1 MVE 6030 The Good Society and its Educated Citizens Topic 2 Liberal’s Idea of Good Society: The...

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MVE 6030The Good Society and its Educated Citizens

Topic 2

Liberal’s Idea of Good Society:

The Idea of Justice

Core Values of HK Society

一国两制愛國愛港

自由民主人權法治公平公義…

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Core Values of Mainland China

穩定壓倒一切發展就是硬道理

正義壓倒一切

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4明報 2013 年 5 月 11 日

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‘“正義壓倒一切”這一行動綱領的確立，將會徹底破解當下社會管理的實踐難題和突破社會管理的格局性困境。當下社會管理的實踐難題就是“穩定壓倒一切”。’（趙孟營， 2012 ， 85 頁）

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Why Justice?Formulation of the Problem

Three levels of social values Ethical value: It refers to desirable traits and

features we attributed to human behaviors, actions, and conducts.

Moral value: It refers to desirable traits and features attributed to human interactions and relationships among fellows humans.

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Three levels of social values… Political values: It refers to the ethical and moral

values taken by a given society as of prominent importance that they should be imposed onto all members of that society coercively.

Accordingly, discourse of political value entails the legitimacy of a public authority (the modern state) in substantiating those prominent values onto the civil society which falls under its sovereignty.

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Distinction between theoretical (pure) and practical reasons:

“Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of system of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. …Being first virtue of human actives, truth and justice are uncompromising.” (Rawls, 1971, Pp. 3-4)

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Why Justice?Formulation of the Question

Distinction between theoretical (pure) and practical reasons:…

Theoretical reason: It refers to human’s abilities and methods to address and verify the question of what is true.

Practical reason: It refers to human’s abilities and methods to address and vindicate the question of what is good, desirable and valuable.

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Practical reason as human’s methodical efforts to vindicate the question of what is good have elicited different perspectives within the fields of ethics and political philosophy

Emotivism or libertarianism Consequentialism or utilitarianism Deontological perspective Perspective of institutionalism Perspective of realization-focused comparison

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The backgrounds and significance of Rawls’ theory of justice: John Rawls’s book A Theory of Justice has been

characterized as a deontological perspective of practical reasoning. More specifically, his formulations have been categorized as a Kantian approach to the question of what is good society

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The backgrounds and significance of Rawls’ theory of justice: Kant’s concept of categorical imperative

Kant stipulates that “there is …only a single categorical imperative and it is this: act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that become a universal law.” (Kant, 1996, p. 73) or “I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.” (P. 57)

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The backgrounds and significance of Rawls’ theory of justice: Kant’s concept of categorical imperative

…. ‘Universal’ here means “an action is morally

permissible if you would be willing to have everyone act as you are proposing to act. An action is morally wrong if you are not willing to have everyone act as you are proposing to act.” (Rogerson, 1991, p. 108)

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G.A. Cohen, one of the outright critics of Rawls’ theory of justice, underlines that …

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“The publication of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice in 1971 was a watershed. …Before A Theory of Justice appeared, political philosophy was dominant by utilitarianism, the theory that sound social policy aims at the maximization of welfare. Rawls found two features of utilitarianism repugnant. He objected, first, to its aggregative character, its unconcern about the pattern of distribution of welfare, which means that inequality in its distribution calls for no justification. ….

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G.A. Cohen“….But, more pertinently… Rawls also objected

to the utilitarian assumption that welfare is the aspect of a person’s condition which commands normative attention. He recommended normative evaluation with new arguments (goods instead of welfare quanta) and new function (equality instead of aggregation) from those arguments to values.” (Cohen, 2011, P. 44; see also, Cohen, 2008, Pp. 11-14)

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Rawls’ Theory of Justice

Justice as fairness: John Rawls formulates his theory of justice from the idea of “Justice as Fairness”, which was published in the form of a journal article in Philosophical Review, vol. 64, no. 1, Pp. 164-194 in 1958. He wrote in the paper that

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Justice as fairness: … “It might seem at the first sight that the concepts of

justice and fairness are the same, and that there is no reason to distinguish them, or to say that one is fundamental than the other. I think that this impression is mistaken. In this paper I wish to show that fundamental idea in the concept of justice is fairness; and I wish to offer an analysis of the concept of justice from this point of view.” (Rawls, 1999[1958], p. 42)

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Justice as fairness: … The meaning of fairness: “Fundamental to justice is

the concept of fairness which relates to right dealing between persons who are cooperating with or competing against one another, as when one speak of fair games, fair competition, and fair bargains. The question of fairness arises when free persons, who have no authority over one another, are engaging in a joint activity and among themselves settling or acknowledging the rules which define it and which determine the respective shares in its benefits and burdens. ….

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Justice as fairness: … The meaning of fairness: …. A practice will strike the

parties as fair if none feels that, by participating in it, they or any of the others are taken advantage of, or forced to give in to claims which they do not regard as legitimate. This implies that each has a conception of legitimate claims which he thinks it reasonable for others as well as himself to acknowledge. …A practice is just or fair, then, when it satisfies the principles which those who participate in it could propose to one another for mutual acceptance under aforementioned circumstances.” (Rawls, 1999[1958], p. 59)

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Two Principles of JusticeRawls stipulates at the outset that “justice is the first virtue of social institution” (P.3) and “the primacy of justice” over other social values. Hence, the basic structure of a just society is to be constituted in accordance with “the two principles of justice”.“First Principle: Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with similar system of liberty for all.

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Two Principles of Justice “Second Principle: Social and economic

inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both to the greatest benefits of the least advantaged, …

and attached to offices and positions open to all under

conditions of fair equality of opportunities.” (Rawls, 1971, p. 302)

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Applications of the principles: “These principles primarily apply …to the basic structure of society. They are to govern the assignment of rights and duties and to regulate the distribution of social and economic advantages….These principles presuppose that the social structure can be divided into two more or less distinct parts.” (Rawls, 1971, p. 61),

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Applications of the principles: … The First Principle applies to those distinct “aspects

of the social system that define and secure the equal liberties of citizenship. …The basic liberties of citizens are, roughly speaking, political liberty (right to vote and to be eligible for public office) together with freedom of speech and assembly; liberty of conscience and freedom of thought; freedom of person along with right to hold (personal) property; freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure as defined by the concept of the rule of law. These liberties are all required to be equal…, since citizens of just society are to have the same basic rights.” (p.61)

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Applications of the principles: … The Second Principle applies to those aspects of

social system “that specify and establish social and economic inequalities.” More specifically, it “applies…to the distribution of income and wealth and to the design of organizations that make use of differences in authority and responsibility, or chains of command.” (p. 61)

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Interpretation of the second principle Rawls qualifies that the two constituent phrases in

the Second Principle, namely to “everyone’s advantage” and “equally open to all” need further interpretation.

Rawls interprets the two phrases as follows (Rawls, 1971, p. 65)

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“Everyone’s advantage”

“Equally open” Principle of efficiency Difference principle

Equality as careers open to talent

System of Natural Liberty

Natural Aristocracy

Equality as equality of fair opportunity

Liberty Equality Democratic Equality

(Result)(Process)

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Priority and lexical orders between principles of justice The priority of liberty: The First Principle, namely

the principle of liberty has lexical priority over the Second Principle. “This ordering means that a departure from the institutions of equal liberty require by the first principle cannot be justified by, or compensated for, by greater social and economic advantages.” (p. 61)

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Priority and lexical orders between principles of justice… Within the Second Principle, the priority of

democratic equality over the other three systems, in other words, the priority of difference principle and equality as equality of fair opportunity over principle of efficiency and equality as careers open to talent.

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Rawls’ Justification of his Theory of Justice

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The idea of original position In reality, most of the situations in which humans enter

into cooperation or competition are not in fair terms. That is they are not in equal footings when engage in a bargain and one of the parties may has an upper hand over their partners. The worst scenario the parties found themselves in a situation where they have to strike a balance not in the most favorable terms of both parties. In other words, “the best that each can do for himself may be a condition of lesser justice rather than of greater good. …It is at this point that the conception of the original position embodies features peculiar to moral theory.” (Rawls, 1971, p. 120)

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The idea of original position… Accordingly, the conception of original position is a

conceptual device initiated by Rawls to “insure that fundamental agreement reach in it are fair” and yield the name of “justice as fairness”. (Rawls, p. 17)

“The original position is defined in such a way that it is a status quo in which agreements reach are fair. It is a state of affairs in which the partners are equally represented as moral persons and the outcome is not conditioned by arbitrary contingencies or the relative balances of social forces. Thus justice as fairness is able to use the idea of pure procedural justice from the beginning.” (Rawls, 1971, p. 120)

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The conception of the veil of ignorance “The idea of the original position is to set up a fair

procedure so that any principles agreed to will be just. The aim is to use the notion of pure procedural justice as a basis of theory. Somehow we must nullify the effects of specific contingencies which put men at odd and tempt them to exploit social and natural circumstances to their own advantage. Now in order to do this I assume that the parties are situated behind a veil of ignorance.” (Rawls, 1971, p. 136)

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The conception of the veil of ignorance… “It is assumed, then, that the parties do not know

certain kinds of particular facts. First of all, no one knows his place in society, his class

position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength, and the like. Nor, again, does anyone know his conception of the good, the particulars of his rational plan of life, or even the special features of his psychology such as aversion to risk or liability to optimism or pessimism. …

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The conception of the veil of ignorance… “It is assumed, then, that the parties do not know

certain kinds of particular facts…. More than this, I assume that the parties do not know the

particular circumstances of their own society. That is, they do not know its economic or political situation, or the level of civilization and culture it has been able to achieve. The persons in the original position have no information as to which generation they belong.” (Rawls 1971, p. 137; the Roman numberings are mine)

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Examining the Liberal Assumptions underlying Rawls’ Theory of Justice

Rawls’ endeavors of constructing A Theory of Justice, i.e. formulating a practical reason vindicating his ethical positions that (a) The good society is a just society, i.e. justice is the first virtue of social institutions; and (b) Just society constitutes its basic social structure in accordance with the two principles stipulated by Rawls have triggered heated discussions in the field of ethics since its publication in 1971.

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… For more than forty years, the debate has retrieved times and again. One of the major focuses of discussion has been to reveal and examine the underlying assumptions, on which Rawls’ whole scholarly enterprise is built. For example, Stephen Mulhall and Adam Swift from the communitarian perspective (1996) have underlined five of such underlying assumptions.

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The conception of the person It has been underlined by Mulhall and Swift (1996,

Pp. 10-13) that the conception of the person as stipulated in Rawls’ conception of original position is a bearer of right to choose freely and equally with no preconception of ends. However, such an assumption of the conception of the person has been criticized by commentators most notably communitarians in the follow terms

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The conception of the person… It has been accused that such an assumption of the

conception the person is practically invalid, in the sense that the very conception of the person qua person is by definition her conception of ends, good, and her plan of life.

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The conception of the person… The second query on Rawls conception of the

person is about its scope. It has been questioned that whether Rawls’ free and equal chooser can exercise her rights to choose across all domains of life or they are specific to some particular domains and scopes of life only. Furthermore, it has been queried that whether these scope-free rights to choose apply to all cultures. The query is based on the phenomenological conceptions that the person is defined existentially by her lived experiences and lifeworld.

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The conception of the person… Following this line of inquiry, Rawls’ conception of the

person may further be questioned in terms of it status (metaphysical or empirical status), its source and origin (ahistorical or temporal & historical specific). This line of query is derived primarily from MacIntyre’s conception of the person that she is defined by her practice, narrative and tradition.

Given the conception of the person has been pre-emptied with her validity, scope, status and origin; the final query on it will be whether such a person could still be able to practically reason about her own good and desirability.

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Asocial individualism: According to Rawls’ conception of the original

position, the free and equal choosers are related to one and other in game situations (either cooperation or competition) in disinterested terms. Such an assumption about relationship has been characterized by Mulhall and Swift as “asocial individualism” (Pp. 13-18) However, such the assumption has been questions in following terms.

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Asocial individualism:…. With reference of psycho-sociological perspective,

the person with her unique self-conception, self-interpretation, the very conception of the good, and her ability to practical reason, are to the large extent the outcomes of her growing and socializing process within a network of interpersonal relationship and a cultural-linguistic matrix. Cutting away from these networks of references, it is hard to imagine how the free and equal chooser could practically and morally make any informed and justified choice.

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Asocial individualism:…. Given the assumption of asocial individualism, the

practical and moral choice that Rawls’ free and equal chooser could have made will be nothing but in favor of individual right and liberty. Thus the seemingly impartiality in original position is in fact bias against conception of communal goods.

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Universalism Another concern about Rawls’ conclusion of his just

society is that whether he assumes his conception of just society is valid universally and cross-culturally. Hence, it is questioned that his conception of just society could have been culturally specific to Western liberal societies only.

Furthermore, Michael Walzer has specifically queried whether Rawls theory of justice can universally applied across various spheres in modern society, such as commodities in marketplace, public offices, occupations, education, love and kinship, religious affiliations, partisanship and citizenship, etc.

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Subjectivism or objectivism It has been underlined specifically by Michael Sandel

that Rawls has assumed that his free and equal choosers make their rational choice mainly based upon their desires and more specifically their subjective preferences. ….

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Subjectivism or objectivism…. ….Sandel makes reference with the following words

of Rawls

“We can say that the rational plan for a person is the one …which he would choose with deliberative rationality. It is the plan that would be decided upon as the outcome of careful reflection in which the agent reviewed, in the light of all the relevant facts, what it would be like to carry out these plans and thereby ascertained the course of action that would best realize his more fundamental desires.” (Rawls, 1971, P. 417; my emphasis)

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Subjectivism or objectivism…. Given its conception of the person and asocial

individualism, Rawls’ rational choosers in her original position could not have any concrete and objective assumptions to made reference with except her own subjective preferences and desires. Hence, it has been queried that if Rawls choosers were given back their personal identities, their socio-cultural backgrounds, or even the concrete and strategic situations; could they have made totally different choices on the principles of justice and the conception of good society.

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Anti-perfectionism and neutrality Lastly, it has been queries that in his endeavor to

formulate a theory of good society, Rawls seems to have assumed that the state should have taken a completely neutral position in all aspects of public affairs, so as to allow Rawls’ free and equal choosers to make whether decisions on the principles of justice and their conceptions of the good society.

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Anti-perfectionism and neutrality… Mulhall and Swift underline that such an assumption

and political position of neutrality is hard to justify in arguments and more importantly impossible to accept in effects. Taken for examples of cases in homicides and/or genocides, it is hard to imagine that even in the hypothetical situation of original position that the state or other forms of legitimate public authority could have stay neutral on the issues.

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Topic 2Liberal’s Idea of Good Scoiety

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