Abstract
Empowerment is a key word in Catherine Audard’s new book on Rawls and a central characteristic of Rawls’ approach to justice. A very different “hermeneutic” approach to justice is presented by Paul Ricoeur, the French philosopher and theologian who, against the background of his own work, examined Rawls’ views in several publications. This essay compares the two views and defends the proposition that empowerment is the common denominator. The author suggests that Rawls would not have objected to including some of Ricoeur’s ideas in the past-principle stage of his Theory.
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Notes
1913–2005.
Is there a—subconscious—connection? When asked about this Audard told me that she was Ricoeur’s student in Paris in 1966–1968 and that, after that, she worked with him on various projects. Nevertheless she thinks that the inspiration for her book on Rawls did not come from Ricoeur in any way.
My interpretation of Ricoeur’s more intricate wording.
In Ricoeur (2006, p. ix) Richard Kearny suggests “dialogical” or “diacritical” hermeneutics.
In my 2000 edition of “The Just” I read “as” instead of “of”, an obvious error. See: Ricoeur (1995, p. 32.).
It is this concept of justice, justice as the first virtue of social institutions, which I dubbed “law-linked justice” in Van Schilfgaarde (2008).
My—rather literal—translation from the French original: Ricoeur (1995, p. 90). In Ricoeur (2000, p. 53) the extract ‘define and interpret the two principles of justice before one can prove—if we ever get that far—that they are the principles that would be chosen in the original situation’ reads as follows: ‘define and interpret the two principles of justice that we ought to be able to prove—if we ever get that far—would be chosen in the original situation’. Mainly because the ‘before’ is left out (“avant qu’on puisse prouver”) this does not seem to make sense. A second problem with the translation lies in last part of the sentence. There Ricoeur writes: ‘c’est-à-dire sans le voile d’ignorance’. The translation reads: ‘that is, behind the veil of ignorance’. I believe that Ricoeur’s word ‘sans’, which means ‘without’ and not ‘behind’, refers to the hardly attainable situation that one can—with open eyes—prove that they are the principles that would be chosen, but I admit that his text is not very clear.
See also Rawls (1971, p. 141; 1999, p. 122): ‘We want to define the original position so that we get the desired solution’. Audard (2007, p. 129) concedes that the Original Position is defined in a circular set-up and that it is normatively oriented. ‘The mistake made in A Theory of Justice was to assume that deductive reasoning was at work’.
The view that fairness functions as a “pre-principle” is confirmed, I think, by Rawls’ introduction of the “principle of fairness” as a principle that applies to individuals in his discussion of “rightness as fairness”. Rawls (1971, pp. 111–112; 1999, pp. 95–96). Then again in Rawls (2001, p. xvii, 186) Rawls moves some distance from the suggested link between ‘justice as fairness’ and ‘rightness as fairness’.
See for this opposition Ricoeur’s opening remarks at Ricoeur (2000, p. 36).
But before Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2001).
If we follow Reidy’s account in Reidy (2009) of Rawls’ ideas on “interpersonal” relations, see below, the overlap is all the more obvious.
Nicomachean Ethics, 1129a, if one accepts that, if applied to human beings, the Aristotelian word hexis must be translated as disposition (habitus), rather than characteristic, as is often done. Compare: Ricoeur (2005, p. 8), and the translation of Nicomachean Ethics by Martin Oswald, Prentice Hall, 1999, 111, xxii ff and Glossary, 308. J.A.K. Thomson, The Nicomachean Ethics, Penguin Classics, further revised edition, 2004, 1129a, translates as ‘state of character’.
Compare Audard (2007, pp. 71–72, 77–78, 128, 227). Typical of the confusion this has caused are Rawls’ later explanations of the difference principle as a theory-based principle of justice, as opposed to the maximin rule as a practical criterion, a useful heuristic rule of thumb to identify the worst outcome of a decision in cases of uncertainty. See Rawls (1999, pp. 72–73), Audard (2007, pp. 150–151). It should be noted in this context that Part One of Rawls’ Theory is called ‘Theory’, to be followed by Part Two ‘Institutions’ and Part Three ‘Ends’.
And the same goes (Audard 2007, p. 284) for other ethical moments, such as equal respect for persons, as part of a suspected ‘deep doctrine’.
Remember that in the first (1985) edition of Rawls’ ‘Justice as fairness’ the words ‘Political Not Metaphysical’ were included in the title.
Compare Audard (2007, p. 65), who mentions civil disobedience and conscientious refusal as Rawlsian examples of resistance to injustice.
‘Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet’ (da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo, Conf., VIII. vii, 17). More or less in line with this Rawls himself (2001, pp. 183–184) declares not necessarily untrue Boniface III’s ‘extra ecclesia nulla salus’, stressing however that it is unreasonable to impose the implications therof upon one’s fellow citizens.
I insert ‘potentiation’, a term most used in neuroscience, as indicating the lasting improvement in communication between neurons with positive effect on the development of memory. The term seems to reflect Ricoeur’s emphasis on the relation between ‘I’ and ‘you’ as a starting point for the development of the self. Compare Ricoeur (2006, p. 8), where the term ‘potentiating’ is used in connection with the challenge of translation.
See for further development of this theme: Van Schilfgaarde (2008).
A ‘purely procedural’ approach to justice may lead to ‘clean’ results but this does not necessarily mean that the results or the procedure lack substance. Rawls makes this clear in Reply to Habermas, Rawls (2005 p. 421 ff; 432): ‘Justice as fairness is substantive … in the sense that it springs from and belongs to the tradition of liberal thought and the larger community of political culture of democratic societies’.
See for the relation between narrative identity, ethics and moral judgment: Ricoeur (1992, p. 140 ff).
References
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van Schilfgaarde, P. Rawls and Ricoeur: Converging Notions of Empowerment to Justice. Res Publica 15, 121–136 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-009-9086-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-009-9086-2