Normative Delusions? Hans Sluga’s Critique of Normative Political Philosophy

How ought political philosophy to proceed in the contemporary moment? What methods should it employ? What can, or ought, it hope to achieve? In his Politics and the Search for the Common Good, Hans Sluga offers a provocative take on these questions. Sluga sets out to problematize the dominant tradition in political philosophy – what he calls the “normative tradition in political philosophy.” The need for such a problematization stems not only from that traditions inadequacies in general, but from ‘the flux, perhaps crisis, and even possibly peril’ that afflicts our politics today: ‘in our changing circumstances, [political] analysis and criticism may have to be invented anew’. In its place, Sluga offers a radically alternative vision of what political philosophy is.

Philosophy, for Sluga, is more craft than science; it is ‘an art of questioning’. Political philosophy, then, is most primordially a kind of questioning about the political. But, for Sluga, the question ‘what is the political?’ lacks a straightforward answer. The political is a ‘family resemblance notion’ and thus ‘resists being pinned down.’ Nevertheless, Sluga thinks ‘the political’ might be ‘usefully conceived’ as ‘a search for the common good’.  That is not to say that the idea of a ‘search for the common good’ gives us the essence of the political; it is merely to suggest that such a search ‘is a distinctive and particularly illuminating component within the assemblage we know as politics”.

With this emphasis, Sluga intentionally departs from the Rawlsian view that political philosophy is most fundamentally concerned with the issue of social justice. Justice, for Sluga, is important; but it is one good among many, and perhaps not even the most fundamental. Sluga toys with the idea that ‘flourishing’ is a most accurate end of politics. This thought brings him closer to Aristotle and the perfectionist tradition then to Rawls, but even here his suggestion is not quite Aristotlean. For Sluga resists the idea that it is primary aim of political philosophy to arrive at timeless answers to questions about normative matters. That idea belongs to the ‘normative conception’ of politics Sluga aims to question.

Rather, politics, for Sluga, is a search for the common good in the sense that it is a ‘continuous process of determining our goals’ –or, one might say, conceptions of the good. Indeed, it could be nothing else, given the ‘contingency of our political existence’. With this thought, Sluga situates his approach of politics as a ‘diagnostic form of political thought’ which ‘seeks to advance a more modest form of political philosophy’. Diagnostic thought shuns grand principles; instead it offers a more on-the-ground approach to politics, one more historical in its outlook and more cautious in its practical conclusions.

Sluga’s book is an attempt to ‘map a genealogy of the diagnostic enterprise’—a sort of diagnostic approach to the diagnostic enterprise itself— in order to better understand its achievements, power, promising, and shortcomings. He begins (Ch. 1-2) with a ‘critique of the normative tradition, followed by a genealogy of the diagnostic approach (3-7) which focuses on key thinkers: Marx, Nietzsche, Schmitt, Arendt, and Foucault. The last two chapters (8-9) assess the promise and limitations of the diagnostic approach.

In this post, though, I focus on Sluga’s critique of ‘the normative tradition,’ expressed most forcefully in the first chapter. The critique makes up only half of the chapter as a whole, as in the second half Sluga outlines his own diagnostic approach. My account of Sluga’s critique will be more critical than usual, and I will note out several points at which one might contest Sluga’s view.

Characterizing the Normative Tradition

Before outlining his own conception of political theory as diagnostic practice, Sluga argues that ‘much stands in the way’ of seeing matters aright. The prime culprits, for Sluga, are ‘the normative theory’ and ‘political naturalism’ (this chapter treats the former; the next takes on the later).

The normative tradition in philosophy, according to Sluga, holds that (1) political action should be understood as the application of general norms and, (2) these norms have an abstract, philosophical justification. Sluga’s description seems plausible, but one could question both aspects of this characterization.

Take (1) first. It is not clear whether Sluga understands the claim as a descriptive one, as a claim about method, or as a claim about how political action ought to be. In the first case, political philosophers need not understand real-world political action as the application of general norms. In fact, many don’t. Political philosophers can acknowledge the kinds of power dynamics and struggles that characterize actual politics, without thereby giving up the thought that norms are important. Norms can play some important role in politics, without being determinative of it. That’s hardly deniable. Suppose the claim is meant to be a normative one: political philosophers ought to treat politics as the application of norms. That claim is more contestable, at least if meant exclusively. Or, if the claim is meant to be a normative one, political philosophers could acknowledge that real political actors often fail to live up to the ideal.

(2) seems harder to disagree with, but it is very vague. Whether the claim is true depends on what Sluga thinks and ‘abstract, philosophical justification’ is. One sort of justification political philosophers give is that their preferred norms best approximate our considered judgments, once we bring them together and make them coherent. But this justification is not necessarily so abstract. At the very least, it is not, or is not intended to be, fully independent of the practices and beliefs of actual political actors.

Letting these issues pass, Sluga aims to challenge both of these presuppositions. But first, he suggests three motivations for why philosophers might seek such an understanding of politics: the separation of the a priori from the empirical and the idea of general norms as what philosophers can distinctively contribute to politics are two such ideas. Sluga also suggests, at a deeper level, that the normative conception remains attractive as a response to the uncertainty about actual politics.

Sluga’s critique is twofold. He aims to question (1) how theorists get from political reality to abstract norms; that is, how they derive or justify norms, and (2) how theorists get from abstract ideal theory to political reality; that is, how they apply norms. Call (1) the justification problem and (2) the application problem.

Political Judgment

Sluga takes the justification problem first. The initial step in his argument is to offer a characterization of actual political judgments, for ‘day-to-day politics is rarely concerned with abstract formulas’. Rather, ‘practical political judgments’ are, in actual practice, of two sorts: verdicts and assessments. Verdicts and assessments often go together (such complex judgments Sluga calls assessed verdicts).

Verdicts takes the form: I (we) intend to (shall, should, will, must, want to) do (not do) x here and now in order to bring about y. In short, verdicts concern action. They have two important features. First, they are always context bound: they are made in particular circumstances, and they apply in the first place only to these. Second, they are personal in character: they are about what I or we should do. Given these particular features, verdicts are not universal judgments, but have much more localized character: they are judgments about how particular agents or communities should act in a particular set of circumstances.

Verdicts are determinations to act, not justifications for actions. They are for this reason usually accompanied by assessments. Assessments are action-guiding judgments in the weak sense that they express or convey a positive or negative view of a situation (Sluga seems to characterize them in a quasi-expressivist manner). They have the form ‘I judge that P here and now’. Again, assessments are made from a personal standpoint, not from an objective point of view. In many circumstances, assessments are highly tentative and uncertain; usually, they are open for reassessment and revision. Again, given the tentative nature of assessments, and their personal nature, they are far from the standard sort of normative judgments political philosophers look for.

Before turning to Sluga’s critique, let us assess where we have come so far. In order for Sluga’s critique of the abstract-normative project to get off the ground, Sluga needs a certain characterization of how political judgment works in practice. His suggestion is that, in practice, we commonly make ‘assessed verdicts,’ which contain references to person and context. One could hardly dispute that this is sometimes or even often the case; one can however question whether this is always, or even primarily the case.

Take the constitutution of the United States, or the Declaration of Independence. These are obviously political documents. Sluga makes some remarks about the historical context here: the constitution, for him, was a sort of political project; its enactment was immediately followed by disagreement about the meaning of the text. Undoubtedly, these things are true. But, nevertheless, the text and its public role seem to contain some special kinds of judgments about liberty and equality. “All men are created equal” is not an assessed verdict, but a completely general norm. Granted, we may contest what this means; but almost everyone agrees to some relevantly similar specification of it. At the very least, Sluga would have to admit that such norms are part of our practice of political judgment, even if they are not its main part. At minimum, then, Sluga must admit that assessed verdicts do not exhaust political judgment.

One question one could then ask, just about the kind of judgments found in the constitution, is what role such norms play. A natural thought is that there is a reason general prescriptions about liberty and equality are found in foundational documents of this kind. Here, a certain Rawlsian line of thought seems attractive: the idea that all persons are moral equals is not just one political judgment among others, on the same par as, say, what the state of Alabama should do about its budget issues. Rather, such judgments play a special role in our public political culture: they form the framework within which other assessments are made. They are, in a word, considered judgments; ones which we are not prepared to revise easily.

Now, such judgments might seem the exception: not all our political judgments have the sort of default status that judgments about basic human equality do. But, even so, there are other judgments that seem to have a similar character. “Slavery is wrong” is an example: anyone who disagrees with that, one might be tempted to say, is not worth taking seriously as a political interlocutor. But, Sluga might say, this again is a special case. And he might be right.

Even if only a few judgments have this special status, others seem also not to fit the descriptions Sluga gives of assessments and verdicts. Moving from the restrictive context of a constitution, let us turn to the case of an actual social conflict: the debate over whether abortion should be permitted. If we follow Sluga’s account, would be inclined to think that the kinds of judgments commonly made in this context involve reference to a person or a context. But this hardly seems to be the case: when a pro-life protester says, “Abortion is wrong,” the judgment should be taken at face value. The claim is not someone in particular judges that abortion is wrong and that judgment binds no one. Nor is it that abortion is only wrong in some context. The claim is simply that abortion is wrong, period, always. The common reply —that women have a ‘right’ to choose—commonly means that all women have a right to choose, regardless of context.

It is easy to multiply such examples. Just think of how advocates on either side of most serious political issues tend to take about them. This is not to deny that some political judgments are verdicts or assessments in Sluga’s sense. Many are. But how many is an open question.

The issue I have been pressing is whether Sluga’s account of practical political judgments is accurate or exhaustive. I have been suggesting that, at best, his account covers only some cases of political judgment, and these are not necessarily the most important ones. Given Sluga’s other commitments, he is unlikely to reply that his account is supposed to give the essence of political judgment (political judgment is a family resemblance term); the most he could do is try to counter the descriptive accuracy of the characterizations I have given.

But, the issue of descriptive accuracy is then central, given Sluga’s next move. The question Sluga  presses next is this: how do we move from context-bound, personal, local political judgments to general, context-free, impersonal norms? Such a move is unexplained and, Sluga contends, inexplicable. But, note that if I am right that at least some of our ordinary political judgments are already general and context-free, then the problem becomes much more surmountable: we don’t need to move from one sort of judgment to the next because many of our judgments are already universal in nature.  Let us, however, set the issue aside.

Against Normative Theory 1 — The Justification Problem

Sluga notes two difficulties in moving from assessed verdicts to general norms.

First, how do we move from a particular political judgment (I judge X to be just here and now, given a certain context) to a general norm (the principles of justice are; or such and such is just)?  Is it not possible, Sluga asks, that our judgments might be so diverse or specific that no such generalization is possible, or that any generalization would be an empty formula?  Possible it is; but that is hardly an argument.

More argumentatively, in moving from the specific to the general, Sluga notes that the political philosopher has to use our ordinary terms: justice, fairness, good, and the like. Sluga suggests, however, that the meanings of such terms are contested. We therefore cannot move in any self-evident manner from their ordinary use to a general normative conclusion.

This is only part of an argument, however. No political philosopher would deny that matters of justice are deeply contested. But, they might say that Sluga’s characterization of exactly what is contested about them is limited.

One move that is open here to the normative theorist is to draw on Rawls’ concept/conception distinction. The concept of justice – giving each their due, and treating one another fairly –is hardly contested; the issue is which conception of justice provides a substantive way of making sense of the problem posed by the concept justice. The problem is to find a standpoint from which such matters can be fairly assessed (Rawls’ original position is one example of what such a standpoint might look like). The issue then is whether there is enough accord, or whether enough accord could be brought about by reasoning together, to settle on a description of such a standpoint, by drawing on the political judgments we do share. The Rawlsian conjecture is that there is. Of course, whether Rawls pulls this off is a different question.

In any case, though, the fact of actual disagreement should not be taken as definitive against the normative theorist. People disagree about a great many thing: whether global warming is real, whether the sun revolves around the earth, or visa versa, etc. In none of these cases does disagreement undermine objectivity. However, Sluga’s argument seems to depend on the claim that disagreement undermines the possibility of deriving general norms. It is at the very least not obvious why this should be so.

Sluga concludes this line of thought raising some doubts about whether disagreements can be resolved by appeal to abstract norms. These doubts are fair. One might be skeptical that philosophical arguments can have the appropriate effects on real agents. But whether the argument will convince someone in a practical context is different from whether that argument is convincing or sound.

Let us turn to the second problem Sluga raises. The problem is this: how can the normative theorist move from claims which have only local and contextual validity to claims that have universal and objective validity?  Again, note that a premise of the argument is that are ordinary judgments are ‘never categorical’ in nature. That premise, I have argued, is dubious. But setting the issue aside, there is a real question here.

Sluga insists on two points in his discussion: first, that agreeing on abstract norms is often not necessary for reaching political agreement, and second, that the agreements we do reach are political agreements, not outside the realm of politics. Both of these claims are certainly true. But no political philosopher should disagree with them. Political philosophy is part of society’s political culture. Political philosophers are not experts, but participants in that culture. In a democratic society, conceptions of justice offered by philosophers are part of politics, even if they are a very abstract part (for this sort of conception of political philosophy, see the introduction to Rawls’ Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy)

There is a further question here Sluga does not press, but is related: namely, whether political values or conceptions of justice are in some self relative or dependent on political communities’ actual practices of valuing. That is a matter of debate in political philosophy. But note that, even if they are, certain quite abstract norms might still be put forward.

In short, Sluga raises important challenges to the possibility of normative political philosophy. But, I have suggested, his argument are at the very least not decisive.

Against Normative Theory 2 — The Application Problem

Let us suppose that that the political theorists’ attempt to derive and justify general norms succeeds. What relevance to such norms have for political practice? Political philosophers, Sluga argues, do not pay enough attention to what ‘application’ of general norms entails, and how it is supposed to be pulled off. Sluga makes two arguments against the possibility of applying norms to practice.

The first argument is Wittgensteinian, or at least Sluga intends it to be. There is no sense in which norms are universal apart from their application, for the generality of a statement consists in the use we make of it. Thus, the norm and its application are not separable from each other. It follows that, in order to grasp the general norm, we need to no what use to make of it.

How good is this argument? I think: not very. For the normative theorist has a ready response. It might be right that we cannot imagine a norm without a possible use, but we can imagine a norm which applies to or governs an ideal society. Imagining such a society and what principles ought to regulate it is a way of imagining such a use.

Take an example. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls stipulates some assumptions which describe the society for which his principles of justice will be chosen. The society contains certain kinds of persons; it exists under conditions of moderate scarcity, and one can enter only through birth and exit only through death, etc. Imagining such a society, we give the abstract norms of justice a use. Such norms are abstract, not in the sense that they have an ‘abstract use’, but rather that they apply in the first instance to a society imagined according to certain idealizing assumptions.

Now, Sluga might press the question: why might we want such norms? There are several reasons. (One of) Rawls’ own stated justification(s) is that “beginning with ideal theory…provides…the only basis for the systematic grasp of these more pressing problems” (8). That seems plausible.

But, there is another answer one might offer, one Sluga might be more likely to accept: ideal theories provide a useful model for comparison, and as such can shed light on justice in our own society. By picking out certain features, and bracketing others, we can reduce the complexity of the political and make it surveryable. Reasoning in this way can help is analogously by serving as an object of comparison. Of course, one should be careful not to confuse the ideal society with the real one. But, done carefully, the approach seems fruitful.

This kind of conception seems to fit with what Sluga says elsewhere, in a paper entitled “Beyond ‘the New’ Wittgenstein”. There, Sluga notes, that in trying to make sense of the social world:

we do not simply grope our way blindly; we make maps for ourselves, crude and incomplete as they are; we draw simple, schematic pictures; we create elementary scenarios of speech and action (“language games”) to illustrate how we go about things’ we construct models in signs, figures words or material bits….These devices prove indispensable to us but we are forece to recognize that they also often mislead us because of their crudeness, their simplicity. We use them analogically, comparing the relations between parts of the model to relations between parts of reality; the question is always how far the analogy goes.

Later he adds:

There are two things our models can do for us. We can use them to orient ourselves in an unsurveyable domain but we can also use them for reconstructing such a domain, for making it surveryable. We can thus speak of a cognitive and of a normative function of the model

My suggestion is that one can think of ideal theory in much the same way: an attempt via an object of comparison (an ideal society) to make our own surveyable.

Sluga then suggests that the application of a rule requires regularity, and politics is characterized by constant flux. But to conclude from this that general norms have no application is a fallacy. One must, of course, determine what the circumstances are at any given time, before making a political decision. That is why non-ideal theory is essential. But, the fact that matters are constantly changing in way undermines the enterprise; it only complicates it. Political philosophy is an on-going process; but it can reach provision conclusions.

Sluga then argues that, even where some normality obtains, there is a problem of getting from a norm to a verdict or assessment. Norms don’t specify situations, whereas assessments do. Sluga suggests the deductive model is misleading, for two reasons. First, from the judgment “If A is the case, do C” it does not follow that “if A and B are the case, do C”. Surely this is correct. But thinking about what to do if A is the case is not necessarily unhelpful, given some account of B. B might be morally irrelevant, or it might change the verdict. That just means one has to rethink the matter, taking into account B (making B part of the idealization involved, for example). The most this suggests is that there is no straight path from ideal to non-ideal theory.

Finally, Sluga notes that politics is the art of the possible, and there are difficulties in knowing what to do in complex situations with many injustices. This all is all true. But, the normative political philosopher would reply, that identifying those injustices in the first place requires some normative grasp of the situation.

Sluga concludes by admitting that there is ‘no decisive argument’ against the normative political theorist. This is surely right: as Sluga notes, a proof of impossibility is difficult. The best argument, Sluga suggests, might consist of showing that an alternative view deals better with real politics. In the remainder of the chapter, he outlines a diagnostic approach to political philosophy, and explores its promise and perils in the remainder of the book. In the next post, I will explore Sluga’s initial characterization of diagnostic practice.

However, it is useful to conclude by making some final observations:

(1) Sluga’s account of practical political judgments seems unduly narrow. It seems to fit only some of the political judgments we make. But the narrow view is essential to his argument.

(2) In pressing his criticisms, Sluga fails to distinguish between ideal and nonideal theory. Many of his criticisms of abstraction seem to apply much more readily to ideal theory than to nonideal approaches.

(3) Sluga’s consideration of how normative theory might be relevant seems unduly narrow, given what he says elsewhere. It is not the case that the only way norms from ideal theory can be relevant is by applying directly to nonideal situations. Rather, such ideal theories might serve as objects of comparison that help us sharpen our judgment in nonideal cases.

(4) Finally, none of this amount to a substantive refutation of Sluga argument—there is much he could say in response. Nor is it to suggest that Sluga’s own diagnostic approach is not appealing (as I will suggest in my next post, I am highly sympathetic to Sluga’s approach). Rather, it simply strikes me that Sluga’s arguments are not, in their current form, definitive against the normative tradition.

 

 

 

 

Redistribution and Recognition? Nancy Fraser on Social Justice

Should theorists of social justice focus on a politics of ‘recognition’ – the valuation of desperate identities and practices? Or, rather, should they aim for a politics of redistribution – focused of wealth, income, capabilities or other social goods?

This large and important issue forms the central question of the volume Redistribution or Recognition? by Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth. In their ‘political-philosophical exchange’ (as the subtitle of the book reads), Fraser and Honneth propose different answers to the question of how redistribution and recognition ought to be related. Both agree that an adequate understanding of social justice must encompass both, and that recognition is not superfluous. But there the agreements ends, and the debate begins.

The volume makes for a lively read. Fraser begins by sketching here two-dimensional conception of justice, and Honneth responds by outlining his theory of justice as recognition. Each then offers a rejoinder to the other. Somewhat rarely, the volume should be equally interesting to readers interested in analytic political philosophy as well as readers interested in critical theory and social philosophy. In today’s post, I sketch Fraser’s argument, focusing in particular on her theory of justice; I summarize her social philosophy, and the political implications of her thought more briefly.

Redistribution or Recognition? A False Antithesis

Fraser begins by sketching two ‘folk paradigms’ of justice – the redistribution paradigm (RDP) and the recognition paradigm (RCP). According to RDP, social injustice is socio-economic, it afflicts classes (which are products of unjust political economy), and remedying it requires economic restricting. A canonical example is simplified-Marxism. According to RCP, social injustice is primarily a matter of cultural devaluation of a status group’s culture, and remedying it is a matter of cultural or symbolic change.

After sketching this intuitive contrast, Fraser argues that the antithesis between them is a false one. Whill we can fashion ideal societies that fit one or the other model, most actual social inequalities are ‘two-dimensional.” That is, most subordinated groups suffer “both maldistribution and misrecognition in forms where neither of these injustices is an indirect effect of the other, but where both are primary and co-ordinals” (19). Fraser then argues that in contemporary American society, gender, race and class oppression are two-dimensional in this sense.

Thus,

[O]ne should roundly reject the construction of redistribution and recognition as mutually exclusive alternatives. The goal should be, rather, to develop an integrated approach that can encompass, and harmonize, both dimensions of social justice (26).

Fraser’s Theory of Justice: A Two-Dimensional Approach

After drawing this conclusion, Fraser poses four questions:

• Is recognition really a matter of justice, or is it a matter of self-realization?
• Do distributive justice and recognition constitute two distinct paradigms, or can one be subsumed by the other.
• How can we distinguish justified from unjustified claims for recognition?
• Does justice require the recognition of individuals or groups, or does recognizing common humanity suffice?

In sketching her own theory, Fraser attempts to answer each question. First, she argues, recognition is a matter of justice (the right) rather than axiology (the good). It is a matter of justice because certain forms of misrecognition deny persons “the status of full partners in social interaction simply as a consequence of institutionalized patterns of cultural value in whose construction they have not equally participated” (29). Treating recognition as a matter of justice means treating it as an issue of social status: actors can either by social peers with reciprocal relations of equality, or suffer from status subordination via miscrecognition.

According to the status model of recognition, misrecognition is neither an impairment of self-realization or a psychic deformation, but rather an “institutionalized relation of subordination” (29). Take the case of racial profiling in which policing practices treat young black males as dangerous because of racialized conceptions of criminality. In such cases , the institutional perception of blackness as danger inhibit persons from achieving the status of “a full partner in social life”.

This approach has four advantages: (1) it permits justification of recognition claims without affirming any one conception of the good; (2) it locates the wrong of miscrecognition in institutions and social practices, rather than in individual psychology; (3) it avoids the claim that each has an equal right to social esteem, only offering the weaker claim that “everyone has an equal right to pursue social esteem under fair conditions of equality of opportunity; and (4) it permits integration of recognition with redistribution.

How, then, should recognition and redistribution be integrated? Fraser argues neither can be subordinated to the other –status subordination occurs to the wealthy as well as to the poor; conversely, not all maldistribution is the product of miscrecognition. Instead, Fraser proposes a ‘two-dimensional conception of justice’ which treats recognition and distribution as ‘distinct perspectives on, and dimensions of, justice’ (35).

Calling the model two-dimensional, however, might be something of a mistake. Take the following passage:

As already noted, the normative core of my conception is the notion of parity of participation. 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, at least two conditions must be satisfied…[an] objective condition [which] precludes forms and levels of economic dependence and inequality that impede parity of participation….[and an] intersubjective condition [which] precludes institutionalized norms that systemically depreciate some categories of people and the qualities associated with them” (36).

This sounds a lot like Fraser is articulating a single principle –a principle of parity—and then deducing two further conditions from it. The principle itself is quite similar to certain articulates of democratic equality (see Anderson for one example). Moreover, Fraser later suggests one can deuce a third condition—that certain ‘political’ inequalities are also precluded; so the view is really three-dimensional.

The principle of parity is prima facie plausible. But, Fraser does little work to actually defend it against other conceptions of the ‘point’ of equality (say, luck egalitarianism). This strikes me as a point where much more would need to be said.

Note that (moreover) a strict application of the principle of parity does not imply strict egalitarianism. Rather, it suggests that the kind of inequalities that ought to be eliminated are those that inhibit members from participating equally in society. Although there are many clear cases, it is an open question which kind of inequalities fail this test, and there for how much (and what kinds) of inequalities Fraser’s view allows.

The parity principles is applied when evaluating both redistribution and recognition claims:

Redistribution claimants must show that existing economic arrangements deny them the necessary objective conditions for participatory parity. Recognition claimants must show that the institutionalized patterns of cultural value deny them the necessary intersubjective conditions.

Focusing on recognition, there are easy cases (same-sex marriage is one example). But cases involving cultural and religious practices are more complicated. Here, when evaluating whether a given practice ought to be recognized, Fraser suggests a dual application of the parity norm:

First, at the intergroup level, [the parity principle] supplies a standard for assessing the effects of institutionalized patterns of cultural value on the relative standing of minorities…Second, at the intragroup level, participatory parity also serves to assess the internal effects of minority practices for which recognition is claimed….Taken together, these two levels constitute a double requirement for claims for cultural recognition. Claimants must show, first, that the institutionalization of majority cultural norms denies them participatory parity and, second, that the practices whose recognition they seek do not themselves deny participatory parity [either to some group member or to anyone else] (40-1).

Fraser takes the case of the foulard ban in France. Here, the first condition is obviously met, and the difficult issue is whether permitting and recognizing the foulard in public schools would exacerbate female subordination (Fraser thinks the answer is probably no).

Fraser suggests such decisions should be made dialogically and discursively with the principle of parity serving as ‘the principle language for conducting democratic political argumentation’ on issues of recognition and redistribution (In short: Fraser defends a sort of public reason view combined with deliberative democracy).

Fraser then turns to the question of what recognition requires: does justice require we recognize an individual’s or group’s distinctiveness, or simply their common humanity? Fraser argues the answer cannot be answered a priori, opting instead for a pragmatic approach: what ought to be recognized depends on what is essential in the political contents to ensure parity.

Social Theory: Perspectival Dualism

Having outlined her normative theory, Fraser next addresses matters of social theory. Here, the task is “to understand the relations between maldistribution and miscreogniton in contemporary society” which entails “theorizing the relations between the class structure and the status order” in the contemporary world. She criticizes three views –economism (which reduces recognition conflicts to an epiphenomenon of distribution), culturalism (which does the opposite), and substantive dualism (similar to Michael Walzer’s view)—before outlining her own approach: perspectival dualism. According to this view, reconition and redistribution “constitute two analytical perspectives that can be assumed with respect to any domain” (again, she also proposes a possible third candidate – a ‘political’ dimension of oppression).

[I bracket this issue for now, and I will discuss social theory in more detail in an upcoming post on Axel Honneth’s Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Social Theory].

Political Strategy: Nonreformist Reform

Fraser concludes by considering the political implications of her thought: stating some ‘rules of thumb’ for thinking about political strategy. Fraser distinguishes between two kinds of approaches to institutional reform: affirmative and transformative strategies. Affirmative strategies correct an inequitable outcome of a social arrangement without distributing the underlying social structures that generate them (e.g. the liberal welfare state’s way of dealing with inequality). Transfromative strategies correct unjust outcomes precisely by restructuring the underlying framework (e.g. a transition to socialism). The distinction applies to both recognition and redistribution, and Fraser suggests that, in principle, transformative strategies are superior, but more difficult to realize in practice.

Fraser then suggests  a way out of the dilemma: whether a strategy has transformative or affirmative consequences is contextual. Reforms that appear affirmative can, in some contexts, have transformative effects. Fraser suggests that the Unconditional Basic Income is one example. She calls such reforms ‘nonreformist reforms’. Such policies engage people’s real needs, but also ‘set in motion’ trajectories of change that make more radical reforms possible over time. Fraser concludes by suggesting that recognition and redistribution issues cannot be separated in practice, and suggesting ways that the two dimensions might be brought together (through what Fraser calls cross-redressing and boundary awareness).

That’s it for today’s post. In the near future, I’ll share a short summary of Honneth’s response.

 

Elizabeth Anderson’s The Imperative of Integration –Ch. 1, “Segregation and Social Inequality”

In The Imperative of Integration, Elizabeth Anderson sets out to argue that segregation is a fundamental cause of social inequality, and that therefore integration should be seen as an imperative of justice. She sees this thesis as cutting against of the post-60s turn from a politics of redistribution to one of recognition, and the subsequent retreat from integration as a substantive goal. That retreat, in her view, is a mistake.

In this post, I’ll outline some of the basic arguments of the book, as sketched in the first chapter. In particular, I’ll focus on two aspects of Anderson’s approach – her focus on nonideal theory and her account of group inequality.

Elizabeth Anderson

Ideal v. Non-Ideal Theory

Anderson’s Imperative is a work of nonideal theory. It hopes to craft principles which we need to cope with injustice in our world, not to envision a perfectly just society. Some might object that we need to do ideal theory first, to determine how our world comes up short of justice. Anderson disagrees:

• Knowledge of the better does not require knowledge of the best.
• This misunderstands normative thinking. Normative thinking, following Dewey, begins in response to practical problems. We often know something is awry before we know how to fix it.

She thus suggests we start with the ‘present, large, systematic, and seemingly intractable’ forms of disadvantage that exist along group lines in our society, and devise principles for responding to them. She then suggests three further reasons for beginning with non-ideal, rather than ideal, theory:

• Relevance – We need to tailor our principles to people ‘as they are’ – that is, to the motivational and cognitive capacities of actual human agents.
• Avoiding the Idealization Gap Fallacy – Thinking from the perspective of ideal theory, we tend to see any gap between the ideal real world as a problem. For example, is an ideal world is ‘color blind,’ we might assume we must pursue a color blind politics under conditions of racist injustice. That would be a mistake.
• Occlusion –Ideal theory may prevent us from seeing problems in our own world. For example, in Rawls’ ideal theory, we think injustice from the perspective of the ‘representative person’ who has a class, but not a racial position. But this prevents us from recognizing the distinctive harms of black Americans experience in (e.g.) housing discrimination. Racial discrimination is not only a harm to a specific individual, but a slight against a group; the class perspective occludes this.

Thus, Anderson suggests, we should begin with non-ideal theory. Non-ideal theory, on her view, formulates hypotheses to be tested by experience, and, through reflection on our experience, allows us to formulate new standards of successful conduct. This is internal to our conception of what we are trying to do – namely, to solve a problem—though we might recognize on reflection we have misdiagnosed the problem.

Anderson sums up her approach later as follows:

In nonideal theory, normative inquiry begins with the identification of a problem. We then seek a causal explanation of the problem to determine what can and ought to be done about it, and who should be charged with correcting it. This requires an evaluation of the mechanisms causing the problem, as well as the responsibility of different agents to alter these mechanisms. If they are unjust, we then consider how these mechanisms can be dismantled (22).

The Relational Theory of Group Inequality

Anderson then articulates a theory of the causes of systemic group inequality (or ‘categorical’ inequality, as she sometimes calls it). The account builds on Weber’s notion of ‘social closure’ and its interpretation by Charles Tilly. Social closure occurs when a group, having gained dominance over an important good, closes its ranks and access to that good to outsides. Tilly develops this idea by postulating mechanisms by which social closure occurs:

• Opportunity hoarding – when one group blocks the access of others to an important set of goods (e.g. whites establishing school systems that provide better education for their own, and inferior schools for others).
• Exploitation – when one group allows another access to a good or opportunity but deprives that group of part of their productive contribrution (e.g. through oppressive sharecropping arrangements

Having established dominance in one domain, Tilly postulates two mechanisms by which inequality can spread:

• Emulation –other organizations copy the exploitative practices. If men are hired in better jobs, and women inferior ones, in one factory, another might simply copy the model.
• Adaptation –groups interact in accordance with oppressive norms and practices acquired in one domain –e.g. the family –and tacitcly or explicitly export them into another –e.g. the workplace.

As such inequalities spread, groups invent legitimizing stories and practices to maintain their privilege. The belief in races is one example; another is the practice of legitimizing hiring decisions by looking at resumes evidencing long-term stable employment. The latter case groups are ‘deprived of experiences that would qualify them for access to an important good’.

Tilly thinks segregation is the linchpin of group inequality. Segregation may refer to either a process by which one group closes its network to another or the outcome of such a process, a condition of closure. It comes in two forms – spatial segregation and role segregation.

Before expanding on this theory, Anderson notes that:

• Tilly’s theory is a general theory of categorical inequality – it applies to race, gender, caste, or citizenship status inequalities equally;
• Tilly’s theory explains inequality by appealing to ‘the relations between groups’ rather than by ‘characteristics internal and original to the groups as such’.
• Tilly’s explaination of inequality need not depend on the intentions of some actor or actors to create.
• Tilly’s theory views ideologies which rationalize inequality as ‘more the effect than the cause’ of group inequality.

Anderson expands the theory in several ways. First, she suggests additional mechanisms that explain the creation of group inequality:

• Violence
• Leverage – when one group uses its control over one good to gain control over others
• Political power (can be construed as a specific example of leverage) – when e.g. whites use control over power to pass laws that disproportionately fund white schools over black ones.
• Psychological mechanisms – stereotyping and prejudice.

(Anderson also modifies Tilly’s account of exploitation from an outcome based to a procedural account).

Second, while Tilly focuses on material inequalities, Anderson (drawing on Young’s ‘five faces of oppression’) includes other forms of inequality. She adds:

• Group Violence
• Cultural imperialism (cultural imposition
• Powerlessness

These arrangements are ‘unjust in themselves’. Despite these modifications, Anderson endorses Tilly’s central thesis – that the central cause of group inequality is the exclusion of one group from equal access to resources controlled by another, and segregation qua social closure is the linchpin of this process.

Anderson then notes here theory is relational, and contrasts it with non-relational views. The latter take ‘de facto inequalities in goods as objects of direct normative assessment independent of the relations through which they are produced or their effects on social relations’ (there are two components to this definition – independent of the causes and independent of effects, so in effect there are two kinds of ‘non-relational’ theories here, though Anderson does not note it).

A relation, according to Anderson, is ‘a mode of conduct…by which one party interacts with (or avoids) the other party…or affect[s] the other party’s interests or autonomy’. A group relation is such a process that governs relations between groups. Anderson advocates two ways we might evaluate such group relations.

1. Contractualist – persons are self-originating sources of valid claims with equal standing, and certain inequalities between groups may be reasonably rejected by members of one group (non-oppression).
2. Democratic –individuals in a democratic society are entitled to equal standing, and relations that depart from this are unjust. The claim to equal standing is more demanding than the claim to non-oppression.

How is the relational theory, which focuses on groups, related to the claims of individuals? Suppose individuals are the primary objects of assessment. Even so, we can say: an inequality in the distribution is unjust if it embodies unjust relations, is caused by such relations or causes such relations (note the three conditions here):

1. Embodiment—an unequal distribution of rights (e.g. to vote) embodies an unjust distribution
2. Causation –a distribution of legal rights through the market causes poor individuals to be vulnerable and thus likely causes violations of their rights. Such persons have two claims: 1. A claim to sufficient goods to participate as equals in society. 2. A claim to fair opportunities
3. Caused –distribution is caused by unjust relations (e.g. on party is denied rights).

Anderson then considers a problem in developing (C). The problem is this:

A just and democratic society must secure not only the equality of its members, but also their liberties, including their freedom of speech and association. This requirement is in tension with the demands of equal standing because individuals may exercise their freedom of speech by propagating stigmatizing ideas about other groups in society, and their freedom of association by practicing social closure (19).

Following Tilly, Anderson then distinguishes between two kinds of causes of unjust group inequalities – (A) stigma or prejudice, which is always unjust and (B) pure in-group favoritism, which is often, but not necessarily, unjust (B). It is unjust when, for example, ethnocentric officials violate their public duty of impartiality. It is not necessarily unjust – though not necessarily beyond moral criticism either – when individuals acting out of friendships or relations produced in a segregated society interact more closely with their associates (note: this distinction seems tenuous, and I am not clear if Anderson will be able to consistently defend it).

Even so, “because such affiliation contains the seeds of injustice, the state should take steps to prevent ethnocentric patterns of affiliation from reproducing themselves in institutions of civil society such as public schools.”

That’s it for today’s post. In my next post about Anderson’s book, I hope to summarize Chapters 2-4, wherein Anderson examines different aspects of the way segregation impacts the lives of African Americans.

Key Texts: Allen Buchanan, “Distributive Justice and Legitimate Expectations.”

In this article, Allen Buchanan offers a provocative critique of Rawls’ difference principle (DP), according to which social and economic inequalities ought to be arranged so as to benefit the worst off. He begins by suggesting a similarity between his critique and Nozick’s well-known critique of ‘end-state theories’ (end state theories are one’s which recommend a specific distributive pattern). Nozick holds that end state theories require “continuous interference into people’s lives” that violates liberty. Buchanan suggests that Nozick’s basic point is right, even if the point about liberty is wrong.

Allen Buchanan

Buchanan first argues that Rawls’ difference principle “makes the justness or unjustness of societies, actions and expectations alarmingly transient” (420). To illustrate, suppose at T1 the DP is satisfied by basic structure b, and institutions are arranged accordingly. But, suppose at T2, some new facts come to light – for example, a new technology that makes new arrangements feasible. In light of these new facts, b might not maximize the benefit to the worst off. A new structure b’ might do so. Since b is now unjust, Rawls’ DP requires that we bring about b’.

As a result, Buchanan suggests, applying the DP may require ‘gross and frequent disruptions of individuals’ framing and execution of long-term plans’ (420)  even though those plans were not previously unjust. This is so because citizens’ expectations are legitimate if and only if they issue from a just basic structure; if the basic structure is no longer just, their expectations no longer have a claim to be honored.

Buchanan gives two ideal theory examples:

• A t T1 benefiting the worst off requires a new health service, which requires a training program together with certain incentives. At T2, the program is scrapped because new equipment makes it a hindrances to maximizing the expectations of the worst off. What claim do the individuals who participated in the program have based on their legitimate expectations which arose as a result of encouragement by past policy?
• At T1 the DP is satisfied by a regime of ‘property-owning democracy,’ while at T2 the DP is satisfied by a regime of ‘market socialism’. What of the expectations of property owners?

Buchanan then contrasts these with a non-ideal case:

• In order to rectify past injustice, a society institutes a quota system on minority applications to law school. The non-minority applicant complains that the introduction of a quota system ‘late in the game’ undercuts his effectiveness as a rational planner.

In cases (3), we can reply that the agent’s past expectations were founded on unjust arrangements [note: Buchanan takes the legitimacy of the agent’s expectations in (3) much more seriously than I do. One way to define privilege might as the assumptions that one’s expectations continue to be met, where such expectations are the product of unjust institutions and doing so requires continual injustice]. But in case (1) and (2), we cannot say the past arrangement was unjust.

Buchanan considers various responses:

• The appeal to rule of law as ‘providing a stable, relatively permanent framework of expectations.’ Buchanan suggests this fails because what is missing is ‘a theory of institutional change,’ not merely a set of principles for cases wherein institutions remain constant.
• The appeal to the ideal/non-ideal distinction. This doesn’t help because the objection applies equally in ideal theory. The problem is how to maintain the justness of a scheme over time, where maintaining justness requires institutional change.

Buchanan then suggests a possible Rawlsian solution: Rawls could appeal to the difference principle itself. The DP primarily distributes long-term life prospects and expectations, and if we include institutions for institutional change in the basic structure, then we should apply the DP in making decisions about how to maintain justice. Many disruptive changes may not be to the benefit of the worst off, since much depends on stable arrangements.  Furthermore, determining whether a given disruption would be to the benefit of the worst off might itself require vast expenditure of resources, which might not be to the benefit of the worst off (similar remarks might be made contra Nozick’s objection).

Buchanan’s conclusion is tentative: “Until a corresponding ideal theory of institutional change is adequately developed, the acceptability of a principle of distribution simply cannot be determined” (425).  That might be. But the basic tenant of Buchanan’s solution – namely, applying the principles of justice to institutional change itself –is promising. This is especially so when one considers that, in a Rawlsian well-ordered society, participants (1) would presumably know that maintaining justice would require institutional change, and (2) would accept the principles of justice as a public conception of justice for making such changes. If they know (1) and (2), then, presumably, it would be reasonable to regard citizens as capable adjusting their expectations accordingly.

Buchanan, Allen. “Distributive justice and legitimate expectations.”Philosophical Studies 28.6 (1975): 419-425.

Key Texts: Iris Marion Young, “Equality For Whom? Social Groups and Judgments of Injustice”

While recent debates have focused much on the “equality of what?” question, in her paper (2001), Iris Marion Young focuses on the question of “equality for whom?”. The issue is this: “whom we are discussing when we compare people’s situation with regard to…equality?” (1).

The dominant assumption among political philosophers is that we ought to be concerned with inequality between individuals. However, in actual practice, we often compare groups of individuals – blacks with whites, old people with younger people, women with men, and so on. Young article asks “whether and how such group-conscious practices of assessing inequality are justified” (1).

Young argues that assessing group inequalities is indispensable for social justice, in particular because focusing on group inequalities allows us to identify structure inequalities. Structural inequalities are sets of” reproduced social processes that reinforce one another to enable or constrain individual actions…[and] that tend to privilege some more than others.”

Iris Marion Young

Challenges to Group-Conscious Measures

Young begins by considering “challenges to group conscious measures of equality”. These come in two kinds – political and philosophical. Political challenges include: (1) the claim that group measures among to ‘invidious discrimination’ and that society should aim to be X-blind (where “X” might be gender, color, and the like), (2) the claim that group measures are politically divisive identify politics. Philosophical challenges include:

• Dworkin’s claim that focus on groups ignores the ‘many differences in the tastes, choices, and goals of individuals,’ which are morally relevant to the assessment of an equality claim
• Temkin’s claim that focus on group wrongly locates the source of moral concern with group, rather than with how individuals fare.
• Rae’s claim that group measures ‘wrongly collapse into group averages and ignore individual difference (ignoring, say, the fact that some members of a disadvantaged group might fare better than some members of an advantaged group).

Young aims to counter these claims in the remainder of the article.

Inequality and Moral Judgment

If we are concerned about equality (or inequality), Young suggests (plausibly), we are concerned about it because we have a conception of justice on which (in)equality is relevant. Young then moves to argue that claims about social justice (which invoke equality) require comparison of groups on measures of advantage. Why? Because only by looking at group inequalities can we see how structures produce injustice by affording people different degrees of opportunity. Young argues for this claim as follows.

First, many inequalities between individuals reduce to claims of sufficiency – the wrong of one starving while another is well fed can be explained on sufficientarian grounds. So assume, for the remainder of the paper, that all have ‘enough’.

Second, take a case of inequality where all are ‘above the line’. For example A has an annual income of $30,000 while B has an annual income of 300,000. Is the inequality unjust? Answering that question, Young thinks, requires further information.

We need to know what caused the unequal condition. “It is the causes and consequences of some pattern of inequality, rather than the pattern itself, that raises issues of justice” (not all egalitarians would agree, but the claim is plausible). For example, if the inequality was caused by the uncoerced and considered decisions and preferences of the less well-off person, then it is probably not unjust. However, many inequalities are not caused in this way, but instead by social institutions that exclude, discriminate, or privilege (Young suggest that this category is usually neglected by ‘luck egalitarians’).  Take the case of the wealth disparity in the U.S. When we learn that the wealthy generally had wealthy parents, were educated at the most resources institutions, and the like, then we can begin to pass a verdict on the injustice of the inequality.

Structural Inequalities

Young then argues that focus on groups – e.g. race, class, gender –also us to make sense of a particular kind of inequality: structural inequality. Young begins by noting that social structures that “inhibit the capacities of some” by a ‘net of restricting and reinforcing relationships’. Take two examples:

1. Women’s oppression, Susan Okin argues, is grounded in a gender division of labor in the family. Gender roles structure people’s lives in such a way that results in disadvantage for women. For example, society expects women to care for their children without compensation, and women are socialized to do this. This effects their career prospects, which in turn often makes them more dependent on men, creating unequal power in the family.
2. Racial segregation is another example. Racially discriminatory housing policy confines many people of color to poorer neighborhoods, with declining property values and concentrated poverty. Business in these communities is more secure; schools have less funding. As a result, more people of color experience physical violence, lack adequate schooling and have fewer prospects for employment.

Young than systematizes the idea of structure by expanding the idea of the structure found in Rawls, Giddens and others as follows:

“Structures refer to the relation of basic social positions that fundamentally condition the opportunities and life prospects of persons located in these positions,” through “mutually reinforcing processes” of effecting individuals and effecting rules and institutions.

A structural inequality, then, “consists in the relative constraints some people encounter in their freedom and well-being as the cumulative effect of the possibilities of their social positions.” Some who encounter net more obstacles will no doubt overcome them, but that does not make the distribution of obstacles fair.

Groups and Judgments of Injustice

What, then, justifies comparing social groups in order to find inequalities? The answer: doing so helps identify structural inequalities. We do not choose the grouping at random – not any statistical inequality between groups makes it unjust; instead, we look at groupings for which there is reason to believe there is some inequality. Moreover, we cannot make a full evaluation of some discovered inequality “unless we can tell a plausible structural story” about how the inequality was produced. That is, until we explain how institutions, rules and policies, combined with individual actions and interactions, created a situation of unequal opportunity.

Young concludes:

ultimately the judgments of injustice…are not about the distributive patterns. Each distributive pattern only offers a piece of the puzzle, a clue to an account of generalized social processes which restrict the opportunities of some people..A large class of social inequalities can be judged as unjust because they violate a broad principle of equal opportunity (16).

Her view is thus close to Anderson’s and farther from luck egalitarianism.

Objections and Policy Implications

Having set out her view, Young responds to the objections, noting:

1. Her account does not assume a reified notion of social groups
2. Her account does not contradict the claim that individuals are the final targets of judgments of justice
3. Her account does not treat social groupings as arbitrary, but focuses on social groupings which we can ‘tell a plausible structural story’ about why they are disadvantaged
4. Her account does not suppress individualized difference, but instead identifies common structural obstacles and privileges.

Young concludes that justifying particular courses of action to remedy inequalities requires separate consideration, but at the very least her approach does suggest gathering data and analyzing group differences should be done.

Overall, Young’s paper is extremely rewarding, and largely succeeds in making group inequality a subject of egalitarian concern without falling into the pitfalls of more simplistic approaches.

Young, Iris Marion. “Equality of whom? Social groups and judgments of injustice.” Journal of Political Philosophy 9.1 (2001): 1-18.

Reader’s Guide: Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Chapter 1, §5-9)

In this post, I continue the Reader’s Guide Serious Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (TJ) (for the first installment, click here) by examining §5-9 of the introductory chapter. In these passages, Rawls aims locate his own account in relation to other theories (notably, utilitarianism in §5-6) as well as other issues in moral philosophy (notably, intuitionism in §7-8). Let’s begin with utilitarianism.

5. Classical Utilitarianism

As already mentioned, Justice as Fairness (JAF), that is, Rawls’ own view, is supposed to represent “an alternative to utilitarian thought generally” (20). Though Rawls believes the essential differences remain the same across the varieties of utilitarian view, for ease, Rawls focuses on the contrast with ‘classical utilitarianism’ (which ‘receives its clearest [sic.] formulation in Sidgwick’).

Henry Sidgwick

The main idea of utilitarian justice is the following: a just society achieves the greatest net balance of satisfaction summed over all individuals belonging to it. Why might one adopt such a view? Rawls gives three answers.

First, we might arrive at this view by thinking that the choice of principles of justice like the choice of principles for one man. In our own case, contemplating how to realize our own interests, ‘we may impose a sacrifice now for the sake of greater advantage later’ (21), and might adopt the maxim to achieve our own ends as far as possible. But, if so, ‘why should not a society act on precisely the same principle’?  Thinking thusly, we might be lead to the conclusion that ‘social justice is the principle of rational prudence applie to an aggregative conception of the welfare of the group’ (21).

Second, we might assume a particular relationship obtains between the right (what we ought to do) and the good (what is valuable). The simplest relationship between these two is the teleological relation: that the good is independently defined, and the right is defined as that which maximizes the good. Rawls’ point is that the teleological picture is very tempting. Of course, the teleological picture is not itself utilitarianism. There are different teleological theories, depending on how one defines the good. Perfectionism (found in both Aristotle and Nietzsche) is another option, the satisfaction of rational desire (Rawls’ conception of the theory of the good in utilitarianism) is another.

Together, these ideas encourage a utilitarian picture, and gives utilitarian ideas like that of the impartial spectator or sympathy their life (24). Any resulting principles of justice would be “derivative from the one end of attaining the greatest balance of satisfaction” (23). On this view, the choice of principles of justice is essential a question of efficient administration.

Rawls then suggests that utilitarian views face have two consequences. First,  “there is no reason in principle why the greater gains of some should not compensate for the lesser losses of others; or more importantly, why the violation of the liberty of a few might not be made right by the greater good shared by many”. Note that the criticism is not that utilitarianism cannot say anything about the priority of liberty, but rather that the best they can say is that ‘it simply happens’ that the greatest balance is not attained in this way. Second, Rawls notes that on the utilitarian view a ‘separate individuals’ are thought of as so many different lines along which rights and duties are to be assigned…so as to give the greatest fulfillment of wants…utilitarianism does not take seriously the distinction between persons”. Both of these points –the problem of an instrumental justification of liberty and the problem of the separateness of persons –have been used as the basis for powerful criticisms of utilitarian thought (see the next section). But here, Rawls simply notes that they are consequences of adopting the utilitarian viewpoint.

6. Some Related Contrasts

Having outlined the utilitarian view, Rawls moves to contrast it with JAF.

• Role of Rights/Liberties – Justice as fairness attempts to account for common sense convictions about the priority of liberty and right. The utilitarian thinks these common sense precepts have only a “subordinate validity” – liberty is important insofar as it promotes utility.
• Separateness of persons – Utilitarianism extends the principle of choice for one man to the whole of society, while JAF “assumes that plurality of distinct persons with separate systems of ends is an essential feature of human societies”. Hence, JAF chooses principles in the OP, rather than through an impartial spectator.
• Teleology – Utilitarianism is a teleological theory while JAF is not. JAF is deontological for two reasons: (1) JAF defines right independently of the good; (2) it assumes that institutions will not maximize the good.

Having noted these contrasts. Rawls offers a powerful; criticisms of the utilitarian view: the so-called ‘offensive tastes’ objection, which runs as follows. In utilitarianism, the satisfaction of any desire has some value in itself which must be taken into account in deciing what is right. It does not matter, on this view, what the desires are for.  Thus, “if men take a certain pleasure in discriminating against one another…then the satisfaction of these desires must be weighted in our deliberations”. But, intuitively, such desires ought not to count in matters of justice.

In contrast, in JAF, the principles of justice impose restrictions on what count as reasonable conceptions of the good. “The principles of right, and so of justice, put limits on which satisfactions have value”. In a slogan, ‘the concept of right is prior to that of good.’ Thus, “a just social system defines the scope within which individuals must develop their aims, and provides a framework of rights and opportunities and means of satisfaction within and by the use of which these ends may be equitably pursued.” Hence, JAF is not subject to the offensive tastes objection.

Thus, utilitarianism and JAF handle the notion of the person in different ways. Utilitrainism only excludes desires that would lead to less satisfaction, but this is a formal restriction: it has nothing to do with the content of such desires per se. For the most part, it utilitarianism “relies…upon natural facts and contingencies of human life in determining what forms of moral character are to be encouraged in a just society.” Rawls emphasizes that this is not so much an objection but ‘simply a feature of utilitarian doctrine’.

Rawls concludes by noting, first, that his remarks only apply to classical utilitarianism (not, say, to Hume’s view), and emphasizing the implicit difference in conception of society at work in utilitarianism and JAF. The well-ordered society of JAF is not an ‘efficient administration’ system, but ‘a scheme of cooperation for reciprocal advantage’.

7. Intuitionism

Having distinguished his view from utilitarianism, Rawls contrasts it with a prevalent methodological view in moral philosophy: intuitionism. Rawls’ intuitionism is not strictly equivalent to intuitionism as meant by other philosophers.  For Rawls, intuitionism is the view that there is an irreducible family of first principles of justice that have to be balanced by consultation of our considered judgments, without higher-order criteria.

This view has two implications: (1) that there are a plurality of first principles which may conflict to give contrary directives in particular types of cases, and (2) that there is no explicit method, no priority rules, for weighing these principles against one another: we are simply to strike a balance by intuition, by what seems to us most nearly right.

W.D. Ross, intuitionist moral philosopher

This characterization of intuitionism brackets e.g. epistemological commitments of intuitionism, and allows for many kinds of intuitionism. For example, what Rawls calls common sense intuitionism applies intuition to ‘particular problems of justice’. The view – and Rawls’ criticism of it – is worth exploring en passant because it is quite close to Michael Walzer’s view in Spheres of Justice, although that book was published latter. Here’s Rawls’ statement of the view:

Common sense intuitionism takes the form of groups of rather specific precepts, each group applying to a particular problem of justice. There is a group of precepts which applies to the question of fair wages, another to that of taxation, still another to punishment, and so on. In arriving at the notion of a fair wage, say, we are to balance somehow various competing criteria, for example, the claims of skill, training, effort, responsibility, and the hazards of the job, as well as to make some allowance for need. No one presumably would decide by any one of these precepts alone, and some compromise between them must be struck (31).

And here’s Rawls’ criticism:

The determination of wages by existing institutions also represents, in effect, a particular weighting of these claims. This weighting, however, is normally influenced by the demands of different social interests and so by relative positions of power and influence. It may not, therefore, conform to any one’s conception of a fair wage. This is particularly likely to be true since persons with different interests are likely to stress the criteria which advance their ends. Those with more ability and education are prone to emphasize the claims of skill and training, whereas those lacking these advantages urge the claim of need. But not only are our everyday ideas of justice influenced by our own situation, they are also strongly colored by custom and current expectations. And by what criteria are we to judge the justice of custom itself and the legitimacy of these expectations? To reach some measure of understanding and agreement which goes beyond a mere de facto resolution of competing interests and a reliance on existing conventions and established expectations, it is necessary to move to a more general scheme for determining the balance of precepts, or at least for confining it within narrower limits (31).

The key part comes in the last part of the paragraph, and I’ll distort Rawls wording to make the criticism of Walzer clear (although a bit polemic). Walzer claims that different goods – health care, offices and positions, membership, money, etc. – should be distributed according to different principles because ‘‘we cannot distribute goods to men and women until we understand what the goods mean, what parts they play, how they are created, and how they are valued, among those same men and women. Distributions flow out of and are relative to social meanings.’ But, distributing goods in accordance with social meanings means distributing them in accord with ‘our everyday ideas of justice’ which are ‘influenced by our own situation.’ But we need some way to ‘judge the justice of custom itself and the legitimacy of these expectations’ and thus ‘it is necessary to move to a more general scheme for determining the balance of precepts.’

Another kind of view would consider ‘the problems of justice by reference to certain ends of social policy’ (an ‘intuitionism of social ends’). Rawls again finds such a view wanting, for it would involve ‘appeal to intuition in the balancing of higher-order ends of policy’.  What is needed is a way to determine the balance of these ends; philosophical conceptions of justice should do so. Conceptions that fail to do so – by offering multiple principles with no clear priority rules – are lacking.

Consider a conception of justice which contains two principles – (A) a utility principle – the basic structure of society ought to be designed so as to produce the most good, and (B) an equality principle – the basic structure of society ought to distribute satisfactions equally –but lacks a priority rule. Lacking such a rule, we don’t know how such principles are to be balanced against one another. Radically different weights might exist. To illustrate, Rawls introduces the notion of an indifference curve. On an indifference curve representing principles (A) and (B), there are various points that could satisfy the distribution (some extra utility could offset some greater inequality). Moreover, very different distributions are consistent with the two principles, depending on how one weights them.

The best the intuitionist can hope for here is that “once these…principles are identified, men will in fact balance them more or less similarly”. That’s the most the intuitionist can hope for because ‘there exists no expressible ethical conception which underlies these weights” (34). Rawls finds this dissatisfying, but he thinks we cannot take for granted that we can do better. Rather, “the only way…to dispute intuitionism” is to set forth criteria that recognize the weighting problem. That amounts to giving an answer to the priority problem, which Rawls turns to in the next section.

8. The Priority Problem

Intuitionism holds “no constructive answer can be given to the problem of assigning weights to competing principles of justice,” and the best we can do is rely on intuition in balancing them. The problem of weighting competing principles Rawls terms the priority problem.

Why is Rawls so concerned with it? Importantly, Rawls is not trying to deny the relevance of all appeals to intuition: “no doubt any conception of justice will have to rely on intuition to some degree” (36). What’s his problem, then? The problem is that Rawls thinks that “if men balance final principles differently…then their conceptions of justice are different…[and thus] an intuitionist conception of justice is…but half a conception” (37). In short, Rawls thinks the intuitionists punt on this issue means they have not yet fully specified a conception of justice.

Rawls thinks the that, in response, “we should do what we can to reduce direct appeal to our considered judgments” (36, my italics).  One way to do this would be to adopt a single, utilitarian standard. Rawls does not opt for this approach. Instead, JAF addresses the problem by:

• Claiming that the justification for a set of principles is given by the fact that they would be chosen in the original position (parties in this position would also reason about weights. Why the OP represents our considered convictions, it does not appeal to them in any direct way.
• Introducing the idea of ‘lexical’ (lexicographical) priority, meaning that, before we satisfy the second principle, we must have satisfied the first (and so on). We will see more on this later.
• Substituting prudential for moral judgment in order to answer a restricted question. For example, in applying Rawls’ difference principle, we need only think about the prudential reasoning of the representive ‘worst off’ person.

The point, again, is not to eliminate intuition, but to focus the appeal by creating a device (in this case, the OP) that allows our considered judgments to converge.

9. Some Remarks about Moral Theory

In the final section, Rawls clarifies the role of the OP and the idea of reflective equilibrium. He claims to follow the ‘general point of view’ expressed in his earlier work “Outline of a Decision Procedure For Ethics” (1951), although there are differences.

Rawls defines moral theory as ‘an attempt to describe our moral capacity’ and theory of justice as an attempt to describe our sense of justice. A ‘sense of justice’, for Rawls, is a kind of ‘moral sentiment (see §73). By ‘our’ Rawls means at least his, or more generally the sense of justice of a mature ‘competent judge’. By ‘describe’ Rawls does not mean a list of our views and their supporting reasons, but formulation of a set of principles which, together with the right beliefs and facts, would lead us to make these judgments were we to apply the principles intelligently and conscientiously. “We do not understand our sense of justice until we know in some systematic way covering a wide range of cases what these principles are.”

Take the ‘sense of grammaticalness’ a native speaker has as an analogy. In this case, we want ‘clearly expressed principles’ that match the discriminations a native speaker would make. But doing so requires making theoretical constructions and posulates that outrun the kinds of ad-hoc justifications a native speaker can typically give. So to for our sense of justice: there is no reason to assume that our sense of justice can be adequately characterized by familiar common sense precepts” (41).

To undertake the task, we first look at our considered judgments, which display our capacity for justice without distortion. Considered judgments (CJs) are those judgments we are certain of, make without hesitation, and in favorable circumstances free (as far are possible from bias). We then hypothesize that the correct PJs (arrived at via the OP) will make our considered judgments. This, of course, will not happen because our CJs are ‘no doubt subject to certain irregularities and distortions”  . So we revise our CJs by weighing up the philosophical considerations in play.

Rawls then distinguishes two conceptions of reflective equilibrium:

1. Conservative [my terminology here]: the principles of justice should match our actual, current considered judgments.
2. Radical [my terminology again]: the principles of justice should match the considered judgments one might come to accept after all philosophical arguments have been presented.

Rawls claims he is only interested in (2). There can be no guarantee such a state will be reached, or reached for every reader, but even if he only systematizes one person’s sense of justice, he will have achieved something.

Rawls emphasizes that he is presented a ‘theory’ of our moral sentiments, and that certain simplifications are necessary. Moreover, he notes that he does not give questions of meaning or definition a special place. Such issues might be resolved – or dissolved –by sketching a conception of justice.

That’s it for today’s Reader’s Guide. Join us next time when we look at Chapter II, §10-17, in which Rawls first formulates the principles of justice for institutions.

Short Review: Jonathan Wolff’s “An Introduction to Political Philosophy”

I just finished reading Jonathan Wolff’s “An Introduction to Political Philosophy” (the revised edition, published 2006 with OUP). The book takes an interesting approach to the topic – introducing what Wolff takes to be the most influential answers to key questions in political philosophy, and largely ignoring chronology. The approach is rewarding, as one can see, by the end, a natural progression of questions in political philosophy. It moves from the question ‘should we have a state?’ and the problem of political obligation (Ch. 2, posed against the backdrop of a summary of views of the state of nature, Ch. 1), to the questions, if we have a state, how should it be ruled (Ch. 3 on democracy), what are the limits on its authority (Ch. 4 on liberty). Then, the book explores property and distributive justice, and concludes by exploring feminist criticisms. Also to the book’s advantage is its skeptical treatment of many of the issues. Wolff takes care to show that many of the basic questions remain deeply controversial and unsettled.

While rewarding, there are limitations to the book’s approach. First, the natural progression of Wolff’s book is not the only progression of thought possible. Second, unlike, say, Rawls’ Lectures in the History of Political Philosophy, the book sometimes fails to grasp the distinctiveness of the questions different historical thinkers – e.g. Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau – were trying to answer. Finally, much is invariably left out: Marxist and communitarian views, to name a few, are given very little treatment, and nothing is said about global justice. Only can hardly complain about these limitations, given the territory already covered and the constraints of space.

I would recommend the book to those seeking to get a grasp on some of the basic issues in political philosophy; for such readers, the Wolff’s introduction will be quite rewarding. More advanced students in political philosophy might supplement Wolff’s book with Rawls’ Lectures, or with Kymlicka’s Contemporary Political Philosophy.

 

Basic Issues: Is the Basic Structure the Primary Subject of Justice?

In A Theory of Justice (hereafter: TJ), Rawls famously claims that his two principles of justice apply, in first instance, to the “basic structure of society“. Rawls sometimes put this by saying that the basic structure is the “primary subject of justice.” Call this Rawls’ primacy thesis.

By basic structure, Rawls means how “the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights andduties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation” (TJ, 6). Major institutions include the principle economic and social arrangements that exist in a society; in ours, things like the legal protection of freedom of thought, competitivemarkets, private property and the family.  Taken as a single, unified scheme, such institutions obviously have a pervasive effect on the lives of citizens.As Rawls puts it, in reasoning for their primacy, as follows:

The basic structure is primary because its effects are so profound and present from the start. The intuitive notion here is that this structure contains various social positions and that men born into different positions have different expectations of life determined, in part, by the political system as well as by economic and social circumstances. In this way the institutions of society favor certain starting places over others. These are especially deep inequalities. Not only are they pervasive, but they affect men’s initial chances in life; yet they cannot possibly be justified by an appeal to the notions of merit or desert (7).

Rawls’ reasoning here is persuasive. Indeed, no one can deny the importance of such institutions in considering matters of justice, and many have been convinced that Rawls is right.

A ‘Basic Structure’

 

One can, however, deny that such institutions ought to be the primary subject of justice in the special sense Rawls intended. Indeed, just that issue is what I wish to consider in today’s post. More particularly, I want to look at an influential and powerful critique of Rawls’ claim that the basic structure is primary developed by Marxist political philosopher G.A. Cohen, and two responses to that critique by Joshua Cohen and Samuel Scheffler.

Cohen’s Critique

G.A. Cohen – a political philosopher, known for his analytic Marxism; less known for his comic but prolific impersonations – offers a profound and relentless criticism of Rawls’ primary claim in his “Where the Action is: On the Site of Distributive Justice” (1997). In that article, Cohen claims  to defend the claim that the ‘the personal is political,’ which for him means that the principles of justice (also) apply to ‘people’s legally unconstrained choices,’ rather than (exclusively, or even primarily) to the basic structure. Cohen targets, in particular, Rawls’ difference principle  and aims to show that Rawls’ application of that principle is problematic in that it allows for a kind of inequality Cohen thinks unjust.

Rawls difference principle (DP) states that inequalities in are justified if and only if they work to the benefit of the worst off; that is, the least advantaged members of society. To stress, Cohen’s argument is not against the difference principle’s content – he thinks the principle quite correct, with some reservations – against its application (5). That is, Cohen’s quarrel concerns which inequalities pass its test (and therefore, derivatively, how much inequality DP allows) (6). In particular, Cohen aims to counter the Incentives Argument – the claim that the talented earning more is justified because it gives them an incentive to work harder, the supposed justification being that taxation of their work could provide benefits to the worst off. By “talented”, Cohen simply means ‘rich’ –people in a position to earn more than others, depending on their choices.

Cohen finds such inequalities are not only unjust, but, more to the point, the reveal a tension in the application of the difference principle.

His argument, in brief, is the following:

• Either the Talented affirm DP, or they do not.
• If they do not, then, from Rawls’ clam that a well-ordered society would be regulated by the principles of justice (including DP), the society is not just.
• If they do affirm the DP, then they ought to (per Rawls) apply it in their daily lives.
• If (3), then they can be asked why they require more pay than the untalented. They cannot claim that it is necessary – since they decide to do the work for the incentive. Thus, they would be committed to abandoning the claim to the incentive.
• Thus, the incentives argument cannot justify inequality.

If Cohen is right, it suggests that the ‘double-minded modeling’ – with citizens endorsing a tax code that assumes their selfish choices – cannot be justified (on Rawlsian terms). That suggests, however, that the DP applies directly to people’s choices – a just society requires an ethos of justice that informs individual choices within a basic structure.

So much in the way of background; the real action happens next. How would the Rawlsian respond? Cohen thinks (as we will see later, perhaps falsely). Cohen thinks Rawlsian would reply with the basic structure objection: that the DP applies only to the basic structure (BS) of society, and therefore not to people choices.  That seems logical, given Rawls’ primacy claim.

After developing this objection, Cohen offers two responses to it: first, that the BS requirement is inconsistent with several key Rawlsian claims; and second, more importantly, that Rawls’ idea of the BS contains “a fatal ambiguity,” which dooms the approach. The second response is more important, but first things first.

Cohen claims that the BS requirement stands in tension with three important Rawlsian claims. This means Rawls would either have to abandon these claims, or to abandon the BS requirement and thus the primacy claim. The three claims are

• That a just society displays fraternity;
• That the worst-off can bear their position with dignity;
• That citizens in a WOS have a sense of justice (3 is the most important).

I’ll leave aside (1) and (2) and focus on (3), which for both Rawls and Cohen is most important. Moral persons, in Rawls’ view, are assumed to be equipped with the capacity for a sense of justice, and in a just society, Rawls claims that individuals would acquire an effective sense of justice. That means, on Cohen’s reading, that they would act from the principles of justice, and apply them as the circumstances require. But, Cohen asks, how can such individuals, “without a redolence of hypocrisy, celebrate the full realization of their natures as moral persons, when they know that they are out for the most that they can get in the market?”

The question is awkward enough; answering it would require spelling out just what having an effective sense of justice, for Rawls, entails. Part of an answer might consist in a discussion of just how Rawls’ two principles figure in the reasoning and choices of moral persons in a just society.  But, let’s now turn to Cohen’s second reply to the basic structure objection, which contains his most forceful challenge to Rawls’ position.

Cohen’s claim here is that Rawls cannot answer the simply question: “What (exactly) is the Basic Structure?”  The very idea contains a fatal ambiguity; it is incapable of elaboration in a manner which can support the primacy claim.  The ambiguity is this. Rawls says the basic structure concerns the major institutions of society, but it is seriously unclear which institutions count as part of it: “Sometimes it appears that .coercive (in the legal sense) institutions exhaust [the BS], or, better, that institutions belong to it only insofar as they are (legally) coercive… Yet it is quite unclear that the basic structure is always thus defined, in exclusively coercive terms, within the Rawlsian texts (18-19).” Cohen offers two readings of the idea of the basic structure, which Rawls could appeal to for help:

• The Broad View: The BS consists of major institutions of society – it is simply the ‘broad outline of society.’ It would this include non-coercive institutions like the family.
• The Narrow View: The BS consists of only the legally coercive institutions of society. It would thus not include non-coercive institutions like the family

Whether one adopts the broad on the narrow view, Cohen argues, Rawls is in trouble. In case (A), the broad view, certain institutions –e.g. the family – have the structure that they have because of people’s routine choices. That much is undeniable.

More problematically, though, institutions like the family are shaped by peoples choices. They have the sort of pervasive effects (and coercive, though not in the legal sense, power) that they have because people’s quotidian choices reinforce them:  “when A chooses to conform to the prevailing usages, the pressure on B to do so is reinforced, and no such pressure exists, the very usages themselves do not exist, in the absence of conformity to them.” Thus, “it follows that the only way of protecting the basic structure objection against my claim that the difference principle condemns maximizing economic behavior…is by holding fast to a purely coercive specification of the basic structure.”

Does the coercive specification – the narrow view –fare better?  With it, Rawls avoids the choice problem, but faces another. If he adopts the narrow view, Rawls, Cohen alleges, cannot explain why the BS is primary. Other non-coercive institutions such as the family have just as pervasive a role as coercive ones. After all, we just admitted that the family has equally pervasive effects. So: “why should we care so disproportionately about the coercive basic structure, when the major reason for caring about it, its impact on people’s lives, is also a reason for caring about informal structure and patterns of personal choice?”

This produces a dilemma: Rawls must either admit application of the DP to (legally optional) choices, in which case the BS restriction fails; or, if he restricts the BS to the coercive structure, he must admit his choice is arbitrary and ungrounded.

So that’s Cohen’s objection. It’s a powerful challenge to a key idea behind the Rawlsian approach. The question is whether Rawls has a reply. In the remainder of the post, I consider two critical responses offered in defense of Rawls: Josh Cohen’s and Samuel Scheffler’s.

Joshua Cohen’s Rousseauian Reply

In his (2001) article “Taking People As They Are?” (the title is based on a quote from Rousseau), J. Cohen – hereafter, Josh – responds to G.A. Cohen’s- hereafter, Jerry- critique of Rawls’ difference principle. Jerry’s critique, on Josh’s reconstruction’ concerns the uncertain place of a social ethos – that is, socially widespread preferences and attitudes about the kinds of rewards are acceptable to insist on– in an account of distributive justice. The ambiguity concerns whether ‘an account of distributive justice should treat the social ethos as part of the background in judgments of justice or as a proper object of such judgments.’ How one applies Rawls’ DP depends on how one answer’s this question, since the DP itself is incomplete.

To illustrate, consider this case. Suppose a certain doctor is perfectly able to doctor for the median wage of (say) $30,000, and would live at least as well as everyone else if she did. However, as it happens, the doctor would prefer to write literary fiction and is therefore unwilling to doctor for less than $100,000. Suppose we give the doctor the incentive. Are they worst off less well off than before?

The answer is not obvious. Indeed, there are two answers, depending on what we hold fixed. If we take “people’s preferences and attitudes as fixed,” then no: the worst off aren’t any worse off than they otherwise would have been. But if we don’t hold such preferences fixed, then, yes, it seems the worst off are worse off. The question is then whether we should hold these things fixed.

Jerry distinguished between two versions of the DP – a lax version, which holds people’s attitudes fixed, and a strict version, which we treat those preferences as assessable by the norms of justice. But there are in fact a multitude of possibilities here, not just two. We might distinguish between different kinds of preferences, some held fixed, others not.

The most extreme case would be an Ultra-Lax DP, according to which we ought to take all preferences as given. That principle is obviously inadequate. To see why, Josh introduces five cases (in order of offensiveness), to which the Ultra-Lax DP could be applied:

• Ascriptive Group Preferences – Racist whites who refuse benefits to worse off minorities, unless they themselves are provided with higher benefits.
• Class Preferences – A better off wants to preserve their economic privileges, and so won’t work unless paid substantially more.
• Greedy/Needy – A greedy better off group care only about their absolute position in society; they won’t work unless they maintain their decedent lifestyle, while the needy suffer.
• Large Dispersion – same as (3), but the needy aren’t so badly off.
• Absolute incentives – a better off group is unwilling to use her talents unless she is made better off in some way.

Which would Rawls allow? Jerry does not distinguish between the Ultra-Lax DP from a family of Lax DPs. Josh suggests that Rawls does not condone the ultra-lax DP. Instead, Josh suggests: ‘Rawls must have some way of excluding, from the incentives condoned by the difference principle. In particular, Josh thinks “Rawls must have some reason for thinking that the objectionable preferences and attitudes will not arise” in a just society.”

On Josh’s reading, Rawls’ account is essentially motivated by Rousseau (if not in practice, in spirit). On this view, a social ethos is a result of social institutions; so, appropriate social institutions would give rise to a social ethos that would undercut the desire for certain kinds of incentives. Part of the answer has to do with duties of justice. “If we can make institutional changes that shift the ethos in a more solidaristic direction—raise the contribution curve—then why shouldn’t such changes be required by justice?” That is, if certain kinds of instructional arrangements produce a deeper ethos of social justice, why would justice not require that we bring such institutions about?

Josh gives two examples of the kinds of institutions that seem to have egalitarian effects by influence people’s preferences: Lijphart’s account of democracy, and labor market regulations in America v. Germany. Both seem to achieve egalitarian effects via a change in ethos. But the extent to which preferences are response to institutions remains open. Josh has little to say about “what happens if the ethos—if attitudes and preferences—are relatively unresponsive to institutions?”

Josh then returns to the cases (1)-(4) earlier. Here, what the Rawlsian needs to show is “that, in a just society, inequalities of the objectionable kinds do not emerge.” If they don’t, “then principles formulated for institutions will suffice.” Two strategies here: (1) instructions shape economic/political outcomes given preferences so as the remedy the issue; (2) institutions shape ethos so such preferences don’t emerge.  Josh then provides some reasons for thinking that each of the cases won’t emerge in the just society envisioned by Rawls. For example, that members view each other as free and equal persons, and thus, won’t try to gain this kind of advantage described in (2) or (1). In (3) and (4), he suggests that the principle of Fair Equality of Opportunity helps resolve these kinds of issues.

Josh doesn’t asses the plausibility of each of these claims; he only says that they are open to Rawls. Josh thus qualifies his defense of Rawls:

“we can be egalitarians and endorse a political conception of justice whose principles focus on the basic structure and its institutions if but (arguably) only if we are prepared to endorse a fairly strong set of assumptions about how social arrangements work: assumptions about the pervasive influence of social institutions on political-economic outcomes and on culture and identity.”

If we don’t make such assumptions, we need a different way of dealing with the problem cases. There are two options here:

• accept preferences as given, and accept the kinds of inequality (temper egalitarianism);
• extend scope of justice beyond institutions (This is the option Jerry opts for).

About (2), Josh notes that: (a) whether attitudes count as ‘private’ is not a given, but the conclusion of an argument; (b) the egalitarian can deny that authoritative measures to produce a certain kind of social ethos are permissible, even if such changes would (in themselves) be good. He concludes with the possibility of changing social ethos through the public sphere (a la Habermas), rather than coercion.

How satisfactory is Josh’s response? The basic idea – that institutions shape the kinds of people we become – is both plausible and promising as a response to the kind of incentive inequalities that Jerry criticizes Rawls for sanctioning. Yet, there are limitations.

First, the central Rousseauian idea is extremely plausible, but not entirely filled out. A full account would have to should just how particular institutions in a just society would prevent the kinds of noxious preferences in question from arising.

Second, while Josh’s account seem to work in cases (1)-(4), it is less clear how effective it is against case (5). But case five is the subject of Jerry’s critique: Jerry’s ‘talented’ don’t seek incentives because they prize their relative standing, but because they simply want to make themselves a bit better off. Josh’s response is that “[Jerry] accepts that at least some incentive inequalities that emerge in the case of Absolute Incentives are not unjust,” though “it is difficult precisely to circumscribe the acceptable cases.” But that’s just what’s at issue: namely, how and whether the difference principle applies directly to people’s uncoerced choices within the basic structure, and what the limits are. The point about incentives is not that people are malicious, but that relatively normal preferences in a market society seem to violate the precepts of justice.

Finally, is there any reason to think that the “basic structure is subject,” even accepting Josh’s claims? Perhaps it will be admitted that the BS shapes peoples preferences, and has profound effects. But Jerry admits this. His question is what motivates the principled distinction between such a structure and people’s choices. Consider, for example, the issue of whether the kind of sexist family structure Jerry discusses – and which Jerry thinks arises from people’s choices –would not occur in a just society.  Josh has nothing (explicit) to say about this, and it remains a problem. The larger issue is that Josh has not yet given an account of what the basic structure could be such that it could (exclusively) play the role Rawls needs it to play.

Scheffler’s Rawlsian Reply

Scheffler in his “Is the Basic Structure Basic?” offers a different response. He begins by interpreting Rawls’ primacy claim.

For Scheffler’s Rawls, to say that the principles of justice for the BS are primary, means that “the principles for individuals depend on them. We cannot know how considerations of distributive justice should effect individual conduct until the principles for the basic structure are in hand” (104). Rawls’ own two such principles – the principle of fairness and the principle governing the duty of justice –illustrate this kind of primacy nicely. Take just the second principle, which requires we ‘support and comply with’ just institutions. To comply with that principle, we first need to know what just institutions are or would be Note that this is a slightly different way of interpreting the primacy claim than Jerry offers, and on face it makes the claim look more moderate.

Scheffler than sketches Rawls’ reasons for holding the primacy claim. He indentifies three such reasons (compared with Jerry’s one):

• Pervasiveness – The BS has profound and constant effects, from the very start of life, on people’s expectations and life prospects. Theis the point Jerry identifies, and Rawls’ reasoning is given in a full quotation above.
• Person-Shapingness– BS determines in part the sorts of persons people become. It ‘shapes the wants and aspirations that its citizens come to have…[and] determines in part the sort of persons they want to be as well as the sort of person’s they are’ (229). Taking such effects into consideration is important because a theory of justice ought not remain ‘at the mercy…of existing wants and desires’ (231). Just institutions ought to foster the virtue of justice. This is the point Josh identifies.
• Local-Inadequacy –Background justice is required for local transactions to be fair. This is part of Rawls’ critique of Nozick. The basic point is that ensuring stable and fair background conditions requires a sort of division of labor, wherein the back structure adjusts and compensates for inevitable tendencies that counter background fairness through mechanisms like inheritance taxation.

One could ask how persuasive each of these justifications is. But, Jerry has nothing – at least nothing explicit– to say about (2) and (3). Together, Scheffler’s account leads to a very different picture of Rawls’ reasoning for primacy the basic structure.  Scheffler characterizes it as the picture as ‘an institutional division of labor between the basic structure and the rules directly to individuals’. There is a distinction here between the kinds of operations performed by the basic structure and the kind of practical guidelines that can reasonably apply to individuals.

Turning now to Jerry’s critique, Scheffler thinks it identifies two crucial ambiguities in Rawls: and ambiguity about just how the DP applies to individuals, and an ambiguity about just what the basic structure it. However, in replying to Cohen’s critique, Scheffler suggests that Rawls would not have employed the ‘basic structure objection,’ at least as Cohen understands and develops it. How then might Rawls reply to the incentive argument?

Let’s take the first ambiguity first: namely, the one concerning whether Rawls adopts a strict or a lax difference principle. Here, Scheffler points out, there is no reason why “a government could not implement the strict difference principle by itself…[say, by] prohibiting incentive payments or taxing them at 100%.” So, Scheffler emphasizes, “there is nothing in Cohen’s challenge to the legitimacy of incentive inequalities per se that undermines Rawls’s claim that the basic structure is the primary subject of justice,” at least if Rawls were to endorse the strict DP. Of course, Rawls might not endorse the strict DP (Scheffler suggest that he might not do so for a reason Jerry himself cites: that ‘every person has a right to pursue self-interest to some reasonable extent’).  If he doesn’t the route Josh argues for is still open to him.  All Scheffler has argued for so far is that there is another route open to Rawls.

Let’s take the second – and Jerry thinks, more fundamental – ambiguity now. To recall, Jerry argued that Rawls faced a dilemma: if the basic structure is limited to coercive institutions, then that’s arbitrary; if it includes non-coercive institutions, Rawls cannot exclude individual conduct. Scheffler notes some ambiguities in Jerry’s dilemma, the most important of which is how Jerry handles the coercive and non-coercive distinction. Here Scheffler points out that not every institution must be classifiable as coercive or non-coercive – one and the same institution can have both coercive and non-coercive aspects. Thus, Rawls can include institutions like the family within the basic structure ‘only insofar as they are (legally) coercive’.

Putting this issue aside, here is the thrust of Scheffler’s response: Assume the coercive specification of the BS. On this assumption, there is a non-arbitrary reason for focusing on the BS: namely, that the BS is coercive, and coercion requires some justification. The justification for such institutions would be that, if the institutions meet Rawls’ principles, they are just. Unjust coercive institutions are even worse than unjust non-coercive one’s because of the difficulty of changing them. So, on the coercive specification, it is at least not obvious that the BS restriction is arbitrary.

Now assume the non-coercive specification of the BS. This does not imply that there is no difference between people’s choices and institutions. Moreover, there may still be good reasons for focusing on the BS: namely, (1) It has profound effects on people; (2) it is necessary to secure background justice; (3) it influences people’s desires’; (4) the principles for the BS are not appropriate guides for individuals, and (5) the principles of individuals depend on the principles for the BS. Thus, while the inclusion of non-coercive institutions would be fatal to the claim that the principles of justice ought to have no influence on individual conduct, it would not undermine the Rawlsian primacy claim.

Thus, Scheffler concludes there is little reason to resist the claim that the basic structure is the primary subject of justice, once it is appropriately understood.

Conclusions

So: Is the personal the political, in the sense that the principles of justice ought to apply to people’s choices in just the same way that they apply to the basic structure? Or, alternatively, ought we to endorse Rawls’ primacy claim? Both responses we’ve looked at suggest the latter. But each remains, in some respect, undeveloped. On Josh’s response, the central issue is whether institutions do, in fact, have the kind of pervasive effects he suggests, and whether the remaining absolute incentive inequalities are tolerable. On Scheffler’s account, a full defense of the basic structure restriction would have to defend a particular (coercive or non-coercive) account of what the basic structure is and of the difference principle (lax or strict),  and show in more detail how those accounts deal with incentive inequalities. But, it seems to me, we should be optimistic about the prospects of both responses.