Abstract
While universalist theories have come under increasing attack from relativist and post-modern critics, such as Walzer, MacIntyre and Rorty, Kantian constructivism can be seen as a saviour of universalist ethics. Kantian constructivists accept the criticism that past universalist theories were foundational and philosophically comprehensive and thus contestable, but dispute that universalist principles are unattainable. The question then arises if Kantian constructivism can deliver a non-foundational justification of universal principles. Rawls, the first Kantian constructivist, has seemingly retreated from the universalist ambitions of Kantian constructivism. However, others have taken up the project of Kantian constructivism. One of them is O’Neill, who argues that she can succeed where Rawls failed and provide a truly universal non-foundational constructivism. Her requirements for such a constructivism are a constructive justification of the procedure of construction and the use of only abstract, non-ideal starting points. I will argue that O’Neill fails on both accounts. Instead of justifying the principle of practical reason constructively she gives an instrumental and therefore conditional justification. Instead of relying on purely abstract starting points her account builds on an underlying value assumption. This indicates inherent contradictions within constructivism, and might force defenders of universalism to look elsewhere to answer the relativist and post-modern critic.
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Notes
Watkins and Fitzpatrick state that Korsgaard's constructivism is ‘constructivism all the way down’ (Watkins and Fitzpatrick, 2002, p. 358), because the constructivism is not only expressed through a hypothetical procedure, but also conditional upon actually carrying out the procedure in question. However, because Korsgaard's theory is ultimately dependent on the affirmation of our ‘humanity’ as ultimate identity, which becomes morally authoritative for us only when we endorse it (Korsgaard, 1996, p. 254), Korsgaard's constructivism is in danger to give up on the strong claim to objectivity that most constructivists want to endorse. For reasons that will become evident, I therefore think that O’Neill can be seen as the most radical or strongest of the Kantian constructivists.
Examples of those authors who can be seen as trying to develop an alternative constructivism that aims to justify universal principles are Thomas Hill (Hill, 1989), Thomas Scanlon (Scanlon, 2000), Christine Korsgaard (Korsgaard, 1996, see also Watkins and Fitzpatrick, 2002, 358ff for an account of Korsgaard's constructivism) and Larry Krassnoff (Krasnoff, 1999). Examples of those who want to improve on Rawls's Political Constructivism are Peri Roberts (Roberts, 2007) and Catriona McKinnon (McKinnon, 2002).
O’Neill states, for example, that ‘Foundationalist attempts to provide an objective grounding for ethics have not born fruit’ (O’Neill, 2000, p. 193).
For example, the principle of injury is not followable because of the specific vulnerabilities and finitude of human beings. If human beings were inviolable the principle of injury might be universalizable. Schwartzman argues O’Neill's abstract account of agents already involves some form of idealization. She states that in ‘focussing on rational agency, rather than other aspects of personhood, she seems to privilege a certain ideal of the person’ (Schwartzman, 2006, p. 573). This criticism seems rather harsh at first sight, because O’Neill is at pains to include in her abstract accounts of agency facts of interdependence and vulnerability. However, Schwartzman's criticism points to a valid problem in O’Neill's account, which I will argue later in more detail, namely that these abstract aspects of personhood will only become relevant in her argument insofar as they affect the capacities and capabilities of rational agency.
Whether the ‘fact’ of plurality and the ‘fact’ of the absence of a pre-established harmony are really separate facts to O’Neill seems questionable. In Constructions of Reasons O’Neill contrasts ‘genuine plurality of agents’ with ‘degenerate plurality’ in which agents are ‘automatically coordinated perhaps by instinct or by pre-established harmony’ (O’Neill, 2000, p. 212). It seems here that any fact of ‘genuine plurality’ already entails the fact that there is no pre-established harmony.
Watkins and Fitzpatrick accuse O’Neill of treating one of the consequences of reason as its defining feature. They state that ‘[o]ne natural reaction to O’Neill's account of reason is to say that it would have us inappropriately define reason in terms of one of its consequences rather than in terms of its nature. It might be uncontroversial to assert that if something is rational, then everyone can follow it. However, the same cannot be said of O’Neill's claim that what makes something rational is the fact that everyone can follow it’ (Watkins and Fitzpatrick, 2002, p. 356).
In a later article O’Neill puts it more succinctly when defining universal obligations as capable of being ‘accepted and adopted (not necessarily discharged) by all agents’ (O’Neill, 1997, p. 135).
As O’Neill admits that reasoning might fail not only if it cannot be followed but also ‘[w]hen those to whom it is addressed, even if they can follow a given stretch of practical reasoning, pay no attention, or do not understand, or do not act on it as proposed’ (O’Neill, 2002, p. 58, my italic), which then does not make the proposal unreasoned, adherents of metaphysical accounts of reason might still have the option to argue that their account is intelligible and followable and that those who deny it simply do not understand.
Could O’Neill not, instead of arguing or implying that coordination needs to be the goal of every reasoner, argue that coordination is part of the transcendental conditions of practical reason? Maybe she could, but in fact she does not. O’Neill in her argument for the principle of practical reason sees coordination not as a (transcendental) condition of reasoning, but rather the reverse. She argues that ‘reason will be no more than the term we use for the necessary condition for any coordination’ (O’Neill, 2002, p. 60). Coordination is not a condition for reason, but reason is a condition for coordination. Further, a transcendental argument would need to make or rely on, I assume, at least some a priori claims. O’Neill in her constructivist argument, however, wants to avoid a priori, transcendental or metaphysical claims, which she sees as problematic and unvindicable (O’Neill, 2000, p. 64, 2002, p. 4).
Consider for example O’Neill's statement that ‘[t]he criterion is not merely that a given principle be such that, as it happens, some or many individuals lack the capacities or capabilities to act successfully on that principle at some times (a situation which constantly arises), but rather that the principle be such that it could not be adopted by all within the domain of ethical consideration’ (O’Neill, 2002, p. 126).
One might want to object here that, although it might be true that one could adopt a universal principle of injury, it is clear that such a principle would be ‘reasonably rejected’ by all, and thus fail as a potential universal principle. This is the line Thomas Scanlon, for example, takes in What We Owe to Each Other. However, it is important to note that O’Neill does not subscribe to such a formula here. Her requirement is a formal one; she tries to show that some principles just cannot coherently be universalized or adopted (see O’Neill, 2002, pp. 58–59, 163). This is in line with her ‘constructivist’ intention to use only a meagre method, which does not presuppose any substantial assumptions or conceptions of the person (O’Neill, 2002, pp. 155, 51). The idea of reasonable rejection, on the contrary, presupposes a substantial account of potential reasoners, their interests and possible reasons from which it is possible to argue which principles would be accepted or rejected. Scanlon for example gives such an account through the notion of generic reasons (Scanlon, 2000, p. 204).
In O’Neill's construction of the principles of virtue the substantial normative commitment to capacities of action becomes even more visible. In a concluding remark on the rejection of the principle of indifference as the main principle of virtue, which supplements the main principle of right (the rejection of principles of injury), O’Neill states that: ‘In a world of vulnerable beings who rejected only principles of injury in their dealings, yet were wholly indifferent to one another, many capacities and capabilities for action would falter and fail’ (O’Neill, 2002, p. 200, my italics; see also pp. 191, 194).
How can coordination or securing capacities for action be ‘arbitrary’ ends? They certainly do not seem arbitrary to most people, but then the same could be said for the ends of ‘happiness’ or ‘well-being’ and a whole set of other traditional ends. When O’Neill speaks of arbitrariness she specifically refers to the question of possible justification of the ends sought after. She says for example that the ‘conditional rationality of action necessary as means to or as constitutive of some end cannot be metamorphosed into the unconditional rationality of seeking that end: unless an end is demonstrably objective, the fact that it is urgently desired, widely preferred or psychologically compelling, will make action that (helps) produce that end no less arbitrary than the end’ (O’Neill, 2002, p. 51). Unless O’Neill offers us an argument of why efficient, non-violent coordination is an objective end, the principle of followability that is to bring about that end remains, according to her own definition, arbitrary.
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Budde, K. Constructivism all the way down – Can O’Neill succeed where Rawls failed?. Contemp Polit Theory 8, 199–223 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/cpt.2008.41
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/cpt.2008.41