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Out-Kanting Rawls: An Argument for Responsibility-Sensitive Theories of Justice from an Autonomy-Based Account of Normativity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2009

Teun J. Dekker
Teun J. Dekker*
Affiliation:
University College Maastricht - Maastricht University
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Abstract

ABSTRACT: When considering normative concepts, such as distributive justice, one must consider both the question how concepts can have normative force and which particular conceptions of these concepts have this normative force. In this article I consider the view that the human capacity for autonomy accounts for normativity, and argue that adopting this view commits one to a responsibility-sensitive theory of distributive justice. This conclusion puts me directly at odds with the work of John Rawls, who derives his responsibility-insensitive difference principle from a similar account of autonomy. However, I argue that such an argument would be based on a mischaracterisation of what is significant about the human capacity for autonomy.

RÉSUMÉ: Pour envisager des concepts normatifs, tels que la justice distributive, il faut à la fois considérer la question de savoir comment les concepts peuvent avoir une force normative et se demander aussi quelles conceptions de ces concepts en sont dotés. Cet article considère que la capacité propre à l’humain d’être autonome rend compte de la normativité nous engage à adopter une théorie de justice distributive qui est sensible à la responsabilité. Cette conclusion entre directement en conflit les théories de Rawls, qui tire d’une explication similaire sur l’autonomie son principe de responsabilité qui ne tient pas compte de la différence. Un tel argument se fonde sur une mauvaise caractérisation de ce qui est important dans la capacité propre à l’humain d’être autonome.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , June 2009 , pp. 353 - 372
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 2009

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References

Notes

This paper was written while in residence as a Research Affiliate at the Department of Political Science, Yale University. I would like to thank the University and the Department for their warm and generous hospitality. In particular, I am indebted to Prof. John E. Roemer for inviting me. I am also grateful to the journal’s anonymous referees for their comments and helpful suggestions, as well as to Prof. G.A. Cohen and Dr. Dov Fox for their support and constructive remarks.

1 The distinction between these questions mirrors the distinction Rawls draws between concepts and conceptions of justice. See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 5.

2 Christine M. Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

3 For more on the nature of constructivism, see John Rawls, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” in Collected Papers, ed. Samuel Richard Freeman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 304-7.

4 For a dialectical summary of how luck-egalitarianism, a prominent responsibility-sensitive theory of justice, arose, see G. A. Cohen, “Luck and Equality: A Reply to Hurley,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 72.2 (2007).

5 For example, see G. A. Cohen, “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice,” Ethics 99.4 (1989).

6 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 3.

7 For more on the subject of distributive justice, see G. A. Cohen, “Where the Action Is: On the Site of Distributive Justice,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 26.1 (1997).

8 For example, see Thomas Hobbes and Richard Tuck, Leviathan, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), II.25, pp. 176-7. For discussion of this view, see Christine M. Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 21-7.

9 For example, see Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). For discussion of this view, see Christine M. Korsgaard, ibid, pp. 28-47.

10 During my presentation, I will cite the corresponding sections in Korsgaard’s account.

11 Consider Derek Parfit’s reflections on his cat. See Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 3.

12 For an elaboration of this conception of autonomy, see Thomas Hill, “The Kantian Conception of Autonomy,” in The Inner Citadel : Essays on Individual Autonomy, ed. John Philip Christman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).

13 John Christman, Autonomy in Moral and Political Philosophy, Fall, 2003, available: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2003/entries/autonomy-moral, October 25, 2005.

14 It is important to realise that autonomy is a property of particular actions or characteristics of the individual that have come about as the result of self-government. If I act in a fashion for reasons that flow from my practical identity, then that action came about in an autonomous fashion. It is entirely possible that I sometimes act for reasons that are my own in the required sense, but not in others. I am only autonomous with regard to the former decisions.

15 See Korsgaard, , pp. 122-23.

16 See ibid., pp. 129-30.

17 For an overview of the debate between liberals and communitarians, see Adam Swift and Stephen Mulhall, Liberals and Communitarians, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).

18 Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

19 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self : Making of the Modern Identity, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

20 Alasdair C. MacIntyre, After Virtue : A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984).

21 Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy : An Introduction, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 226.

22 There is a further complication, in that one might think that although one’s moral identity means that one has obligations to one’s self, it cannot show that one has obligations to others. Korsgaard considers and rebuts this objection, by invoking Wittgenstein’s argument for the impossibility of a private language. However, since this aspect of her account has no bearing on my argument, I will ignore it, and simply assume that autonomy binds both ourselves and others. See Korsgaard, pp. 132-45.

23 John Rawls, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” in Collected Papers, ed. Samuel Richard Freeman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 304.

24 One might argue that our interest in our capacity for autonomy is a reason to secure as many resources as possible with which to act autonomously. I will consider and reject this argument in section 5, but I will first present the positive argument.

25 Korsgaard, p. 125.

26 The same goes for Rawls’s difference principle, as I will argue below.

27 Thomas Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 290.

28 This is not to say that one is responsible only for one’s autonomous actions; it is entirely possible that besides one’s autonomous choices, one is also responsible for one’s other characteristics. All I need maintain is that if one makes an autonomous choice, one should be held responsible for it.

29 G. A. Cohen, “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice.”

30 Richard Arneson, “Equality and Equal Opportunity for Welfare,” Philosophical Studies 56.1 (1989).

31 Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974).

32 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice.

33 R. M. Dworkin, A Matter of Principle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), chapter 6.

34 Kymlicka, pp. 71–5.

35 Nozick, p. 214.

36 Different identities will require different types of resources, but they nevertheless require resources of some type. This is exactly the problem the Rawlsian notion of primary goods is intended to solve. See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 78-81.

37 Ibid., p. 266.

38 See R. M. Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue : The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), pp. 113-8.

39 For discussion of the incentives argument, see G. A. Cohen, “Where the Action Is: On the Site of Distributive Justice,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 26.1 (1997).

40 For further reflections on the Kantian nature of Rawls’s theory, see William Galston, “Moral Personality and Liberal Theory,” Political Theory 10 (1982). See also David O. Brink, “Rawlsian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” Canadian Journal of philosophy 17 (1987).

41 John Rawls, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” in Collected Papers, ed. Samuel Richard Freeman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 307-10.

42 Ibid., p. 312.

43 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 221-7.

44 For example, see John E. Roemer, Theories of Distributive Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 172-82.

45 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 123-30.

46 Ignoring for the moment that for these creatures the problem of normativity does not arise in the autonomy-based solution to the problem of normativity. Perhaps we might imagine human beings asking how goods should be distributed among these creatures.