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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 December 2016
Contra John Rawls, G. A. Cohen argues that the fundamental principles of justice are not constrained by the limits of our nature or the nature of society, even at its historical best. Justice is what it is, even if it will never be realized, fully or at all. Likewise, David Estlund argues that since our innate motivations can be justice-tainting, they cannot be a constraint on the right conception of justice. Cohen and Estlund agree that if the attempt to implement a certain conception of justice is likely to result in widespread harm or injustice, then it should not be implemented, but that this does not entail that the conception itself is false. I argue that (i) there is no way to judge the soundness of a principle of justice independently of all psychological facts, and the effects that the principle is likely to have if it is implemented; (ii) a principle of justice that, if implemented, makes it hard or impossible for individuals committed to justice to lead happy and worthwhile lives, even if the circumstances are favorable to living justly, cannot be sound; (iii) without the constraints noted in (i) and (ii), there can be no reason to reject racist, sexist, or other wrongheaded principles of justice that have been advanced as sound over the years, principles that even Cohen and Estlund would reject. In short, justice is justice only if kept within the limits of human nature.
1 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 454; A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1999), 398.
2 Rawls, Theory of Justice (1971), 8–9, 245–46.
3 Ibid., 145.
4 Rawls, Theory of Justice (1971), 245; Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 47, 101.
5 Rawls, Theory of Justice (1971), 136ff.; Rawls, Theory of Justice (1999), 118ff.; Rawls, The Law of Peoples (1999), 5–7, 12.
6 Rawls, Theory of Justice (1971), 145; Rawls, Theory of Justice (1999), 125–26.
7 Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 185.
8 See, for example, Charles W. Mills, “‘Ideal Theory’ as Ideology,” Hypatia 20, no. 3 (2005): 165–84; Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009); David Schmidtz, “Nonideal Theory: What It Is and What It Needs to Be,” Ethics 121, no. 4 (2011): 772–96; Michael Huemer, “Confessions of a Utopophobe,” this issue; Jacob T. Levy, “There Is No Such Thing As Ideal Theory,” this issue.
9 G. A. Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008) and Why Not Socialism? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).
10 Estlund, David, “Human Nature and the Limits (If Any) of Political Philosophy,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 39, no. 3 (2011): 207–237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar However, Estlund’s argument is directed against anyone who takes the contrary position, and not especially against Rawls.
11 “[I]f we look more closely at our scheming and striving, we everywhere come across the dear self, which is always turning up,” and even when introspection doesn’t reveal self-interest at work, we can never be certain that it isn’t playing a decisive role in motivating the required action (Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, in H. J. Paton, The Moral Law [London: Hutchinson and Co., 1948], chap. II, 407).
12 Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality, 254.
13 Ibid., 234–35.
14 Ibid., 235.
15 Ibid., 255–56. Estlund also likens moral principles to mathematical ones. I discuss this below.
16 Ibid., 251.
17 Ibid., 155. See also Cohen, Why Not Socialism? chap. IV.
18 Ibid., 247, 254–56.
19 Ibid., 254.
20 Ibid., 247.
21 Ibid., 256.
22 Ibid., 254. Like the fundamental principle of utility in indirect utilitarianism, Cohen’s fundamental principles serve as criteria of right action, but unlike the fundamental principle of utility, they function as criteria even if no one is capable of acting on them. Thanks to the anonymous referee for raising this question.
23 Ibid., 268.
24 Ibid., 284, n. 10, 276–77.
25 Ibid., 267.
26 Rawls, Theory of Justice (1971), xviii, 504–6; Rawls, Theory of Justice (1999), viii; 441–43. Rawls recognizes that moral agents are unequal in their capacity for a sense of justice and for forming their own conception of the good, but argues that if “a certain minimum is met, a person is entitled to equal liberty on a par with everyone else.”
27 This kind of “mixed” principle, however, does not satisfy Cohen, who remarks only that Rawls’s conception of persons as free and equal “either embodies or presupposes a fact-insensitive normative principle” (Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality, 241).
28 Ibid., 251.
29 Cohen, Why Not Socialism? 251–53. William A. Galston calls such fanciful theorizing “the political theory equivalent of science fiction — an act of imagination that may illuminate what is distinctive about the world we actually inhabit but that offers no guidance about how we should function in that world” (“Realism in Political Theory,” European Journal of Political Theory 9, no. 4 [2010]: 385–411, at 403).
30 In Why Not Socialism? Cohen suggests that basic human nature is good enough for socialism, the chief problem being that we are incapable of solving the calculation problem without a price system.
31 On the indispensable epistemic function of a price system, see Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, part V chap. 26, The Library of Economics and Liberty, http://www.econlib.org/library/Mises/HmA/msHmA26.html#Part%205,%20Chapter%20XXVI.%20The%20impossibility%20of%20economic%20calculation%20under%20socialism; and Friedrich A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review XXXV, no. 4 (1945): 519–30. Reprinted online at http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html. Robert Heilbroner adds that socialist planners lack the motivation to act on the information they do have in “Socialism,” http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Socialism.html.
32 Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality, 277.
33 Note that this fact is compatible with the truth of “if it’s possible to use this medical principle to save patients, then one ought to use it to save patients.” This shows, once again, the practical irrelevance of Cohen’s fact-free principles. Thanks to Daniel C. Russell for pointing this out.
34 Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality, 4–5.
35 Cohen, Why Not Socialism? Op. cit., chap. IV.
36 Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality, 271.
37 Cohen, Why Not Socialism? Op. cit., chap. II.
38 This tendentious view of market participants has been questioned by many people. See Robert Wuthnow, Loose Connections: Joining Together in America’s Fragmented Communities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); Badhwar, “Friendship and Commercial Societies,” Politics, Philosophy, and Economics 7, no. 3 (2008), 301–326; Tomasi, John, Free Market Fairness (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012);Google Scholar and Jason Brennan, “Is Market Society Intrinsically Repugnant?” Journal of Business Ethics 112 (2013): 271–81 and Why Not Capitalism? (New York: Routledge, 2014).
39 Cohen, Why Not Socialism? 4–5, 6.
40 Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality, 2; Cohen, Why Not Socialism? 17–18.
41 Cohen Why Not Socialism? chap. II.
42 Cohen, Why Not Socialism? 12–14.
43 Cohen does not tell us what obligation these nature-lovers have if they enjoy everything they do, including cleaning up, more than their less cheerful companions.
44 For a similar argument, see Miller, Richard W., “Relationships of Equality: A Camping Trip Revisited,” The Journal of Ethics 14, nos. 3/4 (2010): 231–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
45 Cohen, Why Not Socialism? 19–21. Cohen himself does not say here that it is only if the preferences that lead to a lower level of enjoyment are due to genetic or social luck that the lower level is unjust, but this is what his luck egalitarianism requires him to say.
46 Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality, 5.
47 See Jason Brennan’s more richly imagined ideal capitalist world with its five principles in Why Not Capitalism? 29–36.
48 As I note in the next section, there are a few — very few — very small socialist societies still in existence in the United States and Israel.
49 Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974). See also Brennan’s discussion of this idea in Why Not Capitalism?
50 Estlund, “Utopophobia,” 116.
51 Estlund, “Human Nature and the Limits (If Any) of Political Philosophy,” 207.
52 Ibid., 208.
53 Ibid., 211.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid., 215–16. Here Estlund borrows an argument made by Frank Jackson and Robert Pargetter in a different context.
56 Estlund, “Human Nature and the Limits (If Any) of Political Philosophy,” 220.
57 Ibid., 208.
58 Ibid., 231.
59 Aristotle argues that repeatedly doing the right thing for the right reason is at the heart of a good moral education for the young (Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. II). But it’s equally true for character change in adulthood.
60 Here I put to the side the difficult issue of how responsible we are for our character, since it does not make a difference either to Estlund’s view or to mine.
61 Estlund, “Human Nature and the Limits (If Any) of Political Philosophy,” 224.
62 Ibid., 227.
63 Here I partly agree with Martha Nussbaum’s view that “to find out what our nature is seems to be one and the same thing as to find out what we deeply believe to be most important and indispensable” (“Aristotle on Human Nature and the Foundations of Ethics,” World, Mind, and Ethics: Essays on the Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams, eds. J. E. J. Altham and R. Harrison [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995], 86–131). Only partly, however, because while such evaluative beliefs are indispensable, we need to remember that many common evaluative beliefs about what is most important have fallen by the wayside, victims of, among other things, the bare, scientific facts about human beings. The best examples of this are racist and sexist beliefs. So I agree with Bernard Williams that theories of human nature must also take the bare, scientific facts of human nature into account (Williams, “Replies,” World, Mind, and Ethics, 194–202).
64 A good recent example of such a society is Mao’s China, where communism brought about widespread poverty and taught children to spy on their parents and to say “I love you, Communist Party of China,” and “I love you, Chairman Mao,” but never “I love you, Papa and Mama.” See Anchee Min’s interview with Krista Tippett, “Surviving the Religion of Mao,” September 13, 2007. http://www.onbeing.org/program/surviving-religion-mao/transcript/1192
65 Plato, Republic, Bk. 5, 457c–d. Aristotle anticipates the destructive effects of twentieth-century communism when he criticizes Plato’s communism on the grounds that its demands would destroy alike property and relationships of love (Aristotle, Politics II, 1–5).
66 See Estlund’s discussion of Joseph Carens’s market utopia in “Human Nature and the Limits (If Any) of Political Philosophy,” 214 ff.
67 Global wisdom requires an understanding of all kinds of human beings and societies, and the ability to act rightly on this understanding. But we are all limited in our understanding and abilities. I discuss some reasons for this in “The Limited Unity of Virtue,” Nous 30, no. 3 (1996): 306–329. For the experimental evidence for these limitations, see Doris, John M., Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior (Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For further discussion, see Robert Adams, A Theory of Virtue: Excellence in Being for the Good (Oxford: Clarendon, 2006); Daniel C. Russell, Practical Intelligence and the Virtues (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), and chap. 6 of my Well-Being: Happiness in a Worthwhile Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
68 See Robert Conquet, The Harvest of Sorrow (Oxford University Press, 1987), who argues that private plots comprising 3.8 percent of the total cultivated land produced 21.5 percent of the total produce (339).
69 The only exceptions to this last are the small Hutterite colonies in North America, each of which numbers between twenty and a hundred and twenty members (http://www.hutterites.org/), and a few Israeli kibbutzim. The first kibbutzim, Degania Alef, was established in 1910, and is still in existence (http://www.degania.org.il/en/degania-homepage/history/). But Degania Alef was not entirely socialist. It hired workers for its farms and factories, thus ensuring that the work got done, and it was small enough to allow members to keep lazy neighbors in line through social disapproval. And eventually even Degania ceased to be socialist. Starting in the 1960s, Degania first privatized consumption and then, in 2007, its economy, requiring its members to find jobs and live on their incomes. This is now more-or-less true of most kibbutzim, although they purportedly continue to get special tax treatment from the Israeli government. See Ari Mushell, “Capitalist Yet Socialist?” http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/capitalist-yet-socialist/ Feb. 19, 2015.
70 William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647, ed. Samuel Eliot Morison (New York: Modern Library, 1967): Volume 1, Chapter 16, Document 1 http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/print_documents/v1ch16s1.html; http://www.forbes.com/2008/11/27/thanksgiving-economy-history-oped-cx_jb_1127bowyer.html
71 Estlund, “Human Nature and the Limits (If Any) of Political Philosophy,” 228–29.
72 Ibid.
73 In “What Good Is It? Unrealistic Political Theory and the Value of Intellectual Work,” Estlund argues that just as understanding a true and important mathematical theory is valuable, even if it has no practical value, so understanding the true theory of justice is valuable, even if it has no practical value.
74 Estlund likens his view to Kant’s view that the categorical imperative is grounded in rationality, not in any feature distinctive of humans (“Human Nature and the Limits [If Any] of Political Philosophy,” 228–29). But he does not say how rationality could permit, let alone dictate, sacrifice of one’s children, or complete impartiality between strangers and those we care about. There is an important difference between Estlund’s view and Kant’s. For Kant, only the categorical imperative is a priori, not our perfect or imperfect duties. For example, the imperfect duty of developing one’s talents, and the perfect duty of treating others as ends in themselves by not manipulating or deceiving them, are derived from the categorical imperative in conjunction with the relevant facts of human nature (Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, chap. II). For Estlund, even the content of what Kant would call the perfect duty of justice is derived from considerations independent of human motivations or, indeed, “any facts about what humans . . . happen to be like.”
75 As John Stuart Mill argues in The Subjection of Women, ed. Susan M. Okin (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1988), women’s nature has been distorted by their moral education and social circumstances, made into an artificial thing, like a tree with one root in the hothouse and one in the ice (chaps. 1 and 4). The legal subjection of women and men’s power over women has also, Mill continues, harmed men by feeding their self-worship and self-delusion.
76 Kant, “On a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns,” trans. James W. Ellington, in Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals/On a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns, 3rd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1993).
77 Estlund, “Utopophobia,” 115.
78 Ibid., 120.
79 Estlund calls this kind of theory “hopeless aspirational theory” (“Utopophobia,” 117–18).
80 See Michael Huemer, “Confessions of a Utopophobe,” this issue.
81 But see note 66 above.
82 For discussion, see Edward Hall, “Skepticism about Unconstrained Utopianism,” this issue; and Neera K. Badhwar and Russell Jones, “Aristotle on Friendship,” forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of Love, ed. Christopher Grau and Aaron Smuts (New York: Oxford University Press).
83 David Schmidtz, “Nonideal Theory: What It Is and What It Needs to Be,” 776.