History and pattern

Social Philosophy and Policy

Volumn 22, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 148-177

  Schmidtz, David ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA   (United States)

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EID: 12344316938     PISSN: 02650525     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0265052505041063     Document Type: Review

References (87)

1. T Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 183.
2. A recent book on liberalism by Jon Mandle offers an "overview" of Rawls spanning 133 pages, indicating how hard it would be to summarize Rawls in a few paragraphs. Jon Mandle, What's Left of Liberalism? (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2000).
3. How separate are persons, exactly? Does Rawls presume that individuals are self-contained Robinson Crusoes, as he is sometimes accused of doing by communitarians and feminists? See Andrew Jason Cohen, "Communitarianism, 'Social Constitution', and Autonomy," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 80, no. 2 (1999): 121-35.
4. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971), 4.
5. Ibid., 8 (emphasis added).
6. In passing, what is an "allotment"? Does the sun have an allotment of planets, or are we reserving "allotment" to refer to (potentially blameworthy) allocation decisions? On the one hand, if we use the term's broader sense - allotment as simply the fact of how things are distributed - it becomes true that there is an allotment of advantages, just as there is an allotment of planets, but it becomes false that the concept of justice applies whenever there is an allotment. (It does not apply to the allotment of planets.) On the other hand, if we use the term's narrower sense - allotting as deliberately assigning - it becomes at least arguably true that the concept of justice applies, but then it becomes false that the natural lottery of talent is an allotment, and it is this natural lottery that Rawls wants his theory of justice to cover.
7. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 19. In passing, is it enough that none are known to be advantaged or disadvantaged? What if some of us have disadvantages none of us know about? Does not knowing about a disadvantage suffice to make it fair?
8. Ibid., 302. The full statement of the principle is: Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are (a) to the greatest advantage of the least advantaged, and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity. Part (a) is the notorious "difference principle."
9. One frustrating thing about reading Rawls is that he systematically takes initially bold, clear, inspiring, unambiguous positions, then later reworks and retracts these statements so as to make them consistent with (or in technical terms, in reflective equilibrium with) his second principle.
10. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 45.
11. John Rawls, "Distributive Justice," in Philosophy, Politics, and Society, ed. Peter Laslett and W. G. Runciman (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), 58-82. Reprinted in John Rawls, Collected Papers, ed. Samuel Freeman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 135. Page citations are to the latter.
12. John Rawls, "Distributive Justice," in Philosophy, Politics, and Society, ed. Peter Laslett and W. G. Runciman (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), 58-82. Reprinted in John Rawls, Collected Papers, ed. Samuel Freeman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 135. Page citations are to the latter.
13. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 65.
14. Mandle, What's Left of Liberalism? 151.
15. See John Tomasi, Liberalism Beyond Justice: Citizens, Society, and the Boundaries of Political Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), for the most developed version of this idea.
16. Rawls acknowledges that we do not need a "complete" theory in the international arena. In fact, in that arena, we do not want a complete theory; we want instead to recognize that "peoples" have a right to self-determination. Interestingly, Rawls shows more willingness in the international arena to compromise liberties protected by the first principle than to compromise the economic protections of the difference principle. (The Rawlsian right to life that any minimally decent society has to respect includes a right to economic security.) See John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 65.
17. when we are targeting one particular group as the group whose prospects are to be maximized, it will be hard to characterize the process or the result as an implication of any principle of reciprocity. Reciprocity is a two-way street, not aimed at any particular group, not even the group we think ought to be most favored. It would seem reasonable to give up on saying that this theory has anything to do with reciprocity, but Rawls always insisted there was a connection. For example, see John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, ed. Erin Kelly (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 123-24.
18. Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, 59 n. 26.
19. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), 83.
20. Ibid., 84.
21. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971), 15.
22. See Cynthia A. Stark, "How to Include the Severely Disabled in a Contractarian Theory of Justice" (unpublished manuscript, 2004).
23. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971), 157.
24. I b i d.
25. Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, 104.
26. Do we really need veils of ignorance as devices for controlling bias? I shall suggest an answer to this question shortly below in the text.
27. There are two ways to view the procedure. Bargainers are either deciding what is right or discovering an independent moral reality. If our bargainers are merely hypothetical, we had better be able to show that there is an independent moral reality we are tracking when we decide to imagine bargainers agreeing to one thing rather than another. Otherwise, all we are doing is putting our own prejudices in the mouths of imaginary friends. If real bargainers actually agree to live by a principle, then that is altogether different. In that case, they actually gave their word to each other, and if their word does not count for something, they will not be able to live good lives together.
28. Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, 98. I argued in "Rationality within Reason," Journal of Philosophy 89, no. 9 (1992): 445-66, that satisfying choice is genuinely a form of rational choice. In my Rational Choice and Moral Agency (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), I argued that this opens up possibilities for reconciling elements of rationality with elements of morality. However, I never envisioned defending a suboptimal political regime on the grounds that I would prefer it to intolerable alternatives.
29. Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, 98. I argued in "Rationality within Reason," Journal of Philosophy 89, no. 9 (1992): 445-66, that satisfying choice is genuinely a form of rational choice. In my Rational Choice and Moral Agency (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), I argued that this opens up possibilities for reconciling elements of rationality with elements of morality. However, I never envisioned defending a suboptimal political regime on the grounds that I would prefer it to intolerable alternatives.
30. Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, 98. I argued in "Rationality within Reason," Journal of Philosophy 89, no. 9 (1992): 445-66, that satisfying choice is genuinely a form of rational choice. In my Rational Choice and Moral Agency (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), I argued that this opens up possibilities for reconciling elements of rationality with elements of morality. However, I never envisioned defending a suboptimal political regime on the grounds that I would prefer it to intolerable alternatives.
31. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971), 153.
32. This view begins to emerge most clearly in John Rawls, "Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical," Philosophy and Public Affairs 14, no. 3 (1985): 223-51, reprinted in Rawls, Collected Papers, 388-414.
33. This view begins to emerge most clearly in John Rawls, "Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical," Philosophy and Public Affairs 14, no. 3 (1985): 223-51, reprinted in Rawls, Collected Papers, 388-414.
34. I thank Mark LeBar and John Simmons for encouraging me to be clearer about these distinctions, and I especially thank Richard Arneson for a proposal about how best to draw the distinctions. I follow Arneson's proposal to a significant degree, but not enough to make him accountable for the result.
35. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 150-53, 157-58, 173, and 208.
36. Ibid., 150-53, 157-58, and 262-65.
37. Richard Epstein, in as excellent a short discussion of Nozick as one will find, makes a related point: "Any system of property looks backward to determine the 'chain of title' that gives rise to present holdings. But this is not because of any fetish with the past but chiefly from the profound sense that stability in transactions is necessary for sensible forward-looking planning." See Epstein, Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Case for Classical Liberalism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 130. As Epstein would agree, though, dwelling too much on the past would be as problematic as ignoring the past, and for the same reason: it would reduce stability in transactions. A routine title search when selling a house is one thing; going back as many thousands of years as the land has been held is another.
38. Nozick endorses the undoing of wrongful transfers, but the point of undoing a wrongful transfer is simply that: to undo a wrongful transfer, not to make current holdings match a favored pattern. Nozick has no solution (perhaps there is no solution) to the problem of how to rectify injustice committed not by people now living but by their ancestors. There are places where people have been evening the score for centuries, and it will not stop until people learn to forget the past. For a state-of-the-art argument that successful rectification is about victims and victimizers (or their descendants) getting together to repair damaged relationships and set the stage for a peaceful future, see Linda Radzik, "Making Amends" (American Philosophical Quarterly, forthcoming). I discuss Radzik and add my own thoughts on rectification issues in David Schmidtz, Elements of Justice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
39. Nozick endorses the undoing of wrongful transfers, but the point of undoing a wrongful transfer is simply that: to undo a wrongful transfer, not to make current holdings match a favored pattern. Nozick has no solution (perhaps there is no solution) to the problem of how to rectify injustice committed not by people now living but by their ancestors. There are places where people have been evening the score for centuries, and it will not stop until people learn to forget the past. For a state-of-the-art argument that successful rectification is about victims and victimizers (or their descendants) getting together to repair damaged relationships and set the stage for a peaceful future, see Linda Radzik, "Making Amends" (American Philosophical Quarterly, forthcoming). I discuss Radzik and add my own thoughts on rectification issues in David Schmidtz, Elements of Justice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
40. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 158.
41. Ibid., 163.
42. I borrow the point from Edward Feser, On Nozick (Toronto: Wadsworth, 2004), 71.
43. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 167. Rawls's reply: "The objection that the difference principle enjoins continuous corrections of particular distributions and capricious interference with private transactions is based on a misunderstanding." On the next page, Rawls clarifies: "[E]ven if everyone acts fairly as defined by the rules that it is both reasonable and practicable to impose on individuals, the upshot of many separate transactions will eventually undermine background justice. This is obvious once we view society, as we must, as involving cooperation over generations. Thus, even in a well-ordered society, adjustments in the basic structure are always necessary." See John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 283-84. Rawls's clarification makes it hard to see why Rawls thinks Nozick misunderstood him. (I thank Tom G. Palmer for this point.) In any case, this is a major challenge in constructing a well-ordered constitutional democracy: how to avoid "necessary adjustments" that tell citizens that ownership of their income is a political football, and they are, to that extent, governed by men, not law.
44. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 167. Rawls's reply: "The objection that the difference principle enjoins continuous corrections of particular distributions and capricious interference with private transactions is based on a misunderstanding." On the next page, Rawls clarifies: "[E]ven if everyone acts fairly as defined by the rules that it is both reasonable and practicable to impose on individuals, the upshot of many separate transactions will eventually undermine background justice. This is obvious once we view society, as we must, as involving cooperation over generations. Thus, even in a well-ordered society, adjustments in the basic structure are always necessary." See John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 283-84. Rawls's clarification makes it hard to see why Rawls thinks Nozick misunderstood him. (I thank Tom G. Palmer for this point.) In any case, this is a major challenge in constructing a well-ordered constitutional democracy: how to avoid "necessary adjustments" that tell citizens that ownership of their income is a political football, and they are, to that extent, governed by men, not law.
45. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 164.
46. John Rawls, "Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics," in Rawls, Collected Papers, 14. The article was originally published in 1951.
47. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971), 87-88.
48. I thank Alyssa Bernstein for her help with this point.
49. In this example, a million basketball fans choose to pay twenty-five cents each directly to Wilt Chamberlain in exchange for seeing him play - thus upsetting a previously existing pattern of distribution.
50. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 150.
51. As Steven R. Smith (approvingly) summarizes, "individuals are seen by Rawls as not deserving their initial endowment packages. Consequently, talents are, to some degree, socially owned." Consequently? How would we get from the premise that talents are undeserved to the conclusion that talents are community property? Also, which community would we be talking about? Why not the United Nations, or the Church of Scientology? See Steven R. Smith, "The Social Construction of Talent," Journal of Political Philosophy 9, no. 1 (2001): 31.
52. As Steven R. Smith (approvingly) summarizes, "individuals are seen by Rawls as not deserving their initial endowment packages. Consequently, talents are, to some degree, socially owned." Consequently? How would we get from the premise that talents are undeserved to the conclusion that talents are community property? Also, which community would we be talking about? Why not the United Nations, or the Church of Scientology? See Steven R. Smith, "The Social Construction of Talent," Journal of Political Philosophy 9, no. 1 (2001): 31.
53. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971), 102.
54. Ibid., 100.
55. Rawls, "Distributive Justice," 140. Strictly speaking, this consideration leads only to a precursor form of the difference principle, which specifies that arrangements ought to be mutually advantageous.
56. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971), 15 (emphasis added).
57. Ibid, (emphasis added).
58. Cara Nine argues that arbitrariness is an essentially theory-laden concept, so that X is arbitrary only if X is wrong by the lights of a given moral theory. In that case, if we want to argue for a theory, and want to start with premises about what is arbitrary, the argument is likely to be question-begging. See Nine, "Moral Arbitrariness" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Arizona, 2005).
59. When we call a choice arbitrary, we are implying not only that it is unjustified, and not only that it is wrong, but also that it exhibits a certain arrogance: there is nothing a person could say, or would even be inclined to say, to justify his or her choice. A person might say, "I can do whatever I want."
60. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971), 72.
61. In any system, the main way in which the talented share their talent is precisely by going as far as their talent can take them. What people pay in taxes normally will be trivial by comparison. To take an obvious case, how much did Thomas Edison pay in taxes? The answer is that we do not need to know, because we know that no matter how many millions Edison might have paid, the good done by his taxes was nothing compared to the good done by his inventions.
62. Even the most self-reliant bakers, of course, cooperate.
63. This is not to deny that the assumption is at some level intuitively compelling, or that it tacitly informs a lot of political theorizing.
64. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 214.
65. Ibid., 33. See also A. R. Lacey, Robert Nozick (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 25ff.
66. Ibid., 33. See also A. R. Lacey, Robert Nozick (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 25ff.
67. For a cogent critique of the retreat from the first principle's original maximalist formulation, see Loren Lomasky, "Libertarianism at Twin Harvard," in this volume.
68. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971), 178.
69. Thomas Nagel, "Rawls on Justice," in Reading Rawls, ed. Norman Daniels (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989), 13.
70. Peter Singer, "The Right to Be Rich or Poor," in Reading Nozick, ed. Jeffrey Paul (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), 48. Rawls likely would reply that utilitarianism is cavalier in its willingness to benefit some at the expense of others, so long as total utility thereby increases. Rawls's theory requires that transfers be justified to each individual. Singer probably would say that if that means the well-off have a veto, then Rawls's theory has all the problems of Nozick's; if not, the distinction between Rawls's theory and utilitarianism has not yet been made.
71. For excellent discussions of how the separateness of persons issue relates to issues of personal autonomy and agent-relative values, see chap. 5 of Horacio Specter's Autonomy and Rights: The Moral Foundations of Liberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Eric Mack, "Moral Individualism: Agent-Relativity and Deontic Restraints," Social Philosophy and Policy 7, no. 1 (1989): 81-111; and Eric Mack, "Self-Ownership, Marxism, and Egalitarianism," Politics, Philosophy, and Economics 1 (2002): 75-108.
72. For excellent discussions of how the separateness of persons issue relates to issues of personal autonomy and agent-relative values, see chap. 5 of Horacio Specter's Autonomy and Rights: The Moral Foundations of Liberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Eric Mack, "Moral Individualism: Agent-Relativity and Deontic Restraints," Social Philosophy and Policy 7, no. 1 (1989): 81-111; and Eric Mack, "Self-Ownership, Marxism, and Egalitarianism," Politics, Philosophy, and Economics 1 (2002): 75-108.
73. For excellent discussions of how the separateness of persons issue relates to issues of personal autonomy and agent-relative values, see chap. 5 of Horacio Specter's Autonomy and Rights: The Moral Foundations of Liberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Eric Mack, "Moral Individualism: Agent-Relativity and Deontic Restraints," Social Philosophy and Policy 7, no. 1 (1989): 81-111; and Eric Mack, "Self-Ownership, Marxism, and Egalitarianism," Politics, Philosophy, and Economics 1 (2002): 75-108.
74. One difference, explored by Matt Zwolinski in his "The Separateness of Persons" (American Philosophical Association, 2003), is that while Nozick thinks of separateness as implying restrictions on how people may be treated, Rawls thinks of separateness as a meta-level desideratum. It does not restrict what we can do to people; instead, it restricts what we can offer as a justification for what we do.
75. Rawls in effect holds that the sole implication of separateness is to require a basic structure to justify to each person the assigning of a consumption bundle to that person. See Zwolinski, "The Separateness of Persons," for more on the distinction between respecting separateness in the sense that rules out involuntary transfers from one to another and respecting separateness in the sense of involuntary transfers having to be justified to each individual. (But I note here that Rawls and his followers are not saying each individual has to agree that the transfers are justified; it is enough that "reasonable" people agree.)
76. See Robert Paul Wolff, Understanding Rawls (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977), 201.
77. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 198.
78. Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, 75 (emphasis added).
79. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 43 (emphasis in original). See also David Schmidtz, "The Meanings of Life," in Robert Nozick, ed. David Schmidtz (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 199-216.
80. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 43 (emphasis in original). See also David Schmidtz, "The Meanings of Life," in Robert Nozick, ed. David Schmidtz (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 199-216.
81. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971), 154.
82. Nozick asks us, how would Rawlsian bargainers assign grades? Nozick says Rawlsian bargainers cannot even consider letting grades track performance. Bargainers want to make the lowest grade as high as possible. They do not care (or do not know they care) about the difference between giving the best grade to the best student and giving the best grade to the worst. It would be easy to overstate Nozick's point. In a zero-sum game, as where an average grade is fixed, Nozick would be right, but when we speak of positive-sum games, as in real market societies, everything changes. In a positive-sum game, Rawls can rule out giving the best grade to the worst student on strategic grounds, allowing that rewards can be used to manipulate the talented into performing in a way that enlarges the pie (maximizing the smallest slice). Nozick's complaint is not that such rewards would be too small, but rather that their rationale is brutally disrespectful.
83. For an argument that we can deserve X in virtue of what we do after receiving X, see David Schmidtz, "How to Deserve," Political Theory 30, no. 6 (2002): 774-99. I thank Dan Russell for reminding me of this argument's relevance.
84. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971), 141.
85. Ibid., 136.
86. As Thomas Nagel worries, "Keeping in mind that the parties in the original position do not know the stage of development of their society, and therefore do not know what minimum will be guaranteed by a maximin strategy, it is difficult to understand how an individual can know that he 'cares very little, if anything, for what he might gain above the minimum'." See Nagel, "Rawls on Justice," 12.
87. Schmidtz, Elements of Justice (see note 34).