MVE 6030 The Good Society and its Educated Citizens

MVE 6030The Good Society and its Educated Citizens Topic 3 (Lecture 4 & 5) Communitarian’s Idea of Good Society

Michael Sandel’s Critique on Rawls’ Deontological Liberalism • Rawls’ deontological liberalism Michael Sandel published a book entitled Liberalism and the Limits of Justice in 1982. The book is a direct critique on Rawls’ work A Theory of Justice (1971). The focus of Sandel’s critique is on the assumption on which Rawls has built his theory of justice. Sandel characterizes the assumption as deontological liberalism.

Michael Sandel’s Critique on Rawls’ Deontological Liberalism • Rawls’ deontological liberalism… • By deontological liberalism, according to Sandel’s interpretation, it refers to Rawls’ stance of assigning liberalism such a deontological and significant status that it becomes the Categorical Imperative of all ethical concerns. This can be evident in the following three theses stipulated by Rawls.

Michael Sandel’s Critique on Rawls’ Deontological Liberalism • Rawls’ deontological liberalism… • Priority of justice: “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of system of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. …Being first virtue of human actives, truth and justice are uncompromising.” (Rawls, 1971, Pp. 3-4)

Michael Sandel’s Critique on Rawls’ Deontological Liberalism • Rawls’ deontological liberalism… • Right prior to good: • “We should therefore reverse the relation between the right and the good proposed by the teleological doctrines and view the right as prior.” (Rawls, 1971, p. 560)

Michael Sandel’s Critique on Rawls’ Deontological Liberalism • Rawls’ deontological liberalism… • Right prior to good: …. • Two capacities of moral personality: “Moral personality is characterized by two capacities: one for a conception of the good, the other for a sense of justice. When realized, the firstis expressed by a rational plan of life, the second by a regulative desire to act upon certain principle of right. Thus a moral person is a subject with ends he has chosen, and his fundamental preference is for conditions that enable him to frame a mode of life that expresses his nature as a free and equal rational being as fully as circumstances permit. Now the unity of the person is manifest in the coherent of his plan, this unity being founded in the higher order desire to follow, in ways consistent with his sense of right and justice, the principles of rational choice. (Rawls, 1971, P. 561)

Michael Sandel’s Critique on Rawls’ Deontological Liberalism • Rawls’ deontological liberalism… • Right prior to good: …. • Inability to settle pluralism in conceptions of good: As each moral person is to make his rational plans of life separately, a plurality of life plans and conceptions of good is bound to emerge. To Rawls, it is practically impossible as well as undesirable to impose a dominant conception of good (dominant-end) on a group of free-willing agents.

Michael Sandel’s Critique on Rawls’ Deontological Liberalism • Rawls’ deontological liberalism… • Right prior to good: …. • As a result, the common aim of moral persons “in the original position is to establish just and favorable conditions for each to fashion his own unity. Their fundamental interest in liberty and in the means to make fair use of it is the expression of their seeing themselves as primarily moral persons with an equal right to choose their mode of life. Thus they acknowledge the two principles of justice to be ranked in serial order as circumstances permit. …The main idea is that given the priority of right, the choice of our conception of the good is framed within definite limits. The principles of justice and their realization in social forms define the bounds within which our deliberations take place.” (Rawls, 1971, P. 563)

Michael Sandel’s Critique on Rawls’ Deontological Liberalism • Rawls’ deontological liberalism… • The priorityofindividual autonomy: • Immanuel Kant’s conception of autonomy “Everything in nature works in accordance with laws. Only a rational being has the power to act in accordance with his ideas of laws ― that is, in accordance with principles ― and only so has he a will. Since reason is required in order to derive actions from laws, the will is nothing but practical reason. If reason infallibly determines the will, then in a being of this kind the actions which are recognized to be objectively necessary are also subjectively necessary ― that is to say, the will is then a power to choose only that which reason independently of inclination recognizes to be practically necessary, that is, to be good.” (Kant, 2008[1785], P.5)

Michael Sandel’s Critique on Rawls’ Deontological Liberalism • Rawls’ deontological liberalism… • The priorityofindividual autonomy: … • “Following the Kantian interpretation of justice as fairness, we can say that by acting from these principles persons are acting autonomously: they are acting from principles that would acknowledge under conditions that best express their nature as free and equal rational beings. To be sure, these conditions also reflect the situation of individuals in the world and that their being subject to the circumstances of justice. But this simply means that the conception of autonomy is that fitting for human beings. …The moral education is education for autonomy. In due course everyone will know why he would adopt the principles of justice and how they are derived from the conditions that characterize his being an equal in a society of moral persons.” (Rawls, 1971, P. 516)

Michael Sandel’s Critique on Rawls’ Deontological Liberalism • Sandel’s communitarian critiques on Rawls’ deontological liberalism • Rawls’ flaws on the conception of the person • Voluntaristic connection between a person’s plans of life and the self: On Rawls’ conception of the person, one can always voluntaristically make choices among plans of life and conceptions of good. However, to the communitarians, “establishing one’s own end is not a matter of choosing from a menu of available possibilities, but one of discovering what one’s end really are or ought to be.” (Mulhall and Swift, 1996, P. 50) And this discovery process is deeply embedded in the sociocultural milieu which one is born with and/or has to live with.

Michael Sandel’s Critique on Rawls’ Deontological Liberalism • Sandel’s communitarian critiques on Rawls’ deontological liberalism • Rawls’ flaws on the conception of the person • Disconnection between a person’s plans of life and identity: In connection to Rawls’ voluntaristic conception of choices of one’s end and/or plan of life, such choices can hardly be a constitutive part of one identity, that is, these ends and plans of life could not have been owned permanently and continuously by oneself because they are subject to changes in accordance with one’s preferences or desires. …

Michael Sandel’s Critique on Rawls’ Deontological Liberalism • Sandel’s communitarian critiques on Rawls’ deontological liberalism • Rawls’ flaws on the conception of the person • Disconnection between a person’s plans of life and identity: … However, to Sandel or communitarians in general, the process of personal identification is in essence a social interacting process. It is a balance, negotiation or even conflict between one’s self-aspirations and the social obligation to family, tribe, social class, nation, or any social bondage to which one belong.

Michael Sandel’s Critique on Rawls’ Deontological Liberalism • Sandel’s communitarian critiques on Rawls’ deontological liberalism • Rawls’ flaws on the conception of the person • Disconnection between personal identity and sense of community and common good: Accordingly, “Rawls’ conception of the self commits him to an impoverished understanding of political community. …On Rawls’ view a sense of community describe a possible aim of antecedently individuated selves, not an ingredient of their identity. Essentially communal goods thereby find their place only as one type of contender amongst many.” (Mulhall and Swift, 1996, P. 52) To the communitarians, a community can be conceived as a home in which one can attach one’s sense of belonging, attribute one’s vocationfor life and one’s meaning of existence.

Michael Sandel’s Critique on Rawls’ Deontological Liberalism • Sandel’s communitarian critiques on Rawls’ deontological liberalism • Rawls’ flaws on the conception of community • A society is but a field of cooperation between antecedently individuated rational choosers of ends based primarily on their independent preferences and personal desires. • The value of society is defined simply by its capacity to guarantee individual freedom in realization of personal preferences and desires • Apart from the fulfillment of individual freedom, a society is excluded from any possibility of constituting any forms of common good, such as fraternity or common good and care.

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • MacIntyre published his work After Virtue in 1981. It is a work of not focused specifically Rawls’ A Theory of Justice but a comprehensive critique on liberalism espoused from the project of the Enlightenment. And the work presents a comprehensive thesis on moral philosophy from the communitarian perspective.

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • MacIntyre begins his thesis by criticizing the moral doctrine, which he calls emotivism. To MacIntyre, “emotivism is the doctrines that all evaluative judgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling, insofar as they are moral or evaluative in character. …But moral judgment, being expression of attitude or feeling, are neither true nor false; and agreement in moral judgment is not to be secured by any rational method, for there are none. …..

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • MacIntyre begins his thesis by criticizing the moral doctrine, which he calls emotivism. To MacIntyre, …. “…..It is to be secured, if at all, by producing certain non-rational effects on the emotions or attitudes of those who disagree with one. We use moral judgments not only to express our own feelings attitudes, but also precisely to produce such effects in others.” (MacIntyre, 2007[1981], P. 11-12)

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • MacIntyre then traces this emotivistic orientation prevailing in current moral debates back to of current contemporary back to the Enlightenment project and more specifically to moral philosophies of “Kierkegaard, Kant, Hume, Smith and their contemporaries” of the Enlightenment. (P.51)

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • MacIntyre traces this emotivistic orientation… • Kant’s motto of the Enlightenment: "Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude (Dare to know)! 'Have courage to use your own reason!' - that is the motto of enlightenment." (Kant, 1996/1784)

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • MacIntyre traces this emotivistic orientation… • Accompany with the historical events of Reformation and Scientific Revolution, moral philosophers of the Enlightenment such as Immanuel Kant endowed humans with the capacity to reason practically and morally of their plan of life, ends of life or in MacIntyre’s words “human telos”. • As a result, the moral issue of human telos confronting modern man had practically changed from the project of “man-as-he-could-be-if-he realized-his-essential nature” to that of “man-as-he-happen-to-be”. (2007, P. 52) • ….

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • MacIntyre traces this emotivistic orientation… • … • Furthermore, the whole project of ethics, which was supposed “to enable man to pass from his present state (or untutored human nature) to his true end (or notion of man-as-he-could-be-if-he realized-his-telos)” was left in disarray since the Classical characters of human telos were replaced with the enlightened minds of free-will and autonomy, who could make choices on “man-as-he-happen-to-be” or even “man-as-he-feel-happy-to-be).

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • MacIntyre’s project of After Virtue • Confronted with the prevailing emotivism in current moral discourse or more specifically the modern mobile psyches endowed with free-will and autonomy but striped off the human telos; MacIntyre set out to the pursuit after the long lost concept of virtue, which can trace back to Aristotle writings.

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • MacIntyre’s project of After Virtue … • To begin with, MacIntyre underlines in retrospect that “we have at least three very different conceptions of a virtue to confront: a virtue is a quality which enables an individual to discharge his or her social role (Homer); a virtue is a quality which enables an individual to move towards the achievement of the specifically human telos, whether natural or supernatural (Aristotle, the New Testament and Aquinas); a virtue is quality which has utility in achievement earthly and heavenly success.” (P. 185)

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • MacIntyre’s project of After Virtue … • MacIntyre suggests that “the complex, historical, multi-layered character of the core concept of virtue” can be logically developed in three stages.

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • MacIntyre’s project of After Virtue … • “The first stage requires a background account of what I shall call a practice, the second an account of what I have …characterized as the narrative order of a single human life and the third an account …of what constitutes a moral tradition. Each latter stage presupposes the earlier, but not vice versa. Each earlier stage is both modified by and reinterpreted in the light of, but also provides an essential constituent of each later stage. The progress in the development of the concept is closely related, although it does not recapitulate in any straightforward way, the history of the tradition of which it forms the core.” (Pp. 186-87)

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • The concept of practice • “By a ‘practice’ I am going to mean any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internalto that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involve, are systematically extended. …The game of football is, and so is chess. Bricklaying is not a practice; architecture is. Planting turnips is not a practice; farming is. So are enquiries of physics, chemistry and biology, and so is the work of the historian, and so are painting and music.” (P.187) So are practices of modern professions such as doctors, lawyers and teachers.

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • The concept of practice • Taken professional practices in Anglo-American societies as examples, a ‘practice’ embodies a number of definitive features • The notion of “goods internal to the practice”: It is suggested that participants in a ‘practice’ will more or less experience intrinsic meaning and reward, i.e. internal good, from the cooperative activities and practice. Hence, participants are supposedly motivated not by some material rewards or value external to the activities themselves. • Authority of the standards and paradigms operative in the practice: There are definitive standards and paradigms developed and accumulated within a practice. And an authority of assessing such standards and paradigms will be established and universally recognized by practitioners within a practice.

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • The concept of practice • … a ‘practice’ embodies a number of definitive features… • A framework of reasoning: A framework of due course handling disputes among practitioners on standards or/and paradigms of a practice will develop and be observed by its members. • A form of life and vocation: Accordingly, members of a practice may develop a communal form of life and a sense of vocation among themselves.

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • The concept of practice • Virtue of practice: By locating the notion of virtue with the context of practice. MacIntyre proposes following tentative definition of a virtue: “A virtue is an acquired human quality the possession and exercise of which tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices and the lack of which effectively prevents us from achieving any such goods.” (MacIntyre, 2007, p. 191, emphasis original)

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • The concept of practice • Virtue of practice: … These internal goods to a “practice” include • Truthfulness and trust: It refers to the disposition and capacity of remain truthful to the definitive standard and paradigm established with a practice. At the same time, it expects the practitioners to trust their fellow practitioners, as well as the prevailing authority and reasoning framework within a practice. Finally, the practitioners of a professional practice are also required to be truthful and trustworthy to their clients as well as the general public.

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • The concept of practice • Virtue of practice: … These internal goods to a “practice” include… • Justice: “Justice requires that we treat others in respect of merit or desert according to uniform and impersonal standards: to depart from the standards of justice in some particular instance defines our relationship with the relevant person as in some way special or distinctive.” (P. 192)

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • The concept of practice • Virtue of practice: … These internal goods to a “practice” include… • Courage: “We hold courage to be a virtue because the care and concern for individuals, communities and causes which is so crucial to so much in practices requires the existence of such a virtue. If someone says that he cares for some individual, community or cause, but is unwilling to risk harm or danger on his, her or its own behalf, he puts in question the genuineness of his care and concern. Courage, the capacity to risk harm or danger to oneself, has its role to human life because of this connection with care and concern.” (P. 192)

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • The concept of practice • The relativity of virtue to code of practice: “I take it then that from the standpoint of those types of relationship without which practices cannot be sustained trustfulness, justice and courage ― and perhaps some others ― are genuine excellences, are virtues in the light of which we have to characterize ourselves and others, whatever our private moral standpoint or our society’s particular codes may be. For this recognition that we cannot escape the definition of our relationships in terms of such goods is perfectly compatible with the acknowledgement that different societies have and have had different codes of truthfulness, justice and courage.” (p. 192)

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • Concept of narrative: • After virtue in practical pluralism in modern society: By locating his conception of virtue in terms of practices within the context of modern society, which are filled with varieties of value orientations, codes of practices and forms of life, MacIntyre underlines that it is practically implausible to maintain a comprehensive virtue for one’s life as a whole, as the Aristotelians pledge. MacIntyre characterizes this modern situation in three ways: • “Multiplicity of goods”, “too many conflict and too much arbitrariness” in modern society (P. 201) • “Without an overriding conception of the telos of a whole human life, conceived as unitary, …individual virtues remain partial and incomplete.” (P. 202) • Inability to maintain the virtue of integrity and one’s identity in consistency and continuity

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • Concept of narrative: • To reconcile this modern-man dilemma of “liquidation of the self into a set of demarcated areas of role-playing”, (P. 205) MacIntyre suggests that modern men or more specifically “modern agents” have to constitute and impute the “narrative” to all those multiplicity of goods, variety of telos of life, conflicts of role expectations and to integrate them as much as possible into an intelligible, meaningful or even morally defensible whole, i.e. a storyline.

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • Concept of narrative: • A narrative is therefore a literal device invited by human beings to organize all the discrete incidents in life into a sequential (chronological), intelligible and accountable whole, i.e. a storyline. As MacIntyre underlines, “Man is in his action and practice…essentially a story-telling animal. He is not essentially, but becomes through his history, a teller of stories that aspire to truth. But the key question for man is not about their own authorship; I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’ We enter human society …with one or more imputed characters …and we have to learn what they are in order to be able to understand how other respond to us and how our responses to them are apt to be construct.” (P. 216)

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • Concept of narrative: • It is only in this process of construction of one’ own narrative that a man can practically become an “agent” that is, in Jerome Bruner’s terms, the "empowered protagonist" (1987, P. 19) who possess both the will and ability to set the course of actions and to fulfill the plan of life for oneself. In an article entitle “Life as Narrative” Bruner stipulates that "stories are about the vicissitudes of human intention." (1987, P.18) And "story structure (especially self narrative) is …composed of …an Agent, an Action, a Goal, a setting, an Instrument―and Trouble. Trouble is what drives the drama, and it is generated by a mismatch between two or more of the five constituents." (p. 18)

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • Concept of narrative: • In analytical narrative studies, a number of constituting devices commonly used by narrators have been identified. They include • Selective appropriations of events (Somers, 1994) • Temporal and chronological sequence (White, 1987; Somers, 1994) • Emplotment (White, 1987; Somers, 1994; Ricouer, 1991a, 1991b) • The closure (White, 1987)

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • Concept of narrative: • In a process of self narrative, though one cannot be the author of the story but one can never the least be the narrator and the main character or even hero of the storyline. In other words, he can narrate one’s life-story in a way to make it an intelligible and accountable unity. An in fact, MacIntyre underlines that unity, intelligibility and accountability are three of the essential constituents of a narrative.

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • Concept of narrative: • The end result of all these narrating efforts according to MacIntyre is the emergence as well as constitution of the personal identity. In his own words, “the concepts of narrative, intelligibility, and accountability presuppose the applicability of the concept of personal identity, just as it presupposes their applicability and just as indeed each of these three presupposes the applicability of the other two. The relationship is one of mutual presuppositions.” (P. 218) “Unity of human life is the unity of a narrative quest. …The only criteria for success or failure in a human life as a whole are the criteria of success or failure in narrated or to-be-narrated quest.”

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • Concept of narrative: • Accordingly, MacIntyre provide a second definition of his concept of virtue. “The virtues therefore are to be understood as those dispositions which will not only sustain practices and enable us to achieve the goods internal to practices, but which will also sustain us in the relevant kind of quest for the good, by enabling us to overcome the harms, dangers, temptations and distractions which we encounter, and which will furnish us with increasing self-knowledge and increasing knowledge of the good.” (P. 219)

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • The concept of tradition: • The contextuality of virtue: Building on the concepts of practice and narrative, MacIntyre proceed to the third stage of his quest for virtue. He emphasizes that such a quest and constitution of one’s own virtue could never take place in a individuated and asocial context. In MacIntyre’s own words,

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • The concept of tradition: • The contextuality of virtue: … “I am never able to seek for the good or exercise the virtue only qua individual. This is partly because what is to live the good life concretely varies from circumstance to circumstance even when it is one and the same conception of good life and the same set of virtues which are being embodies in a human life. …It is not just that different individuals live in different social circumstances; it is also that we all approach our own circumstance as bearers of a particular social identity. I am someone’s son or daughter, someone else’s cousin or uncle; I am a citizen of this or that city, a member of this or that guild or profession; I belong to this clan, that tribe, this nation. Hence what is good for me has to be the good for one who inhabits theseroles. As such, I inherit form the past of my family, my city, my tribe, my nation, a variety of debts, inheritances, rightful expectations and obligations. These constitute the given for my life, my moral starting point. This is in part what gives my life its own moral particularity.” (MacIntyre, 2007, P. 220)

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • The concept of tradition: • Historicity of the social identity and moral self: Having located the quest for virtue within particular contexts and role-sets, MacIntyre further his pursuit by injecting the historical dimension into the quest for virtue.

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • The concept of tradition: • Historicity of the social identity and moral self: … “I am born with a past; and to try to cut myself off from that past, in the individualist mode, is to deform my present relationships. The possession of an historical identity and the possession of a social identity coincide. …Notice also that the fact that the self has to find its moral identity in and through its membership in communities such as those of the family, the neighborhood, the city and the tribe does not entail that the self has to accept the moral limitations of the particularities of those forms of community. Without those moral particularities to begin from there would never be anywhere to begin; but it is in moving forward from such particularity that the search for the good, for the universal, consists. Yet particularity can never be simply left behind and obliterated.” (2007, P. 221)

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • The concept of tradition: • Identity, virtue and tradition: Apart from the contetxuality and historicity, the concept of self identity and moral self are also essentially embedded in the notion of tradition. “What I am, therefore, is in the key part what I inherit, a specific past that is present to some degree in my present. I find myself part of a history …whether I like it or not, whether I recognize it or not, one of the bearers of a tradition. It was important …to notice that practices always have histories and that at any given moment what a practice is depends on a mode of understanding it which has been transmitted often through many generations. And thus, insofar as the virtue sustains the relationships required for practices, they have to sustain relationship to the past ― and to the future ― as well as in the present.” (2007, P.221)

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique on Liberalism • The concept of tradition: • Concept of a living tradition: In contrast to the liberals’ conception of tradition which is an embodiment of conservativism and stifling to reasoning and progress, MacIntyre underlines the concept of living tradition: “A livingtradition…is an historically extended, socially embodied argument, and an argument precisely in part about goods which constitute that tradition. Within a tradition the pursuit of goods extends through generations, sometime through many generations. Hence the individual’s search for his or her good is generally and characteristically conducted within a context defined by those traditions of which the individual’s life is part, and this is true both of those goods which are internal to practice and of the goods of a single life.” (P. 222)

MVE 6030 The Good Society and its Educated Citizens