Fluent Essays

Choose ONE question to answer in 750  words. A) What is the best result of a social contract, in terms of ethics? B) In Care Ethics, relationships based on authentic care are the location of good. Ethics attempts to answer questions about what to do, what good is and/or who matters. Is the Ethic of Care sufficient as an answer to these questions? C) Do all interactions of human agents include an exchange or imposition of power? D) How do you recognize when an exchange of power between agents is unethical? What are the results or characteristics which define unethical exchanges? You may use very specific examples, but be sure to explain why they are examples of a definition (your thesis will be what ties your examples together). The Soul Of Martha, A Beast Excerpt from The Soul of Anna Klane by Terrel Miedaner. Copyright © 1977 by Church of Physical Theology, Ltd. Reprinted by permission of Coward, Mcann & Geoghegan Inc. Jason Hunt thanked him, breathed a deep inward sigh of relief, and called his next witness. Dr. Alexander Belinsky, professor of animal psychology, was a short, rotund individual of brusque and businesslike manner. His initial testimony brought to light his excellent academic credentials, qualifying him as an expert witness sin his field. That done, Hunt requested the court’s permission to allow a demonstration of some complexity. There was a brief discussion before the bench as to whether this should be allowed, but as Morrison had no objection, it was permitted in spite of Feinman’s reservations and the bailiff shortly escorted a pair of graduate assistants into the room, pushing before them a cart filled with a variety of electronic equipment. Because the taking of court records had been historically limited to verbal transcription, demonstrations of the sort planned here had not been permitted until recent years, when specialized laws designed to speed up courtroom procedure permitted a court reporter to videotape such demonstrations for the official record. But as Feinman watched one assistant set up electronic paraphernalia, while the other left momentarily and returned leading a chimpanzee, he began to regret the onset of modernization. The animal appeared nervous and afraid of the crowd, holding itself Close to its handler as it was escorted into the courtroom. Upon perceiving Dr. Belinsky, the creature jumped into the witness box with obvious displays of affection. Under Hunt’s direction, he introduced her to the court as Martha, one of twenty experimental animals he used in his latest researches, the results of which had been recently published in book form. When asked by Hunt to describe these experiences, he proceeded as follows. “For years it was assumed that animals had not developed a humanlike language facility because their brains were deficient. But in the early sixties some animal psychologists proposed that the only reason chimpanzees couldn’t talk was because their primitive vocalizing mechanisms prevented them from sounding words. They proceeded to test this theory by devising simple symbolic languages which didn’t involve speech. They tried coloured cards, pictures, magnetic slate boards, keyboard devices and even the international sign language, all with some degree of success. “Although these experiments proved that symbolic speech is not restricted to man, they seemed also to show that the language capacity of the most intelligent animals was severely limited. When a clever undergraduate student subsequently devised a computer program capable of duplicating every language achievement of the cleverest chimpanzees, interest in the animal speech experiments diminished significantly. “Nonetheless, it seemed that these animals might be limited by the constraints of the previous experiments, just as they were limited earlier by poor vocal chords. Man has a speech centre within his brain, a specialized area devoted to the interpretation and creation of human language. Chimpanzees do communicate with each other in their natural state, and also have a specialized brain area for their natural system of chattering and yowling. “It occurred to me that, by their use of hand motions to bypass vocal chords, the previous language experiments had also bypassed the chimpanzee’s natural speech centres. I decided to try to involve this natural speech centre while still bypassing the animal’s primitive vocal cords, and succeeded with the equipment you see before you. “If you look closely at the left side of Martha’s head here, you will observe a circular plastic cap. This covers an electrical connector permanently imbedded in her skull. To this are attached a number of electrodes which terminate within her brain. Our electronic equipment can be connected to Martha’s head so as to monitor the neural activity of her speech centre and translate it into English words. “Martha is only a seven-electrode chimp, one of our slower experimental animals. She ‘speaks’ by stimulating certain of the implanted electrodes, although she doesn’t realize that. The pattern of the electrode signals is decoded by a small computer that outputs her selected word on a voice-synthesizer. This technique enabled her to develop a natural sort of feedback-response mechanism. Except for a deficient grammatical base and lack of inflection, when we connect up her transistorized vocal chords she will sound quite human. “Don’t expect too much, however, for as I mentioned, Martha is not one of our star pupils. Although her seven-electrode system can be decoded into one hundred twenty-eight distinct words, she has learned only fifty-three. Other animals have done much better. Our resident genius is a nine-electrode male with a vocabulary of four hundred seven words out of five hundred twelve possibilities. Nonetheless,” he added as he reached for her connecting cable. “I believe you’ll find her a pleasant conversationalist.” As Dr. Belinsky proceeded to connect her to the world of human language, the chimpanzee indicated delight and excitement. She jumped up and down and chattered as he reached for te cable handed him by one of his student assistants, then sat still while he removed the protective cap and mated the halves of the connector. As soon as they snapped together in positive lock she jumped up again, seemingly oblivious to the cable attached to her head, as she pointed to a small box the scientists held in one hand. “For Martha,” he explained, “speech is an almost ceaseless activity for her electronic vocal chords never tire. In order to get a word in I use this control to literally shut her off. “All right, Martha, go ahead,” the psychologist said as he switched her sound on. Immediately a small loudspeaker on the equipment burst into noisy life. “Hello! Hello! I Martha Martha Happy Chimp. Hello Hello -- ! The beast was cut off with a soft electrical click as the courtroom sat in dumb amazement. The sight of the animal opening and closing her mouth in mimicry of the sexy female voice pouring from the speaker was rather difficult to assimilate. Her teacher continued. “How old is Martha?” “Three Three Martha Three – “ “Very good. Now relax, Martha quite down. Who am I?” he asked, pointing to himself. “Belinsky Man Nice Belins – “ “And what are those?” he asked, his hand sweeping the packed courtroom. “Man man People Nice people – “ The researcher cut her off again and turned t the defense attorney, indicating that he was ready to proceed. Hunt stood and addressed his first question. “In your opinion is this animal intelligent?” “Within the broad definition of ‘intelligence’ I would say yes, she is.” “Is she intelligent in the human sense?” Hunt asked. “I believe so, but to form such an opinion of her yourself, you would really have to treat her lie a human, talk to her, play with her. To that end I brought along a box of her favourite playthings. She will devote her limited attention either to me, or whoever has custody of her treasures. I suggest you examine her yourself.” From the corner of his eye Morrison observed the judge watching him in anticipation of an objection, which he dutifully provided. “Objection, your Honour. I should at least like to hear Mr. Hunt assure us this testimony will be relevant.” “Well Mr. Hun?” Feinman asked. “It is relevant, as will become clear.” “And if it is not,” Feinman promise, “rest assured it will be stricken from the record. Proceed.” Hunt opened Martha’s box, an oversized jewelry box painted in bright red, and after looking over its contents, he reached in and retrieved a cellophane-wrapped cigar. As held it up the chimpanzee piped. “Cigar Belinsky Bad Bad Cigar.” To which she added her normal chattering and some flamboyant nose-holding for emphasis. “What’s an old cigar doing in your toy box, Marha?” Hunt asked. “What? What Wha – “ she returned before Belisnky cut her off. “The question is a bit complicated for her. Try simplifying it to key words and short verbs,” he suggested Hunt did. “Does Martha eat cigar?” This time she responded, “No Eat No eat Cigar. Eat Food Food Smoke Cigar.” “Rather impressive, Doctor,” Hunt complimented the scientist. Then he turned to Morrison. “Perhaps the prosecution would like an opportunity to examine the witness?” Morrison hesitated before agreeing, then took the box holding the animal’s playthings. With undisguised discomfort he picked out a stuffed teddy bear and asked the chimp to identify it. Immediately the beast began to jump in agitation as her artificial voice tried to keep up with her. “Man Bad Bad No take Bear Martha Bear Help Belinksy Help Martha Taske Bear Hel – “ As soon as she was cut off, she reverted to her natural chattering, while the researcher explained her paranoia. “She detects a level of hostility in you, sir. Frankly, I sympathize with you, and assure you that many people besides yourself are uncomfortable with the notion that an animal might speak intelligibly. But she is becoming somewhat agitated. Perhaps if someone else could interview her – “ “I would like to try,” Judge Feinman interjected. The participants readily agreed, and as Morrison brought the box to the bench, Martha subsided, unoffended by the prosecutor’s scowl. “Is Martha hungry?” Feinman asked, perceiving several ripe bananas and candies within the container. “Martha Eat Now Martha Eat – “ “What would Martha like to eat?” “Martha eat Now – “ Would Martha like Candy?” “Candy Candy Yes Can – “ He reached in and handed her a banana, which the animal adroitly grasped, peeled, and stuck into her mouth. Once while she was eating, Belinsky turned her ion for a moment, catching parts of an endless “Happy Martha” readout that appeared to startle the chimp slightly. When done, she faced the judge again, opening and closing her mouth soundlessly until her handler switched on the audio. “Good Banana Good Banana Thank you Man Candy Now Candy Now.” Pleased with his results, Feinman reached into the box and offered the requested treat. She took it, but instead of eating it immediately, Martha again pointed to Belinsky’s switch box, indicating that she wanted to be heard. “Cigar Cigar Martha Want Cigar – “ The judge found the cigar and held it out. She took it, sniffed at it a moment, then handed it back. “Nice Nice Man Eat Belinsky Cigar Thank You Thank You Man –“ The judge was both fascinated with the creature’s intelligence and charmed by her childlike simplicity. The animal sensed his affection and returned it, to the delight and entertainment of the court. But Hunt did not want to prolong this, and after a few minutes of interspecies conversation, he interrupted. “Perhaps I should proceed with the testimony, your Honour?” “Yes, of course,” the judge agreed, reluctantly handing over the animal, who had by this time joined him on the bench. “Doctor Belinsky,” Hunt continued after Martha had settled down, “could you briefly state your scientific conclusions regarding the intelligence of this animal?” “her mind differs from ours, the scientist said, “but only in degree. Our brains are larger and our bodies are more adaptable, consequently we are superior. But the difference between us may yet prove to be embarrassingly slight. I believe that Marta, deficient as she is, still possesses humanlike intelligence.” “Could you draw some clear dividing line between the mentality of her species and ours?” “No. Clearly she is inferior to the normal human. Yet Martha is unquestionably superior to deficient humans at the idiot level, and a peer to most imbeciles. She has an added advantage in that she is cleaner and can care for herself and offspring, which idiots and imbeciles cannot do. I would not wish to make clear-cut distinctions between her intelligence and ours.” Hunt id not ask his next question immediately. He had, of course, planned this experiment with the researcher beforehand. To complete the testimony he was to request one more demonstration, which by its nature could not have been practiced. But he was not sure that Belinsky would go through with it as planned. In fact he was not entirely sure he himself wanted the demonstration performed. Yet, there was a job to do. “Doctor Belinsky, does the humanlike intelligence of this creature merit corresponding humanlike treatment?” “No. We treat all laboratory animals decently, of course, but their value lies only in their experimental potential. Martha, for example, has already outlived her usefulness and is scheduled to be destroyed shortly, for the cost of her upkeep is greater than her experimental value.” “How do you go about eliminating such an animal?” Hunt asked. “There are a variety of quick and painless methods. I prefer an orally administered poison contained in a favourite food and given unexpectedly. Although that may seem a cruel trick, it prevents the anima from anticipating its fate. The fact of death is inevitable for all of us, but for these simple creatures at least, the fear of it need never reach them.” As he spoke, Belinsky extracted a small piece of candy from his coat pocket. “Would you demonstrate this procedure before the court?” Hunt asked. As the scientist offered the candy to the chimpanzee, Feinman finally realized what was being done. He voiced an order to halt the deadly experiment, but too late. The researcher had never personally destroyed one of his animals before, always leaving the task to assistants. As the unsuspecting chimpanzee placed the poisoned gift into her mouth and bit, Belinsky conceived of an experiment he had never before considered. He turned on the switch. “Candy Candy Thank you Belinsky Happy Happy Martha.” Then her voice stopped of its own accord. She stiffened, then relaxed in her master’s arms, dead. But brain death is not immediate. The final sensory discharge of some circuit within her inert body triggered a brief burst of neural pulsations decoded as “Hurt Martha Hurt Martha.” Nothing happened for another two seconds. Then randomly triggered neural discharges no longer having anything to do with the animal’s lifeless body sent one last pulsating signal to the world of men. “Why Why Why Why -- “ A soft electrical click stopped the testimony. TERREL MIEDANER Social Contracts and Rawls on Justice A social contract is a set of rules that a society as a whole functions under. Though these may often be codified as laws, it is better to think of the social contract as an agreement among the denizens of a culture about what “good” is. The social contract provides a definition of goodness, and is the subject of inquiry in ethics when we evaluate the foundations of the contract itself. Social contractarians refer to these foundations as the state of nature, the hypothetical origins of social contracts as a whole. Though the state of nature is not a historically “real” time or place, it can be thought of as the supporting ethical system(s) that establish and perpetuate a social contract. The social rules of etiquette, for example, are not as codified as a SC rule, but seem to have an underlying assumption about what it means to treat others in a particular way. Viewing the rules of etiquette through an ethical lens gives us insight into the underlying values that transform etiquette into the rules of law. For example, in the hypothetical state of nature, there is no prohibition against killing another person. It becomes in the groups self interest to agree on rules, either for teleological (virtue ethical) or for purely sociological reasons. The social contract begins to form, but the explanation for why murder is prohibited, as well as the definition of murder (does it include animals? Children? People who cut you off on the freeway?) is constrained by the ethical foundations before being fully integrated into a social contract. The contract contains then both the explanation of what actions are right, but also why, as opposed to the rule in the “state of nature”, which existed for purely practical purpose. Thus, many contractarians such as John Rawls, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Immanuel Kant argue that the Social Contract is the only situation in which “good actions” occur. The contract itself is “good,” if it is based on well-formed ethical principles, because those principles are now informing our actions. Contracts require an exchange of power in order to function. An individual gives up some of their autonomy/freedom (for example, the ability to decide what punishments are acceptable) to the contract itself, however it manifests, in exchange for protection, access to the social good and participation in a smooth running society. The state gains some powers, generally that of determining law and punishment, but is subject to the citizens remaining within the boundaries of the physical state and is always vunerable to revolution of the citizenry, which inherently dissolves the social contract. This exchange is ideally balanced between the state and the citizens, with restrictions of power on both sides creating a type of equilibrium, but how this balance manifests is dependent on the underlying ethics of the particular contract. As an example of a particular social contract, which does not exist except in theory, is that of Justice as Fairness created by John Rawls, a neo-Kantian who discusses social contracts in the context of fairness being the primary goal as opposed to equality. Fairness does not demand that every person subject to a social contract be treated exactly the same way; rather, that every person within a social contract should have access to the same social concept of Good (which in Rawls's case is based on deontology and the concept of agency). Rawls uses a series of principles to argue for the best possible social contract, which he believes to be rooted in Kantian personhood and actually, practically achievable. First is the Liberty Principle: that people only be limited in freedom in terms of specifics (ie, that you cannot own all the property in the society) but that there are intrinsic rights to action that cannot be infringed upon without creating deep inequalities. The second is the Equality Principle, that all persons under the social contract are fundamentally equal in worth, even if they do not have equal abilities. The inequality of abilities is addressed with his difference principle. His idea of difference regulates inequalities, both natural and those created by the society: it only permits inequalities that work to the advantage of the worst-off. Rather than using the idea of a state of nature to determine which values ought to be present in society and which inequalities are permissible, Rawls instead hypothesizes a “Veil of Ignorance”, where we attempt to create a society from principles that we would adhere to if we had no knowledge of our own social position or influence. If we do not “know” whether we ourselves are physically disabled, we are more likely to create a society where physical disability is not an impediment to using transportation, for example. This type of theory is also called a “First Position” theory, in order to separate it from the historical and linguistic implications of the State Of Nature. Using this, Rawls wants to show that there are intrinsic values (which are very similar to Kantian personhood) which must be present in any Social Contract for it to be Good (at least from a Kantian perspective...) In a Different Voic e Psychological Theory and Women's Developmen t Carol Gilligan Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp . 24-39 . In 1914, with his essay "On Narcissism," Freud swallows his distaste at the thought o f "abandoning observation for barren theoretical controversy" and extends his map of the psychological domain . Tracing the development of the capacity to love, which he equates wit h maturity and psychic health, he locates its origins in the contrast between love for the mother and love for the self. But in thus dividing the world of love into narcissism and "object" relationships , he finds that while men's development becomes clearer, women's becomes increasingly opaque . The problem arises because the contrast between mother and self yields two different images o f relationships . Relying on the imagery of men's lives in charting the course of human growth , Freud is unable to trace in women the development of relationships, morality, or a clear sense o f self. This difficulty in fitting the logic of his theory to women's experience leads him in the end t o set women apart, marking their relationships, like their sexual life, as "a `dark continent' fo r psychology" (1926, p . 212) . . Thus the problem of interpretation that shadows the understanding of women' s development arises from the differences observed in their experience of relationships . To Freud, though living surrounded by women and otherwise seeing so much and so well, women' s relationships seemed increasingly mysterious, difficult to discern, and hard to describe . While thi s mystery indicates how theory can blind observation, it also suggests that development in women i s masked by a particular conception of human relationships . Since the imagery of relationship s shapes the narrative of human development, the inclusion of women, by changing that imagery, implies a change in the entire account . The shift in imagery that creates the problem in interpreting women's development i s elucidated by the moral judgments of two eleven-year-old children, a boy and a girl, who see, in th e same dilemma, two very different moral problems . While current theory brightly illuminates th e line and the logic of the boy's thought, it casts scant light on that of the girl . The choice of a girl whose moral judgments elude existing categories of developmental assessment is meant t o highlight the issue of interpretation rather than to exemplify sex differences per se . Adding a new line of interpretation, based on the imagery of the girl's thought, makes it possible not only to se e development where previously development was not discerned but also to consider differences i n the understanding of relationships without scaling these differences from better to worse . The two children were in the same sixth-grade class at school and were participants in th e rights and responsibilities study, designed to explore different conceptions of morality and self . Th e sample selected for this study was chosen to focus the variables of gender and age whil e maximizing developmental potential by holding constant, at a high level, the factors of intelligence , education, and social class that have been associated with moral development, at least as measure d by existing scales . The two children in question, Amy and Jake, were both bright and articulate and , at least in their eleven-year-old aspirations, resisted easy categories of sex-role stereotyping, since 1 Amy aspired to become a scientist while Jake preferred English to math . Yet their moral judgments seem initially to confirm familiar notions about differences between the sexes, suggesting that the edge girls have on moral development during the early school years gives way at puberty with th e ascendance-of formal logical •thought°in boys . ' ° . . ° " The dilemma that these eleven-year-olds were asked to resolve was one in the series devise d by Kohlberg to measure moral development in adolescence by presenting a conflict between mora l norms and exploring the logic of its resolution . In this particular dilemma, a man named Heinz considers whether or not to steal a drug which he cannot afford to buy in order to save the life of his wife . In the standard format of Kohlberg's interviewing procedure, the description of th e dilemma itself — Heinz's predicament, the wife's disease, the druggist's refusal to lower his price — is followed by the question, "Should Heinz steal the drug?" The reasons for and against stealing are then explored through a series of questions that vary and extend the parameters of the dilemm a in a way designed to reveal the underlying structure of moral thought . Jake, at eleven, is clear from the outset that Heinz should steal the drug . Constructing the dilemma, as Kohlberg did, as a conflict between the values of property and life, he discerns th e logical priority of life and uses that logic to justify his choice : For one thing, a human life is worth more than money, and if th e druggist only makes $1,000, he is still going to live, but if Heinz doesn't steal the drug, his wife is going to die . (Why is life worth more than money?) Because the druggist can get a thousand dollar s later from rich people with cancer, but Heinz can't get his wife again . (Why not?) Because people are all different and so you couldn't get Heinz's wife again . Asked whether Heinz should steal the drug if he does not love his wife, Jake replies that h e should, saying that not only is there "a difference between hating and killing," but also, if Hein z were caught, "the judge would probably think it was the right thing to do ." Asked about the fact that, in stealing, Heinz would be breaking the law, he says that "the laws have mistakes, and yo u can't go writing up a law for everything that you can imagine . " Thus, while taking the law into account and recognizing its function in maintaining socia l order (the judge, Jake says, "should give Heinz the lightest possible sentence"), he also sees the law as man-made and therefore subject to error and change . Yet his judgment that Heinz should steal the drug, like his view of the law as having mistakes, rests on the assumption of agreement, a societal consensus around moral values that allows one to know and expect others to recognize what is "the right thing to do . " Fascinated by the power of logic, this eleven-year-old boy locates truth in math, which, h e says, is "the only thing that is totally logical ." Considering the moral dilemma to be "sort of like a math problem with humans," he sets it up as an equation and proceeds to work out the solution . Since his solution is rationally derived, he assumes that anyone following reason would arrive a t the same conclusion and thus that a judge would also consider stealing to be the right thing fo r Heinz to do . Yet he is also aware of the limits of logic . Asked whether there is a right answer to moral problems, Jake replies that "there can only be right and wrong in judgment," since th e parameters of action are variable and complex . Illustrating how actions undertaken with the best o f intentions can eventuate in the most disastrous of consequences, he says, "like if you give an ol d 2 lady your seat on the trolley, if you are in a trolley crash and that seat goes through the window, i t might be that reason that the old lady dies. " Theories of developmental psychology illuminate well the position of this child, standing a t the juncture' of childhood and . adoleescence,' at what Piaget describes as . the pinnacle of childhoo d intelligence, and beginning through thought to discover a wider universe of possibility . The moment of preadolescence is caught by the conjunction of formal operational thought with a description of self still anchored in the factual parameters of his childhood world -- his age, hi s town, his father's occupation, the substance of his likes, dislikes, and beliefs . Yet as his self- description radiates the self-confidence of a child who has arrived, in Erikson's terms, at a favorabl e balance of industry over inferiority -- competent, sure of himself; and knowing well the rules of th e game -- so his emergent capacity for formal thought, his ability to think about thinking and t o reason things out in a logical way, frees him from dependence on authority and allows him to fin d solutions to problems by himself. This emergent autonomy follows the trajectory that Kohlberg's six stages of moral development trace, a three-level progression from an egocentric understanding of fairness based o n individual need (stages one and two), to a conception of fairness anchored in the share d conventions of societal agreement (stages three and four), and finally to a principled understandin g of fairness that rests on the free-standing logic of equality and reciprocity (stages five and six) . While this boy's judgments at eleven are scored as conventional on Kohlberg's scale, a mixture o f stages three and four, his ability to bring deductive logic to bear on the solution of moral dilemmas , to differentiate morality from law, and to see how laws can be considered to have mistakes point s toward the principled conception of justice that Kohlberg equates with moral maturity . In contrast, Amy's response to the dilemma conveys a very different impression, an imag e of development stunted by a failure of logic, an inability to think for herself . Asked if Heinz should steal the drug, she replies in a way that seems evasive and unsure : Well, I don't think so . I think there might be other ways beside s stealing it, like if he could borrow the money or make a loan o r something, but he really shouldn't steal the drug -- but his wife shouldn't die either . Asked why he should not steal the drug, she considers neither property nor law but rather the effect that theft could have on the relationship between Heinz and his wife : If he stole the drug, he might save his wife then, but if he did, h e might have to go to jail, and then his wife might get sicker again, an d he couldn't get more of the drug, and it might not be good . So, they should really just talk it out and find some other way to make th e money . Seeing in the dilemma not a math problem with humans but a narrative of relationships tha t extends over time, Amy envisions the wife's continuing need for her husband and the husband' s continuing concern for his wife and seeks to respond to the druggist's need in a way that would sustain rather than sever connection . Just as she ties the wife's survival to the preservation o f relationships, so she considers the value of the wife's life in a context of relationships, saying that i t would be wrong to let her die because, "if she died, it hurts a lot of people and it hurts her ." Sinc e 3 Amy's moral judgment is grounded in the belief that, "if somebody has something that would kee p somebody alive, then it's not right not to give it to them," she considers the problem in the dilemm a to arise not from the druggist's assertion of rights but from his failure of response . As the-interviewer proceeds . with-the-series-of questions-that follow from-Kohlberg' s construction of the dilemma, Amy's answers remain essentially unchanged, the various probe s serving neither to elucidate nor to modify her initial response . Whether or not Heinz loves his wife , he still shouldn't steal or let her die; if it were a stranger dying instead, Amy says that "if th e stranger didn't have anybody near or anyone she knew," then Heinz should try to save her life, but he should not steal the drug . But as the interviewer conveys through the repetition of questions tha t the answers she gave were not heard or not right, Amy's confidence begins to diminish, and he r replies become more constrained and unsure . Asked again why Heinz should not steal the drug , she simply repeats, "Because it's not right ." Asked again to explain why, she states again that theft would not be a good solution, adding lamely, "if he took it, he might not know how to give it to hi s wife, and so his wife might still die ." Failing to see the dilemma as a self-contained problem i n moral logic, she does not discern the internal structure of its resolution ; as she constructs th e problem differently herself, Kohlberg's conception completely evades her. Instead, seeing a world comprised of relationships rather than of people standing alone, a world that coheres through human connection rather than through systems of rules, she finds th e puzzle in the dilemma to lie in the failure of the druggist to respond to the wife . Saying that "it i s not right for someone to die when their life could be saved," she assumes that if the druggist wer e to see the consequences of his refusal to lower his price, he would realize that "he should just giv e it to the wife and then have the husband pay back the money later ." Thus she considers the solutio n to the dilemma to lie in making the wife's condition more salient to the druggist or, that failing, i n appealing to others who are in a position to help . Just as Jake is confident the judge would agree that stealing is the right thing for Heinz t o do, so Amy is confident that, "if Heinz and the druggest had talked it out long enough, they coul d reach something besides stealing ." As he considers the law to "have mistakes," so she sees thi s drama as a mistake, believing that "the world should just share things more and then peopl e wouldn't have to steal ." Both children thus recognize the need for agreement but see it as mediate d in different ways — he impersonally through systems of logic and law, she personally through communication in relationship . Just as he relies on the conventions of logic to deduce the solutio n to this dilemma, assuming these conventions to be shared, so she relies on a process of communication, assuming connection and believing that her voice will be heard . Yet while hi s assumptions about agreement are confirmed by the convergence in logic between his answers an d the questions posed, her assumptions are belied by the failure of communication, the interviewer' s inability to understand her response . Although the frustration of the interview with Amy is apparent in the repetition of question s and its ultimate circularity, the problem of interpretation is focused by the assessment of her response . When considered in the light of Kohlberg's definition of the stages and sequence o f moral development, her moral judgments appear to be a full stage lower in maturity than those o f the boy . Scored as a mixture of stages two and three, her responses seem to reveal a feeling o f powerlessness in the world, an inability to think systematically about the concepts of morality o r law, a reluctance to challenge authority or to examine the logic of received moral truths, a failur e even to conceive of acting directly to save a life or to consider that such action, if taken, coul d possibly have an effect . As her reliance on relationships seems to reveal a continuing dependenc e 4 and vulnerability, so her belief in communication as the mode through which to resolve moral dilemmas appears naive and cognitively immature . Yet Amy's description of herself conveys a markedly different impression. Once again, th e hallmarks-of-the preadolescent -child' depict 'a-child-secure-in-her-sense-of herself ;' confident in the substance of her beliefs, and sure of her ability to do something of value in the world . Describing herself at eleven as "growing and changing," she says that she "sees some things differently now , just because I know myself really well now, and I know a lot more about the world ." Yet the world she knows is a different world from that refracted by Kohlberg's construction of Heinz's dilemma . Her world is a world of relationships and psychological truths where an awaremenss of th e connection between people gives rise to a recognition of responsibility for one another, a perception of the need for response . Seen in this light, her understanding of morality as arisin g from the recognition of relationship, her belief in communication as the mode of conflict resolution , and her conviction that the solution to the dilemma will follow from its compelling representatio n seem far from naive or cognitively immature . Instead, Amy's judgments contain the insight s central to an ethic of care, just as Jake's judgments reflect the logic of the justice approach . He r incipient awareness of the "method of truth," the central tenet of nonviolent conflict resolution, an d her belief in the restorative activity of care, lead her to see the actors in the dilemma arrayed not a s opponents in a contest of rights but as members of a network of relationships on whos e continuation they all depend . Consequently her solution to the dilemma lies in activating th e network by communication, securing the inclustion of the wife by strengthening rather than severing connections . But the different logic of Amy's response calls attention to the interpretation of th e interview itself. Conceived as an interrogation, it appears instead as a dialogue, which takes o n moral dimensions of its own, pertaining to the interviewer's uses of power and to th e manifestations of respect . With the shift in the conception of the interview, it immediately becomes clear that the interviewer's problem in understanding Amy's response stems from the fac t that Amy is answering a different question from the one the interviewer thought had been posed . Amy is considering not whether Heinz should act in this situation ("should Heinz steal the drug?" ) but rather how Heinz should act in response to his awareness of his wife's need ("Should Hein z steal the drug?") . The interviewer takes the mode of action for granted, presuming it to be a matter of fact; Amy assumes the necessity for action and considers what form it should take . In the interviewer's failure to imagine a response not dreamt of in Kohlberg's moral philosophy lies th e failure to hear Amy's question and to see the logic in her response, to discern that what appears , from one perspective, to be an evasion of the dilemma signifies in other terms a recognition of th e problem and a search for a more adequate solution . Thus in Heinz's dilemma these two children see two very different moral problems — Jake a conflict between life and property that can be resolved by logical deduction, Amy a fracture o f human relationship that must be mended with its own thread . Asking different questions that aris e from different conceptions of the moral domain, the children arrive at answers that fundamentally diverge, and the arrangement of these answers as successive stages on a scale of increasing mora l maturity calibrated by the logic of the boy's response misses the different truth revealed in th e judgment of the girl. To the question, "What does he see that she does not?" Kohlberg's theor y provides a ready response, manifest in the scoring of Jake's judgments a full stage higher tha n Amy' s in moral maturity ; to the question, "What does she see that he does not?" Kohlberg's theor y has nothing to say . Since most of her responses fall through the sieve of Kohlberg's scorin g system, her responses appear from his perspective to lie outside the moral domain . 5 Yet just as Jake reveals a sophisticated understanding of the logic of justification, so Am y is equally sophisticated in her understanding of the nature of choice . Recognizing that "if both the roads went in totally separate ways, if you pick one, you'll never know what would happen if yo u went the other way, ZZ she explains that "that's-the-chance you-have-to take, and like I said, it's jus t really a guess ." To illustrate her point "in a simple way," she describes her choice to spend th e summer at camp : I will never know what would have happened if I had stayed here, and if something goes wrong at camp, I'll never know if I stayed her e if it would have been better . There's really no way around it becaus e there's no way you can do both at once, so you've got to decide, bu t you'll never know . In this way, these two eleven-year-old children, both highly intelligent and perceptive abou t life, though in different ways, display different modes of moral understanding, different ways o f thinking about conflict and choice . In resolving Heinz's dilemma, Jake relies on theft to avoi d confrontation and turns to the law to mediate the dispute . Transposing a hierarchy of power into a hierarchy of values, he defuses a potentially explosive conflict between people by casting it as an impersonal conflict of claims . In this way, he abstracts the moral problem from the interpersona l situation, finding in the logic of fairness an objective way to decide who will win the dispute . But this hierarchical ordering, with its imagery of winning and losing and the potential for violenc e which it contains, gives way in Amy's construction of the dilemma to a network of connection, a web of relationships that is sustained by a process of communication . With this shift, the moral problem changes from one of unfair domination, the imposition of property over life, to one o f unnecessary exclusion, the failure of the druggist to respond to the wife . This shift in the formulation of the moral problem and the concomitant change in the imagery of relationships appear in the responses of two eight-year-old children Jeffrey and Karen , asked to describe a situation in which they were not sure what was the right thing to do : Jeffrey When I really want to go to my friends an d my mother is cleaning the cellar, I think about my friends, and then I think about my mother, and then I think about the right thing to do . (But how do you know it's the right thing t o do?) Because some things go before other things . Kare n I have a lot of friends, and I can't always play with all of them, so everybody's going t o have to take a turn, because they're all m y friends . But like if someone's all alone, I'll play with them . (What kinds of things do yo u think about when you are trying to make that decision?) Urn, someone all alone , loneliness . While Jeffrey sets up a hierarchical ordering to resolve a conflict between desire and duty, Kare n describes a network of relationships that includes all of her friends . Both children deal with the issues of exclusion and priority created by choice, but while Jeffrey thinks about what goes first , Karen focuses on who is left out. The contrasting images of hierarchy and network in children's thinking about moral conflic t and choice illuminate two views of morality which are complementary rather than sequential or 6 opposed . But this construction of differences goes against the bias of developmental theory towar d ordering differences in a hierarchical mode . The correspondence between the order o f developmental theory and the structure of the boys' thought contrasts with the disparity betwee n existing theory and'the`structure'manifest`in"the thought of the"girls Yet'in neitheryc'omparison doe s one child's judgment appear as a precursor of the other's position . Thus, questions arise concerning the relation between these perspectives : what is the significance of this difference, and how do these two modes of thinking connect? These questions are elucidated by considering th e relationship between the eleven-year-old children's understanding of morality and their descriptions of themselves : Jake Amy (How would you describe yourself to yourself? ) Perfect . That's my conceited side . What do You mean my character? (What do you you want — anyway that I choose to describe think?) Well, I don't know. I'd describe myself? myself as, well, what do you mean ? (If you had to describe the person you are in a way that you yourself would know it was you, what would you say? ) Well, I'd say that I was someone who like s school and studying, and that's what I want t o do with my life . I want to be some kind of a scientist or something, and I want to d o things, and I want to help people . And I think that's what kind of person I am, or what kin d of person I try to be . And that's probably how I'd describe myself . And I want to d o something to help other people . (Why is that?) Well, because I think that this worl d has a lot of problems, and I think that everybody should try to help somebody els e in some way, and the way I'm choosing i s through science . I'd start off with eleven years old . Jake [last name] . I'd have to add that I live in [town] , because that is a big part of me, and also tha t my father is a doctor, because I think tha t does change me a little bit, and that I don' t believe in crime, except for when your nam e is Heinz ; that I think school is boring , because I think that kind of changes your character a little bit . I don't sort of know ho w to describe myself, because I don't know ho w to read my personality . (If you had to describe the way you actually would describ e yourself, what would you say?) I like corn y jokes . I don't really like to get down to work , but I can do all the stuff in school . Every single problem that I have seen in school I have been able to do, except for ones that tak e knowledge, and after I do the reading, I hav e been able to do them, but sometimes I don't want to waste my time on easy homework . And also I'm crazy about sports . I think, unlike a lot of people, that the world still ha s hope . . . Most people that I know I like, and I have the good life, pretty much as good a s any I have seen, and I am tall for my age . 7 In the voice of the eleven-year-old boy, a familiar form . of self-definition appears , resonating to the inscription of the young Stephen Daedalus in his geography book : "himself, hi s name and where he was," and echoing the descriptions that appear in Our Town, laying out acros s the coordinatesµof'time-and-space a•hierarchical order in which-to-define one's'place . Describing himself as distinct by locating his particular position in the world, Jake sets himself apart from that world by his abilities, his beliefs, and his height . Although Amy also enumerates her likes, her wants, and her beliefs, she locates herself in relation to the world, describing herself through actions that bring her into connection with others, elaborating ties through her ability to provid e help . To Jake's ideal of perfection, against which he measures the worth of himself, Am y counterposes an ideal of care, against which she measures the worth of her activity . While sh e places herself in relation to the world and chooses to help others through science, he places the world in relation to himself as it defines his character, his position, and the quality of his life . The contrast between a self defined through separation and a self delineated throug h connection, between a self measured against an abstract ideal of perfection and a self assesse d through particular activities of care, becomes clearer and the implications of this contrast extend b y considering the different ways these children resolve a conflict between responsibility to others an d responsibility to self. The question about responsibility followed a dilemma posed by a woman' s conflict between her commitments to work and to family relationships . While the details of thi s conflict color the text of Amy's response, Jake abstracts the problem of responsibility from the context in which it appears, replacing the themes of intimate relationship with his own imagery o f explosive connection : Jake Amy (When responsibility to oneself and responsibility to others conflict , how should one choose?) You go about one-fourth to the others and Well, it really depends on the situation. If three-fourths to yourself you have a responsibility with somebody else, then you should keep it to a certain extent, but to the extent that it is really going to hurt yo u or stop you from doing something that yo u really, really want, then I think maybe yo u should put yourself first. But if it is your responsibility to somebody really close t o you, you've just got to decide in that situatio n which is more important, yourself or that person, and like I said, it really depends on what kind of person you are and how you feel about the other person or persons involved . (MT ?) Because the most important thing in your decision should be yourself ; don't let yoursel f be guided totally by other people, but yo u have to take them into consideration . So, i f what you want to do is blow yourself up wit h an atom bomb, you should maybe blow Well, like some people put themselves an d things for themselves … http://www.jstor.org Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical Author(s): John Rawls Source: Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 14, No. 3, (Summer, 1985), pp. 223-251 Published by: Formerly published by Princeton University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265349 Accessed: 27/04/2008 17:50 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. 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For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected] http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265349?origin=JSTOR-pdf http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=pup JOHN RAWLS Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical In this discussion I shall make some general remarks about how I now understand the conception of justice that I have called "justice as fair- ness" (presented in my book A Theory of Justice)., I do this because it may seem that this conception depends on philosophical claims I should like to avoid, for example, claims to universal truth, or claims about the essential nature and identity of persons. My aim is to explain why it does not. I shall first discuss what I regard as the task of political philosophy at the present time and then briefly survey how the basic intuitive ideas drawn upon in justice as fairness are combined into a political conception of justice for a constitutional democracy. Doing this will bring out how and why this conception of justice avoids certain philosophical and meta- physical claims. Briefly, the idea is that in a constitutional democracy the public conception of justice should be, so far as possible, independent of controversial philosophical and religious doctrines. Thus, to formulate such a conception, we apply the principle of toleration to philosophy itself: the public conception of justice is to be political, not metaphysical. Hence the title. I want to put aside the question whether the text of A Theory of Justice supports different readings than the one I sketch here. Certainly on a Beginning in November of I983, different versions of this paper were presented at New York University, the Yale Law School Legal Theory Workshop, the University of Illinois, and the University of California at Davis. I am grateful to many people for clarifying numerous points and for raising instructive difficulties; the paper is much changed as a result. In particular, I am indebted to Arnold Davidson, B. J. Diggs, Catherine Elgin, Owen Fiss, Stephen Holmes, Norbert Hornstein, Thomas Nagel, George Priest, and David Sachs; and especially to Burton Dreben who has been of very great help throughout. Indebtedness to others on particular points is indicated in the footnotes. i. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, I97I. 224 Philosophy & Public Affairs number of points I have changed my views, and there are no doubt others on which my views have changed in ways that I am unaware of.2 J recognize further that certain faults of exposition as well as obscure and ambiguous passages in A Theory ofJustice invite misunderstanding; but I think these matters need not concern us and I shan't pursue them beyond a few footnote indications. For our purposes here, it suffices first, to show how a conception of justice with the structure and content of justice as fairness can be understood as political and not metaphysical, and second, to explain why we should look for such a conception of justice in a democratic society. I One thing I failed to say in A Theory of Justice, or failed to stress suffi- ciently, is that justice as fairness is intended as a political conception of justice. While a political conception of justice is, of course, a moral con- ception, it is a moral conception worked out for a specific kind of subject, namely, for political, social, and economic institutions. In particular, jus- tice as fairness is framed to apply to what I have called the "basic struc- ture" of a modern constitutional democracy.3 (I shall use "constitutional 2. A number of these changes, or shifts of emphasis, are evident in three lectures entitled "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory," Journal of Philosophy 77 (September I980). For example, the account of what I have called "primary goods" is revised so that it clearly depends on a particular conception of persons and their higher-order interests; hence this account is not a purely psychological, sociological, or historical thesis. See pp. 526f. There is also throughout those lectures a more explicit emphasis on the role of a conception of the person as well as on the idea that the justification of a conception of justice is a practical social task rather than an epistemological or metaphysical problem. See pp. 5I8f. And in this connection the idea of "Kantian constructivism" is introduced, especially in the third lecture. It must be noted, however, that this idea is not proposed as Kant's idea: the adjective "Kantian" indicates analogy not identity, that is, resemblance in enough fundamental re- spects so that the adjective is appropriate. These fundamental respects are certain structural features of justice as fairness and elements of its content, such as the distinction between what may be called the Reasonable and the Rational, the priority of right, and the role of the conception of the persons as free and equal, and capable of autonomy, and so on. Resemblances of structural features and content are not to be mistaken for resemblances with Kant's views on questions of epistemology and metaphysics. Finally, I should remark that the title of those lectures, "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory," was misleading; since the conception of justice discussed is a political conception, a better title would have been "Kantian Constructivism in Political Philosophy." Whether constructivism is reason- able for moral philosophy is a separate and more general question. 3. Theory, Sec. 2, and see the index; see also "The Basic Structure as Subject," in Values and Morals, eds. Alvin Goldman and Jaegwon Kim (Dordrecht: Reidel, I978), pp. 47-7I. 225 Justice as Fairness democracy" and "democratic regime," and similar phrases interchange- ably.) By this structure I mean such a society's main political, social, and economic institutions, and how they fit together into one unified system of social cooperation. Whether justice as fairness can be extended to a general political conception for different kinds of societies existing under different historical and social conditions, or whether it can be extended to a general moral conception, or a significant part thereof, are altogether separate questions. I avoid prejudging these larger questions one way or the other. It should also be stressed that justice as fairness is not intended as the application of a general moral conception to the basic structure of society, as if this structure were simply another case to which that general moral conception is applied.4 In this respect justice as fairness differs from traditional moral doctrines, for these are widely regarded as such general conceptions. Utilitarianism is a familiar example, since the principle of utility, however it is formulated, is usually said to hold for all kinds of subjects ranging from the actions of individuals to the law of nations. The essential point is this: as a practical political matter no general moral conception can provide a publicly recognized basis for a conception of justice in a modern democratic state. The social and historical conditions of such a state have their origins in the Wars of Religion following the Reformation and the subsequent development of the principle of toler- ation, and in the growth of constitutional government and the institutions of large industrial market economies. These conditions profoundly affect the requirements of a workable conception of political justice: such a conception must allow for a diversity of doctrines and the plurality of conflicting, and indeed incommensurable, conceptions of the good af- firmed by the members of existing democratic societies. Finally, to conclude these introductory remarks, since justice as fair- ness is intended as a political conception of justice for a democratic society, it tries to draw solely upon basic intuitive ideas that are embedded in the political institutions of a constitutional democratic regime and the public traditions of their interpretation. Justice as fairness is a political conception in part because it starts from within a certain political tradi- tion. We hope that this political conception of justice may at least be supported by what we may call an "overlapping consensus," that is, by a consensus that includes all the opposing philosophical and religious 4. See "Basic Structure as Subject," ibid., pp. 48-50. 226 Philosophy & Public Affairs doctrines likely to persist and to gain adherents in a more or less just constitutional democratic society.5 II There are, of course, many ways in which political philosophy may be understood, and writers at different times, faced with different political and social circumstances, understand their work differently. Justice as fairness I would now understand as a reasonably systematic and prac- ticable conception of justice for a constitutional democracy, a conception that offers an alternative to the dominant utilitarianism of our tradition of political thought. Its first task is to provide a more secure and acceptable basis for constitutional principles and basic rights and liberties than util- itarianism seems to allow.6 The need for such a political conception arises in the following way. There are periods, sometimes long periods, in the history of any society during which certain fundamental questions give rise to sharp and di- visive political controversy, and it seems difficult, if not impossible, to find any shared basis of political agreement. Indeed, certain questions may prove intractable and may never be fully settled. One task of political philosophy in a democratic society is to focus on such questions and to examine whether some underlying basis of agreement can be uncovered and a mutually acceptable way of resolving these questions publicly es- tablished. Or if these questions cannot be fully settled, as may well be the case, perhaps the divergence of opinion can be narrowed sufficiently so that political cooperation on a basis of mutual respect can still be maintained.7 5. This idea was introduced in Theory, pp. 387f., as a way to weaken the conditions for the reasonableness of civil disobedience in a nearly just democratic society. Here and later in Secs. VI and VII it is used in a wider context. 6. Theory, Preface, p. viii. 7. Ibid., pp. 582f. On the role of a conception of justice in reducing the divergence of opinion, see pp. 44f., 53, 3I4, and 564. At various places the limited aims in developing a conception of justice are noted: see p. 364 on not expecting too much of an account of civil disobedience; pp. 200f. on the inevitable indeterminacy of a conception of justice in specifying a series of points of view from which questions of justice can be resolved; pp. 89f. on the social wisdom of recognizing that perhaps only a few moral problems (it would have been better to say: problems of political justice) can be satisfactorily settled, and thus of framing institutions so that intractable questions do not arise; on pp. 53, 87ff., 320f. the need to accept simplifications is emphasized. Regarding the last point, see also "Kantian Constructivism," pp. 560-64. 227 Justice as Fairness The course of democratic thought over the past two centuries or so makes plain that there is no agreement on the way basic institutions of a constitutional democracy should be arranged if they are to specify and secure the basic rights and liberties of citizens and answer to the claims of democratic equality when citizens are conceived as free and equal persons (as explained in the last three paragraphs of Section III). A deep disagreement exists as to how the values of liberty and equality are best realized in the basic structure of society. To simplify, we may think of this disagreement as a conflict within the tradition of democratic thought itself, between the tradition associated with Locke, which gives greater weight to what Constant called "the liberties of the moderns," freedom of thought and conscience, certain basic rights of the person and of property, and the rule of law, and the tradition associated with Rousseau, which gives greater weight to what Constant called "the liberties of the ancients," the equal political liberties and the values of public life. This is a stylized contrast and historically inaccurate, but it serves to fix ideas. Justice as fairness tries to adjudicate between these contending tra- ditions first, by proposing two principles of justice to serve as guidelines for how basic institutions are to realize the values of liberty and equality, and second, by specifying a point of view from which these principles can be seen as more appropriate than other familiar principles of justice to the nature of democratic citizens viewed as free and equal persons. What it means to view citizens as free and equal persons is, of course, a fundamental question and is discussed in the following sections. What must be shown is that a certain arrangement of the basic structure, certain institutional forms, are more appropriate for realizing the values of liberty and equality when citizens are conceived as such persons, that is (very briefly), as having the requisite powers of moral personality that enable them to participate in society viewed as a system of fair cooperation for mutual advantage. So to continue, the two principles of justice (men- tioned above) read as follows: i. Each person has an equal right to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties, which scheme is compatible with a similar scheme for all. 2. Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they must be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they must be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society. 228 Philosophy & Public Affairs Each of these principles applies to a different part of the basic structure; and both are concerned not only with basic rights, liberties, and oppor- tunities, but also with the claims of equality; while the second part of the second principle underwrites the worth of these institutional guar- antees.8 The two principles together, when the first is given priority over the second, regulate the basic institutions which realize these values.9 But these details, although important, are not our concern here. We must now ask: how might political philosophy find a shared basis for settling such a fundamental question as that of the most appropriate institutional forms for liberty and equality? Of course, it is likely that the most that can be done is to narrow the range of public disagreement. Yet even firmly held convictions gradually change: religious toleration is now accepted, and arguments for persecution are no longer openly professed; similarly, slavery is rejected as inherently unjust, and however much the aftermath of slavery may persist in social practices and unavowed atti- tudes, no one is willing to defend it. We collect such settled convictions as the belief in religious toleration and the rejection of slavery and try to organize the basic ideas and principles implicit in these convictions into a coherent conception of justice. We can regard these convictions as provisional fixed points which any conception of justice must account for if it is to be reasonable for us. We look, then, to our public political culture itself, including its main institutions and the historical traditions of their interpretation, as the shared fund of implicitly recognized basic ideas and principles. The hope is that these ideas and principles can be formulated clearly enough to be combined into a conception of political justice congenial to our most firmly held convictions. We express this by saying that a political conception of justice, to be acceptable, must be in accordance with our considered convictions, at all levels of generality, on due reflection (or in what I have called "reflective equilibrium").'0 The public political culture may be of two minds even at a very deep 8. The statement of these principles differs from that given in Theory and follows the statement in "The Basic Liberties and Their Priority," Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Vol. III (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, i982), p. 5. The reasons for the changes are discussed at pp. 46-55 of that lecture. They are important for the revisions made in the account of the basic liberties found in Theory in the attempt to answer the objections of H.L.A. Hart; but they need not concem us here. 9. The idea of the worth of these guarentees is discussed ibid., pp. 40f. io. Theory, pp. 20f., 48-51, and I20f. 229 Justice as Fairness level. Indeed, this must be so with such an enduring controversy as that concerning the most appropriate institutional forms to realize the values of liberty and equality. This suggests that if we are to succeed in finding a basis of public agreement, we must find a new way of organizing familiar ideas and principles into a conception of political justice so that the claims in conflict, as previously understood, are seen in another light. A political conception need not be an original creation but may only articulate fa- miliar intuitive ideas and principles so that they can be recognized as fitting together in a somewhat different way than before. Such a con- ception may, however, go further than this: it may organize these familiar ideas and principles by means of a more fundamental intuitive idea within the complex structure of which the other familiar intuitive ideas are then systematically connected and related. In justice as fairness, as we shall see in the next section, this more fundamental idea is that of society as a system of fair social cooperation between free and equal persons. The concern of this section is how we might find a public basis of political agreement. The point is that a conception of justice will only be able to achieve this aim if it provides a reasonable way of shaping into one coherent view the deeper bases of agreement embedded in the public political culture of a constitutional regime and acceptable to its most firmly held considered convictions. Now suppose justice as fairness were to achieve its aim and a publicly acceptable political conception of justice is found. Then this conception provides a publicly recognized point of view from which all citizens can examine before one another whether or not their political and social institutions are just. It enables them to do this by citing what are rec- ognized among them as valid and sufficient reasons singled out by that conception itself. Society's main institutions and how they fit together into one scheme of social cooperation can be examined on the same basis by each citizen, whatever that citizen's social position or more particular interests. It should be observed that, on this view, justification is not regarded simply as valid argument from listed premises, even should these premises be true. Rather, justification is addressed to others who disagree with us, and therefore it must always proceed from some con- sensus, that is, from premises that we and others publicly recognize as true; or better, publicly recognize as acceptable to us for the purpose of establishing a working agreement on the fundamental questions of po- litical justice. It goes without saying that this agreement must be in- 230 Philosophy & Public Affairs formed and uncoerced, and reached by citizens in ways consistent with their being viewed as free and equal persons." Thus, the aim of justice as fairness as a political conception is practical, and not metaphysical or epistemological. That is, it presents itself not as a conception of justice that is true, but one that can serve as a basis of informed and willing political agreement between citizens viewed as free and equal persons. This agreement when securely founded in public political and social attitudes sustains the goods of all persons and asso- ciations within a just democratic regime. To secure this agreement we try, so far as we can, to avoid disputed philosophical, as well as disputed moral and religious, questions. We do this not because these questions are unimportant or regarded with indifference,12 but because we think them too important and recognize that there is no way to resolve them politically. The only alternative to a principle of toleration is the autocratic use of state power. Thus, justice as fairness deliberately stays on the surface, philosophically speaking. Given the profound differences in belief and conceptions of the good at least since the Reformation, we must recognize that, just as on questions of religious and moral doctrine, public agreement on the basic questions of philosophy cannot be obtained with- out the state's infringement of basic liberties. Philosophy as the search for truth about an independent metaphysical and moral order cannot, I believe, provide a workable and shared basis for a political conception of justice in a democratic society. We try, then, to leave aside philosophical controversies whenever pos- sible, and look for ways to avoid philosophy's longstanding problems. Thus, in what I have called "Kantian constructivism," we try to avoid the problem of truth and the controversy between realism and subjectivism about the status of moral and political values. This form of constructivism neither asserts nor denies these doctrines.13 Rather, it recasts ideas from the tradition of the social contract to achieve a practicable conception of objectivity and justification founded on public agreement in judgment on due reflection. The aim is free agreement, reconciliation through pub- lic reason. And similarly, as we shall see (in Section V), a conception of the person in a political view, for example, the conception of citizens as i i. Ibid., pp. 580-83. I2. Ibid., pp. 2I4f. I3. On Kantian constructivism, see especially the third lecture referred to in footnote 2 above. 23I Justice as Fairness free and equal persons, need not involve, so I believe, questions of phil- osophical psychology or a metaphysical doctrine of the nature of the self. No political view that depends on these deep and unresolved matters can serve as a public conception of justice in a constitutional democratic state. As I have said, we must apply the principle of toleration to philosophy itself. The hope is that, by this method of avoidance, as we might call it, existing differences between contending political views can at least be moderated, even if not entirely removed, so that social cooperation on the basis of mutual respect can be maintained. Or if this is expecting too much, this method may enable us to conceive how, given a desire for free and uncoerced agreement, a public understanding could arise con- sistent with the historical conditions and constraints of our social world. Until we bring ourselves to conceive how this could happen, it can't happen. III Let's now survey briefly some of the basic ideas that make up justice as fairness in order to show that these ideas belong to a political conception of justice. As I have indicated, the overarching fundamental intuitive idea, within which other basic intuitive ideas are systematically con- nected, is that of society as a fair system of cooperation between free and equal persons. Justice as fairness starts from this idea as one of the basic intuitive ideas which we take to be implicit in the public culture of a democratic society.14 In their political thought, and in the context of public discussion of political questions, citizens do not view the social order as a fixed natural order, or as an institutional hierarchy justified by religious or aristocratic values. Here it is important to stress that from other points of view, for example, from the point of view of personal morality, or from the point of view of members of an association, or of one's religious or philosophical doctrine, various aspects of the world and one's relation to it, may be regarded in a different way. But these other points of view are not to be introduced into political discussion. We can make the idea of social cooperation more specific by noting three of its elements: I4. Although Theory uses this idea from the outset (it is introduced on p. 4), it does not emphasize, as I do here and in "Kantian Constructivism," that the basic ideas of justice as faimess are regarded as implicit or latent in the public culture of a democratic society. 232 Philosophy & Public Affairs i. Cooperation is distinct from merely socially coordinated activity, for example, from activity coordinated by orders issued by some central authority. Cooperation is guided by publicly recognized rules and procedures which those who are cooperating accept and regard as properly regulating their conduct. 2. Cooperation involves the idea of fair terms of cooperation: these are terms that each participant may reasonably accept, provided that everyone else likewise accepts them. Fair terms of cooperation spec- ify an idea of reciprocity or mutuality: all who are engaged in co- operation and who do their part as the rules and procedures require, are to benefit in some appropriate way as assessed by a suitable benchmark of comparison. A conception of political justice char- acterizes the fair terms of social cooperation. Since the primary subject of justice is the basic structure of society, this is accom- plished in justice as fairness by formulating principles that specify basic rights and duties within the main institutions of society, and by regulating the institutions of background justice over time so that the benefits produced by everyone's efforts are fairly acquired and divided from one generation to the next. 3. The idea of social cooperation requires an idea of each participant's rational advantage, or good. This idea of good specifies what those who are engaged in cooperation, whether individuals, families, or associations, or even nation-states, are trying to achieve, when the scheme is viewed from their own standpoint. Now consider the idea of the person.15 There are, of course, many aspects of human nature that can be singled out as especially significant depending on our point of view. This is witnessed by such expressions as homo politicus, homo oeconomicus, homo faber, and the like. Justice as fairness starts from the idea that society is to be conceived as a fair I5. It should be emphasized that a conception of the person, as I understand it here, is a normative conception, whether legal, political, or moral, or indeed also philosophical or religious, depending on the overall view to which it belongs. In this case the conception of the person is a moral conception, one that begins from our everyday conception of persons as the basic units of thought, deliberation and responsibility, and adapted to a political conception of justice and not to a comprehensive moral doctrine. It is in effect a political conception of the person, and given the aims of justice as fairness, a conception of citizens. Thus, a conception of the person is to be distinguished from an account of human nature given by natural science or social theory. On this point, see "Kantian Constructivism," pp. 534f. 233 Justice as Fairness system of cooperation and so it adopts a conception of the person to go with this idea. Since Greek times, both in philosophy and law, the concept of the person has been understood as the concept of someone who can take part in, or who can play a role in, social life, and hence exercise and respect its various rights and duties. Thus, we say that a person is some- one who can be a citizen, that is, a fully cooperating member of society … Scanned by CamScanner Scanned by CamScanner Scanned by CamScanner Scanned by CamScanner Scanned by CamScanner Scanned by CamScanner Scanned by CamScanner Scanned by CamScanner Scanned by CamScanner Scanned by CamScanner Scanned by CamScanner