Justice 09 Arguing Affirmative Action / What's the Purpose? 讨论反歧视行动/目的是什么？
Last time, we were discussing the distinction, that Rawls draws between two different types of claims.
Claims of moral desert on the one hand, and of entitlement to legitimate expectations on the other.
Rawls argued that it's a mistake to think that distributive justice is a matter of moral desert.
A matter of rewarding people according to their virtue.
Today we're going to explore that question of moral desert and its relation to distributive justice.
Not in connection with incoming wealth, but in its connection with opportunities.
With hiring decisions and admission standards.
And so we turn to the case, of affirmative action.
You read about the case of Cheryl Hopwood.
She applied for admission to the University of Texas Law School.
Cheryl Hopwood had worked her way through high school, she didn't come from an affluent family, she put herself through community college, and California State University at Sacramento
She achieved a 3.8 grade point average there, later moved to Texas, became a resident, took the law school admissions test, did pretty well on that, and she applied to the University of Texas Law School.
She was turned down.
She was turned down at a time when the University of Texas
A policy that took into account, race and ethnic background.
The University of Texas said, "40 percent of the population of Texas
It's important that we, as a law school, have a diverse student body.
And so we are going to take into account, not only grades and test scores, but also the demographic makeup of our class including, its race and ethnic profile." The result, and this is what Hopwood complained about, the result of that policy, is that some applicants to the University of Texas Law School, with a lower academic index, which includes grades and test scores, than hers, were admitted.
And she was turned down.
She said, she argued, "I'm just being turned down because I'm white.
If I weren't, if I were a member of a minority group, with my grades and test scores I would had been admitted." And the statistics, the admissions statistics that came out in the trial, confirmed that African American and Mexican American applicants that year, who had, her grades and test scores, were admitted.
It went to Federal Court.
Now, put aside the law, let's consider it from the standpoint of justice and morality.
Is it fair, or it unfair?
Does Cheryl Hopwood have a case?
A legitimate complaint?
Were her rights violated, by the admissions policy of the law school?
How many say, how many would rule for the law school, and say that it was just to consider race and ethnicity as a factor in admissions?
How many would rule for Cheryl Hopwood and say "her rights were violated?" So here we have a pretty even split.
Alright, now I want to hear from a defender of Cheryl Hopwood. Yes?
You're basing something that's an arbitrary factor, you know, Cheryl couldn't control the fact that she was white, or not in a minority.
And therefore, you know, it's not as if it was like a test score that she worked hard to try and show that she could, you know, put that out there, you know, that she had no control over her race.
Good. And what're your name?- Bree.
Okay. Bree, stay right there.
Now let's find someone who has an answer for Bree.
Yes? - There are discrepancies in the educational system.
And the majority of the time, I know this in New York City
And so there is going to be a discrepancy, naturally, between minorities and between whites.
If they go to better schools.
And they will not do as well on exams because they haven't had as much help.
Because of the worst school systems.
Let me just interrupt you to, tell me your name?
Aneesha.- Aneesha. Aneesha, you're pointing out that minority kids may have gone in some cases to schools that didn't give them the same educational opportunity as kids from affluent families.- Yes.
And so the test scores they got, may actually not represent their true potential.
Because they didn't receive the same kind of help that they might have received had they gone to a school with better funding.
Good, alright. Aneesha has raised the point that colleges still should choose for the greatest academic scholarly promise but in reading the test scores and grades, they should take into account the different meaning those tests and grades have, in the light of educational disadvantage in the background.
So that's one argument in defense of affirmative action, Aneesha's argument.
Correcting for the effects of unequal preparation.
Educational disadvantage.
Now, there are other arguments.
Suppose, just to identify whether there is a competing principle here.
Suppose there are two candidates, who did equally well on the tests and grades.
Both of whom went to first rate schools.
Two candidates, among those candidates, would it be unfair for the college or university, for Harvard, to say, "we still want diversity along racial and ethnic dimensions, even where we are not correcting for the effects on test scores of educational disadvantage." What about in that case, Bree?
If it's that's one thing that puts, you know someone over the edge, then it's, I guess that would be, you know, justifiable.
If everything else about the individual first, though, everything to consider about that person's you know, talents, and where they come from, and who they are without these arbitrary factors, is the same.
Without these 'arbitrary factors', you call them.
But before you were suggesting, Bree, that race and ethnicity are arbitrary factors outside the control of the applicants.- True, I would agree with that.
And your general principle is that admissions shouldn't reward arbitrary factors, over which people have no control.- Right.
Alright. Who else, who else would like to, thank you both.
Who else would like to get into this, what do you say?
Well, first of all, I'm for affirmative action temporarily, but, for two reasons.
First of all, you have to look at the university's purpose.
It is to educate their students.
And I feel that different races, people coming from different races have different backgrounds and they contribute differently to the education.
And second of all, when you say that they have equal backgrounds, that's not true when you look at the broader picture, and you look at slavery and this is kind of a reparation.
I think affirmative action is a temporary solution to alleviate history, and the wrongs done to African Americans in particular.
And what's your name?
David.- David. You say that affirmative action is justified at least for now as a way of compensating for past injustice.
The legacy of slavery and segregation.- Right.
Who wants to take on that argument?
We need now a critic of affirmative action.
Yes, go ahead.
I think that what happened in the past has no bearing on what happens today.
I think that discriminating based on race should always be wrong.
Whether you're discriminating against one group or another.
Just because our ancestors did something, doesn't mean that that should have any effect on what happens with us today.
Alright, good. I'm sorry, your name is?- Kate.
Kate. Alright, who has an answer for Kate?
Yes.- I just wanted to comment and say that, - Tell us your name.
My name is Mansur. Because of slavery, because of past injustices today, we have a higher proportion of African Americans who are in poverty, who face less opportunities than white people.
So because of slavery 200 years ago, and because of Jim Crow, and because of segregation, today we have injustice based on race.
Kate?- I think that there are differences, obviously, but the way to fix those differences is not by some artificial fixing of the result.
You need to fix the problem.
So we need to address differences in education, and differences in upbringing with programs like Head Start, and giving more funding to lower income schools rather than just trying to fix the result, so it makes it look like it's equal when it's really it isn't.
Yes.
Well, with regard to affirmative action based on race, I just want to say that white people have had their own affirmative action in this country for more than 400 years.
It's called 'nepotism' and 'quid pro quo'.
So there's nothing wrong with correcting the injustice and discrimination that's been done to black people for 400 years.
Good. Tell us your name.- Hannah.
Hannah. Alright who has an answer for Hannah?
And just to add to Hannah's point, because we need now someone to respond, Hannah, you could have also mentioned legacy admissions.
Exactly.
I was going to say, if you disagree with affirmative action, you should disagree with legacy admission because it's obvious from looking around here that there are more white legacies than black legacies in the history of Harvard University
And explain what legacy admissions are.
Well, legacy admissions is giving an advantage to someone who has an arbitrary privilege of their parent having attended the university to which they're applying.
Alright, so a reply for Hannah.
Yes, in the balcony, go ahead.
First of all, if affirmative action is making up for past injustice, how do you explain minorities that were not historically discriminated against in the United States
In addition, you could argue that affirmative action perpetuates divisions between the races rather than achieve the ultimate goal of race being an irrelevant factor in our society.
And what, tell us your name.
Danielle.- Hannah.
I disagree with that because I think that by promoting diversity in an institution like this, you further educate all of the students, especially the white students who grew up in predominately white areas.
It's certainly a form of education to be exposed to people from different backgrounds.
And you put white students at an inherent disadvantage when you surround them only with their own kind.
Why should race necessarily be equated with diversity?
There are so many other forms, why should we assume that race makes people different?
Again, that's perpetuating the idea of racial division within our universities and our society.- Hannah?
With regard to African American people being given a special advantage, it's obvious that they bring something special to the table, because they have a unique perspective just as someone from a different religion or socio-economic background would, as well.
As you say, there are many different types of diversity.
There's no reason that racial diversity should be eliminated from that criteria.
Yes, go ahead.
Racial discrimination is illegal in this country, and I believe that it was African American leaders themselves, when Martin Luther King said he wanted to be judged not on the color of skin, but by the content of his character, his merit, his achievements.
And I just think that, to decide solely based on someone's race is just inherently unfair.
I mean, if you want to correct based on disadvantaged backgrounds, that's fine, but there are also disadvantaged white people as well.
It shouldn't matter if you're white or black.- Tell us your name.
Ted. - Ted, - Yes.- Think of Hopwood.
It's unfair to count race or, I assume you would also say, ethnicity or religion?
Yes. - Do you think she has a right to be considered according to her grades and test scores alone?
No. There is more to it than that.
Universities need to promote diversity.
So you agree with the goal of promoting diversity?
There's ways to promote diversity besides discriminating against people solely based on a factor they cannot control.
Alright, so what makes it wrong, is that she can't control her race.
She can't control the fact that she's white.
That's the heart of the unfairness to her.
Bree made a similar point.
That basing admissions on factors that people can't control, is fundamentally unfair.
What do you say?
There's a lot of things you can't control, and if you don't for it based on merit, like just based on your test scores, a lot of what you can achieve has to do with family background, that you were raised in.
If both of your parents were scholarly, then you have more of chance of actually of being more scholarly yourself and getting those grades.
And you can't control what kind of family you were born into.
Alright good, that's a great rejoinder, what's your name?
Da.- Da.
Ted, are you against advantages that come from the family you were born into?
What about legacy admissions?
I do believe that in terms of a legacy admission you shouldn't have a special preference, I mean there is a legacy admission you could argue is another part, versus you could day it's important to have a small percentage of people that have a several generation family attendance at a place like Harvard.
However that should not be an advantage factor like race, it should just be another part promoting diversity.
Should it count at all?
I think that, - Alumni status, should it count at all, Ted?
Yes. It should count.
Alright, I want to step back for a moment from these arguments.
Thank you all for these contributions.
We're going to come back to you.
If you've listened carefully I think you will have noticed three different arguments emerge from this discussion.
In defense of considering race and ethnicity as a factor in admissions.
One argument has to do with correcting for the effects, for the effects of educational disadvantage.
That was Aneesha's argument.
This is what we might call the corrective argument.
Correcting for differences in educational background, the kind of school people went to.
The opportunities they had and so on.
That's one argument.
What's worth noticing though, is that argument is consistent in principle with the idea that only academic promise and scholarly potential should count in admissions.
We just need to go beyond test scores and grades alone, to get a true estimate of academic promise and scholarly ability.
That's the first argument.
Then we heard a second argument that said affirmative action is justified even where there may not be the need to correct for educational disadvantage in a particular applicant's case.
It's justified as a way of compensating for past wrongs, for historic injustices.
So that's a compensatory argument.
Compensating for past wrongs.
Then we heard, a third, a different argument, for affirmative action, from Hannah and others, that argued in the name of diversity.
Now, the diversity argument is different from the compensatory argument, because it makes a certain appeal to the social purpose or the social mission of the college or university.
There are really two aspects to the diversity argument.
One says it's important to have a diverse student body for the sake of the educational experience for everyone.
Hannah made that point.
And the other talks about the wider society.
This was the argument made by the University of Texas
We need to train lawyers and judges and leaders, public officials who will contribute to the strength, the civic strength of the state of Texas
So there are two different aspects to the diversity argument.
But both are arguments in the name of the social purpose, or the social mission or the common good, served by the institution.
Well, what about the force of these arguments?
We've also heard objections to these arguments.
The most powerful objection to the compensatory argument is, is it fair to ask Cheryl Hopwood today, to make the sacrifice, to pay the compensation for an injustice that was admittedly committed and egregious, in the past, but in which she was not implicated.
Is that fair?
So that's an important objection to the compensatory argument.
And in order to meet that objection, we would have to investigate whether there is such a thing as group rights or collective responsibility that reaches over time.
So having identified that issue, let's set it aside to turn to the diversity argument.
The diversity argument doesn't have to worry about that question.
About collective responsibility for past wrongs.
Because it says, for reasons Hannah and others pointed out, that the common good is served, is advanced if there is a racially and ethnically diverse student body.
Everyone benefits.
This indeed was the argument that Harvard made when it filed a friend of the court brief to the Supreme Court in the 1978 case, the affirmative action case, the Bakke case.
In the Harvard brief, the Harvard rationale, was cited by Justice Powell, who was the swing vote in the case upholding affirmative action, he cited that as providing the rationale that he thought was constitutionally acceptable.
Harvard's argument in its brief, was this: "We care about diversity.
Scholarly excellence alone, has never been the criterion of admission, the sole criterion of admission to Harvard College
Fifteen years ago diversity meant students from California and New York , and Massachusetts
City dwellers, and farm boys.
Violinists, painters and football players.
Biologists, historians and classicists.
The only difference now, Harvard argued, is that we're adding racial and ethnic status to this long list of diversity considerations.
When reviewing the large number of candidates able to do well in our classes," Harvard wrote, "Race may count as a plus, just as coming from Iowa
A farm boy from Idaho can bring something to Harvard College
Similarly, a black student can usually bring something a white student cannot offer.
The quality of the educational experience of all students depends in part on these differences in the background and outlook that students bring with them." That was Harvard's argument.
Now what about the diversity argument?
Is it persuasive?
If it's to be persuasive, it has to meet one very powerful objection.
That we've heard voiced here.
By Ted, by Bree.
Unless you're a utilitarian, you believe that individual rights can't be violated.
And so the question is, is there an individual right that is violated?
Is Cheryl Hopwood's right violated?
If she is used, so to speak, denied admission, for the sake of the common good and the social mission that the University of Texas Law School has defined for itself, does she have a right?
Don't we deserve to be considered according to our excellences, our achievements, our accomplishments, our hard work?
Isn't that the right at stake?
Now we've already heard an answer to that argument.
No, she doesn't have the right.
Nobody deserves to be admitted.
Notice how this gets us back to the issue of desert versus entitlement.
They're arguing there is no individual right that Hopwood has.
She doesn't deserve to be admitted according to any particular set of criteria that she believes to be important.
Including criteria that have only to do with her efforts and achievements.
Why not?
I think implicit, in this argument, is something like Rawls' rejection of moral desert as the basis of distributive justice.
Yes, once Harvard defines its mission and designs its admission policy in the light of its mission, people are entitled, who fit those criteria, they are entitled to be admitted.
But according to this argument, no one deserves that Harvard college define its mission and design its admission criteria in the first place, in a way that prizes the qualities they happen to have in abundance.
Whether those qualities are test scores or grades or the ability to play the piano, or to be a good middle linebacker, or to come from Iowa
So you see how this debate about affirmative action, especially the diversity argument, takes us back to the question of rights, which in turn takes us back to the question of whether moral desert is or is not the basis for distributive justice.
Think about that over the weekend and we'll continue this discussion next time.
Suppose we're distributing flutes.
Who should get the best ones?
What's Aristotle's answer?
Anyone?
His answer is, the best flutes should go to the best flute players, because that's what flutes are for.
When we ended last time, we were considering arguments for and against affirmative action.
Counting race as a factor in admissions.
And, in the course of the discussion, three arguments emerged, three arguments for affirmative action.
One of them was the idea that race and ethnic background should count as a way of correcting for the true meaning of test scores and grades.
Getting a more accurate measure of the academic potential those scores, those numbers represent.
Second, was what we called "the compensatory argument".
The idea of righting past wrongs, past injustice.
And the third was the diversity argument.
And when Cheryl Hopwood in the 1990s challenged the University of Texas Law School's affirmative action program, in the federal courts, the University of Texas
Saying that the broader social purpose, the social mission of the University of Texas Law School, is to produce leaders, in the legal community, in the political community, among judges, lawyers, legislators, and therefore it's important that we produce leaders, who reflect the background, and the experience, and the ethnic and the racial composition of the state of Texas.
It's important for serving our wider social mission.
That was the University of Texas Law School's argument.
And then we considered an objection to the diversity argument which after all is an argument in the name of the social mission, the common good.
We saw that Rawls does not simply believe that arguments of the common good or the general welfare should prevail if individual rights must be violated in the course of promoting the common good.
You remember that was the question, the challenge, to the diversity rationale that we were considering when we finished last time.
And we began to discuss the question "Well, what right might be at stake"?
Maybe the right to be considered according to factors within one's control.
Maybe this is the argument that Cheryl Hopwood implicitly was making.
She can't help the fact that she is white.
Why should her chance at getting into law school depend on a factor she can't control?
And then Hannah who is advancing an argument last time said Harvard has the right to define its mission any way it wants to, it's a private institution.
And it's only once Harvard defines its mission that we can identify the qualities that count.
So no rights are being violated.
Now, what about that argument?
What I would like to do is to hear objections to that reply.
And then, see whether others have an answer.
Yes?
And tell us your name.
Da.- Da, right you spoke up last time.
How do you answer that argument?
Well, I think there was two things in there.
One of them was that a private institution could define its mission however it wants.
But that doesn't make however it defines it, right, like I could define my personal mission as I want to collect all the money in the world.
But does that make it even a good mission?
So you can't like, you can't say that just because a college is a private institution it can just define it as whatever it wants, you still have to thing about, what are the way it's defining it, it's right.
And the case of affirmative action a lot of people have said that since there's a lot of other factors involved, why not race?
Like if we already know that, - Let's I want to stick with your first point, Da.- Okay.
Here's Da's objection.
Can a college or university define its social purpose any way it wants to and define admissions criteria accordingly?
What about the University of Texas Law School not today, but in the 1950s?
Then, there was another Supreme Court case, against the admissions policy of the University of Texas Law School because it was segregated.
It only admitted whites.
And when the case went to court back in the '50s, the University of Texas Law School also invoked its mission."Our mission as a law school, is to educate lawyers for the Texas bar, the Texas
And no Texas
So to fulfill our mission, we only admit whites." Or consider Harvard, in the 1930s when it had anti-Jewish quotas.
President Lowell, the president of Harvard in the 1930s said, that he had nothing personally against Jews, but he invoked the mission, the social purpose of Harvard he said, "which is not only to train intellectuals, part of the mission at Harvard," he said, "is to train stockbrokers for Wall Street, presidents and senators and there are very few Jews who go into those professions." Now, here's the challenge.
Is there a principle distinction between the invocation of the social purpose of the college or university today, in the diversity rationale and the invocation of the social purpose or mission of the university by Texas
Is there a difference in principle?
What's the reply?
Hannah?- Well, I think that the principle that's different here, is, basically the distinction between inclusion versus exclusion.
I think that it's morally wrong of the university to say "We're going to exclude you on the basis of your religion or your race." That's denial on the basis of arbitrary factors.
What Harvard is trying to do today with its diversity initiatives, is to include groups that were excluded in the past.
Good, let's see if, stay there, let's see if someone would like to reply.
Go ahead. - Actually this is kind of in support of Hannah, rather than a reply but, - That's alright.
I was going to say another principle difference can be based on malice being the motivation for the historical segregation act, so it's saying that we're not going to let blacks or Jews in because they're worse as people or as a group.
Good, so the element of malice isn't present.
And what's your name?- Stevie.
Stevie says that in the historic segregation as racist, anti-Semitic quotas or prohibitions.
There was built into them, a certain kind of malice, a certain kind of judgment that African Americans or Jews were somehow less worthy than everybody else.
Whereas present day affirmative action programs don't involve or imply any such judgment.
What it amounts to saying is, so long as the policy, just uses people in a way as valuable to the social purpose of the institution, it's okay provided it doesn't judge them, maliciously, as Stevie might add, as intrinsically less worthy.
I'd like to raise a question.
Doesn't that concede that all of us when we compete for positions or for seats in colleges and universities in a way are being used, not judged, but used, in a way that has nothing to do with moral desert.
Remember we got into this whole discussion of affirmative action when we were trying to figure out whether distributive justice should be tied to moral desert or not.
And we were launched on that question by Rawls and his denial, his rejection of the idea that distributive justice whether its positions or places in the class or income and wealth is a matter of moral desert.
Suppose that were the moral basis of Harvard's admissions policy, what letters would they have to write to people they rejected or accepted for that matter?
Wouldn't they have to write something like this: "Dear unsuccessful applicant, we regret to inform you that your application for admission has been rejected.
It's not your fault that when you came along society happened not to need the qualities you had to offer.
Those admitted instead of you are not themselves deserving of a place nor worthy of a praise for the factors that led their admission.
We are in any case only using them and you as instruments of a wider social purpose.
Better luck next time." What was the letter you actually got when you were admitted?
Perhaps it should have read something like this: "Dear successful applicant, we are pleased to inform you that your application for admission has been accepted.
It turns out, lucky for you, that you have the traits that society needs at the moment, so we propose to exploit your assets for society's advantage.
You are to be congratulated.
Not in the sense that you deserve credit for having the qualities that led to your admission, but only in a sense that the winner of a lottery is to be congratulated.
And if you choose to accept our offer, you will ultimately be entitled to the benefits that attach to being used in this way.
We look forward to seeing you in the fall." Now, there is something a little odd, morally odd, if it's true that those letters do reflect the theory, the philosophy underlying the policy.
So here's the question they pose.
And it's a question that takes us back to a big issue in political philosophy.
Is it possible, and is it desirable, to detach questions of distributive justice from questions of moral desert and questions of virtue?
In many ways, this is an issue that separates modern political philosophy from ancient political thought.
What's at stake in the question of whether we can put desert, moral desert aside?
It seemed when we were reading Rawls, that the incentive, the reason he had, for detaching distributive justice from moral desert was an egalitarian one.
That if we set desert to one side, there's greater scope for the exercise of egalitarian considerations.
The veil of ignorance.
The two principles, the difference principle, helping the least well off, redistribution and all that.
But what's interesting, is if you look, at a range of thinkers we've been considering, there does seem to be a reason they want to detach justice from desert that goes well beyond any concern for equality.
Libertarian rights oriented theorists, the kind we've been studying, as well as egalitarian rights oriented theorists, including Rawls, and for that matter, also including Kant, all agree, despite their disagreements over distributive justice, and the welfare state and all of that, they all agree that justice is not a matter of rewarding or honoring virtue or moral desert.
Now why do they all think that?
It can't just be for egalitarian reasons not all of them are egalitarians.
This gets us to the big philosophical question we have to try to sort out.
Somehow they think tying justice to moral merit or virtue is going to lead away from freedom, from respect for persons as free beings.
Well, in order to see what they consider to be at stake, and in order to assess their shared assumption, we need to turn to a thinker, to a philosopher, who disagrees with them.
Who explicitly ties justice to honor, honoring virtue, and merit and moral desert.
And that thinker is Aristotle.
Now, in many ways Aristotle's idea of justice is intuitively very powerful.
In some ways it's strange.
I want to bring out both its power, its plausibility and its strangeness, so that we can see what's at stake in this whole debate about justice and whether it's tied to desert and virtue.
So, what is Aristotle's answer to the question about justice?
For Aristotle, justice is a matter of giving people what they deserve, giving people their due.
It's a matter of figuring out the proper fit between persons, with their virtues, and their appropriate social roles.
Well, what does this picture of justice look like, and how does it differ from the conception that seems to be shared among libertarian and egalitarian rights oriented theorists alike?
Justice means giving each person his or her due, giving people what they deserve.
But what is a person's due?
What are the relevant grounds of merit or desert?
Aristotle says that depends on the sort of things being distributed."Justice involves two factors: Things and the persons to whom the things are assigned.
In general we say," Aristotle writes, "That persons who are equal should have equal things assigned to them." But here there arises a hard question.
Equals in what respects?
Aristotle says that depends on the sort of thing we're distributing.
Suppose we're distributing flutes.
What is the relevant merit or basis of desert for flutes?
Who should get the best ones?
What's Aristotle's answer?
Anyone?
The best flute players, right.
Those who are best in the relevant sense, the best flute players.
Is it just to discriminate in allocating flutes? Yes.
All justice involves discrimination, Aristotle says.
What matters is that the discrimination be according to the relevant excellence, according to the virtue appropriate to having flutes.
He says it would be unjust to discriminate on some other basis.
In giving out the flutes, to, say, wealth.
Just giving the best flutes to the people who can pay the highest price, or nobility of birth, just giving flutes to aristocrats, or physical beauty, giving the best flutes to the most handsome, or chance, having a lottery.
Aristotle says birth and beauty may be greater goods than the ability to play the flute, and those who possess them may surpass the flute player more in these qualities than he surpasses them in his flute playing.
But the fact remains that he is the person who ought to get the best flute.
It's a strange idea this comparison, by the way, that could you say, "Am I more handsome than she is a good lacrosse player?" That's a strange kind of comparison.
But putting that aside, Aristotle says, we're not looking for the best overall whatever that might mean.
We're looking for the best musician.
Now, why this is important to see.
Why, should the best flutes go to the best flute players?
Well, why do you think?
Anybody?
What?
They'll produce the best music.
Well, and everybody will enjoy it more.
That's not Aristotle's answer.
Aristotle is not a utilitarian.
He's not just saying, that way there'll be better music and everyone will enjoy it, everyone will be better off.
His answer is the best flutes should go to the best flute players because that's what flutes are for.
To be played well.
The purpose of flute playing, the purpose, is to produce excellent music.
And those who can best perfect that purpose, ought properly to have the best ones.
Now, it may also be true, as a welcome side effect.
That everyone will enjoy listening to that music.
So that answer is true enough as far as it goes, but it's important to see that Aristotle's reason is not a utilitarian reason.
It's a reason that looks, here's where you might think it's a little bit strange, it looks to the purpose, the point, the goal, of flute playing.
Another way of describing this, looking to the goal to determine the just allocation, the Greek for goal or end, was 'telos'.
So Aristotle says, you have to consider the point, the end, the goal, the telos of the thing in this case of flute playing.
And that's how you define a just allocation.
A just discrimination.
So this idea of reasoning from the goal, from the telos, is called "teleological reasoning".
Teleological moral reasoning.
And that's Aristotle's way.
Reasoning from the goal, from the end.
Now, this may seem, as I said a strange idea, that we're supposed to reason from the purpose, but it is, does have a certain intuitive plausibility.
Consider the allocation, let's say, at Harvard, of the best tennis courts or squash courts.
How should they be allocated?
Who should have priority in playing on the best courts?
Well, you might say, "Those who can best afford them." Set up a fee system, charge money for them.
Aristotle would say "No".
You might say, "Well, Harvard big shots, the most influential people at Harvard, who would they be"?
The senior faculty should have priority in playing on the best tennis courts.
No, Aristotle would reject that.
Some scientist may be a greater scientist than some Varsity tennis player is a tennis player, but still the tennis player is the one who should have priority for playing in the best tennis court.
There is a certain intuitive plausibility to this idea.
Now, one of the things that makes it strange is that in Aristotle's world, in the ancient world, it wasn't only social practices that were governed, in Aristotle's view, by teleological reasoning and teleological explanation.
All of nature was understood to be a meaningful order and what it meant to understand nature, to grasp nature, to find our place in nature, was to inquire into and read out the purposes or the telos, of nature.
And with the advent of modern science, it's been difficult to think of the world that way and so it makes it harder perhaps to think of justice in a teleological way, but there is a certain naturalness to thinking about even the natural world, as teleologically ordered as a purpose of whole.
In fact, children have to be educated out of this way of looking at the world.
I realized this when my kids were very young and I was reading them a book, Winnie the Poo.
And Winnie the Poo gives you a great idea of how there is a certain, natural, childlike way of looking at the world in a teleological way.
You may remember a story of Winnie-the-Poo walking in the forest one day, "He came to a place in the forest, and from the top of the tree there came a loud buzzing-noise.
Winnie-the-Poo sat at the foot of a tree, put his head between his paws, and began to think." Here's what he said to himself, " 'That buzzing-noise means something.
You don't get a buzzing-noise like that just buzzing and buzzing without its meaning something.
If there's a buzzing-noise, somebody's making a buzzing-noise.
And the only reason for making a buzzing-noise that I know of, is because you're a bee.' Then he thought for another long time and said, 'And the only reason for being a bee that I know of, is making honey.' And then he got up, and he said, 'And the only reason for making honey, is so I can eat it.' So he began to climb the tree." This is an example of teleological reasoning.
It isn't so implausible after all.
Now, we grew up, and we're talked out of this way of thinking about the world.
But here's the question, even if teleological explanations don't fit with modern science, even if we've outgrown them in understanding nature, isn't there something still intuitively, and morally plausible, even powerful, about Aristotle's idea that the only way to think about justice is to reason from the purpose, the goal, the telos, of the social practice?
And isn't that precisely what we were doing when we were disagreeing about affirmative action?
You can almost recast that disagreement as one about what the proper appropriate purpose, or end of a university education consists in.
Reasoning from the purpose or from the telos.
Or from the end.
Aristotle says that's indispensable to thinking about justice.
Is he right?
Think about that question as you turn to Aristotle's politics.
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Justice 10 The Good Citizen / Freedom vs. Fit 好市民/自由与适应
We turn to Aristotle after examining theories, modern theories, of justice that try to detach considerations of justice and rights from questions of moral desert and virtue.
Aristotle disagrees with Kant and Rawls.
Aristotle argues that justice is a matter of giving people what they deserve.
And the central idea of Aristotle's theory of justice is that in reasoning about justice and rights we have, unavoidably, to reason about the purpose, or the end, or the telos, of social practices in institutions.
Yes, justice requires giving equal things to equal persons, but the question immediately arises, in any debate about justice, equal in what respect?
And Aristotle says we need to fill in the answer to that question by looking to the characteristic end, or the essential nature, or the purpose, of the thing we're distributing.
And so we discussed Aristotle's example of flutes; who should get the best flutes.
And Aristotle's answer was the best flute-players.
The best flute-player should get the best flute because that's the way of honoring the excellence of flute playing.
It's a way of rewarding the virtue of the great flute-player.
What's interesting though, and this is what we are going to explore today, is that it's not quite so easy to dispense with teleological reasoning when we're thinking about social institutions and political practices.
In general it's hard to do without teleology when we're thinking about ethics, justice, and moral argument.
At least that is Aristotle's claim.
And I would like to bring out the force in Aristotle's claim by considering two examples.
One is an example that Aristotle spends quite a bit of time discussing; the case of politics.
How should political offices and honors, how should political rule be distributed?
The second example is a contemporary debate about golf and whether the Professional Golfers Association should be required to allow Casey Martin, a golfer with a disability, to ride in a golf cart.
Both cases bring out a further feature of Aristotle's teleological way of thinking about justice.
And that is that when we attend to the telos, or the purpose, sometimes we disagree and argue about what the purpose of a social practice really consists in.
And when we have those disagreements part of what's at stake in those disagreements is not just who will get what, not just a distributive question, but also an honorific question.
What qualities, what excellences, of persons will be honored?
Debates about purpose and telos are often, simultaneously, debates about honor.
Now, let's see how that works in the case of Aristotle's account of politics.
When we discuss distributive justice these days we're mainly concerned with the distribution of income and wealth and opportunity.
Aristotle took distributive justice to be mainly not about income and wealth but about offices and honors.
Who should have the right to rule?
Who should be a citizen?
How should political authority be distributed?
Those were his questions.
How did he go about answering those questions?
Well, in line with his teleological account of justice, Aristotle argues that to know how political authority should be distributed we have, first, to inquire into the purpose, the point, the telos, of politics.
So, what is politics about?
And, how does this help us decide who should rule?
Well, for Aristotle the answer to that question is, politics is about forming character, forming good character.
It's about cultivating the virtue of citizens.
It's about the good life.
The end of the State, the end of the political community, he tells us in Book Three of the Politics, is not mere life, it's not economic exchange only, it's not security only, it's realizing the good life.
That's what politics is for according to Aristotle.
Now, you might worry about this.
You might say, "Well, maybe this shows us why those modern theorists of justice, and of politics, are right".
Because remember, for Kant and for Rawls, the point of politics is not to shape the moral character of citizens.
It's not to make us good.
It's to respect our freedom to choose our goods, our values, our ends, consistent with a similar liberty for others.
Aristotle disagrees."Any polis which is truly so called, and is not merely one in name, must devote itself to the end of encouraging goodness.
Otherwise political association sinks into a mere alliance.
Law becomes a mere covenant, a guarantor of man's rights against one another, instead of being - as it should be - a way of life such as will make the members of a polis good and just." That's Aristotle's view."A polis is not an association for residents on a common site, or for the sake of preventing mutual injustice and easing exchange." Aristotle writes."The end and purpose of a polis is the good life, and the institutions of social life are means to that end." Now, if that's the purpose of politics, of the polis, then, Aristotle says, we can derive from that the principles of distributive justice; the principles that tell us who should have the greatest say, who should have the greatest measure of political authority.
And what's his answer to that question?
Well, those who contribute the most to an association of this character, namely an association that aims at the good, should have a greater share in political rule and in the honors of the polis.
And the reasoning is, they are in a position to contribute most to what political community is essentially about.
Well, so you can see the link that he draws between the principle of distribution for citizenship and political authority and the purpose of politics."But why," you'll quickly ask, "Why does he claim that political life, participation in politics, is somehow essential to living a good life?" "Why isn't it possible for people to live perfectly good lives, decent lives, moral lives, without participating in politics?" Well, he gives two answers to that question.
He gives a partial answer, a preliminary answer, in Book One of the Politics where he tells us that only by living in a polis, and participating in politics, do we fully realize our nature as human beings.
Human beings are, by nature, meant to live in a polis.
Why?
It's only in political life that we can actually exercise our distinctly human capacity for language, which Aristotle understands is this capacity to deliberate about right and wrong, the just and the unjust.
And so, Aristotle writes in Book One of the Politics, that the polis, the political community, exists by nature and is prior to the individual.
Not prior in time, but prior in its purpose.
Human beings are not self-sufficient, living by themselves, outside a political community."Man who is isolated, who is unable to share in the benefits of political association, or who has no need to share, because he's already self-sufficient, such a person must be either a beast or a god." So we only fully realize our nature, we only fully unfold our human capacities, when we exercise our faculty of language, which means when we deliberate with our fellow citizens about good and evil, right and wrong, just and the unjust."But why can we only exercise our capacity for language in political community?" you might ask.
Aristotle gives a second part, a fuller part, of his answer in the Nichomachean Ethics; an excerpt of which we have among the readings.
And there he explains that political deliberation, living the life of a citizen, ruling and being ruled in turn, sharing in rule, all of this is necessary to virtue.
Aristotle defines happiness not as maximizing the balance of pleasure over pain but as an activity, an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.
And he says that every student of politics must study the soul because shaping the soul is one of the objects of legislation in a good city.
But why is it necessary to live in a good city in order to live a virtuous life?
Why can't we just learn good moral principles at home or in a philosophy class or from a book, live according to those principles, those rules, those precepts, and leave it at that?
Aristotle says virtue isn't acquired that way.
Virtue is only something we can acquire by practicing, by exercising the virtues.
It's the kind of thing we can only learn by doing.
It doesn't come from book learning.
In this respect, it's like flute playing; you couldn't learn how to play a musical instrument well just by reading a book about it.
You have to practice, and you have to listen to other accomplished flute-players.
There are other practices and skills of this type.
Cooking; there are cookbooks but no great chef ever learns how to cook by reading a cookbook only.
It's the kind of thing you only learn by doing.
Joke-telling is probably another example of this kind.
No great comedian learns to be a comedian just by reading a book on the principles of comedy.
It wouldn't work.
Now, why not?
What do joke-telling and cooking and playing a musical instrument have in common such that we can't learn them just by grasping a precept or a rule that we might learn from a book or a lecture?
What they have in common is that they are all concerned with getting the hang of it.
But also what is it we get the hang of when we learn how to cook, or play a musical instrument, or tell jokes well?
Discerning particulars, particular features of a situation.
And no rule, no precept, could tell the comedian or the cook or the great musician how to get in the habit of, the practice of, discerning the particular features of a situation.
Aristotle says virtue is that way too.
Now, how does this connect to politics?
The only way we can acquire the virtues that constitute the good life is to exercise the virtues, to have certain habits inculcated in us, and then to engage in the practice of deliberating with citizens about the nature of the good.
That's what politics is ultimately about.
The acquisition of civic virtue, of this capacity to deliberate among equals, that's something we couldn't get living a life alone outside of politics.
And so, that's why, in order to realize our nature, we have to engage in politics.
And that's why those who are greatest in civic virtue, like Pericles, are the ones who properly have the greatest measure of offices and honors.
So, the argument about the distribution of offices and honors has this teleological character, but also an honorific dimension.
Because part of the point of politics is to honor people like Pericles.
It isn't just that Pericles should have the dominant say because he has the best judgment, and that will lead to the best outcomes, to the best consequences for the citizens.
That's true, and that's important.
But a further reason people like Pericles should have the greatest measure of offices, and honors, and political authority, and sway in the polis, is that part of the point of politics is to single out and honor those who posses the relevant virtue, in this case civic virtue, civic excellence, practical wisdom, to the fullest extent.
That's the honorific dimension bound up with Aristotle's account of politics.
Here's an example that shows the link in a contemporary controversy; the link to which Aristotle draws our attention between arguments about justice and rights on the one hand and figuring out the telos or the purpose of a social practice on the other.
Not only that, the case of Casey Martin and his golf cart also brings out the link between debates about what the purpose of a social practice or a game is, on the one hand and the question of what qualities should be honored on the other; the link between teleology and honor-based principles of distributive justice.
Who was Casey Martin?
Well, Casey Martin is a very good golfer.
Able to compete at the highest levels of golf but for one thing; he has a rare circulatory problem in his leg that makes it very difficult for him to walk; not only difficult but dangerous.
And so he asked the PGA, which governs the pro tour in golf, to be able to use a golf cart when he competed in professional tournaments.
PGA said no, and he sued under the Americans for Disabilities Act; he sued in a case that went all the way to the United States Supreme Court.
The question the Supreme Court had to answer was, does Casey Martin have a right that the PGA provide him, allow him, to use a golf cart on the tour, or not?
How many here think that, from a moral point of view, Casey Martin should have a right to use a golf cart?
And how many think that he should not have a right to a golf cart, in the tournaments?
So the majority are sympathetic to Casey Martin's right, though a substantial minority disagree.
Let's first hear from those of you who would rule against Casey Martin.
Why would you not say that the PGA must give him a golf cart?
Yes.
Since the inception of golf, because it has been part of the sport it is now intrinsically part of golf; walking the course.
And thus, because it's intrinsic to golf, I'd argue that not being able to walk the course is just not being able to perform an aspect of the sport, which is necessary to performing at a professional level.
Good.
Stay there for a minute.
What's your name?
Tommy.
Are you a golfer, by the way, Tom?
Not so much but, yeah, a little bit.
Are there any golfers here, I mean, real golfers?
Thank you, professor, that was...
No, no.
I'm just taking your word for it.
Is there someone here on the golf team?
Yes?
Tell us your name, and tell us what you think.
My name is Michael and I usually take a cart.
So . . .
I'm probably the wrong person to ask.
Is that why your hand went up slowly when I asked?
Yes.
Alright, but Tom is saying, Tom said a minute ago that at least at the professional level walking the course is essential to the game.
Do you agree?
I would, yes.
You do?
Then why do you take a cart?
And you call yourself a golfer?
No, no, no.
I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
What do you say to that?
When I have walked the course it does add tremendously to the game.
It makes it a lot harder.
It really does.
Yeah?
Alright let's hear, Michael and Tom stay there, let's hear from people who say that he should have a right to a golf cart.
Why? Who is prepared to defend that position?
Yes.
Well, I think the PGA should definitely be required to give him a golf cart because they argue in the decision that it's not just a matter of, he's not experiencing fatigue.
For him he's still walking about a mile, the cart can't go everywhere with him, and in that mile he is still experiencing more fatigue and pain than a healthy player would.
So, it's not as if you're removing the disadvantage.
What's your name?
Riva.
Riva, what do you say to Tom's point that walking the course is essential to the game?
It would be as if a disabled player could play in the NBA but not have to run up and down the court.
Well, I think there are two responses to that.
First, I don't think it's essential to the game, because most golfers who play, particularly recreationally, play with a cart.-- Like Michael.
And on several of the tours you can play with a cart; on the Senior PGA Tour, on the Nike Tour, in a lot of the college events.
And those events are just as competitive and just as high level as the PGA Tour.
So, really it's just a matter of selective reasoning if you argue it as an important part of the sport.
But, even if it is he still does have to walk, he still plays golf standing up, it's not as if he's playing golf from a wheelchair.
Alright.
Who else?
Go ahead.
I think the whole point of a competition is that it calls out the best, you know, from the second best or from the third best.
And when we're talking about the national level, we're talking about the highest of the highest.
I think what they're arguing about here is the purpose of competition.
And I think in the sake of competition you can't change the rules.
So, the purpose of the competition includes walking?
That's an essential, you agree with Tom.
And what's your name?
David.
The Supreme Court ruled that the PGA did have to accommodate Casey Martin and they did it on grounds that Riva mentioned, that walking isn't really part of, an essential part of the game.
They cited testimony saying that walking the court consumes no more calories than you get eating a Big Mac.
That's what walking is in golf, according to the majority.
Scalia was in dissent.
Justice Scalia agreed with David.
He said there is no purpose, and it's certainly not your course to try to figure out the essential purpose of golf.
Golf is like any game, it's strictly for amusement.
And if there's a group that wants to have one version of the game they can have that version of the game.
And the market can decide whether people are amused and like and show up for that and watch the television broadcasts.
Scalia's dissent was an anti-Aristotelian dissent, because notice two things about the argument; first we're thrust into a discussion about what the essential nature, or purpose, or telos of golf really is.
Does it include walking?
And, here's something I think is rumbling beneath the surface of this debate, whether walking partly determines whether golf is really an athletic competition.
After all, the ball sits still.
You have to put it in a hole.
Is it more like basketball, baseball, and football?
Golf, an athletic competition?
Or is it more like billiards?
The ball sits still there too.
You can be out of shape and succeed.
It involves skill but not athletic skill.
Could it be that those professional golfers, who excel at golf, have a stake in golf being honored and recognized as an athletic event, not just a game of skill like billiards?
And if that's what's at stake, then we have a debate about the purpose, the teleological dimension, and also a debate about honor.
What virtues, really, does the game of golf honor and recognize?
Two questions to which Aristotle directs our attention.
We'll continue on this case next time.
What's strange and seems paradoxical to me about Aristotle's view point is that if you walk like a pirate and you talk like a pirate you shouldn't be an investment banker, because that's not what you're inherently supposed to do.
If you have a peg leg and an eye patch and a disgruntled disposition, you know, you should be on a pirate ship on the high seas.
So he doesn't . . .
Some would say that the distinction between the two vocations is not as clear as you suggest.
When we ended last time we were talking about whether Casey Martin has a right to ride in a golf cart in the PGA Tournament.
And it's worth remembering how we got into this debate and what's at stake for an understanding of political philosophy.
Remember, we were looking at Aristotle's theory of justice and one way of describing his approach to justice, we've called it 'teleological'.
Teleological, because he says to allocate rights we first have to figure out the purpose, or the end, of the social practice in question.
Another way of describing Aristotle's account of Justice is that justice is, for him, a matter of fit; it's a matter of fitting persons with their virtues and excellences to the appropriate roles.
Now, I want to finish our discussion about Casey Martin and his claim for a golf cart, and then go back to one more consequential application in Aristotle, namely, the question of slavery.
What do you think about Casey Martin's request?
Should there be an accommodation or not, given the nature of the game and of the tournament and its purposes?"Isn't it discrimination if he's not provided the golf cart as an accommodation", say some.
Others reply, "No, if he got a cart it would be unfair to the other golfers because they exert themselves, become winded, fatigued, walking the course".
That's where we left it.
What about the fairness argument?
OK, Jenny.
My question was why doesn't the PGA just make the option of a cart available to all golfers?
From our readings I learned that there are many golf tournaments, other than the PGA, where using a cart is not prohibited.
For instance, the Seniors Tournament it's even allowed and encouraged.
So why doesn't the PGA just do that?
Let everybody use a cart?
Give everyone the option of using a cart and let them pick.
So then the traditionalists can then still say, "Well, I still choose to walk the course but I do that knowing that I will be more tired at the end than the people who took the cart." Good.
Alright, so what about Jenny's solution?
For the sake of fairness, don't give Casey Martin an advantage, if indeed there is an advantage to riding in a cart.
Let everyone who wants to use a cart.
Is everyone happy with that solution?
Does it put to rest this whole dilemma?
Who has an answer for Jenny?
Yes.
As was brought up last time, if you do that you kind of ruin some of the spirit of golf as a lot of people like to see it.
If you let everybody take a cart.
Even though it gives everybody the same playing field now, it sort of makes golf less of an athletic game, like people pointed out last class.
It's just like if someone decides to go into another sport and they want an advantage.
Like, if you have swimming and then you say, "OK, he wants flippers so why don't we just allow everyone to have flippers when they're swimming?" And what would that do to the Olympic Swimming Competition, if people were free to use, Jenny, we better let Jenny reply to this.
Da says it would sort of spoil the spirit of the athletic competition as if in Olympic swimming you let anyone who wanted to swim with flippers.
Alright, Jenny, what do you say to Da?
It would spoil the spirit of it.
You're also ruining the spirit of golf by not letting people who are really passionate about the game, and very good at it, compete simply because of an aspect of golf which is not, the main point of golf is you use the club to make strokes and hit it into a hole.
I'm sorry, I'm not a golfer but that's basically the gist of the game from what I see it.
And I was reading the PGA versus Casey Martin decision that was one of the sentences that they said is because walking the course is not an inherent part of golf, only swinging the club is.
Good. So, Jenny replies to Da, well, it isn't really essential anyhow to walk the course.
So, we're back to the purpose.
I mean, I'm sure there are, like wheelchair basketball, there are certain different competitions that can be made for people who may only be able to use their arms.
Right. Yes.
Michael what do you think?
Jenny just said that there is stuff like wheelchair basketball where if you can't play basketball there is another option.
I think there are other options in the PGA Tour.
But the PGA Tour is the best, is the pinnacle, and you have to have certain requirements fulfilled to perform.
Alright, Michael, you want to say to Casey Martin there is such a thing as a Special Olympics for those who are disabled.
Go play in the golfing version of the Special Olympics.
That's what you would say Michael?-- Yeah.
I think that walking is part of the sport of golf.
And Casey Martin, you know if he can't walk the course then I don't think he should be able to play in the PGA.
Alright, well thank you very much for that exchange.
What comes out of this exchange that goes back to Aristotle's theory of justice?
Well, one thing is the question, is walking an essential part of golf?
And the very fact that deciding whether there is a right for Casey Martin that the PGA must respect, seems to depend, as Aristotle suggests it must, on debating and resolving the question, is walking essential to the game of golf?
That's one moral of the story.
But there's a second moral to the story from an Aristotelian point of view.
What's at stake here, this is the second Aristotelian stake in this debate, is honor.
Casey Martin wants the accommodation so that he can compete for the honor of winning the best tournaments.
Now, why is it that the professional golfers, the great golfers, testified in this case - Jack Nicklaus, Tom Kite - in the readings, against letting him use a cart and they, I would suspect, would be equally vehement, Jenny, in opposing your suggestion of letting everyone ride in a cart, and this goes back, in a way, to Da's point.
How to put this gently?
Professional golfers are sensitive about whether their sport is really a sport.
Because if everyone rode around in a cart, or could, then it would become clear, or clearer, depending on your point of view, that golf is not really an athletic competition but rather a game; a game of skill but not a sport.
And so not only the question of debating the purpose, the teleological feature, but also from the standpoint of viewing debates about the purpose of golf.
What's essential to golf?
Those debates, Aristotle suggests, inevitably are also debates about the allocation of honor.
Because part of the purpose of golf is not just to amuse spectators; Scalia's wrong about that, from Aristotle's point of view.
It's not just to provide entertainment, it's not just to make people happy.
It's not a mere amusement.
It's honoring, it's rewarding, it's recognizing a certain kind of athletic excellence, at least those who have achieved the highest honors have a powerful stake in maintaining that view.
Now, some of you took the position the Scalia position."This is an incredibly difficult and silly question", Scalia said."What is the essential nature of golf?" It's not the kind of thing that the United States Supreme Court is equipped to decide, or should decide.
That's Scalia.
But he only he says that because he takes a very strong, and as it happens, anti-Aristotelian position on what a game is."It is the very nature of a game to have no object," no point, "except amusement" says Scalia, "That is what distinguishes games" he says, "From productive activity." You can just imagine what kind of sports fan Scalia must be."And so", he says, "It's impossible to say that any of the game's arbitrary rules is essential." And then he quotes Mark Twain's disparaging remark about golf.
He says, "Many consider walking to be the central feature of golf.
Hence, Mark Twain's classic criticism of the sport 'a good walk spoiled'." But Scalia misses an important feature of games and the arguments about rights and fairness that arise from games, when he casts games, sports, athletic competitions, as solely for the sake of amusement; as solely an utilitarian activity.
But an Aristotelian view of sports says, no it's not just about amusement, real sports, real athletic events, are also about appreciation, not just amusement.
And people who follow sports and care about sports and play sports know this.
Which is another way of saying, there's a difference between a sport and a mere spectacle.
And the difference is that a sport is a practice that calls forth and honors and prizes certain excellences, certain virtues.
And the people who appreciate those virtues are the true fans, the informed fans, and for them watching the sport is not mere amusement.
But that means that it's always possible to make sense of the debate about what feature of a sport is essential to it.
We can make sense of these arguments.
Never mind the question whether the court should decide.
The PGA in its own internal deliberations can make sense of that debate, which is why they cared very much about their view, insisting on their view, that walking, an exertion, and fatigue are essential, not peripheral, parts of sport.
Well, this is all to illustrate the teleological and the honorific feature of debates about rights, which Aristotle says we need to take account of in thinking about justice.
Now, I want to begin for us to consider whether Aristotle's theory of justice is right or wrong; whether it's persuasive or unpersuasive.
I want to get your thoughts about that.
But I want to anticipate one obvious and important objection.
If justice is about fit, fitting persons to roles, matching virtues to the appropriate honors and recognition.
If that's what justice is, does it leave room for freedom?
And this is one of the main objections to Aristotle's teleological account of justice.
If certain roles, social roles, are fitting, or appropriate, to me where does that leave my right to choose my social roles, my life purposes, for myself?
What room does teleology leave for freedom?
And in fact, you may remember, Rawls rejects teleological accounts of justice because he says that teleological theories of justice threaten the equal basic rights of citizens.
So, let's begin to examine whether Aristotle is right, and in particular, whether his teleological way of thinking about justice is at odds with freedom.
Now, one obvious reason to worry is Aristotle's defense of slavery.
He defends slavery, which existed as an institution in the Athens
Well, what is his defense of slavery?
Two things, two conditions, have to be met for slavery to be just.
First, it has to be necessary.and Aristotle says, at least in our society, slavery is necessary.
Why is it necessary?
If there are to be citizens who are freed from manual and menial and household chores to go to the assembly, to deliberate about politics, there have to be some who look after those menial tasks; the mere necessities of life.
He says, unless you could invent in some science-fiction a technological fix then there are going to be those who have to do the hard and difficult and menial labor if there are going to be citizens deliberating about the good and realizing their nature.
So slavery is necessary for the life of the polis for there to be open to citizens.
The life of deliberation, of argument, of practical wisdom.
But there's a further condition that has to be met.
Slavery has not only to be necessary for the community as a whole to function, but it also has to be the case, remember the criterion of fit?
It also has to be the case that there are some people for whom being a slave is the just, or the fitting, or the appropriate condition.
Now, Aristotle agrees that by his own standards, both of those conditions must be met, must be true, if slavery is to be just.
And then, in a deplorable passage, he says, well, it is true that there are some people who are fit by nature who are cut out to be slaves.
These are people who differ from ordinary people in the same way that the body differs from the soul.
These are people who are meant to be ruled, and for them their nature is best realized if they're slaves.
They can recognize reason in others but they can't partake of it, they can't exercise it.
And somehow we can know this.
Now, Aristotle must have known that there was something dodgy, something strained about this claim, because he quickly acknowledges that those who disagree may have a point.
And what those who disagree point out is that there are a lot of people in Athens who are slaves not because they were born to be slaves, or fit to be slaves, but because they were captured, they were losers in a war.
And so, Aristotle admits that as practiced in ancient Athens
And on Aristotle's own account even if it's necessary to have slavery for the sake of citizenship it's unjust if people who aren't properly slaves are cast in that role.
There is a misfit.
Aristotle recognizes that slavery for those who aren't fit for the task is a kind of coercion.
The reason slavery is wrong is not because it's coerced.
Coercion is an indicator that it's wrong, because it's not natural.
If you have to coerce someone into a role that's a pretty good indication that they don't belong there, that that role isn't fitting for them.
And Aristotle recognized this.
So, all of this is to say the example of slavery, Aristotle's defense of it, doesn't show that there isn't anything wrong in principle with teleological argument, with the idea of justice as fit between persons and roles, because it's perfectly possible within Aristotle's own terms, to explain what's wrong with this application, this practical application that he made of his theory.
I want to turn to the larger challenge to Aristotle in the name of freedom.
But before I do that I want to see what people think of Aristotle's account of justice as fit, his teleological way of reasoning about justice and the honorific dimension of rights and of distributive justice that immerged in our discussion of flutes and politics and golf.
Questions of clarification about Aristotle or objections to his overall account.
Yes.
My objection to Aristotle is that he wants to match a person to a role.
And, you know, if you walk like a pirate and you talk like a pirate, you know, you should be a pirate.
And that is what is right.
And so what's strange and seems paradoxical to me about Aristotle's view point is that if you walk like a pirate and you talk like a pirate you shouldn't be an investment banker, because that's not what you're inherently supposed to do.
If you have a peg leg and an eye patch and a disgruntled disposition, you know, you should be on a pirate ship on the high seas.
So he doesn't...
Some would say that the distinction between the two vocations is not as clear as you suggest.
Alright, but that's good.
I take your point.
Yes, go ahead.
It just seems to ignore individual rights.
So, I might be the perfect janitor in the whole world and I can do that job the most efficiently out of anybody that exists right now, but I might not want to do that.
I might want to do any other number of pursuits and it seems to say that that isn't really a good option for me.
Alright, and what's your name?-- Mary-Kate.-- Good.
Alright, let's take a couple more.
Yes.
I think that the golf cart exchange sort of brought up what I see as my main objection to this teleological mode of reasoning.
I mean, Michael, I think that's your name, right?
Believes that walking is an inherent part of golf.
Myself, I believe that walking is not an inherent part of golf.
And I feel that no matter how long we debate this particular point of contention we're never going to reach an accord.
The teleological framework of reasoning, I believe, doesn't really allow us to come to any sort of agreement.
Alright, and what's your name?-- Patrick.-- Patrick.
Alright, let me try to address this set of objections to Aristotle.
Let me start with Patrick's; it's an important objection.
We had a debate about whether walking is essential to golf, and even in so seemingly trivial, or at least contained, a case as that, we couldn't agree.
How can we possibly hope to agree?
When the stakes are higher and when we're debating the fundamental purposes, or ends, of political community.
And so, if we can't agree in what the ends or the goods of our shared public life consist in, how can we base justice and rights on some notion of what the end, or the purpose, or the good consists in?
That's an important objection.
So much so that much modern political theory takes that worry about disagreement over the good as its starting point, and concludes that justice and rights and constitutions should not be based on any particular conception of the good or the purposes of political life, but should, instead, provide a framework of rights that leaves people free to choose their conceptions of the good, their own conceptions of the purposes of life.
Now, Mary-Kate said, "What if a person is very well suited to having a certain role, like the role of being a janitor, but wants something else, wants to reach higher, wants to choose another way of life?" So, that goes back to this question about freedom.
If we take our bearing as persons from roles that are said to fit our nature, shouldn't it at least be up to us to decide what those roles are?
In fact, shouldn't it be up to us to define what roles are suitable to us?
And that's going to take us back to the confrontation between Aristotle on the one hand and Kant and Rawls on the other.
Kant and Rawls think Patrick has a point.
They say precisely because people disagree in pluralist societies about the nature of the good life, we shouldn't try to base justice on any particular answer to that question.
So they reject teleology, they reject the idea of tying justice to some conception of the good.
What's at stake in the debate about teleology, say Rawlsian and Kantian liberals, is this; if you tie justice to a particular conception of the good, if you see justice as a matter of fit between a person and his or her roles, you don't leave room for freedom, and to be free is to be independent of any particular roles, or traditions, or conventions that may be handed down by my parents or my society.
So, in order to decide as between these two broad traditions, whether Aristotle is right, or whether Kant and Rawls are right, we need to investigate whether the right is prior to the good, question one, and we need to investigate what it means to be a free person, a free moral agent.
Does freedom require that I stand for toward my roles, my ends, and my purposes as an agent of choice?
Or as someone trying to discover what my nature really is?
Justice 11 The Claims of Community / Where Our Loyalty Lies 社会的需求/我们的忠诚在哪里
Today we turn to Kant's reply to Aristotle.
Kant thinks that Aristotle just made a mistake.
It's one thing, Kant says, to support a fair framework of rights within which people can pursue their own conceptions of the good life.
It's something else and something that runs the risk of coercion to base law or principles of justice on any particular conception of the good life.
You remember Aristotle says in order to investigate the ideal constitution we have first to figure out the best way to live.
Kant would reject that idea.
He says that constitutions and laws and rights rights should not embody or affirm or promote any particular way of life.
That's at odds with freedom.
For Aristotle the whole point of law, the purpose of polis is to shape character, to cultivate the virtue of citizens, to inculcate civic excellence, to make possible a good way of life.
That's what he tells us in the politics.
For Kant, on the other hand, the purpose of law, the point of a constitution is not to inculcate or to promote virtue.
It's to set up a fair framework of rights within which citizens may be free to pursue their own conceptions of the good for themselves.
So we see the difference in their theories of justice.
We see the difference in their account of law or the role of a constitution, the point of politics, and underlying these differences are two different accounts of what it means to be a free person.
For Aristotle we are free insofar as we have the capacity to realize our potential.
And that leads us to the question of fit.
Fit between persons and the roles that are appropriate to them.
Figuring out what I'm cut out for.
That's what it means to lead a free life, to live up to my potential.
Kant rejects that idea and instead substitutes his famously demanding notion of freedom as the capacity to act autonomously.
Freedom means acting according to a law I give myself.
Freedom is autonomy.
Part of the appeal, part of the moral force of the view of Kant and of Rawls consists in the conception of the person as a free and independent self capable of choosing his or her own ends.
The image of the self is free and independent offers a, if you think about it, a powerful liberating vision because what it says is that as free moral persons we are not bound by any ties of history or of tradition or of inherited status that we haven't chosen for ourselves, and so we're unbound by any moral ties prior to our choosing them.
And that means that we are free and independent sovereign selves.
We're the authors of the only obligations that constrain us.
The communitarian critics of Kantian and Rawlsian liberalism acknowledge that there is something powerful and inspiring in that account of freedom, the free independent choosing self, but they argue it misses something.
It misses a whole dimension of moral life and even political life.
It can't make sense of our moral experience because it can't account for certain moral and political obligations that we commonly recognize and even prize.
And these include obligations of membership, loyalty, solidarity, and other moral ties that may claim us for reasons that we can't trace to an act of consent.
Alistair McIntyre gives an account what he calls a narrative conception of the self.
It's a different account of the self.
Human beings are essentially storytelling creatures, McIntyre argues.
That means 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?
That's what he means by the narrative conception of the self.
What does this have to do with the idea of community and belonging?
McIntyre says this, Once you accept this narrative aspect of moral reflection you will notice that we can never seek for the good or exercise of the virtues only as individuals.
We all approach our circumstance as bearers of particular social identities.
I am someone's son or daughter, a citizen of this or that city, I belonged to this plan, that tribe, this nation.
Hence, McIntyre argues, what is good for me has to be the good for someone who inhabits these roles.
I inherit from the past of my family, my city, my tribe, my nation a variety of debts, inheritances, expectations, and obligations.
These constitute the given of my life, my moral starting point.
This is in part what gives my life its moral particularity.
That's the narrative conception of the self.
And it's a conception that sees the self as claimed or encumbered, at least to some extent, by the history, the tradition, the communities, of which it's a part.
We can't make sense of our lives, not only as a psychological matter, but also as a moral matter in thinking what we are to do without attending to these features about us.
Now, McIntyre recognizes that this narrative account, this picture of the encumbered self, puts his account at odds with contemporary liberalism and individualism.
From the standpoint of individualism I am what I myself choose to be.
I may biologically be my father's son but I can't be held responsible for what he did unless I choose to assume such responsibility.
I can't be held responsible for what my country does, or has done, unless I choose to assume such responsibility.
But McIntyre says this reflects a certain kind of moral shallowness even blindness.
It's a blindness at odds with the full measure of responsibility which sometimes, he says, involves collective responsibility or responsibilities that may flow from historic memories.
And he gives some examples.
Such individualism is expressed by those contemporary Americans who deny any responsibility for the effects of slavery upon black Americans saying "I never owned any slaves." Or the young German who believes that having been born after 1945 means that what Nazis did to Jews has no moral relevance to his relationship to his Jewish contemporaries.
McIntyre says all of these attitudes of historical amnesia amount to a kind of moral abdication.
Once you see that who we are and what it means to sort out our obligations can't be separated, shouldn't be separated from the life histories that define us.
The contrast, he says, with a narrative account, is clear, For the story of my life is always embedded in the story of those communities from which I derived my identity.
I am born with the past and to try to cut myself off from that past is to deform my present relationships.
So there you have in McIntyre, a strong statement of the idea that the self can't be detached, shouldn't be detached, from its particular ties of membership history, story narrative.
Now, I want to get your reactions to the communitarian critique of the individualist or the voluntarist, the unencumbered self.
But let's make it concrete so that you can react to more than just the theory of it by looking at the two different accounts of moral and political obligation that arise depending on which of these conceptions of the person one accepts.
On the liberal conception, moral and political obligations arise in one of two ways.
There are natural duties that we owe human beings as such.duties of respect for persons qua persons.
These obligations are universal.
Then, as Rawls points out, there are also voluntary obligations.
Obligations that we owe to particular others insofar as we have agreed whether through a promise or a deal or a contract.
Now, the issue between the liberal and communitarian accounts of the self, is there another category of obligation or not?
The communitarian says there is.
There is a third category that might be called obligations of solidarity or loyalty or membership.
The communitarian argues that construing all obligations as either natural duties or voluntary obligations fails to capture obligations of membership or solidarity.
Loyalties whose moral force consists partly in the fact that living by them is inseparable from understanding ourselves as the particular persons we are.
What would be some examples?
And then I want to see how you would react to them.
Examples of obligations of membership that are particular but don't necessarily flow from consent but rather from membership narrative community, one situation.
The most common examples are ones to do with the family.
The relation between parents and children, for example.
Suppose there were two children drowning.
You could save only one of them.
One was your child, the other was a stranger's child.
Would you have an obligation to flip a coin or would there be something morally obtuse if you didn't rush to save your child?
Now, you may say, well, parents have agreed to have their children.
So take the other case, the case of children's obligation for their parents.
Now, we don't choose our parents.
We don't even choose to have parents.
There is that asymmetry.
And yet consider two aging parents, one of them yours, the other a stranger's.
Doesn't it make moral sense to think that you have a greater obligation to look after your aged parent than to flip a coin or to help the stranger's?
Now, is this traceable to consent?
Not likely Or take a couple of political examples.
During World War II, French resistance pilots flew bombing raids over occupied France
One day, one of the pilots received his target and noticed that the village he was being asked to bomb was his home village.
He refused, not disputing that it was as necessary as the target he bombed yesterday.
He refused on the ground that he couldn't bring himself.
It would be a special moral crime for him to bomb his people even in a cause that he supported, the cause of liberating France
Now, do we admire that?
If we do, the communitarian argues, it's because we do recognize obligations of solidarity.
Take another example.
Some years ago there was a famine in Ethiopia
Hundreds of thousands of people were starving.
The Israeli government organized an airlift to rescue Ethiopian Jews.
They didn't have the capacity to rescue everyone in Ethiopia
They rescued several hundred Ethiopian Jews.
Now, what's your moral assessment?
Is that a kind of morally troubling partiality, a kind of prejudice?
Or as the Israeli government thought, is there a special obligation of solidarity that this airlift properly responded to?
Well, that takes us to the broader question of patriotism.
What, morally speaking, is to be said for patriotism?
There are two towns named Franklin
One is Franklin , Texas , and the other is just across the Rio Grande River , Franklin , Mexico
What is the moral significance of national boundaries?
Why is it, or is it the case that we as Americans have a greater responsibility for the health and the education and the welfare and public provision for people who live in Franklin, Texas, than equally needy people just across the river, living in Franklin, Mexico?
According to the communitarian account, membership does matter.
And the reason patriotism is at least potentially a virtue is that it is an expression of the obligations of citizenship.
How many are sympathetic to the idea that there is this third category of obligation?
The obligations of solidarity or membership.
How many are sympathetic to that idea?
And how many are critical of that idea?
How many think all obligations can be accounted for in the first two ways?
All right, let's hear from the critics of the communitarian idea first.
Yes.
My biggest concern with the idea of having obligations because you're a member of something or because of solidarity is that it seems that if you accept those obligations as being sort of morally binding, then there is a greater occurrence of overlapping obligations a greater occurrence of good versus good.
And I don't know if this sort of framework allows us to choose between them.
Good, and what's your name?- Patrick.
So you worry that if we recognize obligations of membership or solidarity, since we inhabit different communities, their claims might conflict, and what would we do if we have competing obligations?
Yes.
Well, one solution is that we could view ourselves as ultimately, members of the human community and that then within that we have all these smaller spheres, of that, you know, I am American or I am a student at Harvard.and so the most important community to be obligated to is the community of human beings.
And then from there you can sort of, evaluate, which other ones are most important to you.
So the most, and what's your name?- Nichola.
So, Nichola, you say the most universal community we inhabit, the community of human kind, always takes precedence?- Yes.
Patrick, are you satisfied?
No.- Why not?
It seems rather arbitrary that we should choose the universal obligation over the more specific obligation.
I might also say that I should be obligated first to the most specific of my obligations.
For instance, take my family as a small unit of solidarity.
Perhaps I should be first obligated to that unit and then perhaps to the unit of my town, and then my country, and then the human race.
Good, thank you.
I want to hear from another critic of the communitarian view.
We have the objection, well, what if goods collide?
Who objects to the whole idea of it?
Who sees patriotism as just the kind of prejudice that ideally we should overcome?
Yes.
Patriotism reflects a community membership.
That's a, like, a given.
I think the problem is that where some memberships are natural narratives, the narrative of citizenship is a constructed one.
And I think a false one because, as the river is just a historical accident, it makes no sense that because the lottery of birth threw me into the United States as opposed to Mexico
Good. And what's your name?- Elizabeth
Who has a reply?
Yes.
I think in general, we have to ask where do our moral obligations arise from anyway.
And I think, basically, there'd be two places from which they could arise.
One would be kin and the other one would be reciprocity.
And isn't the closer you are associated to other people, there's a natural reciprocity there in terms of having interactions with those people.
You interact with the neighbors on your street, with the other people in your country through economic arrangements- But I don't know and you don't know those people in Franklin , Texas , any more than you know the people in Franklin , Mexico
Presumably you're naturally more connected with the people in your own country in terms of interaction and trade than you are with people in other countries.
Good. Who else?
Go ahead.
Yeah, I think that a lot of the basis for patriotism can be compared to like school spirit or even house spirit that we see here where freshmen are sorted into houses and then within a day they have developed some sort of attachment or a pride associated with that house.
And so I think that we can probably draw a distinction between a moral obligation for communitarian beliefs and sort of just a sentimental, emotional attachment.
Good. Wait, stay there.
What's your name?
Rina.
What about... Go back to my example about the obligation of the child to the parent.
Would you say the same thing there?
It just may or may not be a sentimental type and it has no moral weight?
Well, I mean, I'm not entirely certain that accident, in the initial stages, something that will preclude moral obligations later.
Just because we are randomly sorted into a house or just because we don't choose who our parents are or what country we're born into doesn't necessarily mean that we won't develop an obligation based on some type of benefit, I guess, to sort of...
So your obligation to your aged parent that's greater than to aged parents around the world, is only because and insofar as you're repaying a benefit that your parent gave you when you were growing up?
Yeah, I mean, I would say that if you look at cases of adoption where, you have a biological parent somewhere else that you don't interact with, and then you have a parent who adopted you, most people would say that if you had to pick between them in the case of aging parents, that your obligation would lie more with the person who raised you and who had exchanges with you meaningfully.
May I ask you one more question about the parent?
Sure.
Do you think that a person with a bad parent owes them less?
I don't know because I've never had a bad parent.
I think that's a good place to end.- Thank you.
We'll continue with this next time. Thank you.
If I were working on an [economics] problem set, for example, and I saw that my roommate was cheating, that might be a bad thing for him to do but I wouldn't turn him in.
You would not turn him in.
I wouldn't turn him in and I think that I would argue that's the right thing to do because of my obligation to him.
You don't have a duty to tell the truth, to report someone who cheated?
Today I'd like to take, I'd like to consider the strongest objections to the idea that there are obligations of solidarity or membership.
Then I want to see if those objections can be met successfully.
One objection emerged in the discussion last time.
Patrick said, if obligations flow from community membership and identity, we inhabit multiple communities, doesn't that mean that our obligations will sometimes conflict?
So that's one possible objection.
And then Rina said these examples meant to bring out the moral force of solidarity and membership, examples about parents and children, about the French resistant fighter asked to bomb his own village and withdrawing back.
About the airlift by Israel
These examples, they maybe intuitively evocative, Rina said.
But really they're pointing to matters of emotion, matters of sentiment.
Not true moral obligations.
And then there were a number of objections, not necessarily to patriotism as such.
But to patriotism understood as an obligation of solidarity and membership beyond consent.
This objection allowed that there can be obligations to the communities we inhabit including obligations to patriotism.
But this objection argued that all of the obligations of patriotism, or of community or membership, are actually based on liberal ideas and perfectly compatible with them.
Consent, either implicit or explicit or reciprocity.
Julia Ratthel for example on the web site said that liberalism can endorse patriotism as a voluntary moral obligation.
Patriotism and familial love both fall into this category because after all, Julia points out, the Kantian framework allows people free reign to choose to express virtues such as these if they want to.
So you don't need the idea of a non-voluntary particular moral obligation to capture the moral force of community values.
Where is Julia?
Okay, so did I summarize that fairly?
Julia actually is in line with what Rawls says about this very topic.
You weren't aware of that?
You came up it within your own.
That's pretty good.
Rawls says, when he's discussing political obligation, he says it's one thing if someone runs for office or enlists in the military, they are making a voluntary choice.
But Rawls says there is, I believe, no political obligations, strictly speaking, for a citizens generally.
Because it's not clear what is the requisite binding action and who has performed it.
So Rawls acknowledges that for ordinary citizens there is no political obligation except in so far as some particular citizen willingly, through an act of consent, undertakes or chooses such an obligation.
That's in line with Julia's point.
It's related to another objection that people have raised which is it's perfectly possible to recognize particular obligations to ones family or to ones country, provided honoring those obligations doesn't require you to violate any of the natural duties or requirements of the universal respect for persons-qua-persons.
So that's consistent with the idea that we can choose if we want to, to express our loyalty to our country or to our people or to our family provided we don't do any injustice within the framework acknowledging the priority that is of the universal duties.
The one objection that I didn't mention is the view of those who say that obligations of membership really are kind of collective selfishness, why should we honor them?
Isn't it just the kind of prejudice?
So what I'd like to do, perhaps of those of you who have agreed, who wrote and who have agreed to press these objections, perhaps if you could gather down all together, we'll form a team as we did once before.
And we'll see if you can respond to those who want to defend patriotism conceived as a communal obligation.
Now there were a number of people who argued in defense of patriotism as the communitarian view conceives it.
So let me go down now and join the critics, the critics of communitarianism.
If there's a microphone that we could use somewhere.
Okay, thanks Kate.
Who as the critics of patriotism, communal patriotism gather their forces here?
Patrick if you want to you can join as well or Rina.
Others who have spoken or addressed this question are free to join in.
But I would like to hear now, from those you who defend patriotism and defend it as a moral obligation that can't be translated back into purely consent based terms.
Can't be translated into the liberal terms.
Where is AJ Kumar?
AJ, everybody seems to know you.
All right, let's hear from AJ.
You said, in the same way I feel I owe more to my family than to the general community, I owe more to my country than to humanity in general.
Because my country holds a great stake in my identity.
It is not prejudice for me to love my country unless it is prejudice for me to love my parents more than somebody else's.
So AJ what would you say to this group?
Stand up.
I think that there is some fundamental, a moral obligation that comes from a communitarian responsibility to people in groups that form their identity.
I mean even, like I'll give the example that, there are a lot of things about our government, right now, that I'm not in favor of but part of my identity is that America values a free society where we can object to certain things and I think that's an expression of patriotism as well.
And, I go back to the parent example, even at Harvard, I think, I owe more to my roommates because they make up my identity, than I do it to the Harvard community as a whole.
And I think that applies to our country because there's certain things that growing up here, yes, we can't choose it, we can't choose our parents, things like that.
But it makes up part of our identity.
Okay, who would like to take that on? Mike?
Yeah about the obligation to the others simply by virtue of being in their, being influenced by them.
I'm a German citizen and if I've been born 80 years earlier then I would have been a citizen of Nazi Germany.
And for some reason I just don't think that I would have to feel obligated towards Germany
I mean I guess my response to that would be you have hundreds of thousands of protesters in the United States
I personally do and I would say that they are strongly objecting to basically everything the Bush administration is doing right now but they still consider themselves loving their country because they're furthering the cause of what they see is best for the country.
And I tend to agree with that as a patriotic movement.
Well but how's that then, how do you still favor your country?
How's that still patriotic?
I mean isn't that more sentimental attachment?
Where is the obligation there?
Rina?
Yeah not to bring this back to John Locke, but I would like to bring this back to John Locke.
So, I mean in his conception of, when people join society, there's still some outlet.
If you're not satisfied with your society, you do have a means of exit even though we had a lot of concerns about how you're born and it's not very feasible, he still provides that option.
If we want to say that your obligation to society is a moral one, that means that prior to knowing exactly what that society is going to be like or what your position is going to be in that society, that means that you have a binding obligation to a complete unknown body that could be, completely foreign to all of your personal beliefs Or what you would hold to be correct.
Do you think that that kind of communal obligation or patriotism means writing the community a blank moral check?
Basically, yeah.
I think it's reasonable to say that as you grow and as you develop within the community that you acquire some type of obligation based on reciprocity but to say that you have a moral obligation I think requires a stronger justification.
Who else?
Anyone else who would like to address that?
I guess we could say you could argue that you are morally obliged to society by the fact that there is that reciprocity.
I think it's the idea that, you know, we participate in society, we pay our taxes, we vote, this is why we could say that we owe something to society.
But beyond that I don't think there's anything inherent in the fact that we are members of the society itself that we owe at anything.
I think it's in so far as we, as the society give us something, gives us protection, safety, security, then we owe the society something but nothing beyond what we give the society.
Who want to take that on?
Raul?
I don't think we give the community a blank moral check in that sense.
I think we only give it a blank moral check when we abdicate our sense of civic responsibility and when we say that the debate does matter because patriotism is a vice.
I think that patriotism is important because it gives us a sense of community, a sense of common civic virtue that we can engage in the issues.
Even if you don't agree with the way the government is acting, you can still love your country and hate the way it's acting.
And I think because out of that love of county, you can debate with other people and have respect for their views but still engage them in debate.
If you just say that, patriotism is a vice, you drop out of that debate and you cede the ground to people who are more fundamentalist, who have a stronger view and who may coerce the community.
Instead we should engage the other members of the community on that same moral ground.
Now this, what we hear from AJ and Raul that's very pluralistic argumentative critically minded patriotism.
Whereas what we hear from, Ike and the critics of patriotism here is the worry that to take patriotic obligation in a communal way, seriously, involves the kind of loyalty that doesn't let us just pick and choose among the beliefs or actions or practices of our country.what's left of loyalty if we're all talking about, AJ and Raul, if all we're talking about is loyalty to principles of justice that may happen to be embodied in our community or not as the case may be.
And if not then we can reject its course.
I don't know, I sort of given a reply.
I got carried away. I'm sorry.
Who would like...?
Go ahead Julia.
Yeah I think that patriotism you need to define what that is.
It sounds like, you would normally think that we are given a more weak definition here of patriotism amongst us but almost sounds like your definition is merely to have some sort civic involvement in debating within your society.and I think that that kind of undermines maybe some of the moral worth of patriotism as a virtue as well.
I think if you can consent to a stronger form of patriotism if you want that's a stronger, I guess, moral obligation than even what you're suggesting.
What we really need to sharpen the issue is an example from the defenders of communitarianism of a case where loyalty can actually compete with and possibly outway universal principles of justice.
That's the test they really need to meet isn't it?
All right. So that's the test you need to meet.
Or, any among you who would like to defend obligations of membership or solidarity independent of ones that happened to embody just principles.
Who has an example of a kind of loyalty that can and should compete with universal moral claim respect for persons?
Go ahead.
Yeah, if I were working on an [economics] problem set, for example and I saw that my roommate was cheating, that might be a bad thing for him to do I wouldn't turn him in.- You would not turn him in?
I wouldn't turn him in and I think that I would argue that's the right thing to do because of my obligation to him.
It may be wrong but that's what I would do and, I think that's what most people would do as well.
All right, that's...
Now there's a fair test.
He's not slipping out by saying he's invoking, in the name of community, some universal principles of justice.
What's your name?
Stay there.
What's your name?
It's Dan.
Dan. So what do people think about Dan's case?
That's a harder case for the ethic of loyalty, isn't it?
But a truer test.
How many agree with Dan?
So loyalty... Dan loyalty has its part, if that's it.
How many disagree with Dan?
Peggy.
Oh well I agree with Dan but I agree that it's a choice that we make but it's not necessarily right or wrong.
I'm agreeing that I'm going to make the wrong choice because I'm going to choose my roommate.
But I also recognize that that choice isn't morally right.
So you're still translating, even Dan's loyalty, you're saying well that's a matter of choice, but what's the right thing to do?
Most people put up their hands saying Dan would be right to stand by his roommate and not turn him in.
Yes, go ahead.
Also I think as a roommate you have insider information and that might not be something you want to use.
That might be something unfair to hold against.
You're spending that much time with the roommate, obviously you're going to learn things about him and I don't think it's fair to reveal that to a greater community.
But it's loyalty, Vojtech.
You agree with Dan that loyalty is the ethic at stake here?
Absolutely.
You don't have a duty to tell the truth, to report someone who cheated?
Not if you've been advantage into getting that kind of information.
Before our critics of patriotism leave, I want to give you another version, a more public example of what, I guess we should call it Dan's dilemma.
Dan's dilemma of loyalty and I want to get the reaction of people to this.
This came up a few years ago in Massachusetts
Does anyone know who this man is?
Billy Bulger that's right.
Who is Billy Bulger?
He was president of the Massachusetts State Senate for many years.
One of the most powerful politicians in Massachusetts
Now Billy Bulger, did you hear the story about him that bears on Dan's dilemma?
Billy Bulger has a brother named Whitey Bulger and this is Whitey Bulger.
His brother Whitey is on the FBI's most wanted list alleged to be a notorious gang leader in Boston
But when the US
They called Billy Bulger, then the president of the Univeristy of Massachusetts, before the grand jury and wanted information on the whereabouts of his brother, this fugitive, and he refused to give it.
I hope that I'm never helpful to anyone against him.
I don't have an obligation to help anyone catch my brother." Dan you would agree.
How many would agree with the position of Billy Bulger?
Let me give one other example and then we'll let the critics reply, the critics of loyalty as we'll describe it.
Here's an even more fateful example from a figure in American history, Robert E. Lee.
Now Robert E. Lee on the eve of the civil war, was an officer of the Union Army.
He opposed secession, in fact, regarded as treason.
When war loomed, Lincoln
And he described in a letter to his sons why he refused.
With all my devotion to the Union , he wrote, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home.
By which he meant Virginia
If the union is dissolved I shall return to my native state and share the miseries of my people.
Save in her defense, I will draw my sword no more.
Now here's a real test, Dan, for your principle of loyalty.
Because here is the cause of the war against, not only to save the union but against slavery.
And Lee is going to fight for Virginia
Now the communitarian would say there is something admirable in that.
Whether or not the decision was ultimately right, there's something admirable.
And the communitarian would say we can't even make sense, Rina, we can't make sense of Lee's dilemma as a moral dilemma unless we acknowledge that the claim of loyalty arising from his sense of narrative of who he is is a moral, not just sentimental, emotional tug.
All right, who would like to respond to Dan's loyalty, to Billy Bulger's loyalty or to Robert E.Lee's loyalty to Virginia
What do you say Julia?
Okay, well I think that these are some classic examples of multiple spheres of influence.
And that you have conflicting communities that your family and your country.
I think that's one reason why the idea of choice in your obligation is so important because how else can you resolve this?
If you're morally obligated and there's no way out of this need for loyalty to the both communities, you're trapped, there's nothing you can do.
You have to make a choice.
And I think that being able to choose based on other characteristics, than merely the arbitrary fact that you're a member of this community is important, otherwise it's left to, I guess, randomness.
Well, Julia, the issue isn't whether Dan makes a choice, or Billy Bulger or Robert E. Lee, of course they make a choice.
The question is on what grounds, on what principle should they choose?
The communitarian doesn't deny that there is choice to be made.
The question is which choice, on what grounds and should loyalty, as such, weigh.
Andre now you want to, all right, go ahead. What do you say?
Well one of the things we've noticed in the three examples is that the people of all chosen the most immediate community of which they're a part.
The more local one.
And I think there's something to be said for that.
It's not just random.
I mean, there doesn't seem to be a conflict because they know which one is more important.
And it's their family over the Ec10 Class.
Their state over their country, and their family over the Commonwealth on Massachusetts
So I think that's the answer to which is more important.
Do you think that the local, the more particular, is always the weightier morally, Andre?
Well I mean there's seems to be a trend in the three cases.
I would agree with that.
And I think most of us would agree that your family takes precedence over the United States
Which is why you go with Dan?
Loyalty to the roommate over Ec10 and the truth?
Yeah, exactly.
I would because it...
I mean truth telling, not the truth of Ec10.
Yes.- Alright, so we understand.
Yes.
But on the same example in terms of family, you had cases in the civil war where brother was pitted against brother on both sides of the war, where they chose country instead of family.
So I think the exact same, more shows, that different people have different means of making these choices and that there is no one set of values, or one set of morality that communitarians can stick to.
And personally, I think that's the biggest problem with communitarians, that we don't have one set of standard moral obligations.
And tell me your name.- Samantha.
So Samantha, you agree with Patrick.
Patrick's point the other day that there may be...
If we allow obligations to be defined by community, identification or membership, they may conflict, they may overlap, they may compete.
And there is no clear principle.
Andre says here's a clear principle, the most particular.
The other day, Nichola who was sitting over here, where's Nichola?
Said that most universal.
You're saying, Samantha, the scale of the community as such can't be the decisive moral factor.
So there has to be some other moral judgment.
All right, let's first...
Let's let our defe...our critics of communal patriotism, let's express our appreciation and thank them for their having stood up and responded to these arguments.
Let's turn to the implications for justice of the positions that we've heard discussed here.
One of the worries underlying these multiple objections to the idea of loyalty or membership as having independent moral weight is that it seems to argue that there is no way of finding principles of justice that are detached from conceptions of the good life as they may be lived in any particular community.
Supposed the communitarian argument is right.
Suppose the priority of the right over the good can't be sustained.
Suppose instead, that justice and rights unavoidably are bound up with conceptions of the good.
Does that mean that justice is simply a creature of convention, of the values that happen to prevail in any given community at any given time?
One of the writings we have among the communitarian critics is by Michael Walzer.
He draws the implications of justice this way.
Justice is relative to social meanings.
A given society is just if its substantive life is lived in a certain way, in a way that is faithful to the shared understandings of the members.
So Walzer's account seems to bear out the worry that if we can't find independent principles of justice, independent that is, from conceptions of the good that prevail in any given community, that we're simply left with justice being a matter of fidelity or faithfulness to the shared understandings or values or conventions that prevail in any given society at any given time.
But is that an adequate way of thinking about justice?
Well, let's take a look at a short clip from the documentary "Eyes on the Prize." It goes back in the 784 Here are some situated American Southerners who believed in the tradition and the shared understandings of segregation.
Listen to the arguments they make about loyalty and tradition And see if they don't make you uneasy about tying arguments about justice to the shared understandings or traditions that prevail in any given society at the moment. Let's run the clip.'This land is composed of two different appearances.
A white culture and a colored culture.
And I've lived close to them all my life.
But I'm told now that we've mistreated them and that we must change.
And these changes are coming faster than I expected.
And I'm required to make decisions on the basis of a new way of thinking and it's difficult.
It's difficult for me, it's difficult for all southerners.' Well there you have it, narrative selves, situated selves invoking tradition.
Doesn't that show us that justice can't be tied to the shared understandings of goods that prevail in any given community at any given time?
Or is there a way of rescuing that claim from this example?
Justice 12 Debating Same-sex Marriage / The Good Life 辩论同性婚姻/美好生活
We ended last time talking about the narrative conception of the self.
We were testing the narrative conception of the self and the idea of obligations of solidarity or membership that did not flow from consent, that claimed us for reasons unrelated to a contract or an agreement or a choice we may have made.
And we were debating among ourselves whether there are any obligations of this kind or whether all apparent obligations of solidarity and membership can be translated into consent or reciprocity or universal duty that we owe persons qua persons.
And then there were those who defended the idea of loyalty and of patriotism.
So the idea of loyalty and of solidarity and of membership gathered a certain kind of intuitive moral force in our discussion.
And then, as we concluded, we considered what seems to be a pretty powerful counter example to that idea.
Namely, the film of those southern segregationists in the 1950s.
And they talked all about their traditions, their history, the way in which their identities were bound up with their life history.
Do you remember that?
And what flowed from that history, from that narrative sense of identity for those southern segregationists?
They said we have to defend our way of life.
Is this a fatal or a decisive objection to the idea of the narrative conception of the self?
That's the question we were left with.
What I would like to do today is to advance an argument and see what you make of it.
And let me tell you what that argument is.
I would like to defend the narrative conception of the person as against the voluntarist conception.
I would like to defend the idea that there are obligations of solidarity or membership.
Then, I want to suggest that there being such obligations lends force to the idea, when we turn to justice, that arguments about justice can't be detached, cannot be detached after all, from questions of the good.
But I wanted to distinguish two different ways in which justice might be tied to the good and argue for one of them.
Now, the voluntarist conception of the person of Kant and Rawls we saw was powerful and liberating.
A further appeal is its universal aspiration.
The idea of treating persons as persons without prejudice, without discrimination, and I think that's what led some among us to argue that, okay, maybe there are obligations of membership but they are always subordinate.
They must always be subordinate to the duties that we have to human beings as such, the universal duties.
But is that right?
If our encompassing loyalty should always take precedence over more particular ones, then the distinction between friends and strangers should ideally be overcome.
A special concern for the welfare of friends would be a kind of prejudice, a measure of our distance from universal human concern But if you look closely at that idea, what kind of a moral universe, what kind of moral imagination, would that lead you to?
The enlightenment flows from Montesquieu gives perhaps the most powerful, and I think, the ultimately, the most honest account of where this relentless universalizing tendency leads the moral imagination.
Here's how Montesquieu put it.
He said, "A truly virtuous man would come to the aid of the most distant stranger as quickly as to his own friend." And then he adds, listen to this, "If men were perfectly virtuous, they wouldn't have friends." But it's difficult to imagine a world in which persons were so virtuous that they had no friends, only a universal disposition to friendliness.
The problem isn't simply that such a world would be difficult to bring about, that it's unrealistic.
The deeper problem is that such a world would be difficult to recognize as a human world.
The love of humanity is a noble sentiment but most of the time we live our lives by smaller solidarities.
This may reflect certain limits to the bounds of moral sympathy, but more important, it reflects the fact that we learn to love humanity, not in general, but through its particular expressions.
So these are some considerations.
They're not knock-down arguments, but moral philosophy can't offer knock-down arguments, but considerations, of the kinds that we've been discussing and arguing about all along.
Well, suppose that's right.
One way of assessing whether this picture of the person and of obligation is right, is to see what are its consequences for justice.
And here is where is confronts a serious problem, and here we go back to our southern segregationists.
They felt the weight of history.
Do we admire their character, these segregationists, who wanted to preserve their way of life?
Are we committed to saying, if we accept the idea of solidarity and membership, are we committed to saying that justice is tied to good in the sense that justice means whatever a particular community or tradition says it means, including those southern segregationists.
Here it's important to distinguish two different ways in which justice can be tied to the good.
One is a relativist way.
That's the way that says, to think about rights, to think about justice, look to the values that happened to prevail in any given community at any given time.
Don't judge them by some outside standard, but instead conceive justice as a matter of being faithful to the shared understandings of a particular tradition.
But there's a problem with this way of tying justice to the good.
The problem is that it makes justice wholly conventional.
A product of circumstance, and this deprives justice of its critical character.
But there is a second way in which justice can be tied with or bound up with the good.
On a second non-relativist way of linking justice with conceptions of the good, principles of justice depend for their justification not on the values that happened to prevail at any given moment in a certain place, but instead on the moral worth or the intrinsic good of the ends rights serve.
On this non-relativist view the case for recognizing a right depends on showing that it honors or advances some important human good.
The second way of tying justice to the good is not strictly speaking, communitarian, if by communitarian you mean, just giving over to a particular community the definition of justice.
Now, what I would like to suggest that of these two different ways of linking justice to the good, the first is insufficient.
Because the first leaves justice the creature of convention.
It doesn't give us enough moral resources to respond to those southern segregationists who invoke their way of life, their traditions, their way of doing things.
But if justice is bound up with the good in a non-relativist way, there is a big challenge, a big question to answer.
How can we reason about the good?
What about the fact that people hold different conceptions of the good?
Different ideas about the purposes of key social institutions.
Different ideas about what social goods and human goods are worthy of honor and recognition.
We live in a pluralist society, people disagree about the good.
That's one of the incentives to try to find principles of justice and rights that don't depend on any particular ends or purposes or goods.
So is there a way to reason about the good?
Before addressing that question, I want to address a slightly easier question.
Is it necessary, is it unavoidable, when arguing about justice to argue about the good?
And my answer to that question is yes, it's unavoidable.
It's necessary.
So for the remainder of today, I want to take up...
I want to try to advance that claim, that reasoning about the good, about purposes, and ends, is an unavoidable feature of arguing about justice, it's necessary.
Let me see if I can establish that.
And for that I'd like for us to begin a discussion of same sex marriage.
Now, same sex marriage draws on, implicateds, deeply contested and controversial ideas, morally and religiously.
And so there's a powerful incentive to embrace a conception of justice or of rights that doesn't require the society as a whole to pass judgment, one way or another, on those hotly contested moral and religious questions.
About the moral permissibility of homosexuality.
About the proper ends of marriage as a social institution.
So, clearly, if there's an incentive to resolve this question, to define people's rights in a way that doesn't require the society as a whole to sort out those moral and religious disputes that would be very attractive.
So what I would like to do now is to see, using the same sex marriage case, whether it's possible to detach one's use about the moral permissibility of homosexuality and about the purpose, the end of marriage, detach those questions from the question of whether the state should recognize same sex marriage or not.
So let's begin.
I would like to begin by hearing the arguments of those who believe that there should be no same sex marriage but that the state should only recognize marriage between a man and a woman.
Do I have volunteers?
I had two.
There were two people I asked, people who had voiced their views already on the justice blog.
Mark Loff and Ryan McCaffrey where are you?
Okay, Mark.
And where is Ryan?
Alright, let's go first to Mark.
I have sort of a theological understanding of the purpose of sex and the purpose of marriage.
And I think that for people like myself, who are a a Christian and also a Catholic, the purpose of sex is, one, for its procreative uses, and two, for a unifying purpose between a man and a woman within the institution of marriage.
You have a certain conception of the purpose or the telos... - Yeah....of human sexuality, which is bound up with procreation.
Right.
As well as union.- Yeah.
And the essence of marriage, the purpose of marriage as a social institution is to give expression to that telos and to honor that purpose, namely, the procreative purpose of marriage.
Is that a fair summary of your view?- Yeah.
Where is Ryan?
Go ahead.
Do you agree more or less with Mark's reasons?
Yes, I agree.
I think that the ideal of marriage involves procreation.
And it's fine that, homosexuals would go off and cohabitate with each other but the government doesn't have a responsibility to encourage that.
All right, so the government should not encourage homosexual behavior by conferring the recognition of marriage.
Yeah, it would be wrong to outlaw it but encouraging it is not necessary.
Who has a reply?
Yes.
Hannah?
I just like to ask a question to Mark.
Let's say you got married to a woman, you did not have sex with her before marriage, and then when you became married it became evident that you're an infertile couple.
Do you think that it should illegal for you to engage in sex if children will not result from that act?
Yeah, I think that it is moral and that's why I gave the two-fold purpose.
So like a woman, say...
I think older couples can get married, someone... a woman who's beyond...she has already had menopause and who can't have a child, because I think that sex has these...
It has purposes beyond procreation.
I hate to be uncouth but have you ever engaged in masturbation?
You don't have to answer that.
Right, make your...
I'd like to respond to that.
Wait. We've done pretty well over a whole semester and we're doing pretty well now dealing with questions that most people think can't even be discussed to any university settting and, Hannah, you've got, you have a powerful point.
Make that point as a general argument rather than, Rather than as an interrogative.
Okay.- But make the point.
What's the principle that you're appealing?
What's the argument you have in mind?
Alrightt. Well, biblically...- Put it in the third person.
Yeah, okay.- Rather than......Rather than in a second person.
Make the argument.
Okay. Biblically, masturbation or onanism, is not permissible because it's spilling your seed on the earth when it's not going to result in the birth of a child.
But what I'm saying is, you're saying that sex, there's something wrong with sex if it doesn't produce children or reinforce the marriage bond.- Right.
But then how can you say that there's something wrong, that masturbation is permissible, if masturbation, obviously, is not going to create a child?
I think marriage is society's way to create a separate institution where they say this is what we hold as a virtue.
Yes, every day we fall short and people fall short in so many different other ways, but I think that if you personally fall short, and some morals fear, as we all do, that doesn't take the right of you to argue.
All right, I want you, to stay there.
I want to bring in some other voices and we'll continue.
Stay there if you would.
Go ahead.
I think that the response to the masturbation- Wait, tell us your name.- My name's Steve.
Steve, go ahead.
The response to the masturbation issue is, it's not something that's permissible.
I don't think anyone will argue that homosexual sex is impermissible.
It's just that society has no place in letting you marry yourself if masturbation is something that you do.
Well, all right, Hannah.
Alright, Steve has drawn...
Alright, that's a good argument.
Steve has drawn our attention to the fact that there are two issues here.
One of them is the moral permissibility of various practices.
The other is the fit between certain practices, whatever their moral permissibility, with the honor or recognition that the state should accord in allowing marriage.
So Steve has a pretty good counter argument.
What do you say to Steve?
Well, I think that it's clear that human sexuality is something that is inherent in, I believe, most people and it's not something you can avoid.
And masturbation, I mean, yeah, you can't marry yourself but I don't think that takes away from the fact that homosexuals are people too.
And I can't understand why they wouldn't be able to marry each other.
If you want to marry yourself, I mean, I don't know if you can legally do that.
That's fine but I don't think- - Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!
Now, here we're deciding, here we're deliberating as if legislators, what the law should be.
So you said, Steve, that's fine.
Does that mean as a legislator you would vote for a law of marriage that would be so broad that it would let people marry themselves?
Well, I mean, that's really beyond the pale of anything that would really happen but I don't think that- - But in principle.
Yeah, in principle?- Yes.
Yeah, sure, I mean if Steve wants to marry himself I'm not going to stop him.
And you would confer state recognition on that solo marriage?
Sure.
And while we're at it, what about consensual polygamous marriages?
I actually think that if the male and the female, or that if the wives and the man, of the husbands and the wife are consenting, it should be permissible.
Who else? I know there are a lot of people who...
Yes, okay, down here.
Stand up and tell us your name.
So we're talking about the theological reasoning here for marriage but I think the problem is that we're talking about it within the Catholic viewpoint.
Whereas, the theological, and the point to marriage for another religion or someone who's an atheist could be completely different.
And the government doesn't have a right to impose the theological reasoning for Catholicism on everyone in the state.
Which is what my problem is with not allowing same sex marriage.
Because, I mean, you're beliefs are your beliefs, and that's fine, but civil union is not marriage within the Catholic Church.
And the state has a right to recognize a civil union between whoever it wants, but does not have a right to impose the beliefs of a certain minority or majority of whoever it is based on religion within our state.
Alright, Victoria
A question.
Do you think the state should recognize same sex marriage or just same sex civil unions as something short of marriage?
Well, I think that the state doesn't have a right to recognize it as marriage within a church, because that is not their place.
But whereas civil union, I see civil union as essentially the same thing except not under a religion and that state has a right to recognize a civil union.
Alright, so, Victoria
That's only something that religious communities can decide.
Who else?
My point is I don't see why you feel like the state should recognize marriages at all.
I'm like one of the 70 people who voted that the state should not recognize any marriages because I believe it is a union between male and a female or two males or two females.
But there's no reason to ask the state to give permission to me to unite myself.
And some might say that, if the state recognizes these marriages, it will help children, it will have a binding effect.
But in reality, I don't think it actually has a binding effect.
Alright, tell us your name.- Cezanne.
So, Victoria
They say the state shouldn't be in the business of honoring or recognizing or affirming any particular telos, or purpose of marriage, or of human sexuality.
And Cezanne is among those who says, therefore, maybe the state should get out of the business of recognizing marriage at all.
Here's the question.
Unless, you adopt Cezanne's position, no state recognition of any kind of marriage, is it possible to choose between......to decide the question of same sex marriage without taking a stand on the moral and religious controversy over the proper telos of marriage.
Thank you very much to all of you who have participated.
We'll pick this up next time.
You did a great job.
When we first came together some 13 weeks ago I tried to warn you that once the familiar turns strange once we begin to reflect on our circumstance, it's never quite the same again.
I hope you have by now experienced at least a little of this unease because this is the tension that animates critical reflection and political improvement and maybe even the moral life as well.
We have two remaining questions to answer.
First, is it necessary, is it unavoidable to take up questions of the good life in thinking about justice? Yes.
And is it possible to reason about justice?
Yes, I think so.
Let me try to develop those answers to those two questions.
Now, as a way of addressing those questions, we began last time to discuss the question of same sex marriage.
And we heard from those who argued against same sex marriage on the grounds that the purpose, or telos, or marriage is at least in part, procreation, the bearing and raising of children.
And then there were those who defended same sex marriage and they contested that account of the purpose, or telos, of marriage arguing we don't require as a condition of heterosexual marriage that couples be able or willing to procreate.
We allow infertile couples to marry.
This was Hannah's point in the exchange with Mark.
Then there was another position expressed at the end our discussion by Victoria, who argued we shouldn't try to decide this question.
We shouldn't, at least at the level of the state, at the level of law, try to come to any agreement on those questions about the good because we live in a pluralist society where people had different moral and religious convictions.
And so we should try to make law in the framework of rights, neutral with respect to these competing moral and religious views.
Now, it's interesting that others, some others, who favor the idea of neutrality argued, not in favor of restricting marriage to a man and a woman, nor in favor of permitting same sex marriage, they argued in the name of neutrality, for a third possibility.
Which is that government get out of the business of recognizing any kind of marriage.
That was the third possibility.
Now, Andrea Mayrose had an interesting contribution to this debate.
She had a rejoinder to people who argue for neutrality.
Where is Andrea?
Alright, Andrea, would you be willing...
Share with us the view.
If we can get you a microphone.
Share with us your view.
Why do you think that it's a mistake for the state to try to be neutral moral and even religious questions like same sex marriage?
I don't know that it is possible because people's lives are completely embedded in how they view the world.
And maybe I just agree with Aristotle that the role of the government is helping people live in a sort of...
Having a collective understanding what is wrong and what is right.
Is it possible, and one could ask the same question of abortion, that we've been asking of same sex marriage.
Do you think it's possible to decide whether abortion should be permitted or prohibited without taking a stand or making a judgment about the moral permissibility of abortion?
No, I don't think it is and I think that's why it's such a controversy because people are so deeply committed to, their fundamental beliefs about whether a fetus is a life or if it isn't.
If I believe that, a fetus is a living being and has rights and has fundamentally the right to live, then it's very hard for me to say, "But I can put that aside and let you do what you want," because that's like me saying, "well, despite my beliefs, I'm going to let you commit what to me is murder." So, I mean, that's just one...
Alright, and the analogy in the same sex marriage case is, you said, you're a defender of same sex marriage. - Yes.
But you only came to that view once you were persuaded on the underlying moral question.
Right, well, I think particularly, in the US so many people's beliefs are driven by their religious beliefs and like Mark the other day, I'm a Christian, I'm Catholic, and I had to decide for myself on a lot of thought, a lot of prayer, a lot of conversations with other people that I disagreed with the Catholic standpoint that homosexuality itself isn't a sin.
And once I came to that, sort of conclusion, in my personal relationship with god, I mean, that's sounds hokey, right?
That's like, oh, religious!
But a lot of people are religious and that's where they draw theif beliefs and their views from.
That's when I could say, yeah, I'm down with the state saying, "Go same sex marriage!" because I'm okay with that and I think that's morally okay.
Good, thank you.
Now, who would like to reply?
If you can, perhaps, hang on there for a moment.
Who would like to reply to Andrea's idea that in order to decide the question of same sex marriage, it's necessary to sort out the question about the moral status of homosexuality and figuring out the purpose, the telos, the proper end, of marriage?
Who disagrees with Andrea on that point?
Yes.
Well, I think you absolutely can separate your moral opinion and what you think the law should be.
For example, I think abortion is unequivocally morally wrong.
But I do not believe that illegalizing abortion makes it go away.
I don't believe illegalizing abortion stops it.
And, therefore, I am pro choice and I do believe the woman should have the choice as it gives it more safety just as, maybe, morally, I don't want to get married to a man, but I'm not going try to, impede someone else's freedom to do what they wish to do in terms of the law.
Andrea?
Whether the law makes something legal or illegal, it's implicitly approving or disapproving something.
So if you say, by making abortion legal, we're saying it's okay.
As a society, collectively, we're saying it's okay with us in our society to abort a fetus.
If we make it illegal, then we're saying collectively as a society it's not okay, and that's why societies have different beliefs.
Tell us your name before you...- My name is Daniel.
Daniel, what do you say?
Are we saying collectively that it's okay?
Or are we saying that collectively we don't want women who are going to have an aboration anyway to go to clinics in the side alleys and have unsafe conditions?
Alright, bring it to the same sex marriage case.
Why don't you have to decide that which position you're in favor of same sex marriage, Daniel, being legally permitted?
I think it absolutely should be legally permitted because it's not something telling me that I need to have...
I need to marry a man.
I absolutely don't, I don't see, if two men are consenting adults and want to get married, I don't see how I could even object to that.
Alright, there's no harm.
There's no harm done.
There's no harm done either way, even if it is morally wrong according to me.
Alright, let me turn to the way the Massachusetts
Thanks to both of you very much.
What did the court say?
This was in the Goodridge case which required the state of Massachusetts
The court started out, well, the court was conflicted.
If you read that opinion carefully, the court was conflicted as between the two positions we've just been hearing, defended by Andrea and by Dan.
The court begins, and this is Chief Justice Margaret Marshall's opinion, it begins with an attempt at liberal neutrality.
Many people hold deep-seated religious, moral and ethical convictions that marriage should be limited to the union of one man and one woman, and that homosexual conduct is immoral.
Many hold equally strong religous, moral, and ehtical convictions that same sex souples are entitled to be married, that homosexual persons should be treated no differently than their heterosexual neighbors.
This is the court.
Neither view answers the question before us.
What is at stake is "respect for individual autonomy and equality under law." At stake is an individual freely choosing the person with whom to share an exclusive commitment.
In other words, the issue is not the moral worth of the choice but the right of the individual to make it.
So this is the liberal neutral strand in the court opinion, voluntarist strand, the one that emphasizes autonomy, choice, consent.
But the court seemed to realize that the liberal case, the neutral case, for recognizing same sex marriage doesn't succeed, doesn't get you all the way to that position, because if it were only a matter of respect for individual autonomy, if government were truly neutral on the moral worth of voluntary intimate relationships, then it should adopt a different policy.
Which is to remove government and the state all together from according recognition to certain associations, certain kinds of unions, rather than others.
If government really must be neutral, then the consistent position is what we here have been describing as the third position, the one defended in the article by Michael Kinsley, who argues for the abolition of marriage, at least as a state function.
Perhaps a better term for this is the disestablishment of religion.
This is Kinsley's proposal.
He points out that the reason for the opposition to same sex marriage is that it would go beyond neutral toleration and give same sex marriage a government stamp of approval.
That's at the heart of the dispute.
In Aristotle's terms, at issue here is the proper distribution of offices and honors, a matter of social recognition.
Same sex marriage can't be justified on the basis of liberal neutrality or non-discrimination or autonomy rights alone because the question at stake in the public debate is whether same sex unions have moral worth, whether they're worthy of honor and recognition, and whether they fit the purpose of the social institution of marriage.
So Kinsley says, you want to be neutral?
Then, let churches and other religous institutions offer marriage ceremonies.
Let department stores and casinos get into the act if they want to.
This is Kinsley.
Let couples celebrate their union in any way they choose and consider themselves married whenever they want.
And if three people want to get married, or if one person wants to marry himself or herself, and someone else wants to conduct a ceremony for them and declare them married, let them.
If you and your government aren't implicated, what do you care?
This is Kinsley.
But this is not the position that the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts wanted.
They didn't call for the abolition or for the disestablishment of marriage.
The court did not question government's role in conferring social recognition on some intimate associations rather than others.
To the contrary, the court waxes eloquent about marriage as, "one of our community's most rewarding and cherished institutions." And then it goes on to expand the definition of marriage to include partners of the same sex.
And in doing so it acknowledges that marriage is more than a matter of tolerating choices that individuals make.
It's also a matter of social recognition and honor.
As Justice Marshall
In a real sense there are three partners to every civil marriage: two willing spouses and an approving state.
Marriage is at once a deeply personal cimmitment, but also a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family.
This is the court.
Now, this is reaching well beyond liberal neutrality.
This is celebrating and affirming marriage as an honorific, as a form of public recognition.
And, therefore, the court found that it couldn't avoid the debate about the telos of marriage.
Justice Marshall's opinion considers and rejects the notion that the primary purpose of marriage is procreation.
She points out that there is no requirement that applicants for marriage license, who are heterosexuals, attest to their ability or their intention to conceive children.
Fertility is not a condition of marriage.
People who cannot stir from their deathbed, they marry.
So she advances all kinds of arguments, along the lines that we began last time, about the proper and the essential nature, the telos of marriage, is.
And she concludes, not procreation but the exclusive and permanent commitment of the partners to one another is the essential point and purpose of marriage.
Now, nothing I've said about this court opinion is an argument for or against same sex marriage.
But it is an argument against the claim that you can favor or oppose same sex marriage while remaining neutral on the underlying moral and religious questions.
So all of this is to suggest that at least in some of the hotly contested debates about justice and rights that we have in our society, the attempt to be neutral, the attempt to say, it's just a matter of consent and choice and autonomy, we take no stand.
That doesn't succeed.
Even the court, which wants to be neutral on these moral and religious disputes, finds that it can't.
What then about our second question?
If reasoning about the good is unavoidable in debates about justice and rights, is it possible?
If reasoning about the good means that you must have a single principle or rule or maxim or criterion for the good life, that you simply plug in every time you have a disagreement about morality, then the answer is, no.
But having a single principle or rule is not the only way, not the best way of reasoning either about the good life or about justice.
Think back, think back to the arguments that we've been having here about justice and about rights and sometimes about the good life.
How have those arguments proceeded?
They've proceeded very much in the way that Aristotle suggests moving back and forth between our judgments about particulars, particular cases, events, stories, questions, back and forth between our judgments about particular cases and more general principles that make sense of our reasons for the positions we take on the particular cases.
This dialectical way of doing moral reasoning goes back to the ancients, to Plato and Aristotle, but it doesn't stop with them, because there is a version of Socratic or dialectical moral reasoning that is defended with great clarity and force by John Rawls in giving an account of his method of justifying a theory of justice.
You remember it's not only the veil of ignorance and the principles that Rawls argues for.
It's also a method of moral reasoning, reasoning about justice that he calls reflective equilibrium.
What is the method of reflective equilibrium?
It's moving back and forth between our considered judgments about particular cases and the general principles we would articulate to make sense of those judgments.
And not just stopping there, because we might be wrong in our initial intuitions.
Not stopping there but then sometimes revising our particular judgments in the light of the principles once we work them out.
So sometimes we revise the principles, sometimes we revise our judgments and intuitions in the particular cases.
The general point is this, and here I quote Rawls.
A conception of justice can't be deduced from self evicdent premises.
Its justification is a matter of the mustual support of many considerations, of everything fitting together into one coherent view.
And later in the theory of justice, he writes, moral philosophy is Socratic.
We may want to change our present considered judgments once their regulative principles are brought to light.
Well, if Rawls accepts that idea and advances that notion of reflective equilibrium, the question we're left with is, he applies that to questions of justice, not to questions of morality and the good life.
And that's why he remains committed to the priority of the right over the good.
He thinks the method of reflective equilibrium can generate shared judgments about justice in the right but he doesn't think they can generate shared judgments about the good life, about what he calls comprehensive moral and religious question.
And the reason he thinks that is that he says that in modern societies there is a fact or reasonable pluralism about the good.
Even conscientious people who reason well, will find that they disagree about questions of the good life, about morality and religion.
And Rawls is likely right about that.
He's not talking about the fact of disagreement in pluralist societies.
He's also suggesting that there may be persisting disagreements about the good life and about moral and religious questions.
But if that's true, then is he warranted in his further claim that the same can't be said about justice?
Isn't it also true, not only that we, as a matter of fact, disagree about justice in pluralist societies, but that at least some of those disagreements are reasonable disagreements?
In the same way, some people favor a libertarian theory of justice, others are more egalitarian theory of justice and they argue.
And there is pluralism in our society as between free market laissez faire, libertarian theories of justice and more egalitarian ones.
Is there any difference in principle between the kind of moral reasoning and the kind of disagreements that arise when we debate about justice and the meaning of free speech and the nature of religious liberty?
Look at the debates we have over appointees to the Supreme Court.
These are all disagreements about justice and rights.
Is there any difference between the fact of reasonable pluralism in the case of justice and rights and in the case of morality and religion?
In principle I don't think that there is.
In both cases what we do when we disagree is we engage with our interlocutor, as we've been doing here for an entire semester.
We consider the arguments that are provoked by particular cases.
We try to develop the reasons that lead us to go one way rather than another.
And then we listen to the reasons of other people.
And sometimes we're persuaded to revise our view.
Other times we're challenged at least to shore up and strengthen our view.
But this is how moral argument proceeds, with justice, and so it seems to me, also with questions of the good life.
Now, there remains a further worry and it's a liberal worry, what about if we are going to think of our disagreements about morality and religion as bound up with our disagreements about justice, how are we ever going to find our way to a society that accords respect to fellow citizens with whom we disagree?
It depends I think on which conception of respect one accepts.
On the liberal conception, to respect our fellow citizens' moral and religious convictions, is, so to speak, to ignore them, for political purposes.
To rise above or to abstract from or to set aside those moral and religious convictions.
To leave them undisturbed, to carry on our political debate without reference to them.
But that isn't the only way, or perhaps even the most plausible way of understanding the mutual respect on which democratic life depends.
There is a different conception of respect according to which we respect our fellow citizens' moral and religious convictions, not by ignoring, but by engaging them.
By attending to them.
Sometimes by challenging and contesting them.
Sometimes by listening and learning from them.
Now, there's no guarantee that a politics of moral and religious attention and engagement will lead in any given case to agreement.
There is no guarantee it will lead even to appreciation for the moral and religious convictions of others.
It's always possible, after all, that learning more about a religious or a moral doctrine will lead us to like it less.
But the respect of deliberation and engagement seems to me a more adequate, more suitable ideal for a pluralist society.
And to the extent that our moral and religious disagreements reflect some ultimate plurality of human goods.
A politics of moral engagement will better enable us, so it seems to me, to appreciate the distinctive goods our different lives expressed.
When we first came together some 13 weeks ago, I spoke of the exhilaration of political philosophy and also of its dangers.
About how philosophy works and has always worked by estranging us from the familiar by unsettling our settled assumptions.
And I tried to warn you that once the familiar turns strange, once we begin to reflect on our circumstance, it's never quite the same again.
I hope you have by now experienced at least a little of this unease because this is the tension that animates critical reflection and political improvement and maybe even the moral life as well.
And so our argument comes to an end, in a sense, but in another sense goes on.
Why, we asked at the outset, why did these arguments keep going even if they raise questions that are impossible ever, finally, to resolve?
The reason is that we live some answer to these questions all the time.
In our public life, and in our personal lives, philosophy is inescapable even if it sometimes seems impossible.
We began with the thought of Kant, that skepticism is a resting place for human reason.
Where it can reflect upon its dogmatic wanderings, but it is no dwelling place for permanent settlement.
To allow ourselves simply to acquiescence in skepticism or in complacence, Kant wrote, can never suffice to overcome the restlessness of reason.
The aim of this course has been to awaken the restlessness of reason and to see where it might lead.
And if we had done at least that, and if the restlessness continues to afflict you in the days and years to come, then we together have achieved no small thing.
