What do we owe one another.docx

What do we owe one another? Dilemmas of Loyalty Public Apologies: Honour the memory of those who have suffered injustice at the hands of the political community. To recognize the persisting effects of injustice on victims and their descendants. Atone for the wrongs committed by those who inflicted t...

What do we owe one another? Dilemmas of Loyalty Public Apologies: Honour the memory of those who have suffered injustice at the hands of the political community. To recognize the persisting effects of injustice on victims and their descendants. Atone for the wrongs committed by those who inflicted the injustice of failed to prevent it. o We cannot apologize for wrongs committed by previous generations. Only someone who is somehow implicated in the injustice can apologize for it Official apologies can help bind up the wounds of the past and provide a basis for moral political settlement. Moral individualism It rests on the notion that we are responsible only for what we ourselves do, not for the actions of other people, or for events beyond our control. Moral individualism = assumes that we are, as moral agents, free and independent selves, unbound by moral ties, capable of choosing our ends for ourselves. Leaves little room for collective responsibility, or for a duty to bear the moral burden of historic injustices perpetrated by our predecessors. Locke argued that legitimate government must be based on consent. Why? Because we are free and independent beings, not subject to paternal authority or the divine right of kings. Immanuel Kant argued that we must think of ourselves as more than a bundle of preferences and desires. To be free is to be autonomous, and to be autonomous is to be governed by a law I gave myself. Kantian autonomy is more demanding than consent. Rawls observed that the choices we make often reflect morally arbitrary contingencies. If we want a society to be a voluntary arrangement, we cannot base it on actual consent; we should ask instead what principles of justice we would agree to if we set aside our particular interests and advantages and chose behind a veil of ignorance. o both Kant (autonomous will) and Rawls (hypothetical agreement behind a veil of ignorance) conceive the moral agent as independent of his or her particular aims and attachments. When we follow the moral law (Kant) or choose the principles of justice (Rawls), we do so without reference to the roles and identities that situate us in the world and make us the particular people we are. Should government be morally neutral? Good is prior to the right: Utilitarianism is one such theory. It takes the good to consist in maximizing pleasure or welfare and asks what system of rights is likely to achieve it. Aristotle offers a very different theory of the good. It is not about maximizing pleasure but about realizing nature and developing our distinctly human capacities. Aristotle’s reasoning is teleological in that he reasons from a certain conception of the human good. o “We can’t frame a just constitution until we first figure out the best way to life.” Kant and Rawls argue that the right is prior to the good. The principles that specify our duties and rights should not be based on any particular conception of the good life. Kant: “If we are to think of ourselves as autonomous beings, we must first will the moral law. Only then, after we have arrived at the principle that defines our duties and rights, we can ask what conceptions of the good are compatible with it.” Rawls: “The structure of teleological doctrines is radically misconceived: from the start they relate the right and the good in the wrong way. We should not attempt to give form to our life by first looking to the good independently defined.” The debate over the priority of the right over the good is ultimately a debate about the meaning of human freedom. Kant and Rawls reject Aristotle’s teleology because it does not seem to leave us room to choose the good for ourselves. Modern liberal political thoughts: the notion that justice should be neutral toward conceptions of the good life reflects a conception of persons as freely choosing selves, unbound by prior moral ties. Egalitarian liberals favour civil liberties and basic social and economic rights – rights to health care, education, employment, income security, and so on. They argue that enabling individuals to pursue their own ends requires that the government ensure the material conditions of truly free choice. Libertarians also argue for a neutral state that respects individual choice. But they disagree with egalitarian liberals about what policies these ideals require. Libertarians defend free markets and argue that people are entitled to keep the money they make. For libertarians, a neutral state requires civil liberties and a strict regime of private property rights. The welfare state, they argue, does not enable individuals to choose their own ends, but coerces some for the good of others. Obligations beyond consent “Are we bound by some moral ties we haven’t chosen and that can’t be traced to a social contract?” Rawls’s answer would be no. On the liberal conception, obligations can arise in only two ways – as natural duties we owe to human beings as such and as voluntary obligations we incur by consent. If the liberal account of obligation is right, the average citizen has no special obligations to his or her fellow citizens, beyond the universal, natural duty not to commit injustice. However, it fails to account for the special responsibility we have to one another as fellow citizens. of moral responsibility Three categories : Natural duties: universal, do not require consent. Voluntary obligations: particular, require consent. Obligations of solidarity: particular, do not require consent. Can loyalty override universal moral principles? Liberal philosophers are happy to concede: as long as we don’t violate anyone’s rights, we can fulfil the general duty to help others by helping those who are close at hand. Obligations of solidarity are objectionable only if they lead us to violate a natural duty. The claims of solidarity are familiar features of our moral and political experience. It would be difficult to live, or to make sense of our lives, without them. But it is equally difficult to account for them in the language of moral individualism. They can’t be captured by an ethic of consent. That is, in part, what gives these claims their moral force. “Can all of our duties and obligations be traced to an act of will or choice?” No, obligations of solidarity or membership may claim us for reasons unrelated to a choice – reasons bound up with the narratives by which we interpret our lives and the communities we inhabit. Two ways of thinking about justice: Kant and Rawls: the right is prior to the good. The principles of justice that define our duties and rights should be neutral with respect to competing conceptions of the good life. Kant argues, we must abstract from our contingent interests and ends. To deliberate about justice, Rawls maintains, we should set aside our particular aims, attachments, and conceptions of the good. That’s the point of thinking about justice behind a veil of ignorance. Aristotle doesn’t believe that principles of justice can or should be neutral with respect to the good life. To the contrary, he maintains that one of the purposes of a just constitution is to form good citizens and to cultivate good character. He doesn’t think it is possible to deliberate about justice without deliberating about the meaning of the goods. One of the reasons Kant and Rawls reject Aristotle’s way of thinking about justice is that they don’t think it leaves room for freedom. It fails to respect persons as free and independent selves, capable of choosing their ends for themselves. Justice and the common good In debating justice and rights, we should set aside our personal moral and religious convictions and argue from the standpoint of a political conception of the person, independent of any particular loyalties, attachments, or conception of the good life. People in modern democratic societies disagree about moral and religious questions; these disagreements are reasonable. It is not expected that a conscientious person with full powers of reason, even after free discussion, will arrive at the same conclusion. To achieve a just society, we have to reason together about the meaning of the good life, and to create a public culture hospitable to the disagreements that will inevitably arise. Justice is inescapably judgmental. Questions of justice are bound up with competing notions of honour and virtue, pride and recognition. Justice is not only about the right way to distribute things, but also about the right way to value things. For many people, talk of virtue in politics brings to mind religious conservatives telling people how to live. But this is not the only way that conceptions of virtue and the common good can inform politics. The challenge is to imagine a politics that takes moral and spiritual questions seriously but brings them to bear on broad economic and civic concerns. new politics of the common good What might a look like? Here are some possible themes: Citizenship, sacrifice, and service – if a just society requires a strong sense of community, it must find a way to cultivate citizens a concern for the whole, a dedication to the common good. The moral limits of markets - in our time the expansion of markets and market-oriented reasoning into spheres of life traditionally governed by non-market norms. Unless we want to let the market rewrite the norms that govern social institutions, we need a public debate about the moral limits of markets. Inequality, solidarity, and civic virtue – focusing on the civic consequences of inequality, and ways of reversing them, might find political traction that arguments about income distribution as such do not. It would also help highlight the connection between distribute justice and the common good. A politics of moral engagement – a politics of moral engagement is not only a more inspiring ideal than a politics of avoidance. It is also a more promising basis for a just society.