The most serious charge against a theory of justice concerned with equality is to accuse it of resting on normative principles which express inegalitarian sentiments. A common criticism of Rawls’s list of primary goods in A Theory of Justice is that it fails in precisely this way. Nagel complains that Rawls’s theory presupposes a liberal bias in its premisses which is reflected in the conception of primary goods to be distributed. The aim of this paper is to explore the Rawlsian response to this critique and thereby to explain the import of the shift from comprehensive to political liberalism. Where many commentators have seen this shift in Rawls’s theory as a retreat in the face of multiculturalism and the fragmentation of value, it is more accurate to see the shift as underscoring the original liberal intentions of paying due respect to individuals and individual differences. Political liberalism sets out from the reasons that we can all share, regardless of our particular conceptions of the good life, in order to construct a common framework of justice within which all can thrive. It thus seeks to reconcile the attractions of egalitarianism with proper respect for persons by making the root egalitarian concern equal regard of all people in the demand to justify principles of justice.
Tag: equality
Quelques souvenirs de John Rawls
These lines briefly relate the scientific part of nearly fourty years of discussions with John Rawls. Their interest – if they have any – can rest in three contributions. First, this relation shows the genesis of John Rawls’ concepts and thought. Second, it implies a criticism of these concepts and shows how Rawls faced it. Finally, this desciption exhibits an essential feature of the history of polical philosophy, the idiosyncrasis of English-language thinking in this domain, in opposition to the rest of the world and in particular to the thought developed in France. Indeed, utilitarianism has only been the philosophy of English-language scholars. Rawls first is the philosopher who will have tried to put English-language political philosophy on the path of normality based on liberty and equality after two centuries of Benthamite dogmatism.
Savamment juste. Notes sur l’épistémologie de la position originelle
This paper argues that Rawls’ original position entails an inadequate conception of knowledge and enquires how this affects the robustness of the the impartiality model. A view of knowledge as separate and detachable from (a too independent) mind as it appears in the original position is contrasted with a more constitutive approach Rawls has had in his first article Outline for a decision Procedure in Ethics. There, the competent judges are intellectually virtuous rather than simple possessors of knowledge. First, I argue that a more constitutive approach is inconsistent with the requirement of symmetry and that even if Rawls implicitly recognizes it in Political Liberalism, he will not however revise, and consequently weaken, the original position requirements. Secondly, a view of an independent mind affects the original position: presented as a guide of reasoning it specifies not only how to conduct our judgement but also which knowledge is permitted to us and which is disallowed. But if direct doxastic voluntarism is false the original position simply could not guide our reasoning this way. Therefore, provided that arguments of the paper hold, the original position could hardly succeed in expressing the pure procedural justice.
Cheap Preferences and Intergenerational Justice
This paper focuses on a specific challenge for welfarist theories of intergenerational justice. Subjective welfarism permits and even requires that a generation, G1, inculcates cheap preferences in the next generation, G2. This would allow G1 to deplete resources instead of saving them, which seems to contradict the ideal of sustainability. The aim of the paper is to show that, even if subjective welfarism requires the cultivation of cheap preferences among future generations, it can accommodate two major objections to cheap preferences engineering, the Autonomy Objection and the Fairness Objection. The paper argues that teaching autonomy-related abilities is compatible with cheap preferences engineering insofar as autonomy is understood as an end-state and not as a precondition. Furthermore, teaching autonomy-related abilities could even be required in order to improve G2’s prospects for well-being. However, since being autonomous renders G2 able to revise their initially cheap preferences, G1 should also save enough resources to enable members of G2 to do so. Therefore, cultivating cheap preferences among G2 does not allow G1 to deplete the available resources.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Political Economy, Economic Philosophy, and Justice
Jean-Jacques Rousseau criticizes modern society because of its injustice. A society, whose members are motivated by self-love and relate to each other through market exchanges, implies a loss of equality and ever-increasing artificial inequalities. A social and political philosophy built upon such a society and mirroring its characteristics leads to a naturalization of the type of relationships and abuses this social organization implies. Such a social and political philosophy will focus on efficiency rather than justice. Rousseau’s alternative to such a society and to the political and social philosophy associated with it, is based upon an economy of abundance and sharing like the one he describes in Julie, or the New Heloise. In this economy, moral, economic, and affective bonds become one and give way to relationships that are just and non-envious. Each member takes part in the production of social wealth through labor and each one receives a share of this wealth that provides each member a place in society that such person neither wishes to leave or change. It is not an egalitarian organization but it is just, meaning, free of envy. This economy is only the starting point because justice can only be attained in the political sphere. This vision explains why Rousseau rejects the physiocrats’ science nouvelle as a social philosophy because economics deals with efficiency but says nothing about justice. This exploration shows the similarities and dissimilarities between Rousseau’s analysis and welfare economics, especially, common traits such as envy-free equilibria as found in the theory of economic justice. However, these similarities are limited because Rousseau’s project contains a radical transformation of the individual no longer guided by self-love.
Behavioral paternalism
This article deals with the idea of the performativity of economics. We use the notion of convention in order to emphasize a necessary condition for performativity of the scientific conventions. We show that performativity could be seen as the translation of a scientific convention into the social world. We demonstrate that such a translation needs the scientific concept to take a peculiar form: an empirical one. We study the example of the performativity of economic rationality, which is now a central concept of a new kind of public policy: “nudge” economics.
Cheap Preferences and Intergenerational Justice
This paper focuses on a specific challenge for welfarist theories of intergenerational justice. Subjective welfarism permits and even requires that a generation, G1, inculcates cheap preferences in the next generation, G2. This would allow G1 to deplete resources instead of saving them, which seems to contradict the ideal of sustainability. The aim of the paper is to show that, even if subjective welfarism requires the cultivation of cheap preferences among future generations, it can accommodate two major objections to cheap preferences engineering, the Autonomy Objection and the Fairness Objection. The paper argues that teaching autonomy-related abilities is compatible with cheap preferences engineering insofar as autonomy is understood as an end-state and not as a precondition. Furthermore, teaching autonomy-related abilities could even be required in order to improve G2’s prospects for well-being. However, since being autonomous renders G2 able to revise their initially cheap preferences, G1 should also save enough resources to enable members of G2 to do so. Therefore, cultivating cheap preferences among G2 does not allow G1 to deplete the available resources.