Political Science: Foundations of Political Theory Final Exam

Outline

• Office Hours: Thursday 10-11 SSC 7211

• Extra Credit: Meme relating to course material.

What is Political Theory?

• An Activity:

• Study of whether and what political institutions, practices and forms of organization can be justified, how they ought to be.

• What does it mean?

  • Why government?

  • Should we obey the law?

  • Best tax system?

  • Who should vote?

  • Value of freedom?

Political Theory vs Political Science

• P Scientists ask descriptive questions: how the world is

  • Find the facts and reality of the world.

• P Theorists ask normative questions: how the world should be.

  • How should wealth be distributed.

• Normative Vs Descriptive:

  • Ask if the answer is falsifiable? The answer can be proved wrong.

Conceptual vs. Normative Questions

• Concepts are ‘essentially contested’ leading to disagreement that cannot be resolved. ex. what does it mean to be free?

• Normative questions ask how the world should be. Ex. What freedoms should citizens have?

• Ex. The Value and Nature of Democracy and Freedom? —. Did we consent to be governed?

  • What obligations do citizens have?

  • What does it mean to be fee?

  • What are the limits of freedom?

• Ex. Justice and Equality?

  • Does equality matter?

  • How should benefits/burden be distributed among citizens.

Is Political Theory Pointless

• A lot of political decisions are normative. ex. Should abortion be legal.

• Questions that cannot be resolved or proven.

• Theory gives tools to:

  1. Clarify values being invoked

  2. Draw attention to unstated assumptions

  3. Draw attention to alternative possibilities

Is Political Theory Utopian

• Why bother with theory if we cannot achieve utopia?

• Ideal Theory: An ideal world that theorists create where everyone complied with the theories brought forth.

• Deliberately unrealistic.

• If we know what the ideal society is we can walk towards it instead of walking towards nothing.

• What is unrealistic now may not be in the future. ex. slavery.

How do we ‘do’ Political Theory?

• We argue!

• Arguments:

  1. more fully understand what someone is saying

  2. assess whether the view is convincing or not

• PARTS OF ARGUMENT:

  • Conclusion: Claim that you are trying to prove

  • Premises: Statements offered in support of the conclusions.

  • ex. All men are mortal (premise) Socrates is a man (premise) therefore, Socrates is mortal (conclusion).

• What and Argument is not

  • heated disagreement, need to have reasons

  • a debate: Can’t just use any means necessary to persuade =, trying to show that others have good reason to agree

  • An explanation: Premises need to be arguing in support of a contestable conclusion.

• How to Evaluate an Argument?

  1. Break argument down

     • Conclusion, often explicit in intro.

     • premises (Because, since)

  2. Ask do the premises support the argument

     • is the argument valid?

     • VALID: Premises are relevant, sufficient to defend the conclusion.

     • “The Liberals spend too much money on national defense so you shouldn’t vote for them.” Unstated Premise: national defense doesn’t need that much money.

     • Invalid Argument: The Liberals spend too much money on national defense so you should vote for the Conservatives.

       • Premise doesn’t support the conclusion

  3. are the premises reasonable/acceptable/true.

What is the Point of Government? Justifying the State

Case 1

• Alex kidnaps Ben and forces him to live in his basement for 10 years

• Ben is tried and found guilty and imprisoned for 10 years.

Case 2

• Dem society enacts laws, finds ben guilty and is imprisoned

• Unelected government and is imprisoned arbitrarily.

Legitimacy: Alex acts illegitimately. The state acts legitimately.

Legitimacy: The state acts legitimately. The tyrannical state acts illegitimately.

Why do we need to justify the State

• They have a monopoly on the legitimate use of coercion

• Need to justify the monopoly in order to be legitimate

• i.e how do we distinguish the rightful use of power

Procedural Legitimacy

• Has some sort of procedure

• E.g. if its decisions are democratic, citizens buy into the procedure. Rosseau and Locke

• E.g if the state comes about in a good way, if a region decides democratically to rule themselves then that state came about legitimately and has PL. Compared to annexing a region.

  • Revolutionary state? Was it a small group of people or a large majority?

Outcome Legitimacy

• The state does what is best for its citizens regardless of what exactly they are doing

• If the state only acts in the interests of certain groups to the detriment of other it would not have outcome legitimacy.

• Bentham/Utiltarians’s: legitimacy depends on whether law contributes to happiness.

Justifying the State

• Theories produce conflicting results

  • Ex. Country A democratically decides to deport all Muslims: Unjust outcome that is a result of a just procedure

  • Ex. Country B’s dictator ensures all citizens have free healthcare: Just outcome as a result of an unjust procedure

  • Ex. The Original Indian Act

What Isn’t Political Obligation?

• The obligation to follow the law is tightly bound in the legitimacy of the state.

• What is it not?

• Why we legally have to obey the law: we will get punished

• Why we actually obey the law: why we should, moral obligation

What is Political Obligation

• Provisionally: There is a general moral obligation to obey the law:

More Precisely: Each of us is under a moral obligation to obey every law. This obligation provides us with a content-independent reason for doing so

• Each of us is under a moral obligation to obey every law that provides us with a content-independent reason for doing so

• Each of us: Every person present in the political community

• Moral obligation: A moral reason; NOT a legal reason

• Content-independent reason: Functions independently of the nature, character, or content of the action to be performed. Whether the law is good or bad, just or unjust. -

• Philosophical Anarchism: there is no content-indpendet moral obligation to obey. Don’t want to get rid of the state but do believe there is no need to follow the law.

• two versions…

• A Piori: It is impossible to provide a satisfactory account of any obligation to obey law

• A Posteriori: A satisfactory account of the obligation to obey the law has not been found yet.

CONSENT

• Citizens are obligated to obey the law because they consented to do so… But….

  • If the consent is express, it applies to very few people. Ex. Received Citizenship. If the consequences of not giving consent are so serious (deportation) is that free express consent.

• If the consent is tacit, it is hard to see how it creates an obligation.

  • What counts as tacit consent? By voting, paying taxes, using state provisions.

  • What about those who object to those laws?

  • What about non-citizens who are not permitted to participate? And what about those who vote even if they disagree with the government. is using any government service provide tacit consent? (Fire department?)

  • Tacit Consent creates a very weak link to the obligation to obey.

  FAIR PLAY

  • “Those who have received their fair share of benefits of a just practice have an obligation to take their fair share of its burdens.”

  • Those who have enjoyed the benefits of living in a law-abiding society have an obligation to shoulder the burden of obeying its laws

  • Free Riding: e.g. on a pub crawl where everyone buys a round except for the last person who leaves before its his turn. Someone who benefits form everyone else’s participation but not particpating yourself. These free riders are doing something wrong even if you aren’t harming anyone in anyway.

  • Everyone benefits from obeying the law therefore you have an obligation to do the same.

  • Mere Receipt of Benefit: Receiving a benefit, it seems insufficient to put anyone under and obligation to contribute.

• Ex. Nozick Radio Program: even if you benefited from you never gave consent to participate. People don’t see the benefits of the government as a cooperation but as a purchase.

  Associative Duties

  • “People acquire political obligations simply in virtue of belonging to their political community and identifying with it” We have obligations to our community just by virtue of being in it.

  • Political obligation similar to Family Obligation. We don’t consent to be part of a family for the most part.

  • Attractive Features:

    1. Does not treat ;voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ as dichotomous. You have obligations regardless of you chose or not.

    2. Fits with intuition that we have an obligation to obey our polities’ laws.

    3. Sense of shared identity with other members of the polity.

    4. Are families and polities similar? Yes and No, we would accept Paternalism from the family but not from the State (exception Vaccines, Seatbelt laws)

    5. does associative theory confuse being under an obligation with feeling that one is under an obligation? We feel that we have an obligation but do we actually have one.

    6. Does the associative theory imply that identifying with an unjust polity would mean one had an obligation to obey.

Natural Duties

• “We have to a natural duty to obey the law that is derived from a general duty to support reasonably just or nearly just institutions.”

• Universal in Scope

  • Duties held simply in virtue of being moral agents

    • Nothing done to acquire them

    • Not necessary to occupy a role or relationship.

• Critiques:

  • Wont justify an obligation to obey the law in unjust states (not content-independent)

  • Can the duty to support reasonably just institutions generate an obligation that binds the citizens of a state to its particular laws and institutions?

    • Called Particularity Requirement: the obligation is to uphold our particular laws and just institutions.

    • Ways to Meet This Requirement:

      • best way to support just institutions across globe is for everyone to acknowledge and act upon a special obligation to support the just institutions under which they live

      • Do justice to the claims of individuals who live under them.

        • Citizens of a state lie in a special relationship to these institutions

        • Samaritanism

COMBINGIG ALL FOUR

1. If a person has consented to obey the law, they’re obliged to obey ( Consent Theory)

2. Willingly enjoying the benefits of living in a law-abiding society obliges you to obey some laws (Fair Play Theory)

3. Natural duty to support just institutions means we ought to obey the laws of the just state to which we belong (Natural Duty Theory)

4. When we identify with our own political community, this may ground an obligation to obey its laws when they are not unjust (Associative Theory)

Civil Disobedience

• is there ever a time where it is permissible to disobey the law? Not content independent.

• What is CD?

  • A public, conscientious, non-violent breach that aims to bring change in law or governmental policies.

  • Activists have the aim of overturning laws they regard as unjust or unfair.

• CD does not mean legal protest because breaking laws

• CD does not mean revolutionary because fidelity to law

• Protests: Within the bounds of law

• Revolution: Trying to overthrow a regime.

• CD: Showing respect for the law in general but trying to change particular law.

Direct and Indirect Disobedience

• Direct: Law being broken is the same law that is regarded as unjust. (Powerful/effective). Not always possible as, if punishment is too sever, actually impossible to break the law one is objecting tp.

• Indirect Civil Disobedience: Different law being broken. E.g trespassing laws, or laws surrounding private property.

What Makes it “Civil”

1. Conscientious:

   • The Motive has to be sincere belief that a law is unjust or unfair. E.g MLK Jr. segregation violates constitutional rights.

   • Can’t be motivated by narrow self-interest

   • Doesn’t mean a person cannot benefit

2. Public:

   • CD is communicative. Appealing to the sense of justice of others. Trying tp demonstrate that a law is wrong should be changed.

   • Must take responsibility for breaking the law. Demonstrates fidelity to law.

   • Different to conscientious objection - which is a private or personal act.

3. Non-Violent

   • Most debated condition amongst theorists.

   • The rationale for non-violence- incompatible with public communication of injustice:

     • EIther for pragmatic reasons (Rawls);

     • Or principled ones

   • Ratonale for violbce - might be the only thing to combat other violence. Be MORE communicative

   • Extreme view (Morreall): Direct violence on others could be justified.

   • Moderate view (Brownlee): Physical and psychological harm illegitimate, but harms OK (such as property damage, or self-harm)

     • Needs to be directly related to the law/policy that is seen as unjust.

Justifying CD- Natural Law Theory

• Basic tension with political obligation?

• Most popular justification is natural law theory

  • Could use natural law theory justify civil disobedience, even if a different ground to political obligation.

• But any of the justifications for political obligation could potentially be carried over to civil disobedience. Maybe consent or Fair play theory, construct a theory for obligation to some laws and not others.

• MUST MEET A HIGH STANDARD:

  • Concerns about anarchy, and persons putting themselves ‘above the law’ lead some writers to think civil disobedience is never jsutifiable

  • For it to be permissible, must meet a high standard

    1. Injustice is serious and longstanding

    2. Civil disobedience a last resort

Freedom

What is Freedom?

• Is a person free to leave their abusive spouse?

• Is an observant Jew free to eat pork?

• Is a person in a wheelchair free to run?

  • There is no 1 definition of freedom that is applicable to all the scenarios.

What is Liberty?

• Conceptual question with many components.

• Need to identify

  • what does it mean to be free?

  • What kinds of things constrain freedom?

• 1958 Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty”:

  • Multiple contradictory purposes to which the word ‘freedom’ can be put

  • different types of societies claim to be true defenders of liberty - from liberal democratic states to authoritarian and totalitarian ones (e.g Stalin’s SU)

  • ex. Indiviudal Rights and Freedoms (US) vs Social Provisions (cuba)

Types of Liberty

• Positive and Negative Freedom

NEGATIVE FREEDOM:

• Freedom is the absence of a constraint (usually imposed by others)

• Example: “I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no [person]…interferes with my activity. Political liberty in this sense is simply the area within which a [person] can act unobstructed by others.” (Berlin, 2002)

  • You are free to leave the classroom (Absence of constraint)

• The extent of person’s freedom by knowing how much others interfere in what they want to do —> less interference = more freedom.

• Implication 1: Being unable to do something does not mean you are unfree to do it. ex. I am not able to play the cello buy I can play the cello.

• But it also means…ex. stairs for someone in a wheelchair, they are unable to enter the hall but they are not unfree to enter.

• Implication 2: Should only human interference count?

  • Berlin thinks yes - freedom is a social relation.

  • Implies that natural impediments (boulder in front of grocery store) do not restrict freedom but if someone’s car was stolen they are unfree

• Implication 3: A person is unfree if other people interfere with what you want to do. Ex. A slave that wants to be a slave —> They are free.

  • “If you can’t get what you want, learn to want only what you can get”

• Implication 4: A person is can be made less unfree by suppressing their desires. “if you can’t get what you want, learn to want only what you can get”

• Laws restrict negative freedoms. But do they really? There are just consequences for the action.

• Do threats restrict negative freedom?

• Do internal constraints (religion) restrict negative freedom?

POSITIVE FREEDOM

• Self-government, self-determination. What you can do.

• What is the source of control/interference that can determine someone to this rather than that.

• Aspects of Positive Freedom

  

  • MASTER OF ONE’s Self

    • Implies there are two selves.

    • Internal constraints

    • A higher self: you are free when you do what you really want to

    • A lower self: constrains the true desire.

Negative vs Positive

• I am negatively free not to smoke

• I might be positively unfree not to smoke if I am a slave to addiction.

  My ‘higher’ self does not want to be addicted, but my ‘lower’ self is craving cigarettes.

• Social/Material Conditions:

  • Freedom to realize oneself depends on the right circumstances. Having access to resources required to achieve your purposes.

- Worries about Positive Freedom.

It might lead to authoritarianism because who decides what you really want.

Republican Freedom

Classical Romans

• Political community should be governed by laws and populated by citizens

• Called this RES RESPUBLICA: Res= thing/affair, Publica= public —? Public affair(s)

• Developed a distinct understanding of being free. The stereotype of unfreedom was slavery.

• Slavery = Paradigm (meaning typical example or pattern) of Unfreedom

• Tyranny = Slavery

• Being a free person meant being someone that was not vulnerable to the arbitrary whims of someone else.

• Freedom as Non-Domination

  • what is domination

    1. The capacity to interfere…

    2. On an arbitrary basis…

    3. In certain choices that someone else could make

• it is a status, does not require actual interference, awareness of vulnerability on both sides is what makes you unfree. I am unfree regardless of if an action happens to me or not.

ANTI-POWER

• What makes these things unfreedom and domination is the lack of parameters to restrict arbitrary power.

• Democratic Decision-making

REPUBLICAN FREEDOM

• Different from negative freedom?

  1. A person may be dominated even if they are not interfered with

  2. Someone may be interfered with without being dominated. E.g recovering alcoholic,

Limits on Freedom: Poverty

The Debate

• Socialists have claimed that the poor (under capitalism) are less free than the rich

• Libertarians claim than the poor are no less free than the rich

• Locus (place where something is situated) of the disagreement? Comes down to…

• What counts as a constraint on freedom?

Libertarians

• Distinguish between liberty and the conditions of its exercise (AKA ‘formal’ vs ‘effective’ liberty)

  • The ability someone has to make use of their freedom.

• “If a [person] is too poor…to make use of [their] legal rights, the liberty that the rights confer upon [them] is nothing to [them], but is not thereby annihilated.”

  (Isaiah Berlin, 2002, p. 45) If you cannot make use of a freedom, that freedom is not relevant to you.

  1. Freedom is compromised by interference by others, not by lack of means

  2. Lacking money is a lack of means, not interference from others.

  3. (Therefore) poverty does not imply a lack of freedom.

• go on to argue politcally..

  4. The primary task of government is to protect freedom

• Relief of poverty is not part of the primary task of government

  Socialists/Egalitarians Two broad strategies:

  1.Freedom requires not only the absence of certain things (interference), but the presence of abilities (i.e. reject negative liberty)

  2.    Poverty amounts to interference from others (accept negative liberty)

Strat 1:

• Poverty frustates the ability to exercise autonmy over one’s own life….

  REPUBLICAN FREEDOM

• Poverty will leave people vulnerable to domination

  Freedom requires promoting the socio-economic independence of citizens

  Independence: the ability to operate normally in society without having to beg or borrow from others or depend on their beneficence 

Free Speech and Its Limits

• One of the most contentious issues, volatile because it is highly valued.

What is freed Speech?

• The Charter says that the government should not punish people for their speech. These are subject to limits.

• What about punishment from the Government, Media, Public etc. Do these punishments infringe on free speech.

Value of Free Speech

1. Democratic Reasons

   • The public needs info to make informed choices.

   • government is the srvant of the people - they should not censor them

   • people need to be able to hold the government accountable.

2. Truth Seeking.

   • Mill “On Liberty”: We make progress towards truth through discussions with others. If the discussion is restricted we will never hear new ideas, what we believe to be true becomes “dead dogma” —> Things we take to be true but never challenged, they are dead because they can’t change.

   • The Marketplace of Ideas: People freely expresses ideas, strongest ideas win out and help us progress to truth.

3. Autonomy:

   • we develop our thoughts by hearing others.

   • We develop ability to reason by expression and debate. We have considered other ideas and autonomsly chose to belive what we do.

What Kind of Freedom?

• Negative: Speech is free when other’s do not interfere. (democratic, truth seekin)

• Positive: Speech is free when right circumstances are in place to enable expression. (autonomy)

Free Speech Limits.

• When do we limit speech?

No Limits

• Andrew reports, knowing that is false that Beth has stolen money from her employer.

• Considerations:

  1. Does not seem to fall into any of 3 reasons to value freedom of speech.

  2. He finds value in tarnishing Beth’s reputation.

  3. Beth receives a lot of disvalue.

     • The only way to justify no limits is if you belive,2 trumps 1 and 3.

• Need to decide how to weigh free speech vs other values, ex privacy, security, harm etc.

Mill’s Harm Principle

• Believes that every doctrine deserves the light of day regardless of how immoral it is to others.

• He means everyone, even if it is only one person that supports a doctrine.

• Just because the majority believes something it does not give anyone authority to silence.

• HARM PRINCIPLE: When we should limit speech.

  • Only when their speech harms others.

  • Action that directly invades the rights of a person.

  • Ex. Corn Dealers, the 1% of the 1800’s

    • It is acceptable: If you express view that corn dealers starve the poor in print

    • It is unacceptable to yell it out an angry mob outside a corn dealer’s house. —> Places the rights of dealers (life/security) in danger.

  • Mill wanted free speech limited very sparingly

• A Broader Definition of Harm?

  • May restrict speech that we think ought to be protected.

  • Restricting general harm —> limit political speech —> may stir up nationalism that harms citizens of other countries.

  • Religious speech may cause harm (Kateb): Creates feelings of guilt, potential bigotry etc.

• Two Choices:

  1. Ban political and religious speech

  2. Conclude that harm to others is not enough to restrict speech.

Feinberg’s Offense Principle

• Speech being offensive is enough to prohibit it.

• Acknowledges offense is not as serious as harm therefore punishment should be less.

• Considerations of Prohibition:

  • Extent, duration, social value of speech: how useful or unusefull is it

  • Ease with which it can be avoided

  • Motives of the speaker

  • Number of people offended

  • Intensity of the offense

• Problems:

  • people may be over sensitive

  • offended because of prejudice. ex homophobia

  • Can be offended by statements that others find amusing.

Democratic Citizenship

• When speech is inconsistent with values of liberal democracy

• If it brand some citizens as inferior- because of sex, race, religion, etc.

• Threatens democratic equality,

Context Matters.

• Location (university vs. Military)

• Position ( professor vs. student in the dining hall).

Limiting Speech

• Methods of Limiting.

  1. Legal Sanctions

  2. Social/ Public Shaming

  3. No Platforming.

     • In favor argue either:

       1. No platforming restricts free speech but is legitimate b/c speakers are engaging in hate speech

       2. No platforming doesn’t limit free speech b/c failing to provide a platform is not a limit on free speech.

          • If a person doesn’t have a place to speak, do they have freedom to speak? —> No platforming would restrict freedom of speech.

          • Is free speech a negative or positive right? Others restricting vs. engaging in free speech.

     • Perhaps it is not freedom of speech but, freedom to hear.

       • Difference between failing to rent a room for a speech and forcing a group to cancel an event?

       • Cancellation: infringes group’s right to hear

       • Bare knowledge that the speech i happening enough? —> but objectors already know what the speaker will say; that’s why they’re objecting! So they already have the bare knowledge. The bare knowledge is what upsets them they don’t have to go listen to the speaker.

         • The first group is infringing on the ability of the second group to hear

Hate Speech

• No universal definition but.. verbal or written attacks on people based on their group membership.

• Why is it Hate speech?

  • Some definitions are more narrow and require.

    1. The group in question to be marginalized

    2. the speech to incite violence, discrimination, or other mistreatment.

• Other Considerations:

  1. does intent matter?

  2. Is the listeners reaction what matters? problematic because it takes a subjective definition and makes it more subjective.

  3. Must the attack be levelled at individuals or the group.

• The Challenge:

  • Over inclusive: Includes things that we don’t want to be hate speech

  • Under inclusive: leaves things out that shouldn’t be

The Harm Principle

• If hate speech harms (harms= limiting rights of others), what’s the harm in hate speech?

  1. Physical Harm: ex. Hutu Power’s dehumanizing rhetoric before and during Rwandan genocide.

  2. Could incite non-physical harms: ex. discriminations. Create new or validate prejudice’s.

  3. Could compromise dignity of those under attack: Waldron: The Appearance of Hate —> A society where ‘ist’ images are common making life difficult for the targets. “We may let you live amongst us now, but we can take it away anytime”

• Do we need Restrictions, special laws for hate speech? David Boonin says no because the harm in hate speech is already prohibited through other legislation.

  • Racial slur vs non-racial insults? What is the difference, he believes that hate speech is already prohibited.

Threatening Speech (Boonin)

• If it is threatening speech then it is already illegal.

• Like having a rule against using racial slurs in a library - don’t need the rule because there is a general rule of no speaking.

Group Libel

• Libel against groups, it is already prohibited by libel laws. “X race is lazy” isn’t an expression of fact, but opinion.

Case Study: Nazi March in Illinois

• 1977, Nazis planned to march through predominantly Jewish neighborhood wearing swastikas

• Did not plan to injure people or damage property.

  • Reasons for prohibiting the march:

    1. Physical harm to speakers because the march would insight a riot

    2. Psychological harm to Jewish people.

• Offense Principle: The offense caused by the march cannot be avoided because of bear knowledge that the march is taking place.

  1. Social value of speech is marginal

  2. large number of offended

  3. Motivations are to incite fear/hatred and directly insult

  4. Often contains no political content

  5. Not easily avoided by those towards whom it is aimed.

Equality

Go to office hours next Thursday, email prior.

Two Camps…

• Distributive Egalitarians: Equality means equal shares. Of “stuff”, money, well-being, opportunities.

  • Interested in everyone having an equal piece of the pie.

  • Disagree about holding power

• Social Egalitarians: Equality means equal status. People relate to each other on the same social respect

  • Concerned with the equality of the relationships that people have with each other. Ex. they only care about the distribution of money so far as how it affects relationships.

  • Eradicate hierarchy, oppression, domination, etc.

Is Equality Valuable Per Se? (In of itself)

• Plentificus: Lots of resources, great lives

• Scarcitius: Enough to eat, they have to work a lot harder and their lives are not nearly as good.

  • These planets don’t know about each other.

• Is there anything bad about this inequality? Would it be better for both to be the same then you believe there is an intrinsic value of equality.

• Natural assumption: To take things from Plentificus and give it to Scarcitius, but that is not possible.

  • Scenario A: To take from P and give to no one. Leveling down, by bringing one party down for the sake of equality.

  • In intrinsic equality you would say it would be better for everyone to be blind.

    • Leveling Down Objection: The situation after leveling down must be better than before… but this is counterintuitive.

• CASE: GENDER PAY DISCRIMINATION

  • $400 per episode, vs $3000 per episode. Would it not be better that his salary should be brought down to hers.

• Response to Objection:

  • There is a plurality of values:

  • Weigh intrinsic values of equality against others (fairness, utility etc).

Promoting a Society of Equals.

• Relational Equality:

  • All (adult) permanent members of society are equal citizens '

  • Equal in status – able to relate to each other as equals

  • Contrast with:

    • Caste systems/Class hierarchies

    • Dictatorial/authoritarian regime

  • Instead of equalizing we should figure out distributions that are needed to have a society of equals

  • No equality of wealth, but no massive disparities either. (No people that are so poor that they are marginalized)

Oppression - I.M Young

• Oppression is:

  1. Experienced by groups such as women, racial minorities etc.

  2. Structuarl injustice woven into the instituions that govern us.

• Forms of Oppression:

  1.Groups exposed to violence in order to humiliate/stigmatise

  2.Groups are marginalised

  3.Groups powerless to influence decisions that affect their lives

  4.Dominant group’s worldview imposed on subordinates (cultural imperialism)

  5.Exploitation (when the labour of a group gets used to maintain the power of a dominant group)

• If these exist a society of equals cannot exist.

Opression- Other Views

• Anderson: Stigmatization— demeans and justifies treating groups as worse. Negatively represents them. Justifies excluding people from positions.

• Fricker: Testimonial Injustice- listener gives a speaker less authority or weight because of the listiner’s prejudice. —> This process will serve to delegitimize, if they are consistently people of minority groups their conversations will not be given weight.

Egalitarian Ethos - Wolff

Currency of Equality

• Options

  1. resources

  2. Welfare

  3. Opportunites

Resouces

• Things that we use to satisfy needs/wants

• They can be:

  • Impersonal: transferable- wealth, services, property

  • Personal: health, talents, interest.

• They believed that resources can be harnessed to satisfy needs. As long as everyone starts with the same resources it doesn’t matter if the outcome is equal or not.

• Ronal Dworkin: Equality of resources is satisfied “When everyone has an equally satisfactiry share”

  • What is an equal satisfactory share: The Island Auction

    • Shipwrecked on an island, divide up the resources equally and let people do what they want with the resources.

    • But how do you compare the different resources.

    • Take something of no value, clam shells and give everyone them.

    • Using these everyone can bid for the resources. No one would be envious others. No one will have an identical bundle of goods but what they want.

• PERSONAL and IMPERSONAL:

  • Personal resources are non-transferble.

  • Inequalities in personal resources should be compenstaed by extra (or less) impersonal resources.

• Equality of Resources:

  • A society where wealth is ditributed equally BUT one is disabled while the other isn’t. Their equal resources would be spent very differently.

  • Redistributing impersonal resources mitigates the effects of a prior inequality in the distribution of personal resources

• Luck Egalitariansim:

  • Neutralizing the effects of luck.

  • Cohen: People should not be disadvanatged by circumsances that aren’t your fault.

  • Dworkin think that currency of equlity is resouces:

    • Must pass enevy test.

    • Ambition-sensitive, endowement-insensitive distirbution.

  • Amibtionin Sensitive:

    • Ambtions: Person’s tastes, prefernces, life plans, etc.

    • Ambition-sensitive distribution: reflects people’s voluntary choices about their goals, projects and preferences

      Endowment-Insentive:

    • Distribution ought not be influenced by the distribution of personal resources (natural talents, propensities, etc)

    • /heading 3

    • COMPENSATION:

    • Hypothetical Insurance Market

      • Insurance against being born with a disadvantage/impairment

      • How much would the average person pay for this insurance?

      • This estimated premium becomes compensation policy.

      • The Lucky provides for the unlucky.

Luck Egalitarian View:

• 2 Ideas:

  1. People should be compensated for undereved bad luck

  2. Compenstaion should come from the part of other people’s good luck

• jkdf

• Different Types of Luck According to Dworkin

  • Brute Luck: good/bad luck that is completely random

  • Option Luck: good/bad luck that is taken on by a person.

  • Only bad brute luck is compensated.

• Implications and Criticisms:

  • We don’t deserve the products of our natural talent or hard work, we don’t deserve our natural talents or hard work.

  • Harsh on victims of bad option luck.

  • Wrongly focuses on equal stuff rather than equal respect.

  • Anderson: A luck egalitarian is saying essentially that those who are unlucky are devaluing them. Demeaning them. Pitting the unlucky.

Equality of Welfare

• Happiness or preference satisfaction

• Inequality of wealth because it affects how well their life goes.

• Everyone should be equally happy.

PROBLEMS WITH EQUALITY OF WELFARE

• Adaptive Preferences:

  • People change their desires in light of circumstances.

  • Amartya Sen: A badly off person may not feel badly off because they did not grow up to expect more.

• Expensive Tastses:

  • Equalizing welfare could require giving more resources to people with champagne and caviar’ tastes’.

  • In order to equalize welfare more money must be given to certain people.

  • It is counterintuitive to provide extra resources -Dworkin

• Cohen: Welfare egalitarians should not finance expensive tatse’s that they chose to develop.

• Arneson: Any choice that we make does not need to be compensated.

Equality of Opportunity

• Minimal: Nor formal limits on people’s opportunities; no prejudices.

• Conventional: Life prospects should depend on ability and work, not social background. You should be able to become the best person for the job.

• Radical: Life prospects should depend on only those things that you choose.

QUESTION

• IS equality about sameness or difference?

Sufficientariansim

• Not have the same amount but that people have enough of what they need.

• Is th

• e problem that gap between the rich and poor or is it that the poor have so little?

• That every one has enough not that some have more than others.

• Varitaions:

  • Strict Sufficientariunsm: the ‘headcount’ view, ALways prioritse brining people to the thresho;=ld. No obligations above the threshhold.

  • Moderate Sufficientariansim: Priority to those the furthest below the threshhold. Disagreemt about obligations above the threshold.

  • Lexical priority for those below the threshhold.

• Positives:

  • Fits with intution that people should live good lives.

  • Not susceptible to the leveling-down objection

  • Avoids the objection to luck egalitarianism.

What is Justice

• Clarification

  • NOT talking about retributive justice

    • Making the punishment ‘fit the crime’

    • Criminal system

    • ‘miscarriages of justice’

A little History

• PLATO (429-347 BCE)

  • The Republic

  • What is justice

  • Is not always better to be just than unjust

  • Responding to the Sophists (nomadic Philosophers that made arguments through rhetoric)

  • Did not considered sophists concerned with finding the truth

  • First Chapter of Republic, focused on a Sophist, arguing that justice is the advantage of the party.

  • Another character, “justice is a human custom”

  • RING OF GYGES:

    • ring that turns the wearer invisible whenever they want

    • Shepard uses the ring to seduce the King’s wife and kills the King and takes over Kingdom

    • Imagine there were 2 rings, 1 worn by someone just and one by someone unjust: He says that they would act the same, the only reason we act just is because we are being watched.

    • Being just benefits the unjust man

  • PARTS OF THE SOUL & CITY

    • souls/cities are divided into three parts:

      • Reason-wisdom-Guardians

      • Spirit- courage- soldiers

      • Appetit-satisfaction-producers

      • If one part of the city dominates all else fails; same when applied to the soul

      • Justice is when all three parts are in balance. Harmonious and therefore JUST —→ PLATO

      • it is good for you to be in a just state.

• ARSOTOTLE (384-322 BCE)

  • Justice as what s lawful and fair

    • Conducive to the common good

    • Law should also be fair

    • Distributive Justice: Dividing benefits and burdens fairly

    • Corrective Justice: Try to restore a fair balance where it has been lost

    • Justice is the mean between two extremes: getting too much and getting too little. GETS exactly what they are entitled to.

    • We should be just because that is how we flourish as people.

• HOBBES (1588-1679): Justice as Prudence

  • Reason discovers prudential laws of nature. there is nothing that is inhernetly bad or good.

  • There are things that allow us to survive longer like peace.

  • There is no justice in the state of nature

  • Social contract creates the rules of justice '

  • UNJUST: breaking the terms of the social contract

  • Just: anything that doesn’t break the terms of the social contract.

  • The reason to be just is because of the law.

• IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804)

  • Use reason to determine right/wrong

  • Categorical Imperative: We should try to do only what we could reasonably will to be a universal law. (Can it be reasonably be willed to be universal law)

  • Justice: Others have rights against us that we do particular things.

  • Three Conditions:

    1) Interpersonal behaviors: things that will affect others (we cannot govern things that only regard us)

    2) Related to action and not just wishes ( a physical act)

    3) Intended consequences don’t matter.

  • Example: Stealing laptop is an injustice. Wishing to steal the laptop is not. Taking it without permission in order to call a cab is still and injustice, even if you intended to get it fixed for him.

  • One Universal Right: right to do what you want as long as it’s compatible with the freedom of everyone else in accordance with a universal law”

Concepts vs. Conceptions

• Concept: general structure of a term like ‘justice’ (or ‘equality’, ‘liberty’)

• Conception: specification of that concept =, filling in the detail

• People tend to agree on the concept, disagree on the conception

• CONCEPT OF JUSTICE: we give people what is owed to them’ not giving people what isn’t owed.

• BIG IMPLICATION: justifies using the coercive power of the state to force people to act in certain ways.

• What is it that is owed? To whom? From whom?

• Do the productive/talented have a duty to give some of their money to the less fortunate? or is this charity and not a matter of justice for the state to handle.

Justice and Other Virtues

• Political values and conflict;

• Society A: a democratic vote on what religions people can practice

• Society B: Constitution grants people the right to decide which religion to practice.

Utilitarianism

• Was the lockdown justified? You have to weigh the benefits and burdens to evaluate this.

• THE GIST

  • Descriptive Claim: We improve or worsen social affairs as we increase or decrease the some of well-being (utility)

  • Normative claim: We should strive to maximize utility

  • Kinda obvious?

• The Case of the Ugly Shirt:

  • Do you like my shirt?

    1. Panic: tell the truth or lie. Figure out which response is going to create the most utility.

    2. Calculate the effect on everyone of telling the truth

    3. Calculate the effect on everyone of lying

    4. Pick option with most utiltiy

What is Utility

• what is good for a person to makes their life go well

  1. Pleasure (hedonism) increases your utility.

     • Some unpleasant things are good for us, ex. going to the dentist.

     • Some pleasant things aren’t good for us. ex. being with a cheating partner.

     • Some neither pleasant/nor unpleasant things are good for us. ex. telling someone the truth

  2. Preference/desire satisfaction

     • avoids some pitfalls associated with hedonism. ex. hearing the truth, your preference is to hear the truth.

     • addresses public policy issues in transparent/efficient way.

     • people can be mistaken about what they desire. ex. wanting to eat a meal that is poisned.

Utilitrainism as a Theory of Justice

• public polices should be chosen and designed to maximize utility.

• Compare the likely outcome of a policy against all other alternatives

• …

• ATTRACTIVE FEATURES
  - Impartial perspective; a unit of utility for one person is the same for others

  - Weighs people’s utility equally; we cannot discount people because they are marginalized.

• UNATTRACTIVE FEATURES

  - May require unacceptable sacrifices

  • sacrifice one individuals happiness for another’s is very different to sacrifice one gratification for another within a single life

  • Example": Joe is trying to broadcast the World Cup final. A piece of equipment falls on him. If he is rescued you have to stop the broadcast will end, the small loss to billions would outweigh Joe’s pain.

  - Requires that sometimes we ought to be unjust

  • Example: a small town sheriff who can prevent serious riots only be framing and executing an innocent man.

  - May have negative impacts on perpetual minority groups

  • Example: a policy to remove all funding for refugees is proposed.

• THE TROLLEY PROPBLEM: Utilitarian’s should switch the track to kill 1 instead of 5. There is distinction between killing people and letting people die.

  • Does it matter if the 1 is a small child and the other 5 are all old.

  • What if the 1 cures cancer.

SLIDES 21-30

• Descriptive Claim: We improve or worsen social affairs as we increase or decrease the some of well-being (utility)

• Normative claim: We should strive to maximize utility

Consideration

• Consideration: Meaning “this for that”, a thing of value. Something that the law will recognizes

Justice as Fairness: John Rawls and the Socialist Critique

John Rawls

• …the guy who revived political theory form its ‘death’

• A Theory of Justice (1971)

• A theory of Justice: A Restatement (1999)

• Revived the idea of the social contract by Lock, Rouseau and Kant.

Justice As Fairness - The Method.

• Social Contract….Updated:

  • Social Contract: The imagined agreement between people about the ways social and political cooperation. People living in a state of nature who decide to leave this to create a form of government.

  • Rawls: Instead of a state of nature he beleives that people live in what he calls the Original Position.

    • Believes that the people deliberate and agree upon not the roles of government but the principles of justice, to regulate the basic structure of society. (The major social, politcal and economic institutions that comprise society)

  • The Question to ask whether things are just: What would rational people living in the real world consent to under appropriate circumstances?

    • Appropriate Circumstance? In reality you are probably self serving, if everyone acts in self interest no one would agree on anything.

      • This is where we get to the original position.

Original Position

• Veil of Ignorance: “no one knows their place in society, class, social status, or fortune or the distribution of natural assets and abilities, nor if they subscribe to specific ideologies or religions or if they are brave, intelligent, fearful etc.”

  • Forced to adopt and impartial perspective.

  • Forces to concentrate on morally relevant considerations.

• What the Parties DO Know:

  • Human Nature and Social Institutions.

  • They’ll be committed to a conception of the good. What makes their life go well.

  • Will want to pursue a life of their own.

  • They are rational heads of households

  • Limited altruism- mutually disinterested. Disinterested in others, no strong feelings. don’t care if they have more or less.

  • Society has, moderate scarcity (doesn’t have enough resources for everyone to have everything) and is closed (no new citizens and no citizens will leave) they will take it more seriously.

    • What would you agree to if you have to live in it .

• Important Conclusions:

  1. Each participant will want to maximize their share of (social) primary goods (resources that are useful to everyone, some cannot be distributed by institutions (natural primary goods)

  2. Parties will be averse to taking risks.

• What would you Choose?

  • Utilitarianism

  • Egalitarianism (worst off and best off are equal)

  • Sufficientarianism

  • Maximin: Maximize the minimum position

• Rawls: Parties should choose. Maximin

  • We should maxmise the minimum pooition when uncertain.

  • Country A or Country B:

  • Country A: Best off 1 Mil/yr, worst off 100/yr

  • Country B: Best off 500k/yr, worst off 1000/yr.

    • Rational to choose country B, if you are unlucky you will be much better off in country B.

• Decision Time:

  • Rank all possible principles according to their worst outcomes (the position that has the fewest primary goods)

  • Select the set of principles that delivers the best worst outcome

Justice As Fairness - The Principles

• What do the NOT Choose?

  • Utilitarianism- both total and utilitarian, the worst can be very bad, the gains of some offset the costs of others.

  • Example: A slave society could maximize total or average utility provided that the gains of slavers are significant enough. Parties in the OG position should reject this position because it asks some to pay for others.

• What DO They Choose?

  1. Each person has an equal right to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties which is compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for all (the “Equal Liberties Principle")

  2. Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions:

     a) They are attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity (the “Fair Equality of Opportunity Principle”)

     b) They must be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society (The “Difference Principle” )

• ORDERED LEXICALLY

Equal Liberties Principle

• Basic Liberties: freedom of thought/conscience, association, choose one’s own profession, rights/freedoms covered by the rule of law (e.g. arbitrary arrest), political liberties (e.g. participate in democratic institutions, speech/press, assembly, etc.)

• Lexical priority for this principle means liberties cannot be sacrificed for utility.

  • Must be maximized, sacrificing one person’s freedom can only be done to secure someone else’s.

Fair Equality of Opportunity Principle

• More Egalitarian

• Compensate for social disadvantages

• Aim is to guarantee that people with the same nature abilities have an equal prospect of success, regardless of their social circumstances

  • because natural abilities are often determined by childhood environment. This would lead to unequal opportunity.

• May require limitations on wealth accumulation to guarantee everyone as the opportunity.

Combined with the difference principle, limits permissible inequalities of wealth and to require society to priorities the needs of its least advantaged members.

Difference Principle

• We do not deserve our natural talents, however we must be incentivized to use these talents.

• Compensate for natural disadvantages

• Inequalities are permissible when they maximize the position of the least advantaged

• E.g. A doctor can work for 40h for $1000 or 50h for $1500, Working more hours benefits the least advantaged.

• If inequalities do NOT benefit the least advantaged, they’re are not allowed.

• By incenstivizing those with talents to do stuff it benefits the disadvantged?

Why would they Choose these Principles?

• Equality Liberty Principle: Freedom is necessary in pursing life plans. Lexical priority makes sense because this is essential.

  • Egalitarian considerations

• Fair Equality of Opportunity Principle: Parties don’t know what group(s) they will be part of and want to maximize their chances of success

• Difference Principle: Parties don’t know whether they will be least advantaged or not.

Critiques of Rawls: G.A Cohen’s Socialist Critique

• Criticism of the question that Rawls is trying to answers, that he’s got it backwards.

  • Rawls takes people as he thinks they are and determines what they would agree to.

  • That agreement is what justice is, what people agree to.

  • Cohen doesn’t agree with this, it doesn’t make sense that Justice is created by what people agree on, he believes that justice is a transcendent concept regardless of if we can or ought to achieve it or not.

    • Facts about feasibility is unrelated to what Justice is. Fact neutral.

  • Rawls believes that justice must be constructed around what can be achieved.

• Justice is not what (flawed) people would agree on.

G.A Cohen’s Objections to the Difference Principle

• Difference Principle (DP) assumes inequality is necessary to benefit the worst off

• Rawls’ Assumption: Productive people would be unwilling to be as productive if they weren’t allowed to be better off than others.

  • Cohen’s challenge is why the inequality in talent needs to be necessary to benefit the worst off —Answer: if the inequality is necessary it is because and only because productive people would be unwilling to be as productive as they are if they weren’t able to do better than others.

Cohen’s 1st ‘But’

• Inequality is necessary because productive people will be unproductive without it.

• Inequality isn’t strictly necessary to make the worst off better off.

  • not necessary independent of human will, it is only because the productive aren’t willing to act otherwise

  • It is their choices that make the inequality necessary.

  • If Dr. Grey worked more hours if she wanted.

  • If I make it necessary to make you pay a toll to go through the gate and you need to go through the gate and you ask me to justify the toll and I say the toll is necessary for you to go through the gate.

Cohen’s 2nd ‘But’

• Productive people act this way because they themselves reject the Difference Principle (that inequality is justified if it benefits the worst off).

• Full Implementation of the DP requires it to be observed by citizens as well as the state.

• THE OBJECTION TO THE DP:

  1. well off people can improve the lot of the worst off without increasing inequality (the incentive)

     • ex. people can always work harderd for free or for the same amount as less hard working people. The well off themselves make it necessary for payments.

  2. It is the well-off who make incentives necessary.

  3. People who are motivated by the concern for the worst off (DP) don’t need incentives to produce more.

  4. They refuse to do so without incentives

  5. Therefore they don’t really affirm the DP.

Cohen’s Egalitarian Ethos

• Full implementation of the DP requires an Egalitarian Ethos

  • high potential earners should cease from using the adavanytages awarded to them through their high bargaining power.

  • full implementation of DP requires EG Ethos of justice

• Set of attitudes whose effects is to assign priority to the interests of the worst off in society

• People’s personal, individual choices would be motivated by the difference principle, not jus the basic structure the way the Rawls sees it.

WHAT COUNTS AS THE ‘BASIC STRUVCTURE”

• Rawls: Principle of justice apply only to the basic structure of society and not to citizen’s choices.

  • institutions not people in private capacity.

• Narrow: Coercive mechanisms state count, like laws and taxation. Citizens as self maximizers under capitalist regime with the government implementing a taxation system that benefits the worst off.

• Wide: All major structures that have profound impacts on equality. Like families, personal decisions under DP and move from institutions to personal things. Cohen prefers this.

More Rawls Bashing: Feminist and Racial Critiques

CAROLE PATEMAN

• Rawls seeks an OP that will confirm ‘our’ instuitions baout existing institutions

• Rawl’s task is to find an orginial position to find our position about exisitng institutions.

• Create the OP to get the insitutions that already exists out of them.

• But insitutions are not just they are often patriarchial.

• Our = Men’s (institutions)

• Rawls claims parties:

  • Heads of household

  • descendants they’re concerened about

• Takes for granted:

  • sexual differneces exist

  • sex happens

  • children are born

  • families are formed.

• Rawl’s parties in OP are reasoning entities, heads of families AKA men that represent their wives and children.

• If they are not informed of their sex they will still assume it. Think the way men will.

• They never say the parties wont know how families are set up.

I.M YOUNG

• assumption of impartiality in OP, void of emotion, care or concern for otjers, disinterested parties —> stereaotypically masculine traits.

• impartialoity/universiality create a false dichotomy between emoriotn and reason, overvalues reason and undervalues feeling.

• People think about things differently —> sex, therefore situated differently.

JANE ENFLISH

• parties as heads of household rather than indiviudal makes the family opauque to justice.

• “Suppose that, due to efficiency, all families gain significantly if the natural childbearers are universally appointed as child rearers.”

  • good from the POV of the heads of hosuholds

  • not fair or just from POV from some individuals in famjly

  • Especially it doesn’t allow you to do other acitivities

  • Violates FEO principle.

  • by excluding the family from the scope and realm of justice, children born into these families would be socilaized on the division and they wouldn’t be able to develop a proper meaning of justice.

SUSAN MOLLER OKIN

• Paradox:

  • Rawls treats families as integral to structure of society because its where children develop their sense of justice. families are where the sense of justice is developed so need to be internally just.

  • BUT also treat them as non-political entities and therefore don’t need to organize themselves under 3 principles.

• The family is where justice develops and she believes the family must be just as well. Rawls doesn’t, and actively excludes the family from justice.

• In revised version: does adress formal and legal sex discrimination.

  • Only applied to the basic freedoms.

  • And doesn’t adress that formal equality doesn’t always translate into actual equality.

• Applying Rawl’s theory would require radical social change.

• In a just society “one’s sex would have no more relevance that one’s eye coulour or tje length of one’s toes.” (Okin 1989).

• Solution for women’s equality is to make domestic labor divided equally between the 2.

• State subsidies daycare, flexible work schedules etc…

• Also wanted to make sure that women who chose traditional pattern owuld be protected. all adults in the home had a legal entitlement to all the income that come’s into the home.

• Step away from liberal insistence on the private sphere.

RAWLS’ RESPONSE

• Continued to exempt family from the theory of justice. Argued traditional distribution was voluntary and would not lead to more injustice.

  • being immune to intervention means injustice can occur (ex. Martial rape)

• Fails to recognize ‘voluntary choice’ is problematic of no alternatives

• Affirmed the public/private distinction

RACE AND RAWLS

ELIZABETH ANDERSON

• Rawl’s theory promote ideal norms (like coulourblindness) under non-ideal conditions

  • non-ideal conditions require race-specific policies, not universal ones.

• Original Position precludes recognition of historical injustice.

TOMMIE SHELBY

• Use equality of opportunity principles.

• Racial injsutce now are the result of institutional practices earlier.

• Unequal distrib ution can be explained by the cumaltive imoact of past injsutices.

• Fair equality of opportunity principle: expand employment, educational oppurtunities etc.

• Society that employs this would eliminate socio-economic burdens that racial minorities face now.

CHARLES MILLS

• Rawls did not apply FEO to race.

• Obvious that it can’t because Rawl’s didn’t apply it.

• Race was on Rawl’s radar, explicitly condemes racism and said no one put forth racist doctrines in the OP (VOI).

• Did Rawls believe:

  1. Principles of justice in Theory can be used directly with race?

  2. Different principles of justice are required to deal with race?

  3. Although different principles of justice are required, they can be derived from the original Theory framework

• why didn’t he apply it. Rawl’s probably believed it couldn’t be applied.

• Howk do we get from an unjust society to a just one? Rals doesn’t tell us.

  • “Justice as fairness is a political conception of justice for the special case of the basic structure of a modern democratic society…we view a democratic society as a political society that excludes a confessional or an aristocratic state, not to mention a caste, slave, or a racist one” (Rawls)

• How can polictal theorists (white) possibly exclude race/racial justice? when it has been intergal in shaping the world.

  • MILL: we all focus too much on ideal theory (everyone following the theories of justice)

How does that work?

• Corrective measures unnecessary where no race has been discriminated against (i.e. under ideal theory)

• A perfectly just society would be raceless – so we don’t need to worry about racial justice within ideal theory

• Race ends up completely marginalized in white political theorists’ work

• No conflict between the theory of liberalism and anti-racism

• Problem is how liberalism has been constructed and practiced

• But Rawls/Nozick (e.g.) ignore racial subordination.

RACE AND THE SOCIAL CONTRACT

The Racial Contract

• How did the ideals of the Enlightnement coincide with britality of racial slavery

• Hypocrisy? We would follow the social contract if we weren’t so hypocritical.

• Built in? Racial injustice built into the social contract.

MILL’S RACIAL LIBERALISM

• Racial liberlaism - dominant sonce LOCKE HOBBES etc.

• equality amongts white men only.

• Racism not an anomoly but built in.

• Inferior treatment if POCs not incongrunet with liberal norms b/c by these norms POCs are less than full persons.

MILL’s CLIAMS BAOUZT SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY

1. Proponents held racist attitudes which taint the intellectual framework.

   • yes, founders of the social contract theory were racist, ad hominem attack.

2. Embodies racist assumptions so theories overlook racial domination

3. Embodies ‘whiteness’ - the outlook of a dominant racial group enjoying privileges.

4. Obscures racist practices, rendering them invisible.

5. Acknowledges racist practices but see them as failures to fulfil moral duties, not as structurally oppressive.

DOMINATION CONTRACT

• Existing social contract was made by and through white people which shaped the modern world.

• Seeing social contract as a domination contract captures the realities of actual modern states.

• Race is a global structure of privilege.

• Model of contract where parties don’t know anything racial identities, but

• do know their society’s history of racial exploitation

• parties will agree to racial reoperations as corrective justice.

  • What measures would you select to correct for a history of racial injustice?

  • What changes should be made to the political system, economy, culture, etc.?

  • 1)End racially unequal citizenship;

    2)End racial exploitation;

    3)End racial disrespect

The Libertarian Critique of Rawls: Robert Nozick Justice as Entitlemeny

Nozickean Rights

• Centre of the entitlement theory are rights:

  1) He is reffering to Moral Rights not Legal ones

  2) No meaning welfare rights (positive rights), right to life could be considered a positive right, this rights are special and arises out of contracts

  3) rights tp non-inteference (neg right), people sjouldn’t endanger you for example. Property rights other people shouldnt steal or destory

  4) Rights are inviolabl, can’t overried by other things like maxing out utility, rights limit what others may do to yoy.

  • ex. Someone couldn’t steal your boat to save some children.Utility maxing

• Strikes many people as too severe, it takes Rawl’s critique more seriously than theory of justice.

  • It allowed trade offs in order to max utility. The principle underlying the critique of utilitarianism is that indiviudals are ends and not merel means. they can’t be used to for the ends of others.

  • But it also condemns Rawls’ difference principle, for Nozick only a theory of his conception of rights would incorporate his belief that people should not be used for achieving other people’s ends.

Taxation is Forced Labor

• Nozick and Rawls disagree about the idea of self ownership.

• N believes that each person is the morally rightful owner of his person and powers and each is free (morally speaking) to use those powers as he wishes, provided he does not deploy them aggressively against others.

  • Extreme anti utilitarianism, Brian Barry, making someone a little worse off and making someone a lot better off is never something you should if they wouldn’t otherwise do.

  • Ex. Forced organ transplants are not permissible even if others’ lives depend on it.

    To Nozick self ownership, also rule out redistib tax bc tax is like forced transfer of body parts.

• Say you get taxed 40% for 5 days, then she works 2 days for the government and 3 days for herself. —> Violates their self ownership bc yiu have to transfer something you own.

• 3 Kinds of Principles of Justice

  • Historical: Justice frome the oersepective of how distorbution came about. If it came out in a just way then it is a just resukt

  • End result: look at what the acc distribution is now, what it is at the moment.

    • ex. Person in Prison, we look at if they deserve to have less, this is simillar to historical and procedural legitimacy. Just bc of how it came about or how it looks at the end of the day.

  • Patterned: “to each according to X” distibutes goods accrosding to some criteria, need, merit, inyelligence, csn be historical or end result.

    • Ex. distribution for merit, pattern based on history.

    • Ex. welfare egalitarian distirubution, end result.

    • For Nozick there is no overall pattern because it is about what people decide to do.

Entitlement Theory

• “from each as they choose, to each as they are chosen” (Nozick).

• Distribution is just if everyone is entitled to their property as under the distribution.

• How do they become entitled.

  1. Person who acquires property according to principles of justice in acquisition is entitled to that property

  2. A person who acquires property in accordance with the principle of justice in transfer, from someone else entitled to that property, is entitled to the property.

  3. If past justice has shaped property holdings, rectification is due.

JUSTICE IN ACQUISTION:

• Needs to start by explaining how people can have entitlement over initial resources.

• Comes before justice of transfers.

  1. World is initially unowned.

  2. People own themselves

  3. Owning one’s self means one has the right to appropriate the things you create or mix labor with.

     • ex. Fencing off a piece of land and plant corn you own the corn.

     • Draws on Locke’s theory of acquisition.

  4. Don’t worsen others’ situation. Meaning you need to leave enough and as good for others.

     • Locke: believed, fine to fence off a piece of land even if it was impossible for people to get that specific piece of land so long as there are other fields available to cultivate.

• Nozick thinks that is too strict and make all appropriations illegitimate. Appropriation is contingent on not making others worse off than they would have been if the world had remained unowned. Nozick’s Case:

  a) Being unable to acquire something doesn’t mean you are unable to use it.

  • Someone acquiring the last tree doesn’t make it so that you cannot use wood, you can still appropriate it if Lumber can be purchased.

  • How well of you’d be if no one could own trees, if the world was completely unowned you would not be able to use the lumber AT ALL.

  b) Allowing appropriation potentially benefits everyone.

  • Including those who haven’t appropriated anything for themselves. He says the institution of private property incentives people to efficiency, productivity and experimentation.

JUSTICE IN TRENASFER

• Voluntary exchanges are justice preserving.

  • Ex. Selling you care vs Stealing the care (Injustice, exchange was fragulent)

  • He uses this to defend:

• Substantial inequalities of wealth can be just if they areas from voluntary transfers.

• Imagine a patterned theory, (D1) like egalitarianism, everyone has the same amount of money.

• Imagine Lebron has a contract with his team that for each home game, fans will drop 5 dollars into a box on the way into the arena.

• Now a new distribution (D2) exists, - with Lebron having 5 million more than everyone else.

  • Nozick, says there is nothing unjust because each fan was willing, it was their choice to do what they wanted w/ that money.

• LIBERTY UPSETS PATTERNS:

  • “:No patterned principle of justice can be continuously realized without continuous interference in people’s lives”

    • Ex. Gift Giving, upsets the pattern of resource distribution, to maintain the patter you need to interfere.

  • NB: Nozick prioritizing liberty over equality.

    • Or whatever the pattern is.

    • If that pattern was more important than equality it wouldn’t matter that liberty upset the pattern. We would accept restrictions on our voluntary exchanges OR periodic redistribution necessary to preserve the Just distribution.

• Rawls’ Response:

  • What it means to be entitled to a holding is defined by the public system, before the fans deposit the 5 dollars he knows he is only entitled to a certain portion based on the structured. He isn’t entitled to the part that will be redistributed anyways.

  • Unjustified interference in order to maintain the pattern. Citizens know, understand and uphold the system of patterned redistribution.

  • No one is prevented from doing something, but all parties engage with full knowledge that portion will be redistributed for the principles of justice.

• Radical Inequalities of wealth can be just, Not all inequality is just though.

• If any step in the chain involves force, fraud, theft — subsequent transfers are illegitimate. (Nozick)

  • E. Passing along stolen goods.

• Indifferent to needs, equality, fairness and utility.

RECTIFICATORY JUSTICE

• Some people acquire property, through unjust means - theft, fraud, enslavement, conquest, etc.

  • Colonialism. Enslavement.

  • This is still going on because welfare, public education etc is benefiting from resources belonging to others. ex. Income Tax.

• Society includes both just and unjust holdings.

• Admits there are hard questions:

  • What obligations to descendants of unjust acquirers have to those made worse off?

  • How far back must one go in wiping the slate clean of injustice?

  • What may victims of injustice permissibly do to rectify the injustice done to them.

• Suggested a Principle of Rectification:

  • Try to determine what holdings in society would look like without the injustices of acquisition and transfer

    • Redistribute resources if they ended up worse off.

  • Compare to the actual holdings of society

  • He proposes as a rule of thumb, we ought to organize society so as to maximize the position of whatever group ends up least well-off in the society.

    • Least well off are likely to contain dependents of victims while the well-off likely contain descendants of perpetrators

  • Requires and extensive state - in the short term. Also requires institutionalising Rawl’s differnce principle.

Critique

• Brian Barry, Nozick proposes to “starve or humiliate ten percent or so of his fellow citizens… by eliminating all transfer payments through the state (tax), leaving the sick, the old, the disabled, the mothers with young children and breadwinners, and so on, to the tender mercies of private charity, given at the whim and pleasure of the donors and on any terms that they choose to impose”

  • Libertairan’s like Nozick cannot respond to this through imposing a minimum threshhold or standard of taxation because doing so woul violate their fundamental views.

• RESPONSE 1:

  • Members of society freely choose to transfer holdings to achieve a particular distribution

  • But… this seems impossible because maintaining the pattern would require everyone to gather complex info to make sure that their actions don’t disrupt the pattern.

  • This response doesn’t really respond to Barry’s critique bc The pattern would still be on their own whim and could decide not to at any time.

• RESPONSE 2:

  • Distinguish between a good and just society, Nozick rules out forcing the rich to transfer their wealth but it doesn’t prohibit them doing so voluntarily.

    • Good society, ppl might act out in charity.

  • BUT… it probably won’t address large scale issues and May be inadequate or demeaning.

Nozick vs. Justice as Desert

• “Justice as Desert” - belief that people should receive what they deserve, based on their moral character and actions.

• He is not claiming that the rich like LBJ “deserves” the money, caring about what people deserve would be to go along with a patterned distribution which he doesn’t like.

  • The only reason he has justice claim to money is because his fans had a claim to their money and they chose to give it to him. Neither here nor there.

ARGUMENTS

• Nozick:

• Market is essential to individual freedom and respecting people’s self-ownership (Nozick)

  • forced redis violates people’s freedoms to do what they like.

• Market gives people what the deserve (Justice as Desert)

  • Talented hardworking people deserve more and the market makes sure they get it.

  • Nozick is not offering market outcomes that appeal to desert (deservingness)

Rawls vs. Justice as Desert

• Doesn’t think those whose abilities command a high price in the market deserve the money others are willing to pay

  • Luck plays too great a role in determining how much people sell their activities for, Those that are blessed w/ natural abilities can’t claim to deserve a reward.

    • Justice as desert akin to saying…

    • “Lebron James deserves to earn more than Jack Smith because Lebron is hugely talented who give pleasure to millions and is able to sell his labor for a high price, whereas Jack is a social worker”

• Both agree that social justice is not about people getting what they do because they deserve it.

  • Rawls: Talent is about luck

  • Nozick: Because desert is patterned principle.

The ‘Site’ of Justice

• The Site of Justice: Things that are considered to be matters of justice. Which objects are appropriately evaluated by principles of justice.

• Utilitarianism: Take the most expansive views, the same moral principles apply to all social domains including governments, and choices and actions of individuals.

• Nozick: Individual rights, principles of justice only apply to the conduct of individuals and governments.

• Rawls: basic structure of society as the site to which principles of justice apply.

1. ALL SOCIAL DOMAINS

   • Pros:

     • Encourages us to think about our decisions on others.

   • Objection 1:

     • May require us to set aside our own projects/interests/goals.

     • Even if you prefer to ride a horse, utilitarianism would require me to alleviate poverty or injustice

     • Requires us to treat our project to be one set of utilities amongst others and choose the utility maxing.

     • ex. 80,000 hours project.

     • On one hand, utilitarian’s can comprehend having personal projects on the other can reply that all our attachements should feed into Utility calculations even if it eans sacrificng for the good of others.

   • Objection 2:

     • A society of people (‘do-gooders’) who always do whatever they can to maximize utility may (paradoxically) have less utility in it.

     • One reason, they will rarely settle on desires like loving or working out, may contain less utility.

     • May waste time calculating what utilitarianism demands.

     • might also lack coordination mechanisms so their efforts collectively bears fruit.

2. INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS

   • Justice is concerned only with respecting rights

     • only that they refrian from ibntefering w/ others.

   • Distinction between a ‘good’ society and a ‘just’ society.

     • In good society people may be philanthropihic on their own.

     • A just society can be good OR bad.

3. The Basic Structure

   • “The primary subject of justice is the basic structure of society, or more exactly the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation.” - Rawls

     • Theory of justice identifies the compnetents as the constituiton and the principle econ,social arrangements.

     • He focuses on these becaus ethye profoundly influence our lives.

     • Since he specifies the site of justice, it differs from the utilitarian view.

     • The difference principle, and the principle of qua;lity in oppurtunity do not govern over voluntary societies (clubs) like a Church or Sports teams.

• IS JUSTICE THE PRIME VIRTUE?

  • The Assumption:

  • Rawls: Lexical priority to the first principle of justice

    • People have an intuitive conviction of the sense of justice and this explains why utilitarianism strikes people as misguided bc ppl are commited to the idea that justice should not be subject to political bargaining or the calculating of social value.

    • Lexical priority to the first principle of justice: Basic rights must be secured bfroe anything else.

  • Nozick: Rights may not be violated even if doing so benefits others greatly.

  • Communitarianism (Michael Sandel)

    • Justice only has primacy in the circumstances of justice’ (particular society)

    • We need principles of justice wherever there is:

      • Scarcity of resources

      • Limited altruism

    • These are just assumptions.

    • “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions not absolutely, as truth is to theories, but only conditionally as physical courage is to a war zone.”

    • Further Claims: Also wants to motivate…

      1) Fraternity may have priority over justice

      2) Emphasizing justice could weaken fraternity.

      • Ex. Families, universities, political movements, values and goals coincides, a shared purpose therefore members are moved by a sense of generosity.

Care Ethics

• Men and women enter the moral domain through ‘different doors’

  • The style of moral reasoning associated w/ justice is one among others.

• Care is an equally legitimate approach to morality

• Ethics of care foucs on the demands of:

  • Human connections

  • Relationships and responsibilities

  • Concieves moralirty in terms of Empathy, nurturing

• Contrasts w/ sense of jsutice that uses cincrete principles and absolute rules.

• Giving justice primacy privledges its demands ahead of care

• Care requires relation to others as particulars

  • Their history, identity, individuality - meshed and ongoing realtionships. Response to their needs is less calculating than a just response.

• Justice requires seeing others only in general terms

  • Respecting their rights and rationality.

BENEFITS

1. Less conflictual - orienteered towards preserving existing relationships.

2. Improve how we understand particular social problems - draws our attention to subjective examples.

3. Emphasizes human interdependence - complemting eithics of justice, better equip us to understand and fix social concepts like hierarchy.

Realism:

• Worry about the exclusion of politics from political theory

• object to the ethics-first approach

• political life is conflictual - glossed over by theorists of justice.

• Jeremy Waldron: Rawls neglects the ‘circumstance of politics’

  • persistent disagreements among citizens about politcal decisions, since all societys have to solve these problems

• The most basic problems for political theory have to do w/ “the securing of order, protection, safety, trust, and the conditions of cooperation”

• Justice cannot be the first virtue of politics because it cant be attained w/o securing political order and stability first