Constructivism and practical reason: On intersubjectivity, abstraction, and judgment

Journal of Moral Philosophy

Volumn 7, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 74-104

  Ronzoni, Miriam ^a  

^a EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE   (Italy)

Author keywords

Agnosticism; John Rawls; Moral realism and antirealism; Onora O'Neill; Original position; Thinness and thickness

Indexed keywords

EID: 73949112078     PISSN: 17404681     EISSN: 17455243     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/174046809X12544019606102     Document Type: Review

References (45)

1. Onora O'Neill, 'Constructivism in Rawls and Kant', in Samuel Freeman (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Rawls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 347-36 (348)
2. O'Neill, 'Constructivism vs. Contractualism', Ratio 16.4 (December 2003), pp. 319-31 (321)
3. O'Neill, 'Constructivism in Rawls and Kant', p. 348; emphasis in original
4. O. O'Neill, Constructions of Reason: Exploration of Kant's Practical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 206
5. Christine Korsgaard, 'Skepticism about Practical Reason', Journal of Philosophy 83.1 (January 1986), pp. 5-25. Korsgaard offers a distinction between two forms of skepticism about practical reason - that is, skepticism about the extent to which action can be directed by reason: the first (1), content skepticism, concerns the bearing of 'formal' rational considerations on deliberation and choice; the second (2), motivational skepticism, points at whether reason can ever be a motivation for action
6. O. O'Neill, 'Normativity and Practical Judgment', Journal of Moral Philosophy 4.3 (November 2007), pp. 393-405
7. While most of the literature on constructivism concentrates on (1) anti-realist methodological commitments and (2) a focus on selection procedures, a partially different understanding of constructivism has been recently proposed. Both Aaron James ('Constructing Justice for Existing Practice: Rawls and the Status Quo', Philosophy and Public Affairs 33.3 [July 2005], pp. 281-316; esp. pp. 298-302)
8. and Saladin Meckled-Garcia ('On the Very Idea of Cosmopolitan Justice: Constructivism and International Agency', Journal of Political Philosophy, forthcoming, http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/jopp/0/0, esp. pp. 3-5), put the emphasis on the interpretivist dimension of the constructivist methodology, whilst not denying its reliance on selection procedures
9. Constructivism, understood in this way, is a strategy to cash out the specific normative principles that (ought to) regulate specific social practices, given the specific values served by, and agents participating in, each practice (for an account of interpretivism, see Ronald Dworkin, 'Interpretive Concepts', in Law's Empire [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986], pp. 45-86)
10. G.A. Cohen, 'Facts and Principles', Philosophy and Public Affairs 31.3 (Summer 2003), pp. 211-45; at p. 213 n. 2
11. O. O'Neill, 'Constructivism in Ethics', in E. Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (London: Routledge), http://www.rep.routledge. com/article/L014SECT1 (accessed 12 July 2007)
12. I take it that Rawls's account of the burdens of judgment, which are the main source of reasonable disagreement, is a way of articulating this idea. Unlike prejudice, biases and self-interest, the burdens of judgment are impediments to our judgments that even fully reasonable agents cannot be expected to overcome. Such burdens include, among others, the complexity of empirical evidence, the vagueness of moral concepts, and the way in which our 'history' and identity influence our moral intuitions (John Rawls, Political Liberalism [New York: Columbia University Press, 1993], pp. 54-58)
13. O. O'Neill, Towards Justice and Virtue: A Constructivist Account of Practical Reasoning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 50
14. O'Neill, Towards Justice and Virtue, pp. 48-50
15. This issue is discussed in detail in Miriam Ronzoni and Laura Valentini, 'On theMetaethical Status of Constructivism: Reflections on G. A. Cohen's "Facts and Principles"', Politics, Philosophy, and Economics 7.4 (2008) pp. 403-422
16. See Ronald Milo, 'Contractarian Constructivism', Journal of Philosophy 4.92 (April 1995), pp. 181-204
17. Not all Kantian scholars, however, agree on a constructivist reading of Kant's moral philosophy. See, for instance, Patrick Kain, 'Kant's Moral Constructivism and his Conception of Legislation', The Paideia Project Online (1999), http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/TEth/TEthKain.htm
18. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, rev. edn, 1999), p. 10
19. Michael Sandel, 'The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self', Political Theory 12.1 (Winter 1984), pp. 81-96; at p. 82
20. See, for instance, David O. Brink, 'Rawlsian Constructivism in Moral Theory', Canadian Journal of Philosophy 17 (1987), pp. 71-90; esp. p. 73
21. O'Neill, Constructions of Reason, pp. 206-208
22. J. Rawls, 'Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory', The Journal of Philosophy 77.9 (September 1980), pp. 515-72
23. Political Liberalism, Lectures I-III, pp. 3-129
24. O'Neill, 'Constructivism in Ethics'
25. Rawls, Theory of Justice, p. 12
26. This strategy shares several theoretical features with Alan Gewirth's 'dialectically necessary method' (Alan Gewirth, 'Human Dignity as the Basis of Rights', in Michael J. Meyer and William A. Parent [eds.], The Constitution of Rights [Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992], pp. 10-46)
27. On this issue, see, e.g., Robert E. Goodin, 'Political Ideals and Political Practice', British Journal of Political Science 25.1 (January 1995), pp. 37-56; esp. pp. 40-45
28. Lisa H. Schwartzman, 'Abstraction, Idealization, and Oppression', Metaphilosophy 37.5 (2006), pp. 565-88
29. See also Schwartzman, 'Abstraction, Idealization, and Oppression', pp. 570, 573. According to Schwartzman, every process of abstraction requires us to make' selective omissions', that is, to decide what is relevant to theorizing about justice and what is not, and therefore necessarily implies a certain degree of idealization
30. O. O'Neill, Bounds of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 138
31. An important exception is her 'Abstraction, Idealisation and Ideology in Ethics', where she seems to refer to a more traditional notion of idealization (O. O'Neill, 'Abstraction, Idealisation and Ideology in Ethics', in J.D. Evans [ed.], Moral Philosophy and Contemporary Problems [London: Royal Institute of Philosophy, 1987], pp. 55-69; esp. p. 56). However, her use of the term in all later writings is significantly different
32. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (trans. N. Kemp Smith; London: Macmillan, [1787] 1973), A132-3/B171-2; A134/B173. Indeed, this holds for all kinds of principles and for all theoretical matters, not only in the realm of moral theorizing
33. Susan M. Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic Books, 1989), p. 101
34. One could raise the objection that abstract and perfectly general principles of intersubjective justifiability, like Kant's categorical imperative or O'Neill's principles of injury and coercion, are the most fundamental principles of Rawls's approach, as well. Indeed, they are the principles that demand the adoption of the original position in the rst place (on this, see also Cohen, 'Facts and Principles'). I think, however, that such principlfies are best conceived as methodological, rather than as proper substantive outputs of Rawls's constructivism. From a constructivist/agnostic perspective, intersubjective justifiability is a theoretical constraint, which an appropriate normative theory ought to respect, rather than an element, let alone a prescription, of such a theory. This issue is discussed in detail in Ronzoni and Valentini, 'On the Meta-ethical Status of Constructivism'
35. This issue is addressed in Ronzoni and Valentini, 'On the Meta-ethical Status of Constructivism'
36. Such an understanding of the original position as judgment-informed is also consistent with the slightly different connotation of the role of practical judgment that O'Neill has more recently stressed (O'Neill, 'Normativity and Practical Judgment', esp. pp. 401-405). Judgment, O'Neill has recently contended, is not simply a matter of 'picking' between a wider set of actions that a principle seems to allow: this would make the virtue of making good judgments a quasimagical quality. Moreover, it cannot be equated exclusively with the talent of reading the details of the situation
37. Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family, pp. 101-102
38. J. Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, ed. Erin Kelly (London and Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2001), pp. 162-68
39. For a more detailed discussion of this point, see also Laura Valentini, 'On the Apparent Paradox of Rawlsian Ideal Theory', The Journal of Political Philosophy, 17.3 (September 2009), pp. 332-355
40. Charles R. Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 143-53
41. Thomas W. Pogge, Realizing Rawls (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 211-80
42. Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp. 115-20
43. On this point, see Valentini, 'On the Apparent Paradox of Rawlsian Ideal Theory'. Valentini argues that, unlike Rawls's domestic theory, which is fruitfully open to potential revisions and modifications, his theory of international justice is constructed in a way that obscures the very problem of international justice from the outset. In the light of the argument made in this paper we could reformulate Valentini's point and claim that, if she is right, this might be due to a bad (short-sighted or excessively rigid) exercise of judgment
44. O'Neill, 'Constructivism vs. Contractualism', pp. 330-31
45. and Timothy M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998])