Rejoinder to Michael Sandel Richard Dagger

7/28/2019 Rejoinder to Michael Sandel Richard Dagger

1/4

Rejoinder to Michael SandelAuthor(s): Richard DaggerReviewed work(s):Source: The Review of Politics, Vol. 61, No. 2 (Spring, 1999), pp. 215-217Published by: Cambridge University Press for the University of Notre Dame du lac on behalf of Review ofPolitics

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1408355 .Accessed: 15/12/2012 18:10

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Cambridge University Press and University of Notre Dame du lac on behalf of Review of Politics are

collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Review of Politics.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded on Sat, 15 Dec 2012 18:10:40 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cuphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=notredamepoliticshttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=notredamepoliticshttp://www.jstor.org/stable/1408355?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/1408355?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=notredamepoliticshttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=notredamepoliticshttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup


2/4

Rejoinder to Michael SandelRichard Dagger

Michael Sandel's response to my criticalessay is thoughtful,generous, and characteristically elegant. I am not the only one, Iam sure,who will welcome this clarificationof his views. YetIaminclined to think that what he does not include in his response isas important as what he does.What Professor Sandel's response does not include is anyattemptto sortout, qualify,accept,orreject he criticismsadvancedin the "Sandel and the Self" section of my essay. He says in hissecond sentence that I bring out "the continuities and differencesbetween Democracy's iscontentand my earlierwork with subtletyand care," but he fails to note that most of those continuitiesconcern the unencumbered self he attributes to liberalism. Weareleft to wonder, then, what he makes of the three charges that Ibring against his account of this self: that he mistakes the point ofthe unencumbered self in Rawlsian liberalism;thathe trades on afalse dichotomy between the encumbered and the unencumberedself; and that he neglects to notice a distinction, implicit in his asmuch as in Rawls's thinking, between the self in the abstract,general sense and the self in the concrete,particularsense.What Professor Sandel does say in his response indicates thathe is not as hostile to liberalism as he has sometimes appeared tobe. He draws a distinction between procedural and perfectionistliberalism,as others have done, and he appears to concede that arepublican-liberal hybrid is plausible as long as the liberalportionis perfectionist rather than procedural. That is also my view, andProfessor Sandel rightly surmises that I favor the perfectionistversion of liberalism. We part company, though, when he saysthat "one reason forposing the distinction between liberalism andrepublicanism as starkly as I do is to force liberals to choosebetween theirproceduraland perfectionist impulses."IfProfessorSandel really wants liberals to choose between these impulses,then I should think that he would concentrate his attention ondeveloping the distinction between procedural and perfectionistliberalism in order to make a case for the latter. How he expects asharp distinction between republicanismand liberalism to force

This content downloaded on Sat, 15 Dec 2012 18:10:40 PMAll use subject toJSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


3/4

THE REVIEWOFPOLITICS

liberalsto make this choice, however, isbeyond me. Indeed,posingthis distinction as sharply as he does seems to obscure ratherthanclarifyany differences among liberals-and thus to force a choicebetween republicanism and liberalism, not between forms ofliberalism that are more and less congenial to republicanism.The one point at which Professor Sandel clearly rejects myargument concerns the value of autonomy. My claim is that he iswrong to associate autonomy with procedural liberalism and theunencumbered self, forhis own attempt to revive republicanself-government itself relies on an implicit appeal to autonomy.Professor Sandel's response is that there are two concepts orconceptions of autonomy,neither of which is at all helpful for the"formativeproject" hat both of us endorse. He is right, of course,to point out that autonomy is hardly a simple or straightforwardconcept thatprecludes competing interpretations.He is also rightto point out that conceiving of autonomy as obedience to a lawthatone prescribesforoneself, in themanner of Rousseau's "moralliberty," eads to some of the problems associated with Rousseau's"generalwill."' Butthese two rightsdo not make my claimwrong.As long as Professor Sandel's aim is to revive the republicanidealof self-government, he will need to appeal in some way toautonomy. His own formative projectmakes this point clear.WhatProfessor Sandelhopes to form is people who will thinkand act as self-governing citizens, not as consumers orunencumberedindividuals. Weshould be moreconcerned,he saysin Democracy's Discontent, with "the political economy ofcitizenship"thanwith the distributiveissue of who gets how muchof what. To be a self-governing citizen, however, is not to be aself-governing hermit. The citizen is someone who acts in concertwith others, which requires the citizen to rise above or set asidesome of the features of his or her particularidentity.That is nottosay, as Professor Sandel does, that this kind of "moral freedomconsists in abstracting from all particular interests, ends, andconceptions of thegood." Butit is to say thattheparticular nterestsof the individual are sometimes at odds with the interests of thecitizen. If they were not, then the concept of civic virtue wouldhave no point.

1. As I acknowledge in Civic Virtues:Rights, Citizenship,and RepublicanLiberalismNew York:Oxford University Press, 1997),chap. 6, esp. pp. 96-97.

216



4/4

REJOINDERTO MICHAEL SANDELNor is the self-governing citizen some sort of public-spirited

robot, always doing without reflection what the common goodrequires. Self-government demands citizens who reflect on thegood-their own and that which they sharewith other citizens-before they act. What the formative projectneeds, then, is to finda way of encouraging people to think for themselves-thus to beself-governing as individuals-and at the same time to think ofand with others as self-governing citizens. If Rousseau's prob-lems threaten the project, then we must look for some way to goover, around, or through them.The formative project, in sum, aims to foster autonomy.Professor Sandel may prefer to avoid the word, but he cannotavoid the concept-not without forsaking his commitment torepublican self-government. He also is committed to individualrights, it seems, with the qualification that "rights cannot bedetached from substantive moral judgments about the purposesand ends rights advance." The Sandelian republic thus wouldprotect the rights of self-governing or autonomous individualswhile it fosters their desire to pursue the common good. It maynot be utopia, but it is the kind of place in which a republicanliberal could be quite comfortable.

217


Rejoinder to Michael Sandel Richard Dagger

Documents

Transcript of Rejoinder to Michael Sandel Richard Dagger