Political Philosophy
Page 23
Fact-check
1 What is the ‘unencumbered self’?
A A self that is unencumbered by possessions
B A self that is unencumbered by a concern for justice
C A self that is unencumbered by laws
D A self that is unencumbered by a conception of the good
2 What, according to Sandel, is wrong with the unencumbered self?
A It is not how people really are
B It is not a valuable ideal to aspire to
C It is incompatible with the value of community
D All of the above
3 Why, according to Sandel, is the difference principle unworkable without a strong commitment to community?
A Because, without community, there is no justification for sharing resources
B Because, without community, there will be no way of enforcing the difference principle
C Because, without community, there is too much ethnic diversity for redistribution
D All of the above
4 What, according to MacIntyre, is wrong with liberalism?
A It wrongly assumes that there can be any first principles
B It wrongly assumes that first principles can be decided by rational argument
C It wrongly assumes that the first principles can be freedom and equality
D It wrongly assumes that there can be any rational arguments about justice
5 What is the right way to think about justice, according to MacIntyre?
A By starting from the traditions of our particular community
B By adopting our community’s traditions without question
C By doing whatever the majority want
D There is no such thing as justice
6 What does MacIntyre mean by ‘moral incommensurability’?
A Moral values cannot be rationally evaluated against one another
B Moral values cannot be easily communicated
C There are no moral values
D Moral values are less important than practical considerations
7 Who argues that there should be ‘spheres of justice’?
A Michael Sandel
B Alasdair MacIntyre
C Charles Taylor
D Michael Walzer
8 What is the idea of spheres of justice?
A That goods should be distributed in different ways
B That goods should be distributed according to their social meanings
C That there are no universal needs
D All of the above
9 Why is the idea of spheres of justice communitarian?
A Because communities endorse it
B Because it connects distributions to community values
C Because it rejects the unencumbered self
D All of the above
10 Why is communitarianism problematic for liberalism?
A It suggests that individuals are not the most important unit
B It suggests that individuals have obligations to their communities
C It suggests that individuals can legitimately be constrained by communal vales
D All of the above
14
Political liberalism
In Chapters 10 and 13 we discussed Rawls’s theory of justice and some criticisms made of it by communitarians. The communitarian critique essentially suggested that liberalism is a comprehensive doctrine: a doctrine based on a thick vision of the good life (as autonomous), certain controversial values (like freedom, equality, and individualism), and a metaphysical conception of the person, which together undermine its ability to remain neutral with regard to different conceptions of the good. Liberals have responded in different ways. Some have defended a comprehensive conception of liberalism (e.g. Raz 1986). We will discuss these liberals in the next chapter. Others, however, have suggested that liberalism should be understood as a political rather than a comprehensive doctrine (e.g. Larmore 1987 and 1995; Nussbaum 1999 and 2011).
These political liberals argue that liberal principles and institutions draw their authority from political agreements made by political actors rather than substantive conceptions of the good life or controversial principles. Political liberalism, they argue, satisfies the requirements of neutrality while also respecting the embeddedness of persons in communities. This approach was pioneered by Rawls in his later works – Political Liberalism (1993) and Justice as Fairness: A Re-Statement (2001) – and so our discussion of political liberalism in this chapter will focus on his contribution.
When Rawls and other political liberals say that liberalism is a political doctrine they mean three things: it is political not general, political not comprehensive, and political not metaphysical.
‘[T]he problem of political liberalism is: How is it possible that there may exist over time a stable and just society of free and equal citizens profoundly divided by reasonable though incompatible religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines? Put another way: How is it possible that deeply opposed though reasonable comprehensive doctrines may live together and all affirm the political conception of a constitutional regime? What is the structure and content of a political conception that can gain the support of such an overlapping consensus?’
John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. xviii.
Liberalism is political not general
The first way in which liberalism can be political is in its scope. Political liberals argue that their theory applies only to the political sphere of society, or what Rawls terms the basic structure. As such, it is different from more general moral systems (like act-utilitarianism) in that it does not dictate the decisions that people should make in their daily lives. Instead it stipulates principles which regulate the institutions of society, the laws and other regulative bodies.
This is relevant to the communitarian critique in that it suggests that liberal principles should not be understood as applying to the internal workings of social institutions like churches, families, and so on. In the case of religion, for example, political liberalism requires that religions adhere to the principles of justice in the sense that they may not violate their members’ freedom and equality as citizens. So, a particular religion may not make it illegal or impossible for its members to vote, or to compete for non-religious jobs under conditions of equal opportunity. The religion may not influence the law, so as to prevent its members from doing these things legally, and it may not forcibly prevent these actions by, for example, locking up its members. It must respect their freedom and equality as citizens.
However, within these limits the religion is not required to organize itself internally according to principles of justice. Religious positions, such as the priesthood, do not have to be allocated according to fair equality of opportunity so, for example, the Catholic Church may continue to insist that priests must be men. Similarly, the resources of the church do not have to be allocated according to the difference principle. In other words, people’s freedom and equality is protected in the political sphere, in their role as citizens, but it is not protected within the church. Consequently, justice is political not general: it respects and protects people’s ability to be members of groups which are not required to organize themselves according to liberal principles.
Liberalism is political not comprehensive
The second distinction is more controversial. Rawls argues that liberalism should not be grounded in any particular comprehensive conception of the good. So the authority of liberal principles is not provided by the truth of substantive (and controversial) first principles, but in reasonable agreements made between individual citizens.
This was Rawls’s intention in A Theory of Justice, where he argues that the principles of justice should be chosen in the original position without knowledge of one’s conception of the good. There he argues that autonomy, understood as people’s ability to frame, revise and pursue their conception of the good, is the most important moral power that people have. In Pol
itical Liberalism Rawls revisited the question of how to justify liberalism given reasonable disagreement about conceptions of the good. Communitarians emphasize that some conceptions of the good do not prioritize individual autonomy. Political liberalism aims to show why even people who do not prioritize autonomy would agree upon a common regime of liberal institutions, as opposed to any other kind of institutions.
Rawls argues that liberalism can gain agreement between diverse people only if it is political rather than comprehensive. Political liberalism, with its focus on establishing a fair system of social institutions rather than on telling people how to live, gives different groups sufficient freedom to pursue their own ways of life. Liberal principles would be chosen, he argued, because they can be justified by an appeal to reasons that all people can accept, as opposed to reasons that only some people, with a particular conception of the good, can accept. They are publicly justifiable in a way that reasons arising out of comprehensive conceptions of the good life are not.
To see this Rawls asks us to imagine a hypothetical process of public deliberation conducted between people who wish to decide on the basic ‘constitutional essentials’ of a new society. This conversation is conceived to be between free and equal citizens rather than persons or selves: unlike the parties to the original position, parties to public deliberation are understood to be fully encumbered by their various conceptions of the good. Among parties to the agreement process, there will be an inevitable diversity of comprehensive doctrines, some of which will be mutually incompatible with others. Perhaps some people are evangelical Christians, others are Sikhs, others are atheists, others still will be utilitarians or Aristotelians. Now, the conversation will not get very far if each party to the agreement dogmatically seeks to draw up a constitution based on the truth of their own comprehensive conception of the good. Each will reject the other’s vision of the future society.
In order for the conversation to continue parties need to modify the reasons they give, to make them more acceptable to others. They need to find reasons for or against proposals which do not rely on their own particular, controversial comprehensive values. They need to come up with what Rawls calls ‘public reasons’: reasons which could be acceptable to each member of the public, irrespective of their views about the good life. So, rather than arguing ‘there should be a law against murder because the Bible tells us that murder is wrong’, a citizen might argue ‘there should be a law against murder because society will be extremely unpleasant and unfair if murder is permitted’.
The former is not a public reason because people who do not accept the authority of the Bible cannot accept it; the latter is, because it does not rely on controversial premises based on a particular conception of the good.
Rawls thinks that citizens who are motivated to find agreement on principles of political association would adopt these norms of public reason, and that such a process would produce a constitutional order underpinned by liberal principles. It would enshrine liberal constitutional protections of the kind defended by Rawls’s basic liberty principle, such as free speech, free association, freedom of religion, and equal citizenship, while leaving people alone to live their lives as they see fit.
Liberal principles would therefore pass the test of public justifiability in a way that principles arising out of a particular conception of the good would not. A Muslim and a Christian, for example, may disagree profoundly over matters of religious truth, but they can both agree on the fact that it is important that they be able to practise their religion and so they can agree on the principle of freedom of religion. Climate change sceptics and environmentalists might disagree about the facts of climate change, but they can agree that they should not be persecuted for their particular views, and so can agree on a principle of free speech. Debate conducted between free and equal individuals about the fundamental character of the political order would, Rawls argues, produce a regime of institutions that are not grounded in any particular comprehensive doctrine and so can be acceptable to all.
The point of liberalism, then, is not to tell people how to live their lives, or how to understand their identity, or what values they must hold. It is to find principles of political association which are acceptable to all members of society regardless of their particular ideas about these things. The question for political liberals is not ‘What form of society is required by the metaphysical conception of the autonomous self that we hold?’ but rather ‘What form of society, what regime of institutions, would be seen as legitimate by groups and individuals who fundamentally disagree about deeper questions about truth, the good life, and the nature of the universe?’.
This response did not satisfy the communitarians. After all, one of the key problems with liberalism for Sandel and MacIntyre was precisely that it elevated justice over and above all other moral considerations. Similarly, it is clear that the idea of public reasoning at the heart of political liberalism is not morally neutral, but is instead grounded in the principles of freedom and equality. As a consequence, Sandel’s critique still stands. The political liberal process of public reasoning cannot be neutral with regard to all conceptions of the good: it can only be neutral between conceptions of the good that fit within a justificatory framework premised on individual freedom and equality. A Christian who is not interested in other people’s freedom of religion might continue to insist that laws against murder (and other, more controversial laws such as laws about abortion or marriage) are justified and required only by the Bible. In this respect, Rawls’s later formulation of liberalism seems to represent no improvement at all on his earlier one, as it seems just as inhospitable to religious, traditional and other ‘non-liberal’ conceptions of the good as his original theory of justice as fairness, described in A Theory of Justice.
‘The norms of rational dialogue and equal respect do, of course, make a certain individualism overriding within the political realm. That is, the rights and duties of citizens must be specifiable in abstraction from any controversial ideals that they might share with others. But the two norms do not imply that a broader individualism concerning the very sources of value must pervade the whole of social life. Private associations cannot violate the rights of citizens. Yet they can continue to conduct their internal, extra-political affairs according to ‘illiberal’ principles – principles that deny their members equal rights and require them to defer to traditionally constituted authority… There seems no reason to think, therefore, that liberal neutrality, if understood in the way I have proposed, must harbor any special affinity for individualist views of the good life.’
Charles Larmore, ‘Political Liberalism’, in The Morals of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 140–41.
In response, Rawls accepts wholeheartedly that his theory rests on the values of freedom and equality. He also accepts that some comprehensive conceptions of the good are based on a rejection of those values. For example, Nazism is founded on inequality of the races, and totalitarianism is based on the rejection of individual freedom. Rawls accepts that his theory is based on values that rule out these comprehensive doctrines. Nevertheless, he argues that it is justifiable to rule out such doctrines, not for reasons based on alternative comprehensive conceptions of the good, but simply because they are not what he calls ‘reasonable’. For Rawls, remember, society is a system of fair co-operation in which people with diverse conceptions of the good join together in a community of mutual advantage. Therefore, conceptions of the good which are contrary to the wider co-operative project fall beyond the scope of what can be tolerated in a liberal society.
So Rawls is open about the fact that justice as fairness rules out unreasonable conceptions of the good. However, importantly, he does not believe that groups must accept the good of autonomy, or understand the self as a ‘chooser of ends’ in order to be reasonable. Groups can reject the substantive ethical good of individual autonomy and still remain reasonable as long as they do not seek to constrain
their members’ political autonomy. That is, groups can organize themselves around principles other than autonomy (for example, they can be based on traditional hierarchies or can preach that obedience to a divine entity is more important than individual choice). The distinction between public and private in liberalism dictates, after all, that the state cannot force religious communities to organize themselves in ways which are contrary to their beliefs. However, what groups cannot do is seek to constrain their members’ autonomy in the public sphere. Thus Rawls’s liberalism is political and not comprehensive because its claims are about the political freedom and equality of citizens, not about the substantive value of freedom and equality in all spheres of life.
Case study: Can someone choose a non-autonomous life?
Political liberals like Rawls and Nussbaum believe that the state should not rule out non-autonomous lives. If someone chooses to live a life which is not autonomous, they argue, then they should be able to do so.
But is it possible for individuals to autonomously choose a non-autonomous life? This sounds paradoxical. But there are many examples of such a thing. For example, many women and men choose to join religious communities which radically curtail – or even deny entirely – their ability to choose how to live their lives on a daily basis. Nuns, for example, live their lives according to a strict routine, and their day-to-day lives are largely determined for them by their religious beliefs and by the rules of the convent. Similarly, men who join the priesthood, or who choose to join closed religious orders of one kind or another, do so in full knowledge that their lives will – from that moment on – require adherence to strict rules governing the way they conduct their lives, the choices they are able to make, and so on. And what about men or women who choose to join the armed forces? A principal point of the training process for the army, navy, or marines, for example, is precisely that it extinguishes any sense among new recruits that they are autonomous individuals. The army would not function as it needs to if everyone did whatever they wanted: army training specifically seeks to force people out of the habit of thinking for themselves and to obey orders instead. In all these cases, individuals make an autonomous choice, with full knowledge of the implications, to live a life in which they are required to give up some or all of their autonomy and submit instead to strict rules and rigid hierarchies of authority.