MVE 6030 The Good Society and its Educated Citizens

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MVE 6030The Good Society and its Educated
Citizens

• Topic 3-A
• (Lecture 4 5)
• Communitarians Idea of Good Society

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Michael Sandels Critique on Rawls Deontological
Liberalism

• Rawls deontological liberalism
• Michael Sandel published a book entitled
  Liberalism and the Limits of Justice in 1982. The
  book is a direct critique on Rawls work A Theory
  of Justice (1971). The focus of Sandels critique
  is on the assumption on which Rawls has built his
  theory of justice. Sandel characterizes the
  assumption as deontological liberalism.

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Michael Sandels Critique on Rawls Deontological
Liberalism

• Rawls deontological liberalism
• By deontological liberalism, according to
  Sandels interpretation, it refers to Rawls
  stance of assigning liberalism such a
  deontological and significant status that it
  becomes the Categorical Imperative of all ethical
  concerns. This can be evident in the following
  two theses stipulated by Rawls.

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Michael Sandels Critique on Rawls Deontological
Liberalism

• The thesis of the priority of the right over the
  good
• According to the two principles stipulated by
  Rawls, fair distribution of primary goods among
  members of a given polity is the first virtue of
  social institutions. (Rawls, 1971, P.3)
• Definition of primary social goods Rawls
  suggests that the primary social goods, to give
  them in broad categories, are rights and
  liberties, opportunities and powers, income and
  wealth.

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Michael Sandels Critique on Rawls Deontological
Liberalism

• The thesis of the priority of the right over the
  good
• Rawls theory of the good Rawls further
  specifies that rights, liberty and opportunities
  are considered to be primary because they could
  provide reasonably favorable circumstances for
  rational individuals to carry out and fulfil
  their rational long-term plan of life. These
  specifications presupposed that each individual
  has a rational plan of life drawn up subject to
  the conditions that confront him and a man is
  happy when he is more or less successfully in the
  way of carry out this plan. (Rawls, 1971, P. 93)

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Michael Sandels Critique on Rawls Deontological
Liberalism

• The thesis of the priority of the right over the
  good
• ..
• In contrast with utilitarians theory of the
  good, which assumes that utilities generated from
  material goods are considered to be primary
  because they are capable of satisfying human
  desire, Rawls liberal theory of the good assumes
  that since mens rational plans do have
  different final ends (P. 93), as a result even
  identical goods may generate total different
  degree of utility or satisfaction for them.

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Michael Sandels Critique on Rawls Deontological
Liberalism

• The thesis of the priority of the right over the
  good
• ..
• Hence material goods and the utility generated
  from them are not primary in a sense that they
  are not universally taken to be valuable or
  useful to every individuals. Instead, rights to
  basic liberties and opportunities to power and
  wealth will provide each individual will the
  primary means to pursue their rational plan of
  life of his own choice.

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Michael Sandels Critique on Rawls Deontological
Liberalism

• The thesis of the priority of liberty
• According to the lexical order that Rawls has
  assigned to the two principles of justice, we can
  see that between the primary goods defined by
  Rawls, it is the basic liberties (specified in
  the first principle) which have priority over the
  opportunities to power and wealth (stipulated in
  the second).
• The ground for the priority of liberty The
  ground of Rawls assignment of priority to basic
  liberty rests primarily on the Kantian
  conceptions of autonomy and will of human
  agents. Immanuel Kant writes

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Michael Sandels Critique on Rawls Deontological
Liberalism

• The thesis of the priority of liberty
• ..
• Everything in nature works in accordance with
  laws. Only a rational being has the power to act
  in accordance with his ideas of laws ? that is,
  in accordance with principles ? and only so has
  he a will. Since reason is required in order to
  derive actions from laws, the will is nothing but
  practical reason. If reason infallibly determines
  the will, then in a being of this kind the
  actions which are recognized to be objectively
  necessary are also subjectively necessary ? that
  is to say, the will is then a power to choose
  only that which reason independently of
  inclination recognizes to be practically
  necessary, that is, to be good. (Kant,
  20081785, P.5)

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Michael Sandels Critique on Rawls Deontological
Liberalism

• The thesis of the priority of liberty
• Based on the Kantian conceptions of autonomy and
  will of human agent, Rawls assumes that as free
  and equal rational beings, each of us will see
  themselves as primarily moral persons with an
  equal right to choose their mode of life. In
  order to pursue their own rational plan of life
  to the full, they are inclined (if not bounded)
  to set their fundamental interest in liberty
  and simultaneously they have to endorse their
  fellow agents with their liberty in fair terms.
  As a result and in the long run Rawls confidently
  asserts that free and equal agent they would
  acknowledge the two principles of justice and
  their ranked serial orders. (Rawls, 1971, P. 563)

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Michael Sandels Critique on Rawls Deontological
Liberalism

• Sandels communitarian critiques on Rawls
  deontological liberalism
• Rawls flaws on the conception of the person
• Voluntaristic connection between a persons plans
  of life and the self On Rawls conception of the
  person, one can always voluntaristically make
  choices among plans of life and conceptions of
  good. However, to the communitarians,
  establishing ones own end is not a matter of
  choosing from a menu of available possibilities,
  but one of discovering what ones end really are
  or ought to be. (Mulhall and Swift, 1996, P. 50)
  And this discovery process is deeply embedded in
  the sociocultural milieu which one is born with
  and/or has to live with.

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Michael Sandels Critique on Rawls Deontological
Liberalism

• Sandels communitarian critiques on Rawls
  deontological liberalism
• Rawls flaws on the conception of the person
• Disconnection between a persons plans of life
  and identity In connection to Rawls
  voluntaristic conception of choices of ones end
  and/or plan of life, such choices can hardly be a
  constitutive part of one identity, that is, these
  ends and plans of life could not have been owned
  permanently and continuously by oneself because
  they are subject to changes in accordance with
  ones preferences or desires.

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Michael Sandels Critique on Rawls Deontological
Liberalism

• Sandels communitarian critiques on Rawls
  deontological liberalism
• Rawls flaws on the conception of the person
• Disconnection between a persons plans of life
  and identity
• However, to Sandel or communitarians in
  general, the process of personal identification
  is in essence a social interacting process. It is
  a balance, negotiation or even conflict between
  ones self-aspirations and the social obligation
  to family, tribe, social class, nation, or any
  social bondage to which one belong.

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Michael Sandels Critique on Rawls Deontological
Liberalism

• Sandels communitarian critiques on Rawls
  deontological liberalism
• Rawls flaws on the conception of the person
• Disconnection between personal identity and sense
  of community and common good Accordingly,
  Rawls conception of the self commits him to an
  impoverished understanding of political
  community. On Rawls view a sense of community
  describe a possible aim of antecedently
  individuated selves, not an ingredient of their
  identity. Essentially communal goods thereby find
  their place only as one type of contender amongst
  many. (Mulhall and Swift, 1996, P. 52) To the
  communitarians, a community can be conceived as a
  home in which one can attach ones sense of
  belonging, attribute ones vocation for life and
  ones meaning of existence.

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Michael Sandels Critique on Rawls Deontological
Liberalism

• Sandels communitarian critiques on Rawls
  deontological liberalism
• Rawls flaws on the conception of community
• A society is but a field of cooperation between
  antecedently individuated rational choosers of
  ends based primarily on their independent
  preferences and personal desires.
• The value of society is defined simply by its
  capacity to guarantee individual freedom in
  realization of personal preferences and desires
• Apart from the fulfillment of individual freedom,
  a society is excluded from any possibility of
  constituting any forms of common good, such as
  fraternity or common good and care.

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• MacIntyre published his work After Virtue in
  1981. It is a work of not focused specifically
  Rawls A Theory of Justice but a comprehensive
  critique on liberalism espoused from the project
  of the Enlightenment. And the work presents a
  comprehensive thesis on moral philosophy from the
  communitarian perspective.

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• MacIntyre begins his thesis by criticizing the
  moral doctrine, which he calls emotivism. To
  MacIntyre, emotivism is the doctrines that all
  evaluative judgments and more specifically all
  moral judgments are nothing but expressions of
  preference, expressions of attitude or feeling,
  insofar as they are moral or evaluative in
  character. But moral judgment, being expression
  of attitude or feeling, are neither true nor
  false and agreement in moral judgment is not to
  be secured by any rational method, for there are
  none. ..

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• MacIntyre begins his thesis by criticizing the
  moral doctrine, which he calls emotivism. To
  MacIntyre, .
• ..It is to be secured, if at all, by producing
  certain non-rational effects on the emotions or
  attitudes of those who disagree with one. We use
  moral judgments not only to express our own
  feelings attitudes, but also precisely to produce
  such effects in others. (MacIntyre, 20071981,
  P. 11-12)

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• MacIntyre then traces this emotivistic
  orientation prevailing in current moral debates
  back to of current contemporary back to the
  Enlightenment project and more specifically to
  moral philosophies of Kierkegaard, Kant, Hume,
  Smith and their contemporaries of the
  Enlightenment. (P.51)

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• MacIntyre traces this emotivistic orientation
• Kants motto of the Enlightenment
• "Enlightenment is man's release from his
  self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's
  inability to make use of his understanding
  without direction from another. Self-incurred is
  this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of
  reason but in lack of resolution and courage to
  use it without direction from another. Sapere
  aude (Dare to know)! 'Have courage to use your
  own reason!' - that is the motto of
  enlightenment." (Kant, 1996/1784)

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• MacIntyre traces this emotivistic orientation
• Accompany with the historical events of
  Reformation and Scientific Revolution, moral
  philosophers of the Enlightenment such as
  Immanuel Kant endowed humans with the capacity to
  reason practically and morally of their plan of
  life, ends of life or in MacIntyres words human
  telos.
• As a result, the moral issue of human telos
  confronting modern man had practically changed
  from the project of man-as-he-could-be-if-he
  realized-his-essential nature to that of
  man-as-he-happen-to-be. (2007, P. 52)
• .

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• MacIntyre traces this emotivistic orientation
• Furthermore, the whole project of ethics, which
  was supposed to enable man to pass from his
  present state (or untutored human nature) to his
  true end (or notion of man-as-he-could-be-if-he
  realized-his-telos) was left in disarray since
  the Classical characters of human telos were
  replaced with the enlightened minds of free-will
  and autonomy, who could make choices on
  man-as-he-happen-to-be or even
  man-as-he-feel-happy-to-be).

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• MacIntyres project of After Virtue
• Confronted with the prevailing emotivism in
  current moral discourse or more specifically the
  modern mobile psyches endowed with free-will and
  autonomy but striped off the human telos
  MacIntyre set out to the pursuit after the long
  lost concept of virtue, which can trace back to
  Aristotle writings.

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• MacIntyres project of After Virtue
• To begin with, MacIntyre underlines in retrospect
  that we have at least three very different
  conceptions of a virtue to confront a virtue is
  a quality which enables an individual to
  discharge his or her social role (Homer) a
  virtue is a quality which enables an individual
  to move towards the achievement of the
  specifically human telos, whether natural or
  supernatural (Aristotle, the New Testament and
  Aquinas) a virtue is quality which has utility
  in achievement earthly and heavenly success. (P.
  185)

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• MacIntyres project of After Virtue
• MacIntyre suggests that the complex, historical,
  multi-layered character of the core concept of
  virtue can be logically developed in three
  stages.

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• MacIntyres project of After Virtue
• The first stage requires a background account of
  what I shall call a practice, the second an
  account of what I have characterized as the
  narrative order of a single human life and the
  third an account of what constitutes a moral
  tradition. Each latter stage presupposes the
  earlier, but not vice versa. Each earlier stage
  is both modified by and reinterpreted in the
  light of, but also provides an essential
  constituent of each later stage. The progress in
  the development of the concept is closely
  related, although it does not recapitulate in any
  straightforward way, the history of the tradition
  of which it forms the core. (Pp. 186-87)

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• The concept of practice
• By a practice I am going to mean any coherent
  and complex form of socially established
  cooperative human activity through which goods
  internal to that form of activity are realized in
  the course of trying to achieve those standards
  of excellence which are appropriate to, and
  partially definitive of, that form of activity,
  with the result that human powers to achieve
  excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and
  goods involve, are systematically extended. The
  game of football is, and so is chess.
  Bricklaying is not a practice architecture is.
  Planting turnips is not a practice farming is.
  So are enquiries of physics, chemistry and
  biology, and so is the work of the historian, and
  so are painting and music. (P.187) So are
  practices of modern professions such as doctors,
  lawyers and teachers.

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• The concept of practice
• Taken professional practices in Anglo-American
  societies as examples, a practice embodies a
  number of definitive features
• The notion of goods internal to the practice
  It is suggested that participants in a practice
  will more or less experience intrinsic meaning
  and reward, i.e. internal good, from the
  cooperative activities and practice. Hence,
  participants are supposedly motivated not by some
  material rewards or value external to the
  activities themselves.
• Authority of the standards and paradigms
  operative in the practice There are definitive
  standards and paradigms developed and accumulated
  within a practice. And an authority of assessing
  such standards and paradigms will be established
  and universally recognized by practitioners
  within a practice.

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• The concept of practice
• a practice embodies a number of definitive
  features
• A framework of reasoning A framework of due
  course handling disputes among practitioners on
  standards or/and paradigms of a practice will
  develop and be observed by its members.
• A form of life and vocation Accordingly, members
  of a practice may develop a communal form of life
  and a sense of vocation among themselves.

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• The concept of practice
• Virtue of practice By locating the notion of
  virtue with the context of practice. MacIntyre
  proposes following tentative definition of a
  virtue
• A virtue is an acquired human quality the
  possession and exercise of which tends to enable
  us to achieve those goods which are internal to
  practices and the lack of which effectively
  prevents us from achieving any such goods.
  (MacIntyre, 2007, p. 191)

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• The concept of practice
• Virtue of practice
• These internal goods to a practice include
• Truthfulness and trust It refers to the
  disposition and capacity of remain truthful to
  the definitive standard and paradigm established
  with a practice. At the same time, it expects the
  practitioners to trust their fellow
  practitioners, as well as the prevailing
  authority and reasoning framework within a
  practice. Finally, the practitioners of a
  professional practice are also required to be
  truthful and trustworthy to their clients as well
  as the general public.

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• The concept of practice
• Virtue of practice
• These internal goods to a practice include
• Justice Justice requires that we treat others
  in respect of merit or desert according to
  uniform and impersonal standards to depart from
  the standards of justice in some particular
  instance defines our relationship with the
  relevant person as in some way special or
  distinctive. (P. 192)

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• The concept of practice
• Virtue of practice
• These internal goods to a practice include
• Courage We hold courage to be a virtue because
  the care and concern for individuals, communities
  and causes which is so crucial to so much in
  practices requires the existence of such a
  virtue. If someone says that he cares for some
  individual, community or cause, but is unwilling
  to risk harm or danger on his, her or its own
  behalf, he puts in question the genuineness of
  his care and concern. Courage, the capacity to
  risk harm or danger to oneself, has its role to
  human life because of this connection with care
  and concern. (P. 192)

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• The concept of practice
• The relativity of virtue to code of practice I
  take it then that from the standpoint of those
  types of relationship without which practices
  cannot be sustained trustfulness, justice and
  courage ? and perhaps some others ? are genuine
  excellences, are virtues in the light of which we
  have to characterize ourselves and others,
  whatever our private moral standpoint or our
  societys particular codes may be. For this
  recognition that we cannot escape the definition
  of our relationships in terms of such goods is
  perfectly compatible with the acknowledgement
  that different societies have and have had
  different codes of truthfulness, justice and
  courage. (p. 192)

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• Concept of narrative
• After virtue in practical pluralism in modern
  society By locating his conception of virtue in
  terms of practices within the context of modern
  society, which are filled with varieties of value
  orientations, codes of practices and forms of
  life, MacIntyre underlines that it is practically
  implausible to maintain a comprehensive virtue
  for ones life as a whole, as the Aristotelians
  pledge. MacIntyre characterizes this modern
  situation in three ways
• Multiplicity of goods, too many conflict and
  too much arbitrariness in modern society (P.
  201)
• Without an overriding conception of the telos of
  a whole human life, conceived as unitary,
  individual virtues remain partial and
  incomplete. (P. 202)
• Inability to maintain the virtue of integrity and
  ones identity in consistency and continuity

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• Concept of narrative
• To reconcile this modern-man dilemma of
  liquidation of the self into a set of demarcated
  areas of role-playing, (P. 205) MacIntyre
  suggests that modern men or more specifically
  modern agents have to constitute and impute the
  narrative to all those multiplicity of goods,
  variety of telos of life, conflicts of role
  expectations and to integrate them as much as
  possible into an intelligible, meaningful or even
  morally defensible whole, i.e. a storyline.

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• Concept of narrative
• A narrative is therefore a literal device invited
  by human beings to organize all the discrete
  incidents in life into a sequential
  (chronological), intelligible and accountable
  whole, i.e. a storyline. As MacIntyre underlines,
• Man is in his action and practiceessentially
  a story-telling animal. He is not essentially,
  but becomes through his history, a teller of
  stories that aspire to truth. But the key
  question for man is not about their own
  authorship I can only answer the question What
  am I to do? if I can answer the prior question
  of what story or stories do I find myself a
  part? We enter human society with one or more
  imputed characters and we have to learn what
  they are in order to be able to understand how
  other respond to us and how our responses to them
  are apt to be construct. (P. 216)

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• Concept of narrative
• It is only in this process of construction of
  one own narrative that a man can practically
  become an agent that is, in Jerome Bruners
  terms, the "empowered protagonist" (1987, P. 19)
  who possess both the will and ability to set the
  course of actions and to fulfill the plan of life
  for oneself. In an article entitle Life as
  Narrative Bruner stipulates that "stories are
  about the vicissitudes of human intention."
  (1987, P.18) And "story structure (especially
  self narrative) is composed of an Agent, an
  Action, a Goal, a setting, an Instrument?and
  Trouble. Trouble is what drives the drama, and it
  is generated by a mismatch between two or more of
  the five constituents." (p. 18)

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• Concept of narrative
• In analytical narrative studies, a number of
  constituting devices commonly used by narrators
  have been identified. They include
• Selective appropriations of events (Somers, 1994)
• Temporal and chronological sequence (White, 1987
  Somers, 1994)
• Emplotment (White, 1987 Somers, 1994 Ricouer,
  1991a, 1991b)
• The closure (White, 1987)

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• Concept of narrative
• In a process of self narrative, though one cannot
  be the author of the story but one can never the
  least be the narrator and the main character or
  even hero of the storyline. In other words, he
  can narrate ones life-story in a way to make it
  an intelligible and accountable unity. An in
  fact, MacIntyre underlines that unity,
  intelligibility and accountability are three of
  the essential constituents of a narrative.

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• Concept of narrative
• The end result of all these narrating efforts
  according to MacIntyre is the emergence as well
  as constitution of the personal identity. In his
  own words, the concepts of narrative,
  intelligibility, and accountability presuppose
  the applicability of the concept of personal
  identity, just as it presupposes their
  applicability and just as indeed each of these
  three presupposes the applicability of the other
  two. The relationship is one of mutual
  presuppositions. (P. 218)
• Unity of human life is the unity of a
  narrative quest. The only criteria for success
  or failure in a human life as a whole are the
  criteria of success or failure in narrated or
  to-be-narrated quest.

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• Concept of narrative
• Accordingly, MacIntyre provide a second
  definition of his concept of virtue. The virtues
  therefore are to be understood as those
  dispositions which will not only sustain
  practices and enable us to achieve the goods
  internal to practices, but which will also
  sustain us in the relevant kind of quest for the
  good, by enabling us to overcome the harms,
  dangers, temptations and distractions which we
  encounter, and which will furnish us with
  increasing self-knowledge and increasing
  knowledge of the good. (P. 219)

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• The concept of tradition
• The contextuality of virtue Building on the
  concepts of practice and narrative, MacIntyre
  proceed to the third stage of his quest for
  virtue. He emphasizes that such a quest and
  constitution of ones own virtue could never take
  place in a individuated and asocial context. In
  MacIntyres own words,

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• The concept of tradition
• The contextuality of virtue
• I am never able to seek for the good or
  exercise the virtue only qua individual. This is
  partly because what is to live the good life
  concretely varies from circumstance to
  circumstance even when it is one and the same
  conception of good life and the same set of
  virtues which are being embodies in a human life.
  It is not just that different individuals live
  in different social circumstances it is also
  that we all approach our own circumstance as
  bearers of a particular social identity. I am
  someones son or daughter, someone elses cousin
  or uncle I am a citizen of this or that city, a
  member of this or that guild or profession I
  belong to this clan, that tribe, this nation.
  Hence what is good for me has to be the good for
  one who inhabits these roles. As such, I inherit
  from the past of my family, my city, my tribe, my
  nation, a variety of debts, inheritances,
  rightful expectations and obligations. These
  constitute the given for my life, my moral
  starting point. This is in part what gives my
  life its own moral particularity. (MacIntyre,
  2007, P. 220)

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• The concept of tradition
• Historicity of the social identity and moral
  self Having located the quest for virtue within
  particular contexts and role-sets, MacIntyre
  further his pursuit by injecting the historical
  dimension into the quest for virtue.

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• The concept of tradition
• Historicity of the social identity and moral
  self
• I am born with a past and to try to cut
  myself off from that past, in the individualist
  mode, is to deform my present relationships. The
  possession of an historical identity and the
  possession of a social identity coincide. Notice
  also that the fact that the self has to find its
  moral identity in and through its membership in
  communities such as those of the family, the
  neighborhood, the city and the tribe does not
  entail that the self has to accept the moral
  limitations of the particularities of those forms
  of community. Without those moral particularities
  to begin from there would never be anywhere to
  begin but it is in moving forward from such
  particularity that the search for the good, for
  the universal, consists. Yet particularity can
  never be simply left behind and obliterated.
  (2007, P. 221)

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• The concept of tradition
• Identity, virtue and tradition Apart from the
  contetxuality and historicity, the concept of
  self identity and moral self are also essentially
  embedded in the notion of tradition.
• What I am, therefore, is in the key part what
  I inherit, a specific past that is present to
  some degree in my present. I find myself part of
  a history whether I like it or not, whether I
  recognize it or not, one of the bearers of a
  tradition. It was important to notice that
  practices always have histories and that at any
  given moment what a practice is depends on a mode
  of understanding it which has been transmitted
  often through many generations. And thus, insofar
  as the virtue sustains the relationships required
  for practices, they have to sustain relationship
  to the past ? and to the future ? as well as in
  the present. (2007, P.221)

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Alasdair MacIntyres Critique on Liberalism

• The concept of tradition
• Concept of a living tradition In contrast to the
  liberals conception of tradition which is an
  embodiment of conservativism and stifling to
  reasoning and progress, MacIntyre underlines the
  concept of living tradition
• A living traditionis an historically
  extended, socially embodied argument, and an
  argument precisely in part about goods which
  constitute that tradition. Within a tradition the
  pursuit of goods extends through generations,
  sometime through many generations. Hence the
  individuals search for his or her good is
  generally and characteristically conducted within
  a context defined by those traditions of which
  the individuals life is part, and this is true
  both of those goods which are internal to
  practice and of the goods of a single life. (P.
  222)

51
(Individual level)
(Historical level)
Narrative
Tradition
Unity, Intelligibility, accountability Integrity
Living Arguments
Virtue
Courage (Care Concern)
Truthfulness Trust
Justice
Practice
(Communal level)
52
(Individual level)
(Historical level)
Narrative
Tradition
Unity, Intelligibility, accountability Integrity
Living Arguments
Personal Identity Form of Life
Social, Historical Moral identity
Virtue
Conception of Good
Codes of Practices
Courage (Care Concern)
Truthfulness Trust
Justice
Practice
(Communal level)
53
John Rawls Political Conception of Justice A
Response to Criticism

• In 1993, twenty-two years after the publication
  of A Theory of Justice, John Rawls published his
  second major work entitled Political Liberalism.
  It is a collection of revised articles, which
  Rawls produced through the years in respond to
  critiques in different occasions.

54
(1921-2002)
55
John Rawls Political Conception of Justice A
Response to Criticism

• In comparison with his stance taken in A Theory
  of Justice, John Rawls has simply revised his
  conception just to be a political conception of
  justice. (Rawls, 1993, P. 223)
• In his own words,

56
John Rawls Political Conception of Justice A
Response to Criticism

• In saying a conception of justice is political
  Imean three things (i) that it is framed to
  apply solely to the basic structure of society,
  its main political, social and economic
  institutions as a unified scheme of social
  cooperation (ii) that it is presented
  independently of any wider comprehensive
  religious or philosophical doctrine and (iii)
  that it is elaborated in terms of fundamental
  political ideas viewed as implicit in the public
  political culture of democratic society. (Rawls,
  1993, 223, my numbering see also Rawls, 1993,
  Pp. 11-15)

57
John Rawls Political Conception of Justice A
Response to Criticism

• The conception of public justifiability and
  political constructivism
• The essence of the elaboration of the conception
  of justice as political is that Rawls has made a
  number of concessions in his original theory of
  justice
• The sphere of deliberation is no longer covering
  the society as a whole, but it only confines to
  public or more specifically political sphere.
• The participants in the deliberation are no long
  free and equal choosers in all aspects of their
  lives, but confine to the role of citizens in
  civil democratic polity.

58
John Rawls Political Conception of Justice A
Response to Criticism

• The conception of public justifiability and
  political constructivism
• The essence of the elaboration
• The subjects to be deliberated are also confined
  to public goods and their distributions among
  citizens of a given polity.

59
John Rawls Political Conception of Justice A
Response to Criticism

• The conception of .. political constructivism
• Accordingly, Rawls has also located his theory of
  justice within particular institutional and
  cultural contexts, namely the political
  institution of constitutional and liberal
  democracy and the political culture of a
  reasonable public who can come to a stable
  overlapping consensus.

60
John Rawls Political Conception of Justice A
Response to Criticism

• The conception of .. political constructivism
• The conception of political construtivism In
  connection to these concessions, Rawls suggests
  that Justice as fairness is best presented in
  two stages. In the first stage it is worked out
  as a freestanding political (but of course moral)
  conception for the basic structure of society.
  Only with this done and its content ? its
  principles of justice and ideals ? provisionally
  on hand do we take up, in the second stage, the
  problem whether justice as fairness is
  sufficiently stable. (Pp.140-41)

61
John Rawls Political Conception of Justice A
Response to Criticism

• The conception of .. political constructivism
• Replacement of the original position with the
  constructivism of the political culture of public
  reasonability This two-stage conception of
  political constructivism may be construed in the
  context of criticism on Rawls hypothetical
  conception of original position and veil of
  ignorance. It serves as the precondition of the
  deliberation of the theory of justice as
  fairness.

62
John Rawls Political Conception of Justice A
Response to Criticism

• The conception of .. political constructivism
• Given the fact of reasonable pluralism, citizens
  cannot agree on any moral authority, whether a
  sacred text, or institution. Nor do they agree
  about the order of moral values, or the dictates
  of what some regard as natural law. We adopt,
  then, a constructivist view to specify the fair
  terms of social cooperation as given by the
  principles of justice agreed to by the
  representativeness of free and equal citizens
  when fairly situated. The bases of this view lie
  in fundamental ideas of the political culture as
  well as in citizens shared principles and
  conceptions of practice reason. .

63
John Rawls Political Conception of Justice A
Response to Criticism

• The conception of .. political constructivism
• .Thus, if the procedure can be correctly
  formulated, citizens should be able to accept its
  principles and conceptions along with their
  reasonable comprehensive doctrine. The political
  conception of justice can then serve as the focus
  of an overlapping consensus. (P. 97)

64
John Rawls Political Conception of Justice A
Response to Criticism

• Rawls become a communitarian liberal
• Taken together all the concessions and
  reformulations Rawls has made in Political
  Liberalism, we may conclude that his political
  liberalism stipulated in his two principles of
  justice have been embedded into a concrete
  political community within which
• the institutional practices of public
  reasonability of a constitutional-liberal
  democracy have been firmly in place
• the narrative of citizenship of
  civil-constitutional democracy has been commonly
  shared by its citizens
• the culture of democratic reasonability from
  which overlapping consensuses have been reached
  from generation to generation and has been a
  tradition.

65
John Rawls Political Conception of Justice A
Response to Criticism

• Rawls become a communitarian liberal
• As a result, we may query Has John Rawls has
  become a communitarian himself?

66
MVE 6030The Good Society and its Educated
Citizens

• Topic 3-B
• (Lecture 4 5)
• Liberals Reformulations of
• A Theory of Justice

67
Ronald Dworkins Search for the Foundation of
Liberal Equality

• Ronald Dworkin, one the prominent scholars in
  political philosophy and jurisprudence (the
  philosophy of law), has formulated a liberal
  theory of justice, which differs substantively
  from Rawlss. He aims to constitute an ethical
  foundation for comprehensive conception of
  justice for the liberals, whom he has
  characterized as ethical liberal.

68
1931-2013
69
Ronald Dworkins Search for the Foundation of
Liberal Equality

• Dworkins critiques on Rawls contractarianism
  Dworkin first of all points to Rawls liberal
  theory of justice lacking any ethical foundation.

70
Ronald Dworkins Search for the Foundation of
Liberal Equality

• Dworkins critique on Rawlss strategy of
  discontinuity He disagrees with Rawlss
  compromise suggested in Political Liberalism that
  his idea of justice is but a political
  conception, that is, the idea of justice is
  presented independently of any wider
  comprehensive religious or philosophical
  doctrine. (Rawls, 1993, P. 233) Dworkin accurses
  Rawls of adopting a kind of strategy of
  discontinuity, which separate the political
  conception of justice from personal perspective
  of our ethical ideal. (Dworkin, 1995, Pp.
  199-209) Rawls two principles of justice are
  confined to be applicable only within the
  political domain as a result, Rawls theory of
  justice is voided of any ethical foundation or
  conception of good live.

71
Ronald Dworkins Search for the Foundation of
Liberal Equality

• Dworkins critique on Rawlss contractarianism
  Dworkin further criticizes that if we follow
  Rawls formulation of justice as political
  conception and understand the idea of justice as
  constructed just for politics, in the way a
  contract is constructed for some special
  commercial occasion, then no question can arise
  about the consistency of that political
  perspective with anyone s personal ethical
  perspective. Someone can agree to occupy an
  artificial, purpose-built political perspective
  without subscribing to its principles as his own,
  just as he can agree to be bound by a contract
  without accepting that its terms are perfectly
  fair or even reasonable. (Dworkin, 1995, P. 204)

72
Ronald Dworkins Search for the Foundation of
Liberal Equality

• Dworkins critique on Rawls contractarianism of
  ignorance Finally, Dworkin also underlines that
  In Rawlss version of the social contracteach
  party negotiates to advance the interest of
  people he represents, by of whose actual concrete
  interests he is nearly wholly ignorant.
  (Dworkin, 1995, P. 278) In other words, persons
  under Rawls contractarianism of veil of ignorance
  are striped off any capacity of ethical reasoning
  and reflectivity.

73
Ronald Dworkins Search for the Foundation of
Liberal Equality

• Dworkins models of critical ethical value
  inquiry (value inquiry)
• Distinction between volitional and critical
  well-beings To Dworkin, ethical value enquiry is
  the effort to address the question what kind of
  goodness does a good life have? (Dworkin, 1995
  P.229) Dworkin makes a distinction of two types
  of well-being i.e. good life.

74
Ronald Dworkins Search for the Foundation of
Liberal Equality

• They are the volitional and critical well-being
• Volitional well-being Someones volitional
  well-being is improved and just for that reason,
  when he has or achieves what in fact he wants.
  Hence, volitional interests are concerned with
  getting what one wants. And fulfillments of ones
  wants and/or desires are the sole interest of the
  volitional well-being.
• Critical well-being It involves taking into
  consideration not only what one wants but
  critically reflecting whether the wants in point
  and their fulfillments are ethically and morally
  right. Improvement of critical well-being will
  entail statement such as my life is not worse
  life to have lived?I have nothing to regret,
  still least to take shame in. (P. 230) In other
  words, critical well-being involves ones inner
  self, self-worth, self-respect, dignity, self-
  guilt, and self-shame.

75
Ronald Dworkins Search for the Foundation of
Liberal Equality

• In light of this distinction, Dworkin underlines
  that our project of finding a liberal ethics as
  a foundation for liberal politics must
  concentrate on critical as distinct from
  volitional well-being. We need an account of what
  peoples critical interests are that will show
  why people who accept that account and care about
  their own and other peoples critical well-being
  will be led naturally toward some form of liberal
  polity and practice. (Dworkin, 1995, P.233).

76
Ronald Dworkins Search for the Foundation of
Liberal Equality

• In light of this distinction, Dworkin underlines
  that our project of finding a liberal ethics as
  a foundation for liberal politics must
  concentrate on critical as distinct from
  volitional well-being. We need an account of what
  peoples critical interests are that will show
  why people who accept that account and care about
  their own and other peoples critical well-being
  will be led naturally toward some form of liberal
  polity and practice. (Dworkin, 1995, P.233).

77
Ronald Dworkins Search for the Foundation of
Liberal Equality

• Ethnics studies how people best manage their
  responsibility to live well, and personal
  morality what each as an individual owes other
  people. Political morality, in contrast, studies
  what we all together owe others as individuals
  when we act in and on behalf of that artificial
  collective person. (Dworkin, 2011, Pp. 327-8)

78
Ronald Dworkins Search for the Foundation of
Liberal Equality

• The components of critical-ethical-value inquiry
• According to Dworkin, persons adhere to critical
  well-being are confronted by a series of
  puzzles. In order to resolve the critical
  question of whether ones life is intrinsically
  good, a human agent has to inquire into each of
  them. The puzzles includes
• Significance Thinking of ones critical
  well-being, a person has to first of all
  attribute some meaning, meaningfulness, or even
  importance to his daily living or even his life.
  One must inquire into questions In what sense
  of from what perspective could that be important?
  How can it matter what happens in the absurdly
  tiny space and time of a single human life? Or
  even in the tiny episode of all sentient life
  taken together? .How can we reconcile these two
  ideas that life is nothing and that how we live
  is everything? (Dworkin, 1995, P. 234-5)

79
Ronald Dworkins Search for the Foundation of
Liberal Equality

• The components of critical-ethical-value inquiry
• Transcendent or indexed? Having identified the
  significance and importance of one critical
  well-being, a person then has to decide whether
  these ethical values are transcendent, that is,
  that the components of a good life are always and
  everywhere the same. Conversely, one may opt for
  the ethical stance that there is no such things
  as the single good life for everyone, that
  ethical standards are in some way indexed to
  culture and ability and resource and other aspect
  of ones circumstance, so that the best life for
  a person in one situation may be very different
  from the best life for someone else in another.
  (Dworkin, 1995, P.235)

80
Ronald Dworkins Search for the Foundation of
Liberal Equality

• The components of critical-ethical-value inquiry
• Ethics and morality (limitations and parameters)
  Have addressed the dilemma between transcendent
  or indexed, the third puzzle is what is the
  connection between self-interest and morality?
  (Dworkin, 1995, P.235) Or more specifically, what
  is ethical value relate to moral value? Dworkin
  in his more recent work has made the distinction
  between ethics and morality as follow
• I use the term ethical and moral in what
  might seem a special way. Moral standard
  prescribe how we ought to treat others ethical
  standard, how we ought to live ourselves. But we
  would then have to recognize the distinction I
  draw in order to ask whether our desire to lead
  good lives for ourselves provides a justifying
  reason for our concern with what we owe to
  others. (Dworkin, 2011, P.191)

81
Ronald Dworkins Search for the Foundation of
Liberal Equality

• The components of critical-ethical-value inquiry
• Ethics and morality (limitations and parameters)
  .
• In other words, in pursuing ones well-being
  (either critical or volitional) should one solely
  consider ones own interests or take into account
  of other fellow humans interests? More
  generally, in pursuing one's well-being, should
  the circumstances (including moral as well as
  physical circumstances) in which one find himself
  be taken as limitation or parameters?

82
Ronald Dworkins Search for the Foundation of
Liberal Equality

• The components of critical-ethical-value inquiry
• Additive or constitutive? The fourth component of
  critical value inquiry elevates our inquiry to
  the level on how and on what ground should we
  judge whether some elses life is a good and
  decent life. According to Dworkin, there are two
  ways answer this question. One way is simply ask
  whether some desirable attributes, which we count
  as components of a good life, have been found
  manifested in the behaviors and/or relationship
  of someone whom we are to pass our judgments.
  Dworkin has characteriz