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Ideology and Truth-Seeking in Liberal Theory: The Case of Ackerman's Social Justice in the Liberal State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Lyle A. Downing  and
Robert B. Thigpen
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Extract

This study examines the ideological and truth-seeking aspects of Ackerman's Social Justice in the Liberal State. Ackerman begins in a truth-seeking fashion by requiring all power and all distributive claims to be justified. In developing principles of social justice from imaginary dialogues that are assumed to be neutral toward the good, he defends the “neutrality principle” inadequately and employs it ideologically. The fundamental distributive principle, undominated equality, is derived from dialogues that are manipulated to prevent other principles from passing the “neutrality test.” Although Ackerman discusses issues of citizenship and birthrights that are ordinarily ignored, his attempt to protect the liberal state leads to ideological formulations.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , January 1984 , pp. 45 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1984

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References

1 For their helpful comments on this essay, we would like to thank Calvin Jillson, James Davidson, John Clark and Norton Nelkin.

2 Sargent, Lyman Tower, Contemporary Political Ideologies, 5th ed. (Homewood, Illinois, 1981), p. 3.Google Scholar

3 Christenson, Reo M., Engel, Alan S., Jacobs, Dan N., Rejai, Mostafa, and Waltzer, Herbert, Ideologies and Modern Politics (New York, 1971), p. 15.Google Scholar

4 It is now fashionable to label as “secular religions” those orientations that are called ideologies. It is undoubtedly true, for example, that Marxism and liberalism have replaced religion for many people, and these commitments are sustained by nonrational motives. But contemporary ideologies are not simply disguised religions. The truth claims of religions are based on faith (with reason playing an auxiliary role), revelatory events, sacred writings, personal experience, and the claims of charismatic leadership. The truth claims of movements like liberalism or Marxism rest on reason and science. This is also true of “irrationalist” bodies of thought. After all, the Nazis made “scientific” claims for their racist doctrines. Moreover, the territorial claims of nationalists are based on purported historical facts.

5 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980).

6 Using Political Ideas (New York, 1982), pp. 21–22.Google Scholar

7 Ackerman, , Social Justice in the Liberal State, pp. 89–92.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., p. 4.

9 Ibid., p. 11.

10 “What Liberalism Isn't,” The New York Review of Books, 20 January 1983, p. 47.Google Scholar

11 Ackerman, , Social Justice in the Liberal State, p. 48.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., p. 19.

13 Ibid., p. 369.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid., p. 368.

16 Ibid., p. 10–11.

17 Ibid., chap. 2.

18 “Liberalism Without Foundations?” Yale Law Journal, 91, No. 2 (12 1981), 397–403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Ibid., p. 400.

20 Ackerman, , Social Justice in the Liberal State, p. 67.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., p. 38.

22 Ibid., p. 45–64.

23 Ibid., p. 183–86.

24 Ibid., p. 69–74.

25 Ibid., p. 102.

26 Ibid., p. 103.

27 Ibid., p. 74, 79–80.

28 Ibid., p. 96.

29 Ibid., p. 109–111.

30 Ibid., p. 108.

31 Ibid., p. 131–32.

32 Ibid., p. 201–21.

33 Spheres of Justice (New York, 1983), p. 229.Google Scholar

34 An example of a rigidly egalitarian society would be one in which people exercise the right Ackerman gives them to destroy the surplus, that amount over and above what is necessary to give second-generation members at least as much as members of the first generation started with.

35 Ackerman, , Social Justice in the Liberal State, p. 208.Google Scholar

36 Ibid., p. 153.

37 Ibid., p. 152–53.

38 Ibid., p. 174–77.

39 Ibid., chap. 8.

40 Ibid., p. 258.

41 Ibid., p. 218.