The Ideal and the Real
DharmaTroll
things, or a view from nowhere. After all, we are always somewhere, in
a specific position, with particular constrictions of perception and
understanding. Yet we still can mentally correct for the limitations
of our cognitive situation and make a rational judgment in choosing a
policy and opting between alternatives. We do this--we arrive at
objectivity--by means of a thorough examination of diverse points of
view. This is also the procedure of democracy, which Sen likes to call
government by discussion. In a true democracy, we are open to ideas
and methods that originate outside our own cultural and political
traditions. It is through such an examination of the relative weight
of different arguments that we can approach a consensus about the
truth of a matter, without claiming to possess any perfect or ideal or
absolute standard.>>
The Ideal and the Real
http://www.tnr.com/print/article/environment-and-energy/the-ideal-and-the-real
by Moshe Halbertal, a professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University
and the Gruss Professor at New York University School of Law.
"The Idea of Justice"
By Amartya Sen
(Harvard University Press, 467 pp., $29.95)
In his introduction to The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen asks the
reader to imagine a scenario that will figure prominently throughout
the book. Three children are arguing among themselves about which one
of them should have a flute. The first child, Anne, is a trained
musician who can make the best use of the flute. The second child,
Bob, is the poorest of the three and owns no other toys or
instruments. Clara, the third contender, happens to be the one who,
with hard sustained labor, made the flute. Since philosophers try to
reason about such distributive problems, each of the children can
enlist support from a grand theory of justice that originated in what
seems to be an impartial position in moral philosophy.
Utilitarians will opt for giving the flute to Anne, since their
criteria for distribution is to give preference to the scheme that
will maximize overall utility, thus granting the instrument to the
individual who can derive the most pleasure out of it. Bob, the
poorest child among the three, will be chosen by egalitarians, since
the main concern of their distributive approach is to narrow social
and economic gaps as much as possible. And libertarians, who emphasize
rights-based ownership entitlements, will claim that Clara deserves
the flute as the producer of the object, and that no other
distributive concerns--egalitarian or utilitarian--can supersede her
entitlement to what she naturally owns.
Since the publication of John Rawls’s monumental book A Theory of
Justice in 1971, such grand theories of distributive justice have
gained momentum and depth. Rawls himself defended an egalitarian
position. He articulated it in his famous difference principle,
according to which deviations from strict equality may be allowed only
if such deviations will work for the benefit of the worst-off.
According to Rawls, perfect equality should have been the rule, but
rewarding capable people with differential income will create an
incentive for them to raise the production of the sum total of goods,
which in a system of fair distribution might end up benefiting the
people who are at the bottom of the economic ladder.
The ultimate merit of Rawls’s work did not lie only in his own theory,
but in the extraordinarily broad discussion that it generated. Rawls’s
work provided a framework for a flurry of counter-theories, such as
G.A. Cohen’s in Rescuing Justice and Equality, which challenged Rawls
from the left and advocated a stricter egalitarianism; and Robert
Nozick’s sophisticated libertarian response in Anarchy, State, and
Utopia; and Michael Walzer’s development, in Spheres of Justice, of a
communitarian approach to the problem. Now comes Sen’s magnificent
book, which is dedicated to Rawls’s memory, but differs dramatically
from the Rawlsian and post-Rawlsian conversations.
Sen rejects, as a matter of principle, the nature of Rawls’s project.
The reader who seeks in this book yet another exercise in grand
theory--another abstract discussion out of which the foundations for
the institutions of a just society may be generated--will be
disappointed. And the reader who wonders about the connection of all
these abstractions about justice to the remedying of actually existing
injustices will be glad. Sen questions the plausibility of such
edifices of pure reason. His book quite radically attempts to shift
the grounds of the conversation altogether. Its seeks to provide a
counter-framework rather than a counter-theory. And this is only one
of its many admirable ambitions.
According to Sen, a sustained and reasoned argument about justice
should focus on a result-oriented comparative approach among different
conditions, rather than on an attempt to formulate the philosophical
conditions of a perfectly just society. We can confidently claim that
a society that rejects slavery is more just than a society that
endorses slavery. And such a sound comparison can be performed without
actually having a clear-cut notion of what a perfectly just society
would be like. Injustices are altogether easier to identify than the
conditions of perfect justice. And injustices can be identified on the
basis of various and competing grand theories, which may overlap in
such actual comparative judgments. As Sen observes, we can assess
whether a painting by Dalí is better than a painting by Picasso
without making the claim that the Mona Lisa is the best or the most
ideal painting of all. Constituting a perfect standard is not a
necessary condition for the comparative work that has to be done in
removing injustices. Nor is it a sufficient condition: we might have a
clear conception of the perfectly just society and still find it
difficult, or even impossible, to evaluate two options, two courses of
action, that present themselves in real life. Each of these options,
which will never be fully perfect, might be closer to perfection
according to a different variable they each have.
Given the fact that having a perfect conception of the just society is
neither necessary nor sufficient for the actual comparative judgments
that are needed in real life, Sen concludes that such a project is
quite redundant. To the redundancy argument he adds a deeper and
philosophically more interesting argument for rejecting the very
notion of the theory of justice. He argues that such an attempt is not
feasible. Consider again that debate between the three children about
the flute. According to Sen, each child makes a persuasive claim, and
each of the grand theories that support such claims--utilitarian,
egalitarian, libertarian--can withstand impartial scrutiny, and
therefore each of them is right. There simply is no way to adjudicate
between the rival grand theories that support different distributive
schemes.
There is genuine humility in recognizing the intrinsic limits of our
reasoning and the essential pluralism of value. Sen’s conceptual
sophistication is in the service of a rare intellectual modesty.
Still, we must distinguish between two different interpretations of
the rejection of the grand theory of justice, only one of which seems
to me defensible. Sen, at different moments of his argument, asserts
that indeed each of the proposed grand theories is right and has a
strong case, and that we should therefore avoid the business of
arguing about--and attempting to establish--perfect justice, because
perfection can legitimately come in a variety of radically different
forms. I think that such a view is implausible. There are some good
arguments for rejecting libertarianism, and some of them are made by
Sen in his book, and also in his previous works.
Imagine a slight shift in the parable of the three children. Let us
assume that what is at stake for distribution is not a flute but a
rare medicine that Clara, the brilliant and productive child, somehow
managed to invent. She is willing to provide the medicine to Anne, who
is very sick, but only for an outrageous compensation. If she does not
get her coveted price, then Anne will die; and nobody--this is the
libertarian claim--can take the medicine away from her, since she has
ownership rights as a producer. In such a story, it seems clear that
sticking solely to the libertarian approach to ownership rights,
regardless of the outcome, is wrong. Even if we assert that there are
such rights, surely they should not be absolute.
A serious argument can be made as well against the other grand theory--
utilitarianism, the one that would have awarded the contested flute to
the child who would get the most use out of it. In its sole interest
in outcomes, utilitarianism tends to erase the individuality of
people, as Rawls pointed out. In order to highlight this problematic
feature of utilitarianism, let us once again alter the circumstances,
and therefore the distributive stakes, of our parable. Let us assume
that Clara needs a liver transplant and Anne a heart transplant to
survive. From a strict utilitarian perspective, as a matter of
principle, there is a justification for removing Bob’s heart and
liver. (Assume for the sake of argument that Anne’s heart or Clara’s
liver cannot be used for transplants.) But such a violation of Bob’s
rights to the integrity of his body seems intuitively wrong. Moreover,
the egalitarian approach is also vulnerable to serious criticism. If
Clara is the only producer among the children, and everything that she
produces is given by the egalitarian to the deprived child Bob, so as
to minimize the social gaps, we can expect that Clara will stop
producing altogether. And that will end up harming Bob, among others.
(Rawls was himself concerned about this consequence.)
So it should be possible to state, and interpret, Sen’s argument in a
slightly different and sharper way. The problem with grand theories of
justice, we might say, is not that each of them is, in its own way,
right, but that by aspiring to grandness and exclusivity they are, all
of them, wrong. The very attempt to produce a total and ultimate
theory for a perfectly just society will inevitably generate
injustice. This is the reason why Sen, after realizing the limitations
of each grand theory, wisely resists any temptation to produce one of
his own.
Following Sen, when we examine different grand theories we realize
that each of them has a point, that there is an aspect--but no more
than an aspect--of their respective claims that is convincing. Grand
theories become perverse when they postulate themselves as exclusive,
when they wish to solve all the complex issues with one decisive and
final principle. Rights-based libertarians have a point, but their
complete disregard of outcomes makes their position flawed.
Utilitarians make an important contribution to the conversation, but
their exclusive interest in outcomes is wrong. Egalitarians are deeply
attractive for the principle that moves them, but their principle
cannot withstand critical scrutiny when it is the only principle of
justice there is.
The best way of making comparative judgments is by considering
multiple points of view as they are refined by different theories, and
weighing the diverse claims that they make. By rejecting an ultimate
theory of justice, we do not paralyze ourselves, or surrender our
intention to improve the world. Quite the contrary. We liberate
ourselves for the full complexity of the challenge before us, and
equip ourselves with all the elements of comparative reasoning that
the evaluation of an injustice requires. Only when philosophy is
deployed in this patient and pluralistic way can we apply it usefully
to real people and real conditions.
It is important to note also that Sen’s acceptance of the limited and
relative force of each grand theory does not deteriorate into any kind
of moral relativism. Pluralism is not relativism. Choosing between
different approaches and policies is not an expression of taste or
prejudice, a purely subjective effusion of passion. Such choice has a
more general and objective and rational ground. In Sen’s view, truth
may be secured intellectually without our being in control of a single
absolute criterion. In this connection, he develops one of the deepest
ideas of his book--the notion that he calls positional objectivity.
Objectivity, Sen insists, is not omniscience, or a God’s-eye view of
things, or a view from nowhere. After all, we are always somewhere, in
a specific position, with particular constrictions of perception and
understanding. Yet we still can mentally correct for the limitations
of our cognitive situation and make a rational judgment in choosing a
policy and opting between alternatives. We do this--we arrive at
objectivity--by means of a thorough examination of diverse points of
view. This is also the procedure of democracy, which Sen likes to call
government by discussion. In a true democracy, we are open to ideas
and methods that originate outside our own cultural and political
traditions. It is through such an examination of the relative weight
of different arguments that we can approach a consensus about the
truth of a matter, without claiming to possess any perfect or ideal or
absolute standard.
Sen makes a powerful argument for adopting a particular standard in
ranking and comparing the various approaches to proposed policies or
states of affairs. In making such assessments, he says, we should
consider the standard of capabilities, and their distribution across a
society. By capabilities, he means the actual effective power that
people have to develop their human potential and to act in the world.
Such a scale measures relative conditions such as health, literacy,
and freedom, which all combine together to measure the relative
condition of people for the fulfillment of themselves and their
community. In measuring capabilities, we must understand that
sometimes the broadening of agency and effectiveness may bring about a
decline in happiness. Deprived people with no choice might be happy
about their condition, since happiness is often a function of limited
expectations; and with rising expectations comes the revolution that
bears their name, and also the possibility of disappointment and
defeat. And yet, Sen insists, we should opt for agency and freedom
rather than for sheer happiness.
In his emphasis on capabilities, Sen rejects two other measures of the
condition of individual agency: income and well-being. Income is too
narrow a criterion, since the capacity to convert income into actual
freedoms and possibilities differs between people of similar means. If
someone is limited by an illness or a handicap, his capacity to make
use of a certain income will be very different from that of a
healthier person. According to Sen, we should also avoid using well-
being--which is very commonly supported among economists who deal with
social choice--as a criterion for our approach to justice. The
adoption of welfare, well-being, or happiness as the standard is based
on an assumption that people are self-interested creatures who seek
the fulfillment of their desires, and that the rational approach to
assessing a social situation is measuring to what degree it offers
maximization of self-interest. Well-being, in other words, is just a
softer name for self-interest and egotistical harshness.
The repudiation of the economicist account of life is one of this
book’s most valuable achievements. People seek not only their own well-
being but also the well-being of others, and often they are willing to
make sacrifices so that others will benefit. In measuring their
situation, therefore, we should consider also the degree to which they
have the capability to contribute to others. Theorists who support the
self-interest picture of “economic man” claim that this kind of
altruism is actually reducible to egoism. In this economic view,
people seek the good of others because it will make them happy. There
is no essential difference between an altruist and an egotist--they
both wish the fulfillment of their desires, but the altruist happens
to have a desire that benefits others.
Such an argument is a reversal of the actual causal order. People do
not seek the good of others because it will first make them happy.
They are happy as a result of the help, the happiness, that they give
to others: they wish to help for its own sake. The gratification that
they receive from helping is hardly the primary reason for their help.
Even more, Sen argues, the very capability and power to affect the
lives of others for the better is the source of our moral obligation.
The spectacle of an economist rejecting a purely economic
understanding of the individual is delightful to behold. And this wise
and deep position--focusing on a comparative, results-oriented
approach, which is measured by the actual capabilities that it offers
human beings--is not based on Sen’s arguments alone, important and
penetrating as they are. His position expresses also a larger
sensibility that is anchored in his exceptional range of thought and
his lifelong commitments. Besides what he describes as his love affair
with philosophy, he is a world-renowned economist and one of the
greatest public intellectuals of India, who has been a leading voice
for social and economic reforms, breaking new ground in the analysis
of gender inequality, famine, and illiteracy.
Sen’s range is amazing. His intimacy with the Hindu, Buddhist, and
Muslim cultures of India, which is beautifully woven into the book,
gives him access to a far greater range of argumentation and reasoning
than is common among philosophers who were educated exclusively in the
Western analytical tradition. His knowledge of this vast cultural
history, and his profound respect for it, is an important source of
Sen’s humility in recognizing the essential plurality of legitimate
claims--in rejecting any sort of monism in the life of the mind.
This larger scope, I should add, enables Sen to teach--by example: he
is not a preacher of any kind--a more nuanced sense of the complexity
and the richness of Eastern and Islamic cultures. Though Sen is
steeped in other traditions (some of which are, of course, his own
traditions), his syncretism carries no threat of a clash of
civilizations. Nor does it propound any kind of superficial harmony.
Instead his work--in its simultaneous affirmation of the universal and
the particular--serves as an eloquent and humane testimony to the
power of reason, which respects (when it is honest and attends to the
integrity of its arguments) the multiplicity of voices and traditions.
Reason seeks truth wherever it may be found, and so, like the author
of this genuinely important book, it travels widely, and may find
support near and far.
Keynes
wrote:
><<Objectivity, Sen insists, is not omniscience, or a God’s-eye view of
>things, or a view from nowhere. After all, we are always somewhere, in
>a specific position, with particular constrictions of perception and
>understanding. Yet we still can mentally correct for the limitations
>of our cognitive situation and make a rational judgment in choosing a
>policy and opting between alternatives. We do this--we arrive at
>objectivity--by means of a thorough examination of diverse points of
>view. This is also the procedure of democracy, which Sen likes to call
>government by discussion. In a true democracy, we are open to ideas
>and methods that originate outside our own cultural and political
>traditions. It is through such an examination of the relative weight
>of different arguments that we can approach a consensus about the
>truth of a matter, without claiming to possess any perfect or ideal or
>absolute standard.>>
>
>
>The Ideal and the Real
>http://www.tnr.com/print/article/environment-and-energy/the-ideal-and-the-real
>by Moshe Halbertal, a professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University
>and the Gruss Professor at New York University School of Law.
>
>"The Idea of Justice"
>By Amartya Sen
>(Harvard University Press, 467 pp., $29.95)
>
Seems like there's no possibility of justice for all
since these three rational systems conflict. Not even
democracy can settle the conflict. So much for utopia.
DharmaTroll
> On Sun, 20 Dec 2009 19:20:21 -0800 (PST), DharmaTroll <dharmatr...@my-deja.com>
>
> Seems like there's no possibility of justice for all
> since these three rational systems conflict.
You miss the point. For a dogmatist it's a no-win dilemma, yes. But
having 3 (or more) all reasonable perspectives which overlap and
conflict is an opportunity for one to use and develop one's own
experience and feelings and draw upon all the available resources to
make important choices and to constantly refine and deepen one's
personal values -- a much richer project than finding the one true
authority and simply following and believing it.
--DharmaTroll
Lee
"DharmaTroll" <dharm...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:557463dd-eeec-4b23...@e27g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...
--DharmaTroll
-------------------------------------------------------
define important
DharmaTroll
> "DharmaTroll" <dharmatr...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
Aha! It's the Loser Lee for whom I mistook an intelligent Lee.
Define Yo Mamma! Heh.
--DharmaTroll
Lee
mistakes do seem to be your heavy fuel
Charles E Hardwidge
The topic was badly framed and the article was windy without really getting
anywhere but the basic idea you've raised is sound.
Looking at the Anglo-Saxon mentality and the current state of British
politics kicks up how useless the polarised and tribalistic approach is.
Harvard have done research on this and neatly explain better ways of working
in the final chapters of "Getting to Yes".
Links:
http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-Negotiating-Agreement-Without/dp/0140157352
FU trimmed to alt.zen
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Ron Fuller
news:d3c304d7-0614-4ce9...@e27g2000yqd.googlegroups.com:
> <<Objectivity, Sen insists, is not omniscience, or a God�s-eye view of
> things, or a view from nowhere. After all, we are always somewhere, in
> a specific position, with particular constrictions of perception and
> understanding. Yet we still can mentally correct for the limitations
> of our cognitive situation and make a rational judgment in choosing a
> policy and opting between alternatives. We do this--we arrive at
> objectivity--by means of a thorough examination of diverse points of
> view. This is also the procedure of democracy, which Sen likes to call
> government by discussion. In a true democracy, we are open to ideas
> and methods that originate outside our own cultural and political
> traditions. It is through such an examination of the relative weight
> of different arguments that we can approach a consensus about the
> truth of a matter, without claiming to possess any perfect or ideal or
> absolute standard.>>
>
>
> The Ideal and the Real
> http://www.tnr.com/print/article/environment-and-energy/the-ideal-and-t
> he-real by Moshe Halbertal, a professor of philosophy at the Hebrew
> University and the Gruss Professor at New York University School of
> Law.
>
> "The Idea of Justice"
> By Amartya Sen
> (Harvard University Press, 467 pp., $29.95)
>
> In his introduction to The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen asks the
> reader to imagine a scenario that will figure prominently throughout
> the book. Three children are arguing among themselves about which one
> of them should have a flute. The first child, Anne, is a trained
> musician who can make the best use of the flute. The second child,
> Bob, is the poorest of the three and owns no other toys or
> instruments. Clara, the third contender, happens to be the one who,
> with hard sustained labor, made the flute. Since philosophers try to
> reason about such distributive problems, each of the children can
> enlist support from a grand theory of justice that originated in what
> seems to be an impartial position in moral philosophy.
>
thanks for the reference. ordered sen's book and hope to read
it shortly.
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
rfu...@freeway.net rfu...@cainsquestion.org
if you and the universe are going in the same direction
you will find that the whole world conspires for your
benefit.