Abstract
G. A. Cohen incisively argued that our judgments of social justice should fit our convictions about how to interact with others in our personal lives. Ironically, the ordinary morality of cooperation invoked in his last book undermines his favored principle of equality, and supports John Rawls’ reliance on a relevantly impartial choice promoting appropriate fundamental interests as a basis for distributive standards. His further objections to Rawls’ account of distributive justice neglect the role of social relations in establishing the proper scope of that impartiality and the moral force of Rawls’ taxonomy of non-ideal societies. In contrast, the powerful evocation of goods of community at the end of Cohen’s last book points to a genuine inadequacy. Conscientious fellow-citizens must take account of the impact of their political choices on options for sharing and caring. In finding a proper balance between these goods and competing individualist concerns, the original position is of too little use to sustain Rawls’ assessment of his conception of justice as complete. In the face of our strong moral convictions about how to live together, both Cohen’s luck egalitarianism and Rawls’ barriers between aspirations to community and political choice must give way.
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Notes
The relevance of relationships became a central theme in Scheffler’s own work, starting with Scheffler (1997).
In explaining the central role of fundamental interests, as opposed to actual desires and inclinations, Rawls notes, “Remember it is up to us, you and me, who are setting up justice as fairness, to describe the parties (as artificial persons in our device of representation) as best suits our aims in developing a political conception of justice.” See Rawls (2001 [based on lectures written in the 1980’s], p. 87). See also Rawls (2001, pp. 85, 107, 141), and the discussion of the similarity between the ideal of the person in justice as fairness and perfectionism in Rawls (1999, p. 231. There are no relevant departures from the original edition in the passages that I will cite.)—In his essay on the currency of egalitarian justice (1989, p. 913f.), Cohen makes the broadly analogous move of excluding welfare due to the satisfaction of “offensive tastes” from his principle of equality. This does not readily fit his general insistence that a demand for equal access to welfare is part of a freestanding principle solely concerned with equality, to be weighed against other moral principles, describing other aspects of morality.
Rawls (2001, pp. 139, 144) takes the ultimate goal of economic justice to be “to put all citizens in a position to manage their own affairs on a footing of a suitable degree of social and economic equality” and bases rights to personal property on “fundamental interests” including the interest in “a sufficient material basis for personal independence and a sense of self-respect.”
See for example, Rawls (1999, p. 265).
See for example, Rawls (1993, pp. 19, 30–32, 72–74).
Rawls (1999, p. 217).
Rawls (1993, p. 7).
Cohen (2008, p. 159).
Rawls (1999, p. 122).
See for example, Cohen (2008, p. 44).
Cf. Michael Blake’s thesis that political coercion is a sufficient basis for egalitarian demands of a broadly Rawlsian sort, in Blake (2002, pp. 281–284).
Cf. Andrea Sangiovanni’s claim that “the state’s capacity to provide the basic goods necessary to protect us from physical attack and to maintain and reproduce a stable system of property rights and justice” is sufficient to make economic equality a demand of justice, in Sangiovanni (2007, p. 19).
Rawls himself aligns with common sense in asserting nothing more than a well-hedged “duty of helping another when he is in need or jeopardy, provided that one can do so without excessive risk or loss to oneself … that … [holds] between persons irrespective of their institutional relationships.” See Rawls (1999, pp. 98f.). I present a detailed specification and defense of such a moderate duty of beneficence in Miller (2004, pp. 357–383; 2010, Chapter 1).
See Rawls (1993, pp. 269f., 277–279).
I develop this justification at greater length in Miller (2010, Chapter 2).
Cohen (2008, p. 74. See also p. 2). With sufficient bad luck in fellow-campers, Rawlsian camping might be vulnerable to a similar objection.
Rawls (1999, pp. 229, 230).
Rawls (1999, p. 417).
Rawls (2001, p. 56).
Rawls (1993, p. 95).
Cohen (2008, p. 69).
Cohen (2008, p. 2).
Rawls (1999, p. 7).
Another reason favoring this reading is Rawls’ denial that hold-outs by greedy people with special talents would, in fact, be effective in creating large and important inequalities against the background of fair equality of opportunity that is instituted by well-ordered societies. See Rawls (1999, pp. 136f.; 2001, p. 67). In the latter passage, Rawls concedes that a few rarities such as divas in opera might command big salaries when opportunities are fair, because of special fixed constraints on supply of talent relative to demand, but insists that doctors could not cash in greed without restrictions on fair equality of opportunity that a well-ordered society would not permit.
Rawls (1999, p. 73).
Rawls (1999, p. 216).
Rawls (1999, p. 215).
Rawls (1999, p. 215).
Rawls (1999, p. 215).
Rawls (1999, p. 217. See also pp. 264f.).
Rawls (1999, p. 218).
Rawls (1999, p. 264).
Rawls (1999, p. 217).
See Cohen (2009, p. 51).
See Cohen (2009, pp. 34–37).
Cohen (2009, p. 1).
Cohen (2009, p. 10).
Cohen (2009, p. 81).
Cohen (2009, p. 6).
See especially Cohen (2009, pp. 37–46).
See Rawls (1999, pp. 90f.).
See Rawls (1999, pp. 463f.).
See Rawls (1999, p. 468).
See Rawls (1999, pp. 153f.).
See Rawls (1999, p. 84).
See Rawls (1993, p. 32).
Rawls (1993, p. 225. See also p. 240).
Of course, Rawls’ strongest strictures against the political assertion of more-than-purely-political values must also be abandoned.
References
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Miller, Richard W. 2004. Beneficence, duty and distance. Philosophy & Public Affairs 22: 357–383.
Miller, Richard W. 2010. Globalizing justice: The ethics of poverty and power. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rawls, John. 1993. Political liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.
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Sangiovanni, Andrea. 2007. Global justice, reciprocity and the state. Philosophy & Public Affairs 35: 3–39.
Scheffler, Samuel. 1994 (original edition: 1982). The rejection of consequentialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Scheffler, Samuel. 1997. Relationships and responsibilities. Philosophy & Public Affairs 26: 189–209.
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Miller, R.W. Relationships of Equality: A Camping Trip Revisited. J Ethics 14, 231–253 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-010-9079-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-010-9079-6