here. A sample:
Still, one has to wonder whether the residuum of religious belief helped Rawls affirm the basics of his philosophy with more confidence than he otherwise could have mustered. Otherwise (and more bluntly) put: Rawls's religious background may account for the aspects of his political philosophy that I and many others find oddly other-worldly.
Let me give an example. Rawls famously, and controversially, rejected merit as a basis for distribution. Not only are our natural endowments unearned and beyond our control; so too is their development and use: "Even the willingness to make an effort, to try, and so to be deserving in the ordinary sense is itself dependent on happy family and social circumstances." Cohen and Nagel find a theological version of this thought in the senior thesis. "There is no merit before God," Rawls wrote, "Nor should there be merit before him. True community does not count the merits of its members. Merit is a concept rooted in sin, and well disposed of." And more: "The human person, once perceiving that the Revelation of the Word is a condemnation of the self, casts away all thoughts of his own merit."
Now it is possible to argue that we are all equally meritless sinners in the eyes of God (although it is hardly the case that all religions and theologies concur on this point). But does moral equality before God imply equality of merit before our fellow men? Should a God's-eye point of view structure human relations here on earth? In the world as we experience it, some people work harder to develop and exercise their gifts than others, some people are more responsible than others, and some people contribute more to the general welfare than others. If we think of ourselves as contributing nothing to these results, for good or ill, then the core of human liberty and personhood vanishes. To live human lives, we must assume that we are more than dependent variables, more than the passive outcome of external forces, whether material, social, or divine.
Highly recommended; read the whole thing. And, yes, I find this so interesting that it makes me a lot more hesitant about my initial reaction to the publication of Rawls' senior thesis.
Update: As is evident in comments, my immediate enthusiasm for Galston's essay has not been widely shared. Paul Gowder has been expressing his disapproval at some length on his own blog as well as in comments; he also points to hilzoy's critique.
12 comments:
Hmm, just based on the index:
1. Oooh, snap. But:
2. I hope he's not trying to slip a little genetic fallacy in under the doorstep.
eh, I meant "excerpt," not index. this is my pre-caffeine google reader runthrough.
I don't remember Rawls endorsing "equality of merit before our fellow men."
If that were meant to be a sufficient argument against Rawls' account of merit, there'd be a genetic fallacy. But I think Galston probably thinks that there have plenty such arguments, and that this is a possible *explanation* for why Rawls held such an unusual view.
(I'm not sure anything else in Rawls inspires such an immediate and bimodal reaction. People tend to think the ruling out of appeals to merit and desert obviously right and crucially important, or obviously wrong and deeply strange. Nozick seems to have been rare in thinking it interestingly and usefully wrong.)
Was the idea really that unusual? The problem of whether people are truly responsible for their character and for the things that usually count as merit has been around at least since Plato and Aristotle (e.g., Laws 731c-d)...
Thanks for the link to the article, Jacob, and I'm glad to see that you're somewhat recanting your previous insistence that nothing useful can come from looking at an important thinker's early work. In this case, I find the whole discussion of Rawls's senior thesis helpful in grasping just what kind of, for lack of a better word, "Kantianism" shaped his theories. (For example, as has been noted by others, the moral significance Rawls granted to the "overlapping consensus" is almost pietist at its roots, this notion of there emerging a site where justice can be discussed amongst different peoples by emphasizing their areas of overlapping agreement, as if the fact of overlap had anything necessarily going for it besides (as presumably a secularist like Rawls ought to assume) some strategic usefulness.) Like Kant, Rawls appears to have been--and Galston seems to agree--a thinker who saw the world religiously, even though he had lost (as Kant arguably did) the ability/confidence/belief to make a good argument for seeing the world religiously, and so had to make up a rational politics that could do what religions do.
I don't really understand what it means to "see the world religiously," other than to believe in god. (Is it a matter of one's aims and aspirations for the world? One's beliefs about, e.g., essential goodness? The sorts of reasoning one practices? Some combination of these?)
I wasn't that moved by Galston's review. I should also say that, although I haven't read the thesis, I read Eric Gregory's original article and was much more struck by the differences between 22 year old Rawls and 50 year old Rawls than the similarities. The tone in the thesis (as far as I remember) was brash, strident and over-the-top. Not what we associate with TJ.
Here is Galston's summary:
[Judging from the writing of his youth, the aspects of his bearing that made him so compelling as a teacher and human being were rooted in a religious sensibility that made it impossible for him to approach politics on its own terms. Even at its best, politics cannot be a branch of moral philosophy, or a kind of rational choice, or the product of deliberations among reasonable people. While politics is not without norms and standards, it must reflect the nature of the human species as self-interested and passionate as well as reasonable--and as capable of destruction as well as cooperation. Political norms and standards must also take into account the distinctive difficulties of collective action and the means sometimes needed to enforce compliance. If we look at political life from too high an altitude, we can no longer see it as it is.]
1. What is a "religious sensibility"?
A contempt for human nature as it really is? I don't get that from TJ in the slightest. A moralizing approach to politics? Well, yes, but isn't that the point? What does this mean besides the well-known idea that Kantian morality is a form of secularized golden rule? It is "religious" only in the Nietzschean sense that all egalitarian morality is a form of slave revolt. The motivation to be moral has to come from somewhere and it is not that interesting to observe that that "impulse" is shared with religion.
2. What does it mean to "approach politics in its own terms"?
Of course, Rawls was very much aware of what happens in the real world and what the logic of politics is. (Although one could press Galston on which conception of politics he is forwarding as genuine.) The entire point is to subject self-interest and communities of common meaning to a higher standard.
3. "Even at its best, politics cannot be a branch of moral philosophy, or a kind of rational choice, or the product of deliberations among reasonable people."
Yes, but how can we avoid doing something like what Rawls does whenever we try to judge, evaluate or condemn the real-world social contracts which societies produce and when we try to interrogate our own assumptions which underlie those judgments? Are we suppose to stop thinking about justice because politics is embedded in history and human imperfection? Habermas's point about relativists falling into a performative contradiction comes to mind here.
4. "While politics is not without norms and standards, it must reflect the nature of the human species as self-interested and passionate as well as reasonable--and as capable of destruction as well as cooperation."
First of all, Rawls never claimed to give a comprehensive theory of the political, or rulership, or governance, or of the good. But, more importantly, it seems to me that the whole point of constructivism and the ideas of a "reasonable moral psychology," a "more or less just, well-ordered society," "the fact of reasonable pluralism" and many other companion concepts is to subject one's moral theory as much as possible to the standard of taking people as they are while still offering a moral theory. Furthermore, Rawls even wants to limit his theory to the basic structure of society, not to all political activity. Galston seems unwilling to acknowledge how much Rawls was and continues to be criticized for retreating too much from ideal theory.
5. "Political norms and standards must also take into account the distinctive difficulties of collective action and the means sometimes needed to enforce compliance."
Where does Rawls ever say that the stability of a well-ordered society is spontaneously generated by the eureka moment of an entire community adopting principles of justice and self-imposing them?
6. As to the merit question - who is really on firmer ground? Those who think that life success tracks hard work and moral decisions or those who recognize the contingency and arbitrariness in life prospects? Who is really more utopian now?
Andrew, I think your point 3 and your point 6 are in tension. Part of what we do "whenever we try to judge, evaluate or condemn the real-world social" arrangements (I'll omit "contracts," which seems to me controversial) is to compare them with a variety of moral standards, including merit or desert. That's *not* passively thinking that the social arrangements *already* track desert in any way. But the impulse to criticize that (sometimes, over some social domains) runs deep.
The interesting pluralists about social justice-- Walzer, Miller, Schmidtz, Galston-- all treat this as something to be taken into account and understood. When, why, and how might desert or merit be appropriate metrics? Which kinds of institutional arrangements do we criticize for seeming to punish desert and reward its opposite?
Bill Clinton's Galstonian "The American dream that we were all raised on is a simple but powerful one: If you work hard and play by the rules, you should be given a chance to go as far as your God-given ability will take you" is the kind of thing that we do seem to reach for as evaluators of social orders. And it's something that's long made a lot of people uncomfortable about Rawls (as well as, e.g., Hayek) that his theory seems to leave no room for or even meaning for that kind of appeal.
"Furthermore, Rawls even wants to limit his theory to the basic structure of society, not to all political activity. Galston seems unwilling to acknowledge how much Rawls was and continues to be criticized for retreating too much from ideal theory."
I can't speak for Galston here, but I have no problem saying simultaneously "Rawls has come in for serious criticism from Cohen and assorted Rawlsians for making too many accommodations to non-ideal social facts" and "even the late Rawls was too committed to ideal theory in ways that are problematic for his theory." Someone can be wrong even though there are others who are even more wrong in a similar fashion. It's an illusion of politics that the existence of a more-extreme view makes an initial view moderate and therefore acceptable.
NB: I'm more comfortable with Rawls' project than I think Galston is, and have been known to defend Rawls against related criticisms made in Galston's name (not by Galston himself). But the relationship between useful moral abstraction and unhelpful unworldliness is complicated and interesting, with final answers about which points of abstraction to settle on generally unavailable.
The idea that for Rawls as for Kant there could be light cast on the problem of abstraction by thinking about the philosophy's Protestantism seems... plausible, and if like Galston you think that Rawls' level of abstraction is anomalous enough to warrant *explanation*, this might be a good strategy. The explanation has no bearing on our evaluation of the arguments of TJ, but Galston doesn't claim that it does.
So, does a person who finds it intuitive that merit should sometimes be rewarded (along the lines of your Clinton quote) find serious objections to Rawls (which is different from saying that such a person finds pluralist theories more attractive)?
First of all, isn't the point of something like the second principle of justice that positions offering greater rewards must be open to all on terms of fair equality of opportunity? That seems to satisfy a large part of the moral intuition behind the Clinton quote: "It is unfair that so many talented people are stymied by the privileges of inherited wealth and unfair access to important social resources. That's not what America is all about." That implies something like a social contract, and certainly concern for more than just transfers and entitlements.
Second, we expect that our skills will be appreciated and used in all sorts of areas of life (in civil society) which TJ just doesn't have that much to say about. There is no insistence that similar principles of distribution be adopted for firms, universities, farming communes, etc as long as the basic structure of society is just. Nothing in TJ counsels against rewarding academics based on publications and teaching evals.
Third, it is not clear that "if you work hard and play by the rules, you should be given a chance to go as far as your God-given ability will take you" is a principle of distribution. It seems to suggest something more qualitative (the chance to develop and use your talents, to fulfill oneself). If all have a decent income and there are some spheres where people can compete for more based on their talents, can a Clintonian complain? That is, do we really think that what is important morally is that a talented person literally make as much money as possible given her talents?
Fourth, someone adopting the Galston/Clinton line, might be more of a Rawlsian than a pure free-market meritocrat. What the market finds meritorious is not necessarily consistent, rational or justifiable. Lots of people find themselves using talents they don't value as much as others, and lots of people simply have talents which are not valued by the market.
Fifth, there is the obvious question, Why should we only be concerned about wasted talents? What about people whose talents don't get them very far? The Clinton/Galston quote can't account for that intuition.
The fact is that the difference principle is so vague and subject to empirical speculation that a person concerned about people developing their talents in certain spheres of life are likely to be as satisfied in a Rawlsian society as in many others.
I simply don't read the Rawlsian rejection of merit as a distributive principle as reflecting a moralized disgust for the pursuit of self-interest or the psychological attachment to one's own talents. If that were the case, then perhaps speculation on the religious origins of Rawls's rejection of merit might be more illuminating. Similarly, it is hard (for me) to see political constructivism and especially neutrality between conceptions of virtue as Protestant in origin. Isn't the classic argument, in fact, that Protestantism has a genetic link to meritocratic conceptions of worldly success? Also, it seems to me that the truly religious sensibility (even in secularized form) is to doubt that justice belongs to this world or if it does that our "realistic utopia" would involve such moderate demands on human nature as TJ does.
I've expanded my thoughts into a separate post.
And another follow-up post elaborating on my claim that Galston is guilty of the genetic fallacy, but I'll stop spamming your comments now, even though heaven only knows how many more follow-up posts I'll produce before running out of steam.
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