Justice, impartiality, and equality: Why the concept of justice does not presume equality

Political Theory

Volumn 24, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 375-393

  Kane, John ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0030511270     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591796024003003     Document Type: Article

References (54)

1. S. I. Benn and R. S. Peters, Social Principles and the Democratic State (London: Allen & Unwin, 1959), 111.
2. Amartya Sen, Inequality Re-examined. Occasional Paper No. 2 (New Haven, CT: Yale University, The Economic Growth Center, 1989), 15. Also Sen's book of the same title (Harvard: Russell Sage and Harvard University Press, 1992).
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. and analysed by H. J. Paton in The Moral Law (London: Hutchinson, 1972), 57f.
6. R. M. Hare, Freedom and Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), chap. 9.
7. As Hare himself says (ibid., 191), "the mere existence of a certain conceptual apparatus cannot compel anybody to accept any particular evaluation."
8. The Nichomachean Ethics of Aristotle, trans. by J.E.C. Welldon (London: Macmillan, 1923), bk. V, chap. 6, pp. 143-4.
9. W. Galston, Justice and the Human Good (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 105.
10. Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, bk. V, chap. 9, p 155.
11. Ibid., chap. 6, p. 144.
12. See Aristotle, The Politics, trans. by E. Barker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), bk. III, chap. 9, p. 163.
13. See Julius Stone, Human Law and Human Justice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965), 11-4.
14. J. Feinberg, "Non-comparative Justice," Philosophical Review 83 (1974): 297-358.
15. Ibid., 312.
16. Ibid.
17. R. M. Hare, Freedom and Reason, 11-5.
18. P. Montague, "Comparative and Non-comparative Justice," Philosophical Quarterly (April 1980): 130-40.
19. Ibid., 137.
20. Ibid., 138.
21. See, e.g., K. Baier, The Moral Point of View (New York: Random House, 1965); R. M. Hare, The Language of Morals (London: Clarendon Press, 1952); G. Harman, The Nature of Morality (New York: Anchor Press, 1977).
22. See, e.g., K. Baier, The Moral Point of View (New York: Random House, 1965); R. M. Hare, The Language of Morals (London: Clarendon Press, 1952); G. Harman, The Nature of Morality (New York: Anchor Press, 1977).
23. See, e.g., K. Baier, The Moral Point of View (New York: Random House, 1965); R. M. Hare, The Language of Morals (London: Clarendon Press, 1952); G. Harman, The Nature of Morality (New York: Anchor Press, 1977).
24. Kant, Groundwork; Harman, Nature of Morality, 52.
25. See, e.g., R. Firth, "Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 12 (1952): 237-9.
26. W. Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice: With Selections from Godwin's Other Writings, ed. by K. Codell Carter (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 70f.
27. See, e.g., Bernard Williams, "Persons, Character and Morality," in his Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); John Kekes, "Morality and Impartiality," American Philosophical Quarterly 18 (1981): 295-303.
28. See, e.g., Bernard Williams, "Persons, Character and Morality," in his Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); John Kekes, "Morality and Impartiality," American Philosophical Quarterly 18 (1981): 295-303.
29. Kekes, "Morality and Impartiality,"; Lawrence Blum, Friendship, Altruism and Morality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980);
30. Kekes, "Morality and Impartiality,"; Lawrence Blum, Friendship, Altruism and Morality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980);
31. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).
32. Adrian S. Piper, "Impartiality, Compassion, and Modal Imagination," Ethics 101 (July 1991): 726-57. (This volume of Ethics was devoted entirely to the impartiality debate.)
33. What I say about impartiality, however, has undoubted implications for the debate about the place of impartiality in morality. My own view is that the essence of a moral rule lies in its imperative prescriptivity with regard to identified goods and evils, and not in any formal criterion such as impartiality.
34. Piper, "Impartiality," 727.
35. D. Lloyd, The Idea of Law (New York: Penguin, 1979), 121.
36. Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 698-703.
37. Kant, Groundwork.
38. Ibid., 91.
39. R. Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 50.
40. For an extreme case, see Christine Battersby, "Morality and the Ik," Philosophy (April 1978): 201-14.
41. J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978); see pp. 251-3, where he describes his principles in terms of Kantian categorical imperatives.
42. Ibid., 136-7, 516.
43. Ibid., 19.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid., 19, 505.
46. Ibid., 62. Since writing this, I have come across a passage from Allan Bloom that makes the same point, and indeed the point of this whole essay. Bloom writes that Rawls's theory "begins by dismissing discussion of its egalitarian premise. It is only an analysis of what an egalitarian society should be, if you accept that equality is just. Rawls begins by assuming, or taking for granted, that which political philosophy always took as its task to prove or investigate. We can no longer take the alternatives seriously; we intuit the justice of equality. Thus the longing to know the truth about these questions is dogmatically denied fulfillment and we are given over to what may only be the dominant prejudice of the day." " The Study of Texts," in Political Theory and Political Education, ed. M. Richter (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 120.
47. Ibid., 62. Since writing this, I have come across a passage from Allan Bloom that makes the same point, and indeed the point of this whole essay. Bloom writes that Rawls's theory "begins by dismissing discussion of its egalitarian premise. It is only an analysis of what an egalitarian society should be, if you accept that equality is just. Rawls begins by assuming, or taking for granted, that which political philosophy always took as its task to prove or investigate. We can no longer take the alternatives seriously; we intuit the justice of equality. Thus the longing to know the truth about these questions is dogmatically denied fulfillment and we are given over to what may only be the dominant prejudice of the day." " The Study of Texts," in Political Theory and Political Education, ed. M. Richter (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 120.
48. Benn and Peters, Social Principles.
49. Ibid., 107.
50. Ibid., 111.
51. Ibid.
52. Hare, Freedom and Reason, 118-9.
53. Hare (ibid.) can only make his argument work by explicitly stating at the start that all is equal, that no bona fide claims to ownership and so on exist among the parties.
54. M. Walzer, Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 313.