Ah splendid. It's good. Fantastic. Well, welcome back to Beyond the Text with me, Samuel Woodall.
SPEAKER_01Me?
SPEAKER_00Fantastic. We didn't talk over each other this time. But there wasn't a little bit of it. Yeah, we'll cut that out. We'll cut that out. No one will know anything. No, no one will know that. However, welcome back to the final uh episode of essentially what we were studying in our Reading Club seminars that Jack and I have been running over the past couple of months, which was the Liberty series of the History of Ideas and Political Thought Reading Club. And today we're going to be looking at two quintessential figures, bringing us up to our own time, John Rawls and Michael Sandell. Now, I will be going through the first of those figures, uh, John Rawls, um, in some detail, and then Jack and I will cover the discourse over some questions that we raised in the session and some of our own since then. And then Jack will take over and do a little bit of a preamble on Sandell and yeah, and how Sandell contributes to the discourse of liberty. Um, but yes, in the meantime, Jack, how have you been? Have you been well? I've been very well, thank you, yeah. Um fantastic. They they missed the viewers missed out on you enjoying a nice cup of coffee and a biscuit.
SPEAKER_01Well, I still have the coffee.
SPEAKER_00Oh wonderful. Yeah, it's yes uh and everything's been going well with your classes over in over in the neighborhood.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Um last time we spoke we were doing um we were doing St. Paul's Letters of the Romans this week. We started Augustine's Confessions. Oh, which has been really um oh it's been spectacular. Has he stolen the training yet? Has he stolen the phone? Oh yeah, well we're in book five, so we did his all his whole adolescence, so he's gone to Milan and um he'll have his conversion in book six, um, which is what we're reading for Friday.
SPEAKER_00Um booking and how is the book classified in your readings? Because I mean, essentially it is the first autobiography, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01It is apparently, yes, yeah. So um, I mean that was mentioned in our seminars. Um it's it's a it's a it's a theological text, yeah, primarily. Um it's it's you know confession the the title confessions is is is has multiple meanings. It's a confession of his sins, but it's also uh um a confession in the more positive sense. Um you know we have a king, Edward the Confessor.
SPEAKER_00Um well, of piety, of piety and dedication, yeah.
SPEAKER_01The idea that that it that that the revelation of Christ was saturated in his vocation and how he conducted himself himself in all his affairs, and that that was on display for the world to see. Um so Augustine is is retrospectively going through his life and and announcing all the ways he's realized that um that God has um has positively influenced his life through providence, even when he was ignorant of it, and that's the sort of this other meaning of confessions.
SPEAKER_00And of course it has a lasting impact on the literary um or the political literary world because Descartes will have his confessions, um, and then Rousseau has confessions, so a couple of thinkers that we've discussed.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh wow.
SPEAKER_00I knew about Russell's well it Descartes famously ends, I think, his confessions by sort of laying out all the issues that he's encountered with his theory, um, with his rationalism, um, and then famously ends it, and people can't tell whether or not he was being ironic by saying in the the solution to these issues is God, and then just ends.
SPEAKER_01Um I mean I I believe him. Um I mean I think he was sincere. Um but it would be I guess it would be useful if we could um fill that in a bit.
SPEAKER_00And who knows how Russo ends his probably some weird made-up story about how he was a fantastic contributor to his society.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, so so I was having an interesting conversation with someone about this um the other day, and um he was basically making me aware of all the ways that this Russo's confession actually was quite positively, quite concretely influenced by Augustine.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Um not just in like an inversion, I mean so he has his own pair story, for instance, he goes and steals an or machine, but it's the complete opposite message that he draws from it. Um it's not that he he had a desire for evil for its own sake, which is what Augustine says, but rather that society had had forced on him uh um uh to have no other option. A crime, basically. Um but um but he also has um but in the early chapters uh the in his um analysis of of of of infants, which Augustine also is plays where Augustine begins, they both agree, Russo more strongly than Augustine, that the the most basic motive of the baby is to tyrannize and to punish.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_01And that's possibly why he abandoned his family.
SPEAKER_00Um multiple times. Yeah, so but someone someone who doesn't abandon his family and thinks about us as a global family is John Rawls. Magnificent segue, as per usual on this podcast. Um now, John Rawls sits, I would say semi-comfortably within the liberty canon, because Rawls in his own day was criticized by people on the left for being not left-wing enough, for being sort of uh uh status quo um perpetuator and not really coming up with enough of a revolutionary theory to emancipate those who were dispossessed and uh and um you know hard up in the world. And he was criticized by people on the center and then into the right of the political spectrum for being more of a socialist, for being a social democrat, and uh actually rules semi-admits this by the sort of um sort of later part of his life, um sort of almost aligning with kind of the kind of third-way uh social democracy that we see with things like New Labour, Bill Clinton in the States. So he sits uncomfortably in the political canon, but often those kind of characters are the kind of ones you want to delve into and explore why they're complex. So that's what we're going to do today. So John Rules um was born in 1921 and he died in 2002, so a year two years after I was born. Jack, is that when how how long around? Yeah, 2002, yeah, that was when I was born. Oh, there we are, right. Maybe we have rules reincarnate here.
SPEAKER_01Uh I hope not.
SPEAKER_00He stands as one of the most influential political philosophers of the 20th century, shaping modern liberal thought with his A Theory of Justice in 1971. His vision of justice uh as fairness, grounded in the principles of equality and individual liberty, sought to reconcile the tensions between freedom and social cooperation. Rules uses the original position and veil of ignorance which provide a powerful framework for justifying a redistributive liberal democracy. His ideas sparked intense debate, most notably with Robert Nozick, whose Anarchy, State, and Utopia in 1974, mounted a libertarian critique of rules. Nozick rejected the emphasis on distributive justice, arguing instead for a minimal state that respected individuals' natural property rights, so very classical Lochian, as we explored when we were looking at Loch and Payne. This rivalry defined a key fault line in contemporary political philosophy between egalitarian liberalism and libertarianism, shaping debates on justice and rights and the role of the state that persists today. In 1985, Rules published an essay, Justice is Fairness, Political, Not Metaphysical, which marked key difference in his thought, clarifying his theory as a form of political liberalism rather than a comprehensive moral doctrine. Responding to critiques of a theory of justice, Rules' emphasis was more on the idea that justice was fairness, but not grounded in any specific metaphysical or religious worldview. But instead, it's a freestanding political conception that can be endorsed by citizens with diverse moral and philosophical commitments. And I think what that's responding to is something we'll probably come on to, which is sort of the issue with these kind of universalising political uh doctrines that sort of don't take into account the situation and the individual, Jack. I know that you're uh very passionate on that critique, I think, for this sort of a uh uh uh conceptual field. Um the the move reflected Rules' growing concern with stability within pluralistic societies, um, and it laid the groundwork for his later tone, political liberalism, in 1993. So, what was the political liberalism? Well, this represented a major development in Rules' thought, and it shifted focus from justice as a moral ideal to justice as a basis for political stability in pluralistic societies. So that's a little bit reminiscent of when we were discussing the ideas of Camus and the need for both political freedom and political and economic justice. Um, he responds to the critiques of the theory of justice again by emphasising that liberal democracy must not rest on any single comprehensive doctrine, um, but instead on a political conception of justice that people within diverse worldviews can endorse. And then when we come to his first great work of the 1970s, A Theory of Justice. Now, for the Reading Club, Jack and I assigned chapter four of this reading, um, which is titled Equal Liberty. Um, and this is where John Rolls articulates the foundational role of basic liberties in his theory of justice. He argues that each person should have an equal right to a system of liberties that is compatible with the same rights as others. These include political freedoms, freedom of speech and assembly, liberty of conscience, and personal freedoms like freedom of thought and the right to hold personal property. Rules asserts that these liberties are what he terms lexically prior to considerations of social and economic advantage, meaning they cannot be sacrificed for greater economic efficiency or wealth distribution, even though those are still components of his thought. He critiques utilitarianism for allowing individual rights to be compromised for the sake of a just society. Uh, Rules insists that a just society must protect these liberties as inviable, forming the foundation of modern democratic legitimacy and social cooperation. So today, Jack and I will go through this sort of core Rulesian principle in the theory of justice, um, its justifications, and its implications for contemporary liberal democracies. So we obviously have some questions, Jack, from the Rereading Club, but I wondered whether there was uh a point at which you might like to start out in terms of how you came at this text, how you understood it, um, and your sort of preconceptions about rules. Obviously, uh Hayek was engaging with these um economic scholars in the 70s. So what how did you come at this text?
SPEAKER_03You're on mute, Jack. I'm sure it's wise words, wise words.
SPEAKER_01So my apologies, sorry, I forgot to turn that off. Um so I had a very limited idea of roles before we did this seminar. I understood he was in the um quite a feeling we got bigger than the libertarian modern libertarian tradition. Um almost bringing about a revival of that. And it's interesting because in in many ways Hayek also um in his own way styled himself as that kind of a figure. Um so so Hayek would present himself as um recovering an authentic cont uh liberal constitutionalism or constitutional liberalism. I don't know which way that should be. Um and recovering an authentic democracy, let's say, against the many plights it had suffered in the 20th century. Um now roles also seem to be claiming to do this, but the two do it with very different, in fact, incompatible um concepts of justice. Um and it's suggestions that Rawls particularly turns um to make his case. Um one of the things that which I I try to understand a bit more when we did our seminar was this this idea of lexical priority, which I hadn't really understood before. Um why, well when you read roles it seems that he goes back and forth between someone who is advocating um redistribution and someone who isn't. And that was a tension that I felt was somewhat helpful throughout our discussion last time, but particularly we just considered electrical priority because he has asserted the the electrical priority of property rights, but then he had a a theory of of justice which says that inheritance is it it has no intrinsic value, um that that no one has any intrinsic innate right to something by virtue of what their parents had or where they were born or whatever. And property seems to be quite tied up with that. I mean one one of the major provisions that we see the discussion of property, inheritance. Um to deal with what he perceives as as inequalities in the domain of inheritance. My understanding is that he would would be advocate some degree of of redistribution, and then that seems to suggest to me that the lexical priority has been um forsaken, that now it now now the property can be sacrificed for economic gain. Um that's a a uh at least a surface reading. I don't know if we can reconcile these tensions at all.
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, yeah, I mean the whole idea of lexical priority does sort of like all of these sorts of as much as he's rejecting utilitarianism, he still sort of occupies that uh uh theoretical space in a sense, because he's doing very similar things to why a lot of philosophers see the utilitarians as complex and thereby essentially useless, because this idea of lexical priority is a bit like the hedonic calculus, which is that obviously for the utilitarian's a hedonic calculus what's working out in a situation, how much prof you know, uh how much impact, how much uh how many people, what's the intensity, what's the propinquity, what's the uh how you were supposed to do that within every ethical situation that you encountered. It's obviously impossible. And in a similar way, you don't come into a political or ethical situation and think, right, well, what I'll do is I'll lexically prioritize the the uh three aspects that rules has laid out for me here. So, right, we've got rights, but let's weigh that up against how far distribution needs to be done here, uh, and every scenario have to go through that methodology. So I do think it's complicated, but obviously, because he's added in this clause, it does mean that he is still um at the vanguard of individual rights. And he does say in the in the chapter four, each person possesses an inviability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. So obviously, for him, the individual is the priority. Uh, he was actually um uh not decommissioned, but he was demoted uh during his final stages of being in the army um because he refused to uh beat another soldier. Um his presiding officer had said to him that he needed to discipline uh another member of the army who were at that point occupying Japan, 1946, after the conclusion of the war. And he said that he couldn't see any reason why he would be justified in beating another soldier. Um so clearly he is thinking about individuals. Um however, that has to be weighed up against um against welfare as a whole. And again, looking at the historical context, I mean, the reason he then resigns from the army is because he can't see how the use of uh nuclear weapons in Japan becomes completely disillusioned when he sees the sort of impact and fallout of the dropping of the bomb in Hiroshima whilst he's there as the occupying force. Um so yeah, I mean, how how can these it's a perennial issue in political philosophy of how can justice and political freedom be synthesized? And you know, uh I don't think anyone has a uh necessarily has a has a rigid resolution to that issue, do they? Um, but in a similar vein to Camus, he does say about how if even if formally granted, political liberty loses its value whenever those who are better off are able to control the course of policy to their advantage. Now, as a political thinker, rules is forged out of a very class-based society, and throughout his life he rejects these kind of um, what is essentially given to him as a white middle class man in 1930s America as he's going through his university experience. And when he comes out of university, instead of taking a commission and going into the army as an officer, he says, I don't see why just because I'm a university graduate, I should go into the army at a higher rank than um my American um compatriots who are going in at a base level. So he goes in at a base level as well. Um and because of this rigid class system, um he's I think he's very worried that there will be an eternal politicking solely, solely dominated by those who are wealthy enough to be there, and that will create a self-perpetuating system. So I think for him the resolution would be democratic participation that's much more broad. So then you'd be representing those individuals who don't come from that walk of life. Obviously, that's kind of the idea that has stuck, you know, that is the dog that barks of in terms of rules, ideas lasting in political philosophy. That is the idea that most liberal democratic countries now have, which is this idea of sort of uh sectional interests or, you know, pushing positive discrimination to push uh underrepresented groups into legislative assemblies uh to try and create policies that are reflective of a diversifying society. But it still doesn't fundamentally answer your question, which is can there ever be a sort of perfect balance between political liberty and political justice or economic justice? Um but I I think that somewhat goes in the direction of maybe how rules would would come at it. What about you, Jack? Do you think there's anything else there?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, I mean, I know he I understand that he is conscious of what he would describe as like um you know ideal theory or um you know or both you know theory and practice. Yeah um he is aware of of discrepancy, but but this seems a bit more like fundamental. And it's I don't necessarily mean to like you know to blame him for that because I think you you you were right in connecting us to the uh what is what is a perennial problem. Um we have we we we want to declare rights, but also we're sensitive to to excess. Um even John Locke was. Um in the uh second treatise, he writes about um although men have a natural right to property and to cultivate the land, there is obviously he basically he said there is it is obvious that there is such a thing as an excess and people shouldn't go beyond the excess. Um and I can see how in the turn of the twentieth century in the second half of the twentieth century, sorry, um into the present day, uh you know the the idea that there is excess in things, excess in business in in in in capital and footballs has enjoyed a popular resurgence and so these uh Um in many ways one of the things for the time. But yeah. Then what what is the value of lexical priority? What else is lexically prior?
SPEAKER_00So the redistribution and also um it is I think it's to do with um redistribution and the the the the the the lexical priority is liberty. So that's that's the the one that must come before the rest. And then it's redistribution and creating a sort of political system that is redistributive, um if you if you see what I mean. So that that that is part of the part of the system, but the priority must always be individual rights.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I've just um just in my in my notes, I've I've recovered um the two principles of justice is fairness. Yes, maybe that that'll be worth some discussion in in connection with this. So the first principle, each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all. So we're we're under the same structure of governance, let's say, um, you know, abstractly speaking, not necessarily the same, concrete system of governance. Um second principle, which comes in two parts, social and economic inequalities must satisfy two conditions. First, they are to be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair, equal, and opposite fair equality of opportunity. That's a very modern concept, um, very straightforward. Um part two of that second principle, they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged member of society. This is called his difference principle.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So you can so so there is some degree of tolerance to given to economic inequality.
SPEAKER_00And variation, and it's it's added in that final clause that yeah, that the difference principle facilitates a fluctuation in equality, because although he does say a fair equality of opportunity, you need to have something there to say, well, obviously, because of even even mere deterministic uh traits, say geographical constraints, or um I suppose a bit like Hayek in terms of sort of like natural disaster. Well, you want to for rules you'd want to do something about that, but a natural disaster is obviously going to set back a peoples within the area that a natural disaster occurs than somewhere else, and you and you can't you can't do anything about that. So you know you have to allow for difference.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah. And uh and I guess another another motivation there is um there is advantage to the excess inequalities insofar as they could their endeavors, their profits are fed back into the community, let's say, um, and into the broader society. Um so he I I think he gives a an example of of teachers pay or something, which uh sounded a bit random, but um yeah, yeah, yeah. Must be something about the 70s.
SPEAKER_00Um and I mean I mean he's writing this at a time where distributive theories of justice are which is kind of odd because quite a lot of the thinkers that we've studied so far aren't they they're writing in a vein that's sort of intellectual lone star. It's like pushing society forward. These liberty thinkers are thinking either critically about their society and what they want to change, or they're thinking something better from a historical analogy, say, that could be taken forward to today. What's odd about Rules is that he's coming at the end of a distributive economic period in history. Um, and I mean, if we want to talk about the viability of political ideas, ultimately Rules is it's it, I mean, essentially wrong. His ideas aren't taken up, it flipped massively in the other direction within the next decade to monetarist economic policy, advocated by um Nozick somewhat, but you could say really more of Milton Friedman, obviously, who is the quintessential economic thinker. Um and it's odd, I find, that he's kind of coming at the end of a period of distributive justice, that you know, the New Deal in the US um Labour government in the UK that's kind of backing the unions and supporting kind of these mass organisations that are to do with distribution. So I suppose for historical context, what we see in a thinker like Rules is someone who's looking very much as an internationalist. And this is where the idea of his behind the veil of ignorance comes in. So should I maybe go into that and then we can do a bit of back and forth from there?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, but um uh a question going to mind as you uh explain that, if if I could. Um do you think then we are prone to interpreting roles as someone who's trying to make the positive case for say redistribution, when a better way of reading him, a more appropriate, more historically informed way of reading him would be to view him as trying to limit it?
SPEAKER_00Potentially, or or I suppose he's not coming up with something innovative. He's coming up with he's trying to come up with essentially a more efficient way of doing what he thinks states are trying to do, but not achieving sort of thing. Um, so he's not like an existentialist or a revolutionary, and and that's why I suppose he sits awkwardly, because what as I was saying at the start, left-wing people would be like, well, you're essentially advocating what we have, um, and that's not working. Whereas he's trying to say, well, I'm a sort of blend of these different ideologies, I'm a blend of libertarianism with redistributive justice on the left. Um and yeah, I mean, I think I think he's very unique. Um, and certainly, certainly the reactionaries, the ones who want to change society fundamentally, are the nozicks of the day, the ones saying that everything is property. What's his theory? Entitlement theory, which um already sounds sort of selfish and sinful. Uh, well, but if to a lovely lefty like me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, it's precisely reaction against Rawls quite radical insistence that there's that there's no value to inheritance. And um Sandel's paper, which we'll move on to later, is begin with an a scrutiny of Nozick's criticism of Rawls on this point. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um what was I going to say? Um, but yeah, let's discuss the veil the veil because he's an internationalist, so we've talked about his encounters um during the war. Two years after the war concludes, you have the UN Declaration of Human Rights, so the idea that you can universalise these libertarian principles um of individual rights. However, critics of something like the um uh Convention on Human Rights, which sounds an odd thing to say, but let's say it anyway, critics of human rights would argue that um that um then maybe not applicable in every society, that it's uh for for say a for say a post-colonialist, they might say, well, this is just another infringement on countries by Western ideas formulated within Western universities, uh, and academics sitting around thinking what's best for the world. Um, so that comes in 1948. And from that, Rules takes an inspiration. And he thinks, well, if we're doing that, then why can't we envisage a system where in each individual society there's at least some universal parameters that we set to say there has to be a standard of living, there has to be a standard of um quality of life, an economic situation to allow life to be viable like it is in the more flourishing states around the world. So he says that the principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance. Now that's his idea. So this veil of ignorance would shround our view, it would come down over our heads. I'm sure you'd look lovely in a veil, Jack. That isn't a proposition, I just want to add. Um this veil would descend over our eyes and would block out um any vision of where we might be going in life. So we would go back to this childlike state. He talked about essentially a child in a bubble floating around the earth. Um, and it's what he calls the original position. Now, he thinks that we all want to further our own interests. To do this, he sees that we need to work together. Therefore, we require rules. Um rules, not rules, but we maybe we require both, the rules. Rules that are fair and just must apply equally to all, ignoring social status or situation. So the principle of justice, therefore, should be chosen behind a veil of ignorance. Now, obviously, this is massively easier said than done, but the idea would be that because you wouldn't know whether you could be born as, you know, whatever cross-section of society in whatever location in the world, you could be a poor farmer with no food, um at risk of various diseases in sub-Saharan Africa. You could be born in Asia into a life of poverty, but you could be born into a New York skyscraper in a tramp tower and living a luxury life. Um, but you don't know. Now, as we've already said, there will always be a difference principle. It's not like he's saying it's going to be flat across the board, but no rational individual would decide that that is a fair system to have because you have just as much risk of falling into poverty and destitution as you do being born into riches and lavish wealth. Um, from the original position, um he believes that we would create a society where the rules of society support what we've already referred to as a fair equality of opportunity. Liberty, and individual liberty is still lexically prior to all this. So the system behind the veil of ignorance would have to prioritize individual liberties in the process of making this ideal world that he's envisaging. Um, but you need to create a at least somewhat fair starting point for all humans to thrive. Jack, where does your criticism begin?
SPEAKER_01Oh, everything's I mean, oh goodness, this is um um an aspect, I mean, this is the basic contention I would have with with roles, but I I I I I can't see it as having read Sandel's paper and it personally didn't really hit me. Okay, so veil of ignorance means to abstract from the the the social context in which people do live. Um and Sandel's criticism of this was that that's not how we think about justice. Um we if if it's I guess similar to um you brought up an example earlier. Um oh yeah, again, for utilitarians, that was it. We don't make these rational calculations in the same way, but uh it's it's it's not obvious that we do always think of justice in in very cold um universalizable um terms. Um the the the circum i i it's it's it's we think of it at the level of well, you know, I got this service from this person, um and maybe there were the there were family ties there, and I felt that um that he he owed me something, and you know that's that's a lot more like the everyday incidents they're they're very much bound to our our social connections, families, culture, all this. Um can we get behind all that? Yeah um it it's it seems like it's been increasingly difficult to support that argument, and certainly the the the the literature on on these themes has gone in the opposite direction. Um not necessarily, you know, for me, not necessarily because a critique of values isn't possible or critique of society isn't possible, where you could start to make some some quite concrete evaluations about certain ideals of justice that maybe ought to be omnipresent, but it's just it's it's the first thing I would say is not straightforward to make that critique. And it's very easy to get carried away, and and it's the naive thing to completely sidestep, undermine, undervalue the the the the the yeah, the the lived ex lived experience, which you say that a bit overused, but the the dimension of our of our lives which is in the world is situated as Sartre would say. Um which which brings me to sort of a maybe a another more precise criticism. Um part of the premise of the veil of ignorance is uncertainty, epistemic uncertainty about circumstances, but that's sort of not really true. Um in in in in at least one critical sense, which is that there are people in the world who have some idea about the conditions into which their sons and daughters are going to be brought into the world, for instance. So the idea that you sort of you as an individual, yes. Because you know, you're not in the world and and you're you're just you you just you know you you become conscious of a certain situation you're in and you don't even recognise the moment of consciousness. But there are people in the world who are planning for the future. So the there isn't a a radical degree of uncertainty here. And small people are planning for the in the interest usually of of their of the people who have been their inherited, not just their immediately family, but their their community and and and their nation. Um they're they're they're making sacrifices often for for for um to to to leave something behind for the next generation. Um and in in all these ways uh trying to overcome certainty. I think Rawls is far too pessimistic. Um and this is part of the value of inheritance. It's it's it's it's it's I think it is is a way of counteracting some of that uncertainty, which leads him to feel that he needs to radically abstract from human experience and affairs.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well he is a quintessential rationalist, isn't he? Because he says that the way of thinking here, if it doesn't work, which obviously it doesn't, um, he says it won't be a failure of of um of charity, it won't be a failure of like people not feeling emotional enough to like support this. He says it will be a failure of reason. He says that it will be humanity's collective reason that has failed if this system isn't implemented, rather than say, a socialist's critique, which would be, oh, well, it's just selfish vested interests. Whereas he's saying, no, it's not that people are nasty and selfish, but it's that their rationality, if this doesn't happen, isn't isn't leading them to the right conclusion. Which obviously every philosopher could end their argument with.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I mean it could, I mean, in fairness, it could be both. Um you know, I mean part of the problem is that there are we we have personal interest, and that's not always a bad thing. Um, I think sometimes it is, but um part of what is sometimes of personal interest to us is is just the preservation of something more local and comparison to something more con more global, um, increasingly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um but this also I do want to ask you about this, Jack, because obviously I know you're not a fan of rules, but in in this period, there is a kind of re-emergence of certain faith ethic politics politico-ethical faith systems coming out of utilitarianism. So you have someone like Joseph Fletcher, who, in a similar way to rules, he's very impacted by the Vietnam War and the dropping of Napalm and Agent Orange and the destruction of our natural habitat and obviously the infliction of immense pain and suffering on humanity. And he says he comes up with this idea of prioritizing agape, universal love in everything we do and policies that we implement. And is there not uh, you know, Rules was a Christian um while he was going through his school and when he went to Princeton, but he sort of lost his faith. But there is still quite a, I would say, a certain kind of Christian ethic to this idea of kind of us all being born and and creating a certain a certain society and system that surely gets us at least to the kind of starting gun of life that gives us a chance.
SPEAKER_01There is there is a case to be made for that. Um did why I I don't go all the way with these the people who emphasize the social dimension to to existence. You could overstate that and and basically come to the conclusion that all cultures are radically incommensurate, you can't compare them, um you can't have intercultural dialogue, um, we're incomprehensible to one another. I think that's just as bad. Um the the difficulty is trying to mediate this sort of collective shared humanity, the shared human experience, and what makes it actually quite distinctive, um, and also meaningful, which is often what is more the you know, the more concrete element. The thing with um sort of the the universal postulates is they're often all very abstract. Um even Agassiz is very abstract, which is why But that isn't that isn't to say that the monetarists aren't.
SPEAKER_00I mean that you know, going in the other direction, within a few years you have someone like Thatcher saying there's no such thing as society. Now, surely we know that there is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right, right. But but she means that um, I mean, I guess she means that in the in the way Hayek also amended, but I mean, I know that I'm necessarily defending either of them on this point, but it it they had they had a very specific idea that we were mistaken to predicate anything of society as anything other than an abstraction from from lived experience. Even Hayek shouldn't even be saying that because Hayek believed that there is some some something metaphysical about an economy where it's neither reducible to reason nor to to to to to ground up genetic um factors, it sort of hovers in the middle. Society is a bit like that, I think. Um it it's it it's real, but in a very specific sense. Um and so and so we we have to say, okay, so if we say, you know, say it's social injustice, for instance, well, who do we blame for that? Who do we petition for our rights to be rectified for social injustice?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um that's that's a problem Hayek brings to our attention. It's um it's it's not obvious. I mean, maybe there is an answer to it, but it's it's a bit like you know, who do we blame? It's it it it's actually i i inimical to justice when the question of who to petition for for rights to be rectified is so abstract in that way. Um it's better if our if our claims to j injustice are attracted to individuals.
SPEAKER_00Um of course he's writing at a time where those social justice campaigns have been on the march. I mean, he's this book comes out only three years after 1968, that moment when, you know, it looked like France could turn red with the rioters in the streets in Paris, uh, the campus riots in the States, um, you know, this kind of moment of potential revolution. And again, in a way, he would be seen as kind of part of the conservative force, really, in his writing, because he's he's not advocating the overthrow of a regime. He is uh advocating obviously a change and a and a restructuring. But um but also I suppose he's recognizing the legitimacy of Of those arguments in terms of the fact that it's only a couple of years before that the Civil Rights Act has been passed by Lyndon Johnson in the state to allow black people the same rights as white. So I suppose when we look at this, it is very much within the context of his day. If you were to try and expropriate rules ideas to today, they would fit very differently within the kind of debates that we're talking about in terms of contemporary politics. Yes. Sorry, I interrupted you. I'm a rude man.
SPEAKER_01But you mentioned the monetary. Yeah. Yeah, and they were abstract.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, I I just thought that in the opposite direction, to say that there's no such thing as society also seems quite kind of like withdrawn from the withdrawn from the real world. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay. So okay, and then to return to the the original question of things like agape, and are we trying to, you know, um you know to what extent is it possible and desirable to find a sort of universal ethic um as role than doing? I think it is, I think it is admirable.
SPEAKER_00Um it is always always sounds like it's heading in a positive direction when the sentence starts with it's admirable. Or it's like when a when a government minister is told that's very brave minister. Don't do it.
SPEAKER_03It's very brave, yeah, yeah, it is, it is.
SPEAKER_01Um but um I mean you know it it's easier to to to to make those kind of um claims and and and and state this kind of omission in his day when you have so such clear violations of what we would consider as as decency and and and as and as justice and and and and peace and all this, but but what you mentioned, what does agape look like in practice? That is a that is a an ongoing debate. It's um in individual, you know, even even in in religious traditions. That is um, it's why Christ spoke in parables, for instance, because these things are irreducibly contextual. That there is some but there is something that unites it. So the agape is the real principle. We were just talking before we dive recording about Augustine. Um in the confession, he has to address a criticism of the Manichaeans against the Old Testament. If the if the customs in the Old Testament continually change and transform, can there ever be such a thing as justice? And Augustine has to reply, I think rightly, that the the the the underlying principles of justice are universal. The problem is that they have to enter into human context and have to be applied. And this is a relative phenomenon. This is where where justice truly becomes relative, but not to the sake of being able to make right and wrong claims about what is and what is not just. It's just it's it's a puzzle, it's literally a puzzle. Um a game.
SPEAKER_00Um and I know it can I was going to say, I I I think I think the um rules is very old-fashioned uh in a way. I mean, you're the philosopher, so you you can probably relate to what I'm about to say more. Um but in that philosophical tradition for someone writing in the 1970s is actually quite old-fashioned to be, and and this is in uh Plato to NATO by Brian Redhead, um, which was a quintessential sort of studies of political thought home for a long time. And in there, it it says rules of theory is both more old-fashioned, but also more successful um in some ways. It is more old-fashioned in simply assuming that if we think hard about our moral obligations and put our minds to meeting them, we shall, on the whole, act rightly. Now, as I as I was saying before, you know, he does have this very rationalist view that if this doesn't work, if if his view of how you can rectify social injustice whilst maintaining political freedom doesn't work, then it will just be a result of not rationalizing far enough. But I think there's a massive issue with his potentially what is the social contract theory, which is that it completely lacks any identification of the situation. You know, regardless even of the debates around individual liberties, which he think is covered. I think, and I'd love you to expand on this, is a lack of sort of like contemplating situationalist kind of concerns because you know the the the feminist um scholar Carol Payton in her sexual contact, which I've referenced a couple of times about this theory, that rules attempt to just emulate what every um social contact theorist from the Enlightenment onwards has done, which is assume one position as a white man in the West and say that it's applicable to everyone. Now, obviously, he's saying that because he wants to try and help people, but ultimately he's doing the same thing of completely forgetting his place in the world and then use that abstracting himself from sort of reality, and then saying that therefore the position that he's come to could be apply applicable and apply in all circumstances. But yeah, what would you say about the lack of situation as a drag?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, maybe that's a um a good place to turn to Sandel.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, please do actually. Yeah, let's go into uh let's go into that and we can come back to the situation.
SPEAKER_01Well, but I I'll I'll try and maybe move it towards Sandel through through answering that particular question. I mean or nice segue again. We'll see, we'll see if I can manage it, but um yeah, I mean the basic issue is um a problem of human identity. That's how Sandel will look at it. Um if if if justice is going to be you know something meaningful to it, it has to be something a bit more than just you know solving problems of debt or um you know very generic um cases of um of injustice, you know, like murder or whatever. Um it it it's it's it's gotta have some some very intimate connection to how we're actually living our lives. And so we're all we all have different roles in society, you know, we and and uh connections, obligations. Um some of us have families, um, some of us are uh tradesmen. Um and it's this does give us a very particular perspective on the world, um also in the context of maybe a of a national history and then maybe a religious history. Um we have therefore characteristic ways of framing problems. Um we have very specific values which uh a rationalist critique would just completely overwrite as accidental, but in a certain situation might be you know very very important, um, you know, uh and and even be raised to the question of a of a of a of an injustice. Um so the the the basic problem is that uh I guess Roth has simplified this too much. Um even erased the human subject in the process. Um so so Sandel um in the article we looked at from the um On the Limits of Liberalism, which is a text that he writes primarily in response to Rawls's version of liberalism, basically to say that um the the the human factor has disappeared. Um the his that the self is left bare of any substantive feature or characteristic that could qualify as a basis for for claims of justice and injustice or or um or what is owed to someone. Even just just thinking of of the basic basic idea of justice as as um as inheritance or um or in relation to problem of inheritance or or um what is due to you to a certain because of a certain effort you've exerted in society, for instance. Um you know maybe you you you you you you work you've given um your your time to company. Um so Sandel's his whole career is is is beyond this book, it is about resituating the human person into political theory and to do it in a way where the the situation sort of the human subject comes to the fore of these questions. Um I can give a bit of a history of of of that, um, a bit of a summary. So Fandel was um born in 1952. Um he's an American political philosopher and popular author on such subjects as liberty, justice, identity, and globalization, um, as well as the ethics of markets and of meritocracy. So you're already seeing um uh the recovery of the human subject in in this in this context, because um Sandal was one of the the foremost writers to say actually there are some things you can't you shouldn't be able to sell on markets, for instance, like human body parts.
SPEAKER_00Um yes, yeah, which Nozick had famously said, if you want to, you can.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right. So you know this won't do if we're going to if we're going to have a justice that is human-centered, that's socially centered. And the the Yeah, I mean, part yeah, here's one way of thinking about it. Um, when you abstract from the human subject, as Rawls does, it's not obvious on the economics paradigm of justice, let's say, which is sort of what justice question is become once you've abstracted the human subject. Why the things that matter to people would matter to them, like um organ donations or slavery or um or what else? Um or even yeah, even just the question of of excess in economic growth. Um that's not just it's not a mathematical problem, it's because people feel dispossessed. Um it it's because their local businesses suffer.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01And that's where they're they're deriving their identity, their meaning, their purpose. Um it's it's what's binding the local community together. So there's no economic argument for why that shouldn't be done away with. I mean, the economic argument seems to suggest no, get rid of it because the globalization stuff is more efficient, and the the big corporations are producing what everyone needs um at half the price, and um, you know, and deface the world of grace and deface the world of the of the subject, as um the kind of thing someone like Rodrigo would say. Um okay, so this is sort of what Sandel's coming up against. Um where did he get this from? Well, he studied under um Charles Taylor at Oxford, um, and Charles Taylor was a famous communitarian philosopher, not a communist philosopher. Um, communitarianism emerged in the 70s with the writing of Charles Taylor and Alistair McIntyre, who were some of the first in the Anglophone academies, at least around this time, to raise serious objections to the supposed values neutrality of theories of liberal democracy and their tendency to abstract individuals from the social and historical context that we've been describing. Um they also relatedly, they they they they basically were making the argument for positive notions of freedom and positive notions of the common good from within the confines of a plurality of views on these subjects. So, Charles Taylor, for instance, he argues that we can have a constructive discourse about cultural values in a way that the libertarian philosophers really just shirk back from this um question at all. He borrows from the scientific tradition. If you have a theory in science which accounts for more problems than the previous, it's sort of the one you go with. And this was sort of how he how he um he approached cultural discourse. Um if the if there's a if if there are more moral situ uh moral complications, moral gray areas that one culture can make sense of over the other, that for Charles Taylor and I think Alan de McIntyre also, that would be sort of how that how how the culture would grow in a in a consistent way. And I think Vandel adheres to that also. But so you see how how you know cultural conversation, cultural discourse comes back to the fore of political thinking, where they seem to be quite distant in John Rollers, I would say, um, at least abstracted. Um the other thing to note, I guess, also about this tradition is is is work of Alazar McIntyre, which is especially interesting in this regard because he so he wrote a book um called After Virtue, and then another one called Which Justice Who's Rationality. So really putting to the forefront these questions of well, in this plurality, what do we do? Um and it was it was remarkable how both of these thinkers really were able to, I think, convincingly present a path forward through complex cultural discourse without ever claiming as Rolls just to go outside of it. In many ways, very Kantian. Um, not in what Kant's actual political theory says, but in the actual metaphysics that underlies it. Maybe that's quite an ambiguous comment for me to make, but Kant's theory of transcendental idealism is all about getting to the object from within the subject. So this is a political analogy, let's say. Um, okay. Sandel's um first publication that it mentioned was this this book, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, specifically targets the false theory of justice um and and uh the radical individualism that it presented there uncritically as value neutral. Um he was he he published it after his employment at Harvard, um, which you know just after he began there, and he would teach classes on justice for over two decades, and these were some of the most popular um lectures that Harvard ever produced, and they were they were recorded, they were reproduced in various broadcasting networks across the globe. Um sorry, a striking amount of students he taught in in this period immense. Um his subsequent work includes um Democracy's Discontent, 1996, Public Philosophy, 2005, uh What Money Can't Buy, The Moral Limits of Markets, and The Tyranny of Merit 2020. Um I wanted to also just add that part of communitarianism, another way of thinking about it, is the recovery of um public goods, irreducibly public goods. Um so it's not just um I think I think a lot of liberalism tends to reduce to to to to um private interest, yeah. Private goods, and then construct the public goods out of those under sufficient conditions. And Charles Taylor, for instance, was very big on the idea that no, they're just there are irreducibly public goods, um, like family, like friendship, like um uh like language is is is is one um if you follow Wittgenstein anyway, um you know, there is there are there are certain jobs we might occupy ourselves with, um, which you can't do on your own and require another. Um you know, all these ways that we come together to achieve things.
SPEAKER_00Um and it is, I suppose, yeah, is rules theory too individualistic, is the kind of quintessential link here in terms of like take, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. So so this is this was Sandel's um criticism. So individualist in its approach to to um to society and to and to and to justice, and also then individualist in the in its view of the human person, uh, which undergirded all that in its anthropology, let's say, like all the social contracts used to come before this you know, the idea that you can just abstract out of what has been inherited. Um this is what the communitarians are are seeing as the root of um of so many missteps in their thinking, uh, excess rationalism, um, loss of the subject in the in this public discourse, um even ambiguity about what is social justice? Is is it just economic?
SPEAKER_00Um I suppose I suppose he's also making rules or his his critiques are doing what rules maybe didn't want to do, which was to come up with a comprehensive doctrine and is you know starting to say, well, where does an idea of say the good life come from? Well, it's our community, it's our values, the things that for just so to be able to create a system that is just, we surely have to have reference to the good life. I suppose Mandel would say that's impossible, you know, to create an idea of what rules is ideal kind of just state would be if you don't have some idea of what the good life is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, exactly, exactly. And this is what these thinkers are trying to do, especially Alistair McIntyre actually, is is is put that conversation right back at the fore and say, no, actually, we this is something we can discuss and that we need to discuss because our disc our discourse around justice, while Rawls is there asserting this idea, no, um we'll just abstract and we'll we'll just pretend we'll put on our nails of ignorance and we'll rationally discern the the most appropriate principles um for conducting ourselves in the absence of self-interest. Um what's actually going on in the real world is that all these um social tensions and wars and um other forms of strife that you've described already, uh uh are putting enmity between people, between groups of people, um, and that is shaping the way they they are thinking about justice and it's and it's intimately connected with their social situations in a way Rawl is completely ignoring despite living in this time. And these thinkers are the the communitarian thinkers are uh of completely inverting that. Um we we so so so rather than run away from the conversation that's happening around Rawls, they they're I think they're uh embracing it, et cetera, but also criticizing it, realizing that it it has prevailed for far too long on what Alistair McIntyre would call emotivist principles, um and which is just the idea that um ethics had by this point really just been reduced to what I assert is the good, because there had been such a radical loss of tradition and and and and let's say like a cohesive worldview that could unite us in our ethical thinking. Yeah um that turned out not to make us more rational, um, contrary to what Rawls would expect in McIntyre's view, it has made us emotional and um and vindictive and um and unable to talk about this, um, which is quite remarkable.
SPEAKER_00And yeah, and I mean I suppose they're also exploring, you know, is the self prior to its end, is is the individual able to get behind that veil of ignorance, unencumbered as the rule says by kind of our motives and uh you know um moral and communal responsibilities and obligations and truly ever abstract ourselves when, of course, as we all know after this six-part series, we're brick ours and we have to understand the world through the way that we've been reared and raised. Um and yeah, and I mean, yeah, I think I think this this is certainly linked to um what's going on in postmodernism, which we'll be exploring in the next series when we come to Foucault and and and and and and that when we look at heritage. Um and yeah, um, did I have anything else? Yeah, I think the the the bit about the reference to the good was something that I really wanted to um yeah to to ask you about in terms of that communitarium. Did you have any other points about standard or jack that you wanted to make? I mean he's the only one of our scholars who's still alive.
SPEAKER_01He is, that's absolutely worth noting, yeah. was written five years ago. Um so and you can see him on YouTube, he he gets around a lot.
SPEAKER_00Um I mean it is interesting that these critiques of rules come from both essentially communitarian sort of um uh uh views, but also obviously you've got critiques of rules coming from someone like Nozick as a libertarian, you've got critiques of rules coming from Carol Pateman as a feminist, and you have critiques of rules coming from Charles Mills as a um as a post-colonial scholar. Um and I don't think necessarily that's a bad place to be, because I think what rules does come up with as a as a rulesian apologist, I think what rules does come up with, it's a very legalist system. You know, he he has said that um he doesn't want to create a comprehensive doctrine to sort of um try and you know, he's he's he's writing at a time that's in the midst of the Cold War, and one thing that obviously he really doesn't like is Soviet socialism. He doesn't like the the dominating control that Soviet socialism has. Admittedly, he does say that he sort of becomes a socialist of some type by the end of his life, and his ideas are taken up by the social democratic countries of Scandinavia, for example. You know, you can really see Rules' influence in the way that um Scandinavian states have developed, particularly in the 21st century. Um, but I think the critiques come at him as a quintessential liberal, you know, that he's he's trying to envisage some idea of creating the world to be a better place. And often we we sometimes forget the motives of these individuals because we get wrapped up in criticism. And I think he has an admirable task because he is trying to reduce what he's doing too. It's essentially that, you know, that the the sort of very iconic image of justice, which is Lady Justice standing there with a with her uh scales, with a blind round her, and saying that to me, I don't know who you are, what your background is, but on the evidence that I shall receive, I want to give a just outcome. That is Rules' idea of what he sees the responsibility of politics being, just as that's the responsibility when it comes to a courtroom. Um and I don't think that's a bad place to begin a political argument. I I think the critiques just raise the flaws in implementation.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes, it it's um perhaps there are two different questions that would be one way of thinking about it. And um not necessarily that they have to be addressed separately, but uh I think they do. Maybe they're not two separate questions, but certainly two relatively independent questions would be a better way of phrasing it. Um the the structure of our institutions and the and and I guess uh the the the way that they relate to two individuals, let's say. Um trying to on the one hand get get that universalism right, but also the this this this particular dimension that that that real people do bring in. What uh what uh Sandel calls sickly constituted selves. Um in contrast to um to two completely featureless selves of of of roles. Um then I think what happens is if you can bring those two together, which is a precarious project, because I also I'm I'm I'm dissatisfied with a lot of the of the discourse around trying to make justice more humane, because I think it's often quite naive, it's isn't it a straightforward task? And um you know, for for instance, you know, the the the term social justice in itself, which is very much what Fandel is interested in, is very ambiguous and very manipulable. So this so though I have criticized roles um for not uh contending with this question properly, the people who who favour it also often struggle with it because it's it's we're dealing with very precarious things, especially because we're dealing with the complexity of people, many people with all kinds of circumstances how to how to bring the institutional question and the social question together is uh another one of our indissoluble problems, but the important thing for me is that we do not uh uh uh which you know which is the which is the greater evil. Um I'm I mean certainly the way my philosophizing goes, I mean I'm very interested in the philosophers that think about you know constitutive subjectivity, constitutive freedom. I'm more anxious about the the way in which our political theories neglect the subject than which um than which they maybe give it too much credence. Um although economists would probably um be upset with me for saying that. Oh no. Um dear I did. Yeah, but it but but look, I mean it it's not obvious that the economic motive and the social motive always, or the cultural motive or the moral motive, coincide.
SPEAKER_00I think private vices, private vices, public virtues.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right, right. And I I wouldn't be too pessimistic about this, but you know, so um and and the inter when when when these political philosophers are talking about institution, they're they're mostly in the 20th century talking about economics.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01But politics has become economics, it's very strange. Oh, essentially, yeah, primarily um Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You don't you don't see politicians sitting around discussing ethics in in in in the legislative chamber.
SPEAKER_01And when they want to, only five turn up.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, we hope that far more than five of you have turned up to watch this. Yeah, we do, we do. Um and unless you have any concluding remarks, Jack, um we can start.
SPEAKER_01I have a I have a good quote from Sandell.
SPEAKER_00Oh, marvelous.
SPEAKER_01Um, it's come from the end of the paper we said. I think I read it out also quite spontaneously in the in the seminar. I quite liked it. Um liberalism, says Sandell, teaches respect for the distance of self and ends. And when this distance is lost, we are submerged in a circumstance that ceases to be ours. But by ceasing, um sorry, but by seeking to secure this distance too completely, liberalism undermines its own insight. By putting the self beyond the reach of politics, it makes human agency an article of phase rather than an object of continuing attention and concern. The premise of politics rather than its precarious achievement. This misses the pesos of politics, but also its most inspiring possibilities. It overlooks the dangers that when politics go badly, not only disappointment but also dislocation they're likely to revolt. And it's to get to possibility that when politics goes well, we can know a good in common that we can't know alone.
SPEAKER_00Oh, lovely. That's a beautiful passage. It's very, very, very nice, yes. And we really have ebbed ebbed slowly and smoothly towards the mouth of the river that is our conclusion.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00Yes, we have. It's not only a conclusion of discussing rules and sandell, who I think have revealed themselves to be quintessential in the formation of the conclusion of the 20th century's political thought in the case of rules and in formulating ideas about, as we've said, communitarianism, and about how do you weigh up the sort of abstracting uh from a, you know, when a political philosopher like rules wants to abstract, and like many that we've covered, wants to abstract to some state outside of human condition, how do you tackle that when you're really talking about politics that is happening day to day? And I think I think what we've done in this series is cover these thinkers, how history has impacted their visions of liberty that have changed and fluctuated, even the definition of liberty as we've as we started. We were talking about the idea that a liberty was a piece of land given out by a king, and now we're talking about equality of opportunity. Liberty has ebbed and flowed like the river of this discourse that we've had. It really has.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Well, it's a complex um history to summarize and to do justice to. Um so I stumbled upon that. Um, yeah, so yeah, it's it's uh but yeah, how much changes in that period? Um, as we say.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Um I think it's fascinating because to be able to engage with these philosophical concepts correctly, you have to situate them within that time period, and that is what we've done, and now we've got a better idea, and we hope we've given you a better idea of how these ideas they're not they're not in a silo, you don't have to abandon them to history, but through contextualising them, through exploring them in the way we have, I think they're much more ready to be pried open and used more effectively and in a more attuned manner than just simply going to the text and trying to apply to the modern day. Um and we'll be doing the same thing all over again, which will be wonderful, with a series called Heritage that we're going to be running as a reading club. Um and we'll be coming back to you very shortly with an episode on Plato. So going much, much further back. So there'll be lots of semantic difference in our next period between ancients and moderns. But until then, Jack and I will let you go. We'll let Jack get back to some revision for his exam tomorrow.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um I may go for a walk first to clear your mind.
SPEAKER_00Um wonderful guy. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you for listening. And yeah, we'll see you next time. Bye.