Why Principles Cannot Justify:
A Pragmatist Commentary on the Affirmative Action Debate
By
Michael Harmon
Department of Public Administration
The George Washington University
mharmon@gwu.edu
Introduction
In a recent issue of The Atlantic Monthly Randall Kennedy (April, 2002) remarks that partisans in
the debates over racial profiling and affirmative action often—and, by implication,
disingenuously—invoke the principles claimed by their opponents when those principles suit their
own political convenience. He correctly notes that supporters of racial profiling typically oppose
affirmative action, while supporters of affirmative action usually oppose racial profiling. The
consistent application of either of the competing principles on which these issues are currently
argued, however, would logically compel either support for both kinds of practices or support for
neither of them, but not support for one and opposition to the other. Kennedy explains why in the
following passage:
Vocal supporters of racial profiling who trumpet the urgency of communal needs
when discussing law enforcement all of a sudden become fanatical individualists
when condemning affirmative action in college admissions and the labor market.
Supporters of profiling, who are willing to impose what amounts to a racial tax on
profiled groups, denounce as betrayals of “color blindness” programs that require
racial diversity. A similar turnabout can be seen on the part of many of those who
support affirmative action. Impatient with talk of communal needs in assessing
racial profiling, they very often have no difficulty with subordinating the interests
of individual white candidates to the purported good of the whole. Opposed to
race consciousness in policing, they demand race consciousness in deciding whom
to admit to college or select for a job. (p. 24)
Had Kennedy written more contentiously, he might well have characterized such principled
inconsistency in stronger terms, namely, as evidence of hypocrisy by both sides. Content with the
implication of mere irony, however, he mildly concludes that “it would be…better if participants
in the debates acknowledged the simple truth that their adversaries have something useful to say”
(ibid).
The argument of this paper, chiefly informed by a Pragmatist viewpoint, holds that the
contradictory principles that supposedly frame the debates over racial profiling and affirmative
action actually reveal neither irony nor hypocrisy, and that, insofar as partisans try to justify their
positions by means of principled argument, they can have nothing “useful to say” to one another.
More directly, I hope to show that principled argument, at least as its rules of engagement are
typically construed, can offer no support or guidance whatsoever with respect to substantive
policy positions, and therefore that moral admonitions that policy makers, administrators, and
citizens ought to employ principles to decide or justify particular positions presuppose a logical
impossibility. By extension, the sin of hypocrisy stems, at least mainly, not from the inconsistent
application of principles, but from the misguided belief that they can be “applied” at all in
formulating sensible positions.
In another sense, however, principles may be correctly regarded as inevitable features of
any moral or policy decision, thus rendering superfluous any moral approval of or congratulation
to those who act upon them. Following Stanley Fish’s (1999) alternative conception of principles
as nothing more nor less than moral intuitions to which we are resolved to be faithful, with rare
exceptions we cannot help but act on principles thus defined. Briefly contrasting these two views
on moral principles provides the backdrop against which I shall critique some of the prominent
“principled” arguments for and against affirmative action. That analysis suggests that affirmative
action ought to be regarded as more an “administrative” than a “policy” issue, subject to
continuing practical, rather than principled, reassessment on the basis of local experience.
Finally, and perhaps more importantly, I hope to make evident why any assertion of a principled
stance on the issue of affirmative action is both morally and politically irresponsible.
Two Ways of Viewing Principles
I shall refer to the first kind of principles (those comprising the object of critique here) as
justifying principles and the second as expressive principles. Justifying principles are the kinds of
principles asserted by those whom I shall call principled moralists, while expressive principles are
associated with those who embrace an essentially pragmatist outlook. A summary description of
each type is provided immediately below, followed by brief comparisons of them with respect to
five issues on which supporters of one type are likely to find themselves disagreeing with
supporters of the other.
Justifying Principles (Principled Morality) Expressive Principles (Pragmatism)
Principles consist of decision-making
criteria derived from universal truths
about the “good” and the “right”;
principles are by definition substantively neutral in that they precede and
therefore determine and justify
particular substantive positions on
moral issues. People must “act on
principle” in order to be moral.
Principles are moral intuitions to
which we are resolved to be faithful;
principles cannot be neutral with
regard to substance because
principles derive from prior local
and historical moral commitments
regarding particular situations and
issues; principles, therefore, cannot
justify moral positions. Except for
sociopaths, people cannot help but
act on principle.
1. 1. Principles are mainly “thought” based
Principles are mainly “feeling” based
2. 2. Personal motives are irrelevant to the
in
validity of principles (“Avoid ad
hominem argument”)
Personal motives generate principles
3. 3. Principles, and rules more generally,
rationalize
guide behavior and shape experience
the first place (“Consider the source”)
Principles and rules typically
behavior and experience after the fact
4. 4. Substance is “relative” to principle
Principle is “relative” to substance
5. 5. Claim the moral high ground!
Create common ground!
Principles and the Affirmative Action Debate
Principled moralists regard as a cardinal sin the rhetorical deployment of principles as ammunition
to defend substantive commitments that have already been decided upon. Since principles precede
substance, they are therefore (and implicitly by definition) neutral with respect to particular
substantive commitments. Cases in which this priority is reversed, or where the distinction
between principle and substance is blurred, may be taken as evidence of either intellectual
confusion or, worse, moral hypocrisy. From the principled moralists' priority of principle over
substance, it follows that whatever personal motives or local considerations might underlie
arguments supporting or opposing a particular substantive commitment are irrelevant to the
arguments' merit. What counts is the analytical rigor with which the particular (substance) is
deduced from the general (principle). In extrapolating substance from principle, therefore, we are
morally obliged to let the personal and the local chips fall where they may, irrespective of how we
or others might feel afterward about their distribution.
My project in this section is to critique this aspect of the principled moralist position on the
following grounds:
1. that the goodness or badness of principles can be judged only through reference to the
specific local and/or historical contexts that provide them operational meaning;
2. that, independent of those contexts, principles are and must be either vacuous or
disguises for substantive preferences; and
3. that, in purely abstract form, principles can therefore provide no a priori moral
guidance for deciding how to act in particular cases.
To illustrate the argument, I shall begin by summarizing two articles (appearing on the oped page of the Washington Post in November, 1996) taking opposing sides on the California
legislature's passage of Proposition 209, which sought to end affirmative action programs in the
state.
Nick Thompson, a Stanford University undergraduate who had lobbied, unsuccessfully,
against Proposition 209, wrote that, despite the cogency of many of the arguments for the
proposition, its supporters must surely have been aware of the racial and ethnic tensions that the
campaign for its passage would further inflame.
They must have known this, and yet they still dedicated enormous resources
to passing it. Why? Because of race politics hidden behind valid, analytical
arguments that obscure honest motivations.
There is a difference between a valid argument and an honest argument.
A valid argument is any argument that is plausible and possibly defensible. An
honest argument stems from our true motivations. Honest arguments are what
drive us. Valid arguments are what we use to defend our positions when our
honest arguments would repel people.
Prop 209 falls into a long tradition of the forces of racism arguing
validly, but not honestly, in support of measures to increase racial inequity
and their own personal power, without ever mentioning racial inequality
or personal power....
In 1996 no one argued that we should support Proposition 209
because it would decrease the power of people of color in society. If they
had, the proposition would have been defeated. Blatant race baiting
doesn't sell in this society. Subtle race baiting, cloaked in other
arguments, does. (Washington Post, Nov. 19, 1996)
Shortly afterward, Terry Mitchell, a former Democratic National Committee press secretary
and later and later director of the Washington Center for Politics and Journalism, answered
Thompson with a sharp rebuttal, excerpts from which are included below:
[In his column Thompson] was merely reflecting the received wisdom of
those who, for years, have been playing the liberal race card, doing their
heavy-handed best to stifle a reasonable public discussion of racial
preference policies by impugning the motives of others who want to end
the civil wrong of group entitlements....
In an attempt to silence principled, progressive arguments by those of us
who oppose racial preferences,... [Proposition 209 opponents] tried to tar
...[its supporters] as friends of David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan.
The forces of civil rights non-leadership would like nothing better
than to maintain the fiction that there has been a public consensus around
group entitlement policies, which they euphemistically refer to as
"affirmative action"—corrupting a term that originally meant reaching out
to consider as many people as possible and then not discriminating on the
basis of race or gender in the selection process....
In the same way conservative opponents of the civil rights and voting
rights acts of the 1960s attempted to camouflage their opposition to ending
institutionalized bigotry with a phony appeal to states' rights, the
advocates of race-based policies attempt to conceal their true agenda:
handing out opportunity based on skin color and sex rather than individual
need and ability....
Much as the guardians of this status quo want to keep it that way, a
substantial portion of the public has now been able to express itself
tangibly against the fundamental unfairness of group preferences.
(Washington Post, Nov. 30, 1996, italics original)
In considering these excerpts, I urge readers to try to suspend momentarily their opinions
about affirmative action generally. Try to suspend as well judgment about Thompson's assertion
that Proposition 209 supporters actually were dishonest about their motives, as well as whether, as
Thompson claims, eliminating affirmative action policies would in fact "decrease the power of
people of color." Similarly, try to set aside for the present any opinion about whether Mitchell is
right in saying that Thompson, by "playing the liberal race card," was therefore guilty of trying "to
stifle a reasonable public discussion of racial preference policies by impugning the motives" of
209's supporters. Focus instead on one key contention in each of the articles: Thompson's
contention, or at least his assumption, that the motives of the antagonists in the 209 controversy are
germane to an analysis of the affirmative action issue; and Mitchell's contention that, because
"group preferences" sanctioned by affirmative action policies are "fundamentally unfair," the
motives of 209's supporters (regardless of whether Thompson is correct in stating what they were)
are irrelevant to a "reasonable public discussion of the issue."
Thompson's distinction between "valid" and "honest" arguments is clearly invidious, given
his ironic definition of the former as the kinds of arguments we use "when our honest arguments
would repel." Whatever respectability "valid" arguments might otherwise have, moreover, is
hardly salvaged by Thompson's vaguely characterizing them as "plausible and possibly
defensible." Thus, Thompson's rhetorical ploy of counterposing the two kinds of arguments in the
way that he does might well appear, and certainly did appear to Mitchell, to be a disingenuous
tactic for making an ad hominem argument seem respectable. To Mitchell, valid arguments require
no scare quotes signifying such an ironic and disparaging definition; valid arguments, rather, are
valid by virtue of their appeal to "reasonable public discussion" that would in his view surely
reveal the "fundamental unfairness of group preferences." Mitchell does not explain (though
perhaps owing to the space limitations of op-ed columns) why group preferences of the sort
promoted by affirmative action are fundamentally unfair; but, it is clear that he sees the issue as a
matter of principle, the application of which in the case of affirmative action is perverted by those
who cast aspersions on the motives of others with whose substantive position they disagree.
Principled moralists would, of course, be far from unanimous in supporting Proposition 209
or in opposing affirmative action generally. They could disagree with one another (including
Mitchell), for example, about which principle or principles are truly at stake in the 209
controversy; and, even if they agreed upon the pertinent principles, they could very well differ over
their correct interpretation in the case of affirmative action. Nevertheless, principled moralists
would more likely approve of Mitchell's style of argument than Thompson's. Unlike Thompson,
who "personalizes" the issue by focusing on the ostensible motives of Proposition 209's supporters,
Mitchell argues that support for it rationally follows from principle, namely, that "group
preferences" (to him a less euphemistic phrase than "affirmative action") are fundamentally unfair
by virtue of their violating the twin, as well as substantively neutral, principles of color-blindness
and equal opportunity.
Principles and Pragmatism
In criticizing Mitchell's reasoning and siding with Thompson's mode of engaging the issue, I shall
draw from Stanley Fish's recent book, The Trouble with Principle (1999), to show, first, why
Mitchell's hope that a prior commitment to these principles supports 209, or indeed that such a
commitment supports any position whatsoever with respect to affirmative action, is logically
unrealizable; and, second, that Thompson's concern with the motives of both 209's supporters and
its opponents is not only legitimate, but also a necessary feature of the debate over the issue.
Fish's argument about "the trouble with principle" runs roughly as follows: A commitment
to any abstract principle—such as fairness, freedom of association, merit, nondiscrimination, or
color-blindness—necessarily presupposes both an understanding of and a particular moral stance
toward the historical circumstances that gave rise, and continue to provide operational meaning, to
that principle. Contrary to the belief that principles can be neutral in the sense of being free of
prior as well as current substantive commitments, principles in fact derive from those
commitments. The vocabulary of substantive neutrality typically employed by those who engage
in principled discourse simply serves to disguise those commitments, giving the false impression
that abstract principles somehow preceded history and the substantive commitments upon which
people act.
Take, for example, the "principle" of nondiscrimination. Independent of its historical and
current association with acts of political oppression and economic deprivation against various
minority groups and women, the word "discrimination" otherwise seldom provokes our
disapprobation, connoting as it does merely the act of making pertinent and even socially approved
distinctions between particular ideas, actions, or phenomena. Discrimination became a morally
contentious word—and thereby part of the vocabulary of principle—only when, in a particular
social, political, and economic context, "discriminatory practices" came to be used to describe, and
indeed decry, those acts of oppression and deprivation. Hence the term "invidious discrimination"
arose in order to differentiate such acts from other, more socially and politically acceptable, forms
of discrimination.
It is likely that neither Thompson nor Mitchell would find much fault in the preceding
paragraph, although Mitchell should begin to feel somewhat apprehensive about its implications
for his own position. "Invidious," quite obviously, is an adjective that has meaning only insofar as
it describes the motive or intention to bring about real-world consequences of which at least some
people strongly disapprove. No moral principle is either embodied in or violated by the act of
discriminating per se, nor indeed necessarily violated even by acts of racial, gender, or age
Adiscrimination@ that are not part and parcel of institutional practices that meet with our
disapproval.
Mitchell seems implicitly to condone, for example, a form of "group preference"
discrimination when he approvingly cites the original, "uncorrupted" meaning of affirmative action
as "reaching out to consider as many people as possible and then not discriminating on the basis of
race or gender in the selection process." "Reaching out to consider as many people as possible,"
however, seems to suggest that special efforts are needed to reach out to some groups—surely a
kind of group preference—who have not previously been adequately considered. By this
reasoning, suspending the principle of "no group preferences" is apparently acceptable in the
process of "reaching out to consider," but not in the process of selection itself—leaving one to
wonder what other, presumably higher, principle warrants suspending the no-group-preference
principle in the former instance but not in the latter. Mitchell might answer that the "neutral"
principle of merit supersedes the no-group-preference principle, and should therefore be decisive in
the selection process. I shall forgo the temptation here to rehearse the many arguments as to why
merit is itself a contestable concept, whose prevailing institutional definitions very often, upon
examination, reflect the substantive interests of those empowered to define merit authoritatively.
Instead, I would only note that the legitimacy of the merit principle, however it may be
operationalized, derives not from some higher neutral principle, but from the expectation that one
or another operational meaning of merit, when put into practice, will aid in producing outcomes
that some, perhaps even most, people happen to like.
More importantly, however, Mitchell's characterizing group preferences such as those
promoted by affirmative action as fundamentally unfair begs the question of what "fundamentally"
in this context is supposed to mean. In its standard connotation "fundamentally" would seem to
exclude, by virtue of transcending, any consideration of local or historical contingencies that might
affect particular wants and preferences. But, if principles are vacuous, and indeed impossible, in
the absence of these considerations, Mitchell's claim that group preferences are "fundamentally
unfair" seems to be merely a rhetorical ploy to make some interests and preferences appear more
respectable than others. Moreover, Thompson's consideration of the motives of Proposition 209
supporters, irrespective of whether he identified those motives correctly, is by the same token not
only appropriate, but necessary. Substantive commitments by definition involve the connection
between motives, on the one hand, and the consequences of political and institutional practices
arising from them, on the other. Practices and substantive commitments without motives to
effectuate them are a logical absurdity.
One might object, however, that the wide-spread acceptance of this view would result in
replacing the political discourse of reasoned argumentation with the vulgar politics of competition
between naked preferences. Fish answers that this would be a damning point only if one accepts
the "neutral principles" view of the world that radically separates abstract principle from substance
and preference in the first place. From that view,
naked preferences are the danger and neutral principles the bulwark erected against
them. But there are no naked preferences for the same reason that there are no
neutral principles: principle and substance come always mixed. Principle and its
vocabulary of fairness, equality, and so on are already informed by substantive
preferences..., and preferences are always preferences in relation to some notion of
the good; they are never naked. In fact, preferences...are principles (or at least
principled)--not principles of the neutral kind but principles of the only kind there
really are, strong moral intuitions as to how the world should go combined with a
resolve to be faithful to them. (Fish, 1999, p. 9, italics original)
Lest readers construe Fish's argument as a subterfuge to promote an exclusively liberal
political agenda of which affirmative action is typically seen as being a part, he makes plain that
the critique of neutral principles cuts both ways. Fish's targets of criticism, in fact, include on the
whole principled liberals and conservatives in virtually equal measure. Principled defenses made
by liberals of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, for
example, raise the same logical difficulties as those encountered by principled, typically
conservative, opponents of affirmative action. Fish cites a landmark essay by Herbert Wechsler
(1959), who, as a constitutional scholar, was troubled that the Brown decision had been motivated
chiefly if not exclusively by the justices' wish to end school segregation, "rather than being driven
by a principle indifferent to particular results and faithful only to the enforcement of...[the Court's]
own abstract norm" (Fish, p. 26). In trying to locate such a principle after the decision had been
handed down, Wechsler at first proposed the principle of "freedom of association" as a plausible
candidate. Freedom of association, he argued (and which the Supreme Court could have argued),
had been historically denied to blacks through state-imposed segregation of public schools. In
what Fish calls a last-minute reversal, however, Wechsler reluctantly concluded that
if the freedom of association is denied by segregation, integration forces an
association upon those for whom it is unpleasant or repugnant; [and] given a
situation where the state must...choose between denying the association to those
individuals who wish it or imposing it on those who would avoid it, is there a basis
in neutral principles for holding that...the claims for association should prevail?
(Wechsler, 1959, p. 34)
Wechsler=s answer was evidently no, prompting Fish to add that:
Deliberately obscured is the fact that one wish is born of the desire to escape
a history of oppression and exclusion, while the other wish is born of a desire to
retain the political and economic advantages that have been produced by that same
history. You can see the two wishes as equivalent only if you empty them of their
historical and moral content, which is exactly what the doctrine of neutral principles
demands that you do. (Fish, p. 27)
Similarly, the debate over affirmative action should not be seen as hinging on the question
of which side has the better neutral principle(s) to support its position, nor even whether one side
more persuasively deduces its position from a neutral principle upon which both sides have
previously agreed. Rather, since no neutral principle can provide any substantive and moral
guidance whatsoever, we have no choice but to rely on a combination of moral intuition and an
appreciation of the historical and local contexts that have given rise to that intuition. Moreover,
recognition of this by no means settles or even biases the outcome of arguments made on other
grounds either for or against affirmative action. Although Fish seems to support, for example,
many (though not necessarily all) affirmative action policies and programs, he would have to
concede that, all things considered, affirmative action may turn out to be a bad idea or only
temporarily a good one. He is claiming, therefore, only that the tests of whether affirmative action
is a good or a bad idea ought to be pragmatic rather than "principled," and constructed in the light
of local and historical experience with it. Various of these tests, while no doubt debatable in their
own right, already comprise much of the repertoire of arguments made by affirmative action
supporters and opponents alike. Rid of spurious appeals to neutral principle, debate over
affirmative action might then produce, if not common ground and wide-spread public consensus, at
least a more tentative, experimental public attitude toward it.
When Nick Thompson invidiously contrasted "valid" with "honest" arguments, he probably
had in mind something very close to Fish's distinction between neutral principles and principles
construed as strong moral intuitions. At first glance the parallel appears weakened slightly by
Fish's refusal to credit neutral principles with even the mildly positive attributes of "plausible" or
"possibly defensible" that Thompson grants them. To Fish, neutral principles possess no positive
qualities because such principles are necessarily devoid of any intrinsic moral content; but this may
be what Thompson was really getting at in any event. Ostensibly neutral principles, Fish says, are
merely "mechanical tests"—for example, whether this policy or that program displays "race-
consciousness"—to which people grant phony moral status in order to disguise, in Thompson's
phrase, their honest motives. The disguising of honest motives may explain why the discourse
about "neutral" principles, rather than facilitating the resolution of differences, actually prevents it:
first, by concealing the hoped-for outcomes actually at stake and, second, by inserting a presumably
authoritative abstraction as a wedge between, rather than a possibly unifying symbol to connect,
those who for the moment disagree with one another.
To recognize principles as expressive rather than justifying provides no guarantee that
differences will be resolved and agreements reached. No knock-down arguments justifying one
moral intuition rather than another may be admitted under such a view. The hope that honest
differences might on occasion be unified or at least amicably lived with, however, rests in
abandoning the illusion that ultimate justification of the sort promised by neutral principles is even
desirable. Because they entail no claims to transcendent truth, expressions of moral intuitions,
owing to the authentic conviction that motivates them, might possibly be heard as an invitation to
understand and connect with others, rather than as a tactic for defeating them in argument.
Conclusion
Stanley Fish would, I suspect, readily admit that his warnings about “the trouble with principle” are
not entirely original. As both a pragmatist and a legal scholar he is no doubt familiar with similar
sentiments expressed more than a century ago by one of pragmatism’s four great founders, Oliver
Wendell Holmes, whose most frequently quoted sentence on the theory of jurisprudence anticipates
all that has been said here. “It is the merit of the common law,” Holmes wrote, “that it decides the
case first and determines the principle afterwards” (quoted in Menand, 2001, p. 338). He said this
with no trace of irony, cynicism, or disappointment, for such a conclusion seemed obvious in view
of not only his reading of the history of the law, but also his appreciation of the infinite
manipulability of principles.
My own views on the possible benefits of a pragmatist stance toward principles in general
and affirmative action in particular are hopeful inasmuch as I see pragmatism as potentially
liberating public discourse from the false expectations, the deceit, and the acrimony that principled
discourse inevitably breeds. Freed from divisive appeals to principle, the debates (and I use the
plural form deliberately here) over affirmative action at least might focus more directly on whether
or in what sorts of circumstances practices so labeled have produced or show reasonable promise of
producing what they intend. A pragmatist stance toward such discourse neither settles nor even
biases the outcomes of those debates in one direction or another. Pragmatism’s overall neutrality
on the matter, moreover, is predictable in view of the wide range—from conservative (e.g., Richard
Posner [1990]), to liberal (Richard Rorty [1989]), to leftist (Fish [1994] himself)—of political
opinion represented by those who share that philosophical outlook. And, of these three, only Rorty
seems to draw any direct connection between philosophical pragmatism and his politics, for which
he has been criticized by Fish (1994) on the ground that pragmatism leads to no political agenda
whatsoever.
Pragmatic—which is to say, nonprincipled—discussion about affirmative action might
actually get somewhere. I would eagerly attend, for example, a public conversation on the subject
between Fish and John McWhorter (2001), whose recent and controversial book, Losing the Race,
argues that affirmative action programs in higher education, especially in California, have failed
owing to their unintended complicity with the cults of black victimology, separatism, and antiintellectualism. There may be more common ground underlying Fish’s and McWhorter’s positions
than at first seems apparent. Fish, while in one sense an advocate of affirmative action, directs his
ire chiefly against principled arguments opposing affirmative action, rather than developing
principled or any other kind of arguments supporting it. Similarly, McWhorter, though not a selfdeclared pragmatist, argues almost exclusively from evidence of recent historical experience, rather
than from principle, that affirmative action in higher education in the main is not now fulfilling its
promise and is unlikely to do so within the climate that such practices have tended, unwittingly, to
perpetuate. At the same time, he argues, such programs probably were (not just that they seemed)
sensible three decades ago in view of the then-widespread and often blatant discriminatory
admissions practices of many American universities. Moreover, he explicitly restricts his
objections to current affirmative action programs in American higher education, arguing that
affirmative action with respect to employment, perhaps especially in the business sector, is still
needed.
My intention here is not to assess the merits of pragmatic arguments for and against
affirmative action, but only to highlight a few of the chief features of pragmatic discourse about it.
Rather than being general and abstract, as principled argumentation nearly always is, such discourse
is instead necessarily local, concrete, and context-specific. Pragmatists would urge that we not
expect that experience with affirmative action at one point in history, or in one sector of social life,
or in one geographical area will necessarily be the same as that in another. The lessons learned
from one time or context, therefore, may or may not be transferable. Pragmatist discourse,
therefore, is also tentative, viewing programs and practices emerging from it as experimental rather
than definitive and permanent. Whether affirmative action “works” is thus more properly seen as a
question to be answered by experience than in terms of a priori moral criteria—making due
allowance, of course, for the fact that experience is itself always subject to widely differing
interpretations. At the very least, however, we should not expect that answers derived from varied
experience will very often be uniform.
Asserting any general position about affirmative action in the belief that it either embodies
or, alternatively, violates one or another cherished principle should be regarded as unwise and even
irresponsible. By implication, then, it may be similarly unwise to regard affirmative action chiefly
as a policy issue in view of the word’s connotation of general authoritative practice. Both blanket
prohibitions on what are typically labeled as affirmative action practices, and “indiscriminate”
mandates instituting them across various sectors of public life, ought to be discouraged. The local
and the experimental, where the varied experiences with affirmative action can as a continuing
practice be most fruitfully assessed—and thus continued, revised, or discarded accordingly—would
seem to be an appropriate province of public administration. Such a claim, however, would require
radical revision of our field’s most ancient but still most influential definition, namely, “the
systematic execution of public law” (Wilson, 1941). The field’s redefinition in light of this and
kindred arguments, a task that has already consumed the energy of many PATNET members, is,
alas, beyond the scope of this present effort.
In view of these arguments, does there remain any valid and honest sense in which
principles might further rather than impede our collective moral project? The answer, I believe, is
certainly yes—so long as we take principles to be nothing more than the sincere expression of
moral convictions. If understood as such, principles might assist us in initiating and sustaining
discourse rather than terminating it by means of unrealizable promises of Aultimate justifications.@
Under this more modest conception, principles, which of course everyone has and cannot help but
have, could no longer be played as moral trump cards, claimed as the moral high ground, hidden
behind when our actions harm or appall others, nor otherwise used as artful means for disclaiming
our responsibility as moral agents. Construed in this way, principles may serve as aids to
responsibility rather than substitutes for it. The kind of responsibility I have in mind, of course, is
personal responsibility: the mutual, back-and-forth responding among citizens and public servants
unafraid of confronting the freedom made evident to us by the uncertainties and paradoxes of
contemporary moral life.
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_____ (1999). The Trouble with Principle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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