Progress in reconciliation: Evidence from the right and the left

Journal of Social Philosophy

Volumn 28, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 101-116

  Sterba, James P ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84887924038     PISSN: 00472786     EISSN: 14679833     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9833.1997.tb00379.x     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. It is interesting to note that in his recent work Alasdair Maclntyre has significantly qualified his commitment to the incommensurability thesis with which he is so widely associated. Maclntyre now allows that while alternative political ideals are incommensurable, it is still possible for a sensitive interpreter to come to adequately understand competing ideals so as to raise problems for those ideals that should lead either to their abandonment or their modification. Maclntyre credits Aquinas with being a sensitive interpreter of Aristotelianism and Augustianism who showed the need to modify each perspective to produce a more adequate synthesis. In his most recent work, Maclntyre sees himself as being the sensitive interpreter of two views he calls the encyclopaedist (which he apparently thinks contains the core view of liberalism) and the genealogist (which represents an ugly form of relativism). Maclntyre then attempts to show that both of these views are plagued with internal contradictions which he takes to provide support for the Augustinian- Aristotelian synthesis that he derives from Aquinas. Obviously, I welcome Maclntyre's newly stated recognition that it is possible to argue nonarbitrarily with respect to alternative political ideals. Nevertheless, I think that while Maclntyre in his most recent work may have correctly refuted the genealogist, the liberalism he criticizes is only a caricature of contemporary liberalism. Ironically, it turns out that contemporary liberalism, correctly understood, is in fact one variant of the general Augustinian-Aristotelian synthesis that Maclntyre derives from Aquinas! (See Alasdair Maclntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,1990].)
2. One might think that it would not suffice for reaching agreement in practice to show that all of these conceptions support the same practical requirements of a right to welfare and a right to equal opportunity given that these rights can be interpreted differently or given different priorities in light of other requirements of justice. But for the purposes of my argument, I will consider rights that are interpreted differently or given different priorities to be different rights. So understood, showing that all of these conceptions of justice support the same rights to welfare and equal opportunity would constitute a significant practical reconciliation. I should also point out that I am not denying that these conceptions of justice may be incommensurable in other respects than with regard to their practical requirements for the circumstances in which we live. Furthermore, the way I hope to establish that we have a nonarbitrary reason for abiding by those practical requirements is by showing that these conceptions have the same practical requirements for the circumstances in which we live. For some relevant discussion, see How To Make People Just, pp.99-100,180-82.
3. Some earlier and later published versions of the argument are the following: See "Neolibertarianism," American Philosophical Quarterly 15 (1978) 115-21;
4. The Demands of Justice (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980), Chap. 5;
5. "The Welfare Rights of Distant Peoples and Future Generations: Moral Side-Constraints on Social Policy," Social Theory and Practice 7(1981) 99-119;
6. "Recent Work on Alternative Conceptions of Justice," American Philosophical Quarterly 23 (1986), 1-22;
7. "The U.S. Constitution: A Fundamentally Rawed Document" and "A Response to Three Critics," in Christopher Gray, The U.S. Constitution and its American Philosophers (1989);
8. "Feminist Justice and the Family," Perspectives on the Family, edited by Michael Bayles, Robert Moffat, and Joseph Grcic (1990)
9. reprinted in my anthology, Justice: Alternative Political Perspectives, 2nd ed. (Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing, 1991);
10. "Practical Reconciliation Reaffirmed: A Reply to Peffer," The Journal of Social Philosophy (1992);
11. "From Liberty to Welfare," in Moral Controversies, edited by Steven Jay Gould (1993);
12. "Liberalism and a Non-Question-begging Conception of the Good," in C.J. Delaney, The Liberalism/Communitarian Debate (1993);
13. "Reconciling Conceptions of Justice," in Law, Justice and the State, edited by Michael Karlson (1993);
14. "Feminist Justice and the Pursuit of Peace," Hypatia, Special Issue (1994);
15. "From Liberty to Equality," in Morality in Practice, 4th ed. (1994).
16. See also "From Liberty to Welfare," Ethics, (1994).
17. Individuals and their Rights (La Salle, 1989), pp. 100-111.
18. Alan Durning, "Life on the Brink," World Watch, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1990), p. 24.
19. "James P. Sterba, Tibor Machan, et al., Morality and Social justice: Point/Counterpoint (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1994).
20. James P. Sterba, "Reconciling Conceptions of Justice," in Morality and Social Justice: Point/ Counterpoint.
21. "Reconciling Conceptions of Justice."
22. Douglas Rasmussen, "Individual Rights and Human Flourishing," Public Affairs Quarterly (1989) pp. 89-103.
23. See also Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl, Liberty and Nature (La Salle, 1991) Chaps. 2-4.
24. Rodney Peffer, "A Failed Reconciliation: Further Reflections on Sterba's Project," Journal of Social Philosophy (1994) Vol. 25, pp.206-221. In this article, Peffer raises a third critique concerning my favorable analysis of communitarianism, which Peffer regards as a totally indefensible view. But this third critique need not concern us here.
25. One of the implications of cognitive science for moral philosophy, according to Mark Johnson, is that virtually all of our concepts are characterized by such indeterminancy. See Mark Johnson, Moral Imagination (Chicago, 1993), pp.8-9.
26. 29Bob Bergland, "Attacking the Problem of World Hunger," The National Forum (1979) Vol.69, No.2, p 4.
27. For a discussion of these causal connections, see Cheryl Silver, One Earth One Future (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1990);
28. Bill McKibben, The End of Nature (New York: Anchor Books, 1989);
29. Jeremy Leggett, ed., Global Warming (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990);
30. Lester Brown, ed., The World Watch Reader (New York: Nelson, 1991);
31. Anita Gordon and David Suzuki, It's a Matter of Survival (Cambridge, 1991).
32. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), Chap. 2.
33. Derek Parfit and others have challenged this argument in print ("A Reply to Sterba," Philosophy and Public Affairs, (1987) pp.193-94), but Parfit later conceded in correspondence that he now thinks that the argument works. After searching in vain for a mistake in it, I also think the argument works. But I also see more clearly now that the argment does little to support my case for equality, since under present conditions it justifies both abortion and contraception. So I have not used it here. My initial argument, buttressed by the new considerations that I have brought to bear here, is more than sufficient to establish the conclusion I want.
34. James P. Sterba, "The U.S. Constitution: A Fundamentally Flawed Document" and "A Response to Three Critics," in Christopher Gray, The U.S. Constitution and its American Philosophers (1989).
35. Rodney Peffer, Marxism, Morality and Social Justice (Princeton, 1990).
36. James P. Sterba, "Nine Commentators: A Brief Response," Journal of Social Philosophy (1991), 110.
37. "Nine Commentators," 109-110