Plural values and heterogeneous situations: Considerations on the scope for a political theory of justice

European Journal of Political Theory

Volumn 6, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 359-375

  Ceva, Emanuela ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PAVIA   (Italy)

Author keywords

Justice; Justification; Pluralism; Procedural justice; Substantive justice; Theories of justice

Indexed keywords

EID: 38849107517     PISSN: 14748851     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1474885107077325     Document Type: Article

References (31)

1. John Rawls (1971) A Theory of Justice, p. 127. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2. Note that, although it involves agents, the presence of a plurality of values is considered here an objective circumstance of justice. Indeed, it refers to a social and interpersonal situation and not to an intra-personal quality of the agents - as was, in fact, the case with Rawls's identification of limited altruism as a properly subjective circumstance of justice. Unlike Rawls's subjects who were limitedly altruistic, here agents are not considered pluralist themselves. Ideally, they could be monists at an intra-personal level (giving priority to one value over the others), but this would not change the objective fact of their disagreeing at an interpersonal level.
3. Briefly, the understanding of value that I endorse in this work is a very basic one, as something that gives meaning to a person's life and that one prefers to realize where possible.
4. See, for instance, Brian Barry (1995) Justice as Impartiality. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Jürgen Habermas (1996) Between Facts and Norms. Cambridge: Polity Press. Stuart Hampshire (1999) Justice is Conflict. London: Duckworth.
5. On this see John Rawls (1993) Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Glenn Newey (1997) 'Metaphysics Postponed: Liberalism, Pluralism, and Neutrality', Political Studies 45: 296-311. Joshua Cohen (1994) 'Pluralism and Proceduralism', Chicago-Kent Law Review 69: 589-618.
6. For reasons in support of this claim see, among others, Stuart Hampshire (1989) Innocence and Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hampshire (n. 4).
7. On this see Isaiah Berlin's defence of value pluralism in Isaiah Berlin (1991) The Crooked Timber of Humanity. London: Fontana Press. On the distinction between pluralism as a metaphysical theory of values and pluralism as the recognition of a fact see also Charles Larmore (1994) 'Pluralism and Reasonable Disagreement', Social Philosophy and Policy 11: 61-79. Matt Matravers (2000) Justice and Punishment. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Susan Mendus (2000) 'Pluralism and Scepticism in a Disenchanted World', in M. Baghramian and A. Ingram (eds) Pluralism: The Philosophy and Politics of Diversity. London: Routledge.
8. Newey (n. 5), p. 307.
9. In Rawls's words, 'the burdens of reason ... are the many hazards involved in the correct (and conscientious) exercise of our powers of reason and judgement in the ordinary course of political life' (n. 5), p. 236.
10. Let me specify that the fact of the presence - i.e. the mere existence - of a plurality of values is not a problem in itself. The specific relevant problem for a theory of justice is that such values are actually held by different agents, and can thus collide. In short, that such plural values are held by someone - and are not merely 'there' - is of paramount importance in terms of considering a circumstance of justice that can be relevant to us.
11. I construe social harmony in terms of legitimacy and stability of social and political institutions. See on this George Klosko (2000) Democratic Procedures and Liberal Consensus. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
12. In view of this characterization of circumstances of justice, a possibly related question regards the scope of plurality. Namely, if the scarcity of resources was considered moderate by Hume and Rawls, here I have introduced no specifications as regards the scope of a plurality of values, whether it is to be considered in relation to radically different values (absolute plurality), or to values that are different but, nonetheless, compatible (moderate plurality). Accordingly, I have inserted no considerations on whether an absolute heterogeneity of values would render justice redundant. This point concerns also the vexed question on the limits of pluralism, and urges us to decide how much plurality the so-called liberal societies can - and should - accommodate. Although I certainly appreciate the significance of such an urge, an extensive answer to this question would go far beyond the limits of these considerations whose purpose is to explain the reasons why the fact of plurality (whatever its scope) should be taken into consideration when constructing a political theory of justice. The study of the types of plurality that can be successfully accommodated within liberal societies and any considerations on the scope of pluralism as a basis for the definition of a theory of justice are set aside for another work to come.
13. Thomas Nagel (1991) Equality and Partiality, p. 36. Oxford: Oxford University Press. For an extensive, empirically grounded, analysis of this claim see also Klosko (n. 11).
14. For an extensive and insightful treatment of such issues see Fred D'Agostino (1996) Free Public Reason: Making it up as we Go. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
15. Rawls (n. 5), p. 421.
16. See Hampshire (n. 4).
17. Ibid. p. 18.
18. Klosko (n. 11), p. 231.
19. See Rawls (n. 5), pp. 421-33.
20. Ibid. p. 425.
21. See Newey (n. 5), p. 310.
22. See on this his extensive characterization of democracy as embodying both procedural and substantive aspects: Cohen (n. 5).
23. Incidentally, note that even a 'free-standing' theory of justice, as John Rawls claims his theory of justice as fairness is, ultimately depends on value assumptions. These are - arguably - not metaphysical or comprehensive values, but political ones (see Rawls (nn. 1 and 5).
24. Let me postpone a further tentative illustration of this idea to an example I shall introduce at the end of §2.2 (see esp. n. 30 below).
25. H.L.A. Hart (1994) The Concept of Law, p. 128. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
26. Ibid. p. 135.
27. Ibid.
28. For an extensive analysis of issues of feasibility and justice see Andrew Mason (2004) 'Just Constraints', British Journal of Political Science 34: 251-68.
29. John Horton (1988) Back to the Future: Political Philosophy and its Prospects, p. 8. Morrell Studies in Toleration Discussion Paper Series, 41. York: University of York, Department of Politics.
30. To be fair, the conception of justice in (a) also allows for a certain degree of contextual adaptation, as what makes the solution to a conflict just actually depends on the specific tradition of a certain community. However, there are certain cases in which such a substantive definition could not possibly be applied. Think, for instance, of a case in which a dispute emerges during the definition of a constitutional charter, that is to say, a case in which the considered community had been recently founded so that it does not make sense to call in such a criterion of justice as the respect of tradition. In this case, we can say that the theory in (a) is not relevant for the context to which it should be applied.
31. Note that the characterization of the theory in (c) is only an example of the kind of minimal procedural conception of justice that I consider plausible. In other words, my case here is not meant to defend it as a specific formulation of a theory of procedural justice, the construction of which - in accordance with what I stated at the beginning of the article - goes beyond the aim of the present considerations.