, such as evaluation on public policy
discourse. It requires its respective speakers to make evaluative
statements based on standards of value, which are relevant and/or
legitimate to the issues under evaluation.
- Truthfulness and sincerity: This set of principles applies to the internal
and expressive positions of the speakers themselves. It restricts the
speakers from put forth deceptive and illusive utterances and to only
utter statements that are truthful and sincere.
- Comprehensible: This last principle applies to the linguistic and
discursive situation itself. It requires all parties engaged in the
discourse are speaking a common language and rendering
statements and utterances that are structured in mutually
comprehensible format.
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B. Politics of Difference and Recognition: Remedies to Relational Injustice
1. Iris Young’s conception of politics of difference
Built on her theory of oppression and domination, Young has formulated the
conception of “the politics of difference” as the remedy to unjust relationship of
oppression and domination. Chronically, the politics of difference may be
differentiated into two forms.
a. Originally, it refers to struggles against all kinds of stigmatization and
denigration of the cultural representations and social identities of specific
collectivities which are different from the dominant cultural and social
collectivity of a given society. One typical example is the cultural struggles
of the colonized against the conception of the superiority the colonizers’
cultures.
b. More recently, it refers to struggles against the universal-liberal policies of
equalization, which promote a kind of “color-blind”, “gender-blind”,
ethnicity-blind”, etc. treatments to all citizens. Instead, politics of difference
advocates the policy orientations, which are “sensitive” to different forms of
life and identities. For example, within the Black movement of the US, it has
shift from struggle for equal treatment and desegregation to assertion of the
distinctiveness and meaningfulness of the Afro-American culture. And in
feminist movement in the US, the struggle has also shifted from equal
voting right and “equal wages” to pregnancy right and child-caring right.
Taken together, politics of difference can be taken as a type of “emancipatory
movements asserting a positive sense of group difference. …In the version the
good society does not eliminate or transcend group difference. Rather, there is
equality among socially and culturally differentiated groups, who mutually
respect one another and affirm one another in their differences.” (Young, 1990,
P. 163)
2. From the politics of difference to the the politics of recognition
a. Iris Young’s formulation of the politics of difference has met with severe
criticisms, most notably from Nancy Fraser (1997). In a review of Young’s
book, Fraser points out that Young’s global strategy of applying her politics
of difference to all oppressed groups may prove to be counterproductive in
some cases. Fraser specifically underlines that the politics of difference will
inevitably lead to a kind of political orientations which are separatistic and
fractious in nature and are harmful to the solidarity-building for the struggle
of the oppressed as a whole.
b. Instead, Fraser suggests that “there are different kinds of differences”
(Fraser, 1997, Pp. 204) within the project of identity struggles of the
oppressed. Accordingly, she proposes four different types of “differences”:
(Fraser, 1997, Pp. 203-4)
i. Type 1 difference: It refers to the identity of difference arbitrarily and
artificially imposed upon the oppressed by the oppressors, such as the
culturally inferior identity of the colonized. The political strategy to this
type of identities is to abolish and eliminate them.
ii. Type 2 difference: It refers to the self-imposed difference constructed by
members of the oppressed groups in order to invoke “their cultural
superiority over their oppressors”. (P. 203) For examples, within
feminist movement in the US, there emerges the “gynocentism”, and
within antiracist politics, there invokes the “Afrocentricism” (P. 203)
Fraser suggests that the political orientation towards this type of
difference should not be celebrated ethnocentrically but should be
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universalized and extended to all the oppressed groups.
iii. Type 3 difference: “This is the view that the differences manifested by
members of different groups are neither superiorities nor inferiorities.
They should neither be eliminated nor universalized but rather affirmed
difference; they are valuable as expression of human diversity.” (Fraser,
1997, Pp. 203-4)
iv. Type 4 difference and the politics of recognition: Given all these
different types of differences in identities, Fraser proposes we should
adopt a more sensitive approach to the kind of differences found in
various situations in thepolitics of difference. Instead of adopting a
“wholesale and undifferentiated” approach to different cultural and
identity situations of various oppressed groups, “we can make
judgment about which differences fall into which categories.” In other
words, we should adopt a more “differentiated view of difference”.
Therefore, Fraser proposes that we could call this new and more
inclusive perspective “the politics of recognition”.
c. The politics of recognition: Accordingly to Nancy Fraser’s formulation, the
politics of recognition, as a perspective in the studies of social justice, aims
primarily at rectifying the injustice “rooted in representation, interpretation
and communication” found mainly in the socio-cultural domain in modern
society. “Examples include
i. cultural domination (being subjected to patterns of interpretation and
communication that are associated with another culture and are alien
and /or hostile to one’s own);
ii. nonrecognition (being rendered invisible via the authoritative
representational, communicative, and interpretative practices of one’s
culture); and
iii. disrespect (being routinely maligned or disparaged in stereotypic public
cultural representations and/or in everyday life interaction).” (Fraser,
1998, P. 7; the numberings are mine)
C. Conceptual Integration of Redistribution and Recognition
1. Nancy Fraser’s contribution to the studies of social justice is not confined in the
clarification and reformulation of the concept of relational justice. She has also
proposed a conceptual integration of the paradigms of distribution and
recognition.
2. Fraser takes issue with the “truncated” or even “mutually exclusive” perspective
in the conception of social justice. Instead she proposes a kind of “perspectival
dualism” (Fraser, 1998, P. 42) in the understanding of social justice. That is,
both the redistribution and recognition paradigms are institutionally and
practically intertwined with each other. For example the “less advantaged”
identified by John Rawls for more favorable redistribution of primary goods may
most probably be labeled as stigmatized as the “unproductive”, “free-riders” or
“unworthy”. On the other hand, the cultural minorities of a society may need
redistributive assistance and economic relieves simply because they suffer
cultural and/or linguistic disadvantages in both economic and cultural domains
in a given society at large.
3. Parity of participation: Fraser proposes that both the redistribution and
recognition paradigm can conceptually as well as practically be integrated with
the notion of “parity of participation”.
a. Bivalent conception of justice: Fraser asserts that we “should adopt …a
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‘bivalent’ conception of justice. A bivalent conception of justice
encompasses both distribution and recognition without reducing either one
of them to the other. Thus, it does not treat recognition as a good to be
distributed, nor distribution as an recognition as an expression of
recognition. Rather, a bivalent conception of treats distribution and
recognition as distinct perspectives on, and dimensions of, justice, while at
the same time encompassing both of them within a broader, overarching
framework.” (Fraser, 1998, P. 30)
b. The framework of parity of participation: The broader and overarching
framework that Fraser in mind is what she called the notion of parity of
participation. She proposes. “According to this norm, justice requires social
arrangements that permit all (adult) members of society to interact with one
another as peers. For participatory parity to be possible, I claim, it is
necessary but not sufficient to establish standard forms of formal legal
equality. Over and above that requirement, at least two additions must be
satisfied.
i. “First, the distribution of material resources must be such as to ensure
participants’ independence and ‘voice’. This I call the ‘objective’
precondition of participatory parity.
ii. “The second additional condition for participatory parity I call
‘intersubjectivite’. It requires that institutionalized cultural patterns of
interpretation and evaluation express equal respect for all participants
and ensure equal opportunity for achieving self esteem. This condition
precludes cultural patterns that systematically depreciate some
categories of people and the qualities associated with them.” (Fraser,
1998, P. 30-1; the numberings are mind)
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