Virtue for pluralists

Journal of Moral Philosophy

Volumn 2, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 207-235

  Sabl, Andrew ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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EID: 33847261935     PISSN: 17404681     EISSN: 17455243     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1740468105054446     Document Type: Article

References (68)

1. William A. Galston, Liberal Purposes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 236
2. Stephen P. Macedo, Liberal Virtues (Oxford: Clarendon Paperbacks, 1990), p. 278
3. Amy P. Gutmann, 'Undemocratic Education', in Nancy Rosenblum (ed.), Liberalism and the Moral Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 71-88 (74-79)
4. Michael Walzer, 'Civility and Civic Virtue in Contemporary America' (1974), in idem, Radical Principles (New York: Basic Books, 1980), pp. 54-72 (70-72)
5. As noted by Thomas A. Spragens, Jr., Civic Liberalism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), p. 213. This also means that political theory discussions of the liberaldemocratic virtues have essentially nothing in common with the recent revival of virtue ethics - a fact often missed, to great confusion. While the 'virtue' of 'virtue ethics' refers to the classical virtues (Aristotle, Stoic, or something else), which are supposed to conduce to the good or happiness of human beings generally, discussions of 'virtue' in contemporary political theory almost always follow the tradition of Machiavelli, Mandeville, and Montesquieu in proclaiming that the virtues good for the polity, and relevant in a political discussion, are quite independent of the human virtues (which may or may not remain relevant in other spheres). This is not to say that one has to regard the classical or Christian virtues as contrary or dangerous to the civic virtues that are good for liberal democracy
6. (For that view see Alasdair MacIntyre, 'Sophrosune: How a Virtue Can Become Socially Disruptive', in Peter A. French, Theodore E. Euhling, Jr., and Howard K. Wettstein [eds.], Midwest Studies in Philosophy. XIII: Ethical Theory: Character and Virtue [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988], pp. 1-11
7. Stanley Hauerwas, 'The Difference of Virtue and the Difference It Makes: Courage Exemplified', in Mary Ann Glendon and David Blankenhorn [eds.], Seedbeds of Virtue: Sources of Competence, Character, and Citizenship in American Society [Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1995], pp. 201-20.) That question is beyond the scope of this paper, though I admit to some skepticism towards the view that the classical and Christian virtues have any chance of becoming attractive to more than a tiny minority of any contemporary polity
8. See, respectively, Macedo, Liberal Virtues, p. 260
9. Gutmann, 'Undemocratic Education', pp. 79-83
10. Galston's rejection of neutrality is of course the most famous: see Liberal Purposes, esp. chapters 1, 4, and 5
11. Walzer, 'Civility and Civic Virtue', pp. 54-72
12. and Stephen P. Macedo, 'Transformative Constitutionalism and the Case of Religion: Defending the Moderate Hegemony of Liberalism', Political Theory 26.1 (February 1998), pp. 56-80 (58, 59, 65)
13. Stephen L. Carter, Integrity (New York: HarperPerennial, 1997), pp. 59, 230
14. idem, Civility (New York: HarperPerennial, 1998), p. 209
15. As pointed out by Richard Flathman in his reply to Macedo, 'It All Depends...on How one Understands Liberalism', Political Theory 26.1 (February 1998), pp. 81-84 (82)
16. Exemplary in this respect are Spragens, Civic Liberalism, pp. xii, 128, 222
17. Stephen P. Macedo, Diversity and Distrust (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), pp. 10-11
18. and to some extent Richard Flathman, Willful Liberalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 211. The latter two authors, however, maintain the distinction inconsistently
19. Macedo, Diversity and Distrust: compare pp. 173 and 327 n. 17 to pp. 174 and 197, where dissent from a deliberative interpretation of liberal democracy is associated with opposition to liberal democracy itself
20. Macedo, Diversity and Distrust, pp. x, 7, 20, 132, 151
21. Carter, Integrity, pp. 59, 238
22. idem, Civility, pp. 209, 282
23. Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996 [1531]), pp. 239-41
24. Michael Walzer, 'Citizenship', in Terence Ball, James Farr and Russell L. Hanson (eds.), Political Innovation and Conceptual Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 211-19 (217-18)
25. Sharon R. Krause, Liberalism with Honor (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 11; compare pp. xii, 185
26. Andrew Lister, 'Understanding the Burdens of Judgment: Moral Pluralism, Causal Ambiguity, and the Limits of Consequentialist Public Reason' (PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2001)
27. Lister, 'Understanding the Burdens of Judgment', chapters 4-6, contains an excellent account of this
28. William A. Galston, 'Causes of Declining Well-Being Among U.S. Children', Aspen Quarterly 5.1 (Winter 1993), pp. 52-77
29. idem, 'Divorce American Style', Public Interest (Summer 1996), pp. 12-26
30. Different assessments of whether the traditional family entails more or less 'dependence' for women than state welfare schemes produce also come into play. See Iris Marion Young, 'Mothers, Citizenship, and Independence: A Critique of Pure Family Values', in her Intersecting Voices (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 114-33
31. This is true even in the article that appears to promise a direct causal argument for the effects of family structure on politics: William A. Galston, 'A Liberal-Democratic Case for the Two-Parent Family', The Responsive Community 1.1 (Winter 1990), pp. 14-26
32. Lee Siegel, 'How to Raise a Good Liberal', Atlantic Monthly 227.1 (January 1996), pp. 104-108, citing competing books of virtues by William Bennett on the one hand and Colin Greer and Herbert Kohl on the other
33. Thomas Nagel, Equality and Partiality (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 164
34. Some moral philosophers contest this claim, or even doubt whether toleration plays much of a role in contemporary societies (see several of the essays in David Heyd [ed.], Toleration: An Elusive Virtue [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996]). But this is only because they narrow the meaning of 'toleration' so strictly that many of the functions' common-sense attributes to toleration are assigned by these authors to other virtues. If one likes, one can call the core virtue 'that complex of attitudes, virtues, and behaviors that ordinary usage commonly but sloppily refers to with the single name "toleration"'. I would like to use 'tolerance' for the attitude or sentiment and 'toleration' for the practice or policy. But as this usage seems to be eccentric, I shall not press it
35. Robert Paul Wolff calls tolerance (which he places in all capitals) 'the virtue of the modern pluralist democracy which has emerged in contemporary America...that state of mind and condition of society which enables a pluralist democracy to function well and to realize the ideal of pluralism' - even as he opposes virulently both the state of mind and the pluralist form of democracy. This makes clear that one can attribute instrumental virtues even to those whose ends one opposes. Robert Paul Wolff, 'Beyond Tolerance', in Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore, Jr., and Herbert Marcuse, A Critique of Pure Tolerance (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965), pp. 3-4
36. Judith N. Shklar, The Faces of Injustice (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), p. 122
37. E.g. minimal legalism, the lack of a propensity to engage in revenge or honor killings rather than appealing to the law for redress. See e.g. G.W.F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. A.W. Wood, trans. H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991 [1820]), pp. 129-31
38. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 35-38, 58-66
39. Pierre Bayle, Various Thoughts on the Occasion of a Comet, trans. Robert Bartlett (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), Eighth Letter, §§133-60, pp. 165-99
40. 'That a public man should try to make himself acceptable to his fellow citizens did not strike Franklin as despicable; on the contrary, he carefully taught himself to hide much of his native character.... Persuasion is not natural; it requires a great deal of effort, and in a man as superior to his fellows as Franklin was, it takes exactly what he described. It was a mark of Franklin's intelligence that he always knew what was called for and could do what he thought right'. Judith N. Shklar, Ordinary Vices (Cambridge: Harvard University Press [Belknap Press], 1984), pp. 72, 73 (emphasis added in both cases)
41. Shklar, Ordinary Vices, p. 85, recognizes that an anti-hypocritical attitude can be functional for those prone to either political isolation or a salutary if annoying brand of moral critique
42. For an excellent brief account of Franldin's determination throughout his life to combine genius with extreme sociability see Edmund S. Morgan, Benjamin Franklin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002)
43. Judith N. Shklar, Legalism: Law, Morals, and Political Trials (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986 [1964]), pp. 100-101
44. '[O]ur government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith and I don't care what it is. With us of course it is the Judo-[sic]Christian concept, but it must be a religion that all men are created equal'. 'President-Elect Says Soviet Demoted Zhukov Because of Their Friendship', New York Times, 23 December 1952, p. 16
45. Compare Bernard Williams, 'The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and the Ambitions of Ethics', in idem, Making Sense of Humanity and Other Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 153-71
46. Henry, Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th edn (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1982 [1907]), Book IV, chapter 5, §3, pp. 485-92
47. '[T]o put the point simply, to say you believe something is to assert that you believe it is true; and to assert that something is true is necessarily to assert -or at least to imply - that other people who are interested in believing the truth should believe it too. Hence, to affirm something is necessarily to prescribe it, at least implicitly'. Steven D. Smith, 'Barnette's Big Blunder', Chicago-Kent Law Review 78 (2003), pp. 625-67 (630). Though matters are obviously more complicated, one can grant the point for the moment given that it does not apply to the argument here
48. There are, of course, accounts of the virtues - especially religious and/or classical ones - that do not see the virtues in functional terms. Each of these might well be incompatible with the theoretical scheme described here. But then, religious and classical accounts are often more or less self-consciously outside the liberal-democratic virtue debate as glossed here: that is, they resist, often angrily, the idea that the virtues should be valued even in part for their social utility, and often go out of their way to stress the conflicts between (the religious) virtues and getting along with others. See, e.g., Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd edn (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), chapter 3
49. idem, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), chapter 3. Whether a given account of virtue is a threat to the liberal-democratic pluralism of ways of life depends on the level of political coercion that is contemplated. One should make sure that there are core violations before condemning even marginally liberal virtue theories too quickly. The search for a society based on moral consensus is harmless, and can even have salutary effects, as long as its advocates respond nonviolently and tolerantly when brought the news that this quixotic project continues to fail
50. Charles Taylor, 'Cross-Purposes: The Liberal-Communitarian Debate', in Nancy L. Rosenblum (ed.), Liberalism and the Moral Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 159-82
51. Michael Walzer, 'Comment', in Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 99-103
52. William A. Galston, Liberal Pluralism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 4
53. Galston, Liberal Pluralism, pp. 59-60
54. Compare Macedo, 'Transformative Constitutionalism', p. 75: 'It is likely that no political order, including our own, can be a home to all good things'
55. Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1983), p. 79 et passim
56. Michael Walzer, 'Political Alienation and Military Service', in idem, Obligations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 99-119. The text summary oversimplifies: Walzer is troubled by the conclusion and offers it very tentatively
57. Michael Hardimon, 'Role Obligations', Journal of Philosophy 91.7 (1994), pp. 333-63
58. See, e.g., Susan Moller Okin, 'Whose Traditions? Which Understandings?' in her Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic Books, 1989), pp. 41-73
59. Nancy Rosenblum, Another Liberalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), pp. 138-51
60. Even attempts at defining civic virtues in a minimalist manner sometimes fall into the trap of endorsing one from each of these pairs of incompatible virtues at the cost of the other. Thus Nancy Rosenblum, by saying that liberal democratic society requires an 'easy spontaneity' that embodies 'a rejection of deference, a habitual disregard for social and economic standing, ethnic and cultural differences' (Membership and Morals [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998], pp. 350-51), more or less calls undemocratic (or at least a bad citizen) anyone who cares about multiculturalism and cultural sensitivities, has been taught to respect his or her elders, or is simply shy. ('Those incapable of exhibiting these dispositions in mundane affairs put themselves outside the pale of liberal democratic society' [p. 351].) She has presented her ideal of no-nonsense personal interactions as if it were the core of liberal democracy, ignoring the possibility, which the rest of her book would seem to entail, that there is more than one way of being a good liberal democrat
61. (on which see Mark Philp, 'Economising on Truth in Democratic Public Life', paper delivered before the 2003 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, PA)
62. Similarly, Rosenblum's call for citizens to have thick skins and not multiply slights (Membership and Morals, p. 353
63. 'The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout: A Field Experiment', American Political Science Review 94.3 (September 2000), pp. 653-63. Gerber and Green cite prior evidence that various lands of volunteerism likewise depend on face-to-face appeals
64. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers, no. 49 (attributed to Mason) (Cutchogue, NY: Buccaneer Books, 1992 [1788]), pp. 254-58 (256)
65. Hannah Arendt, 'What is Freedom?' in her Between Past and Future (New York: Viking Press, 1968; repr. New York: Penguin Books, 1987), p. 156
66. Hannah Arendt, 'Preface: The Gap Between Past and Future', in Between Past and Future, p. 14 and pp. 3-15 passim
67. Max Weber, 'Politics as a Vocation', in From Max Weber, trans. and ed. H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 127
68. Arendt, 'What is Freedom?' pp. 170-71