Amartya Sen on Justice (3) - Rawls and Beyond (a)

Image credit. Continued from Amartya Sen on Justice (2) - Reason and Objectivity

Academic antics

True to form, Amartya Sen embarks on the second chapter dispensing apodictically sounding advise on how to properly revere John Rawls.

First, Sen stresses Rawls extraordinary significance by letting us know how much HE, Sen, has learned from his personal friend. Then Sen tells us - and hence me, to which I thoroughly object - about

the very large debt that we all owe to Rawls for reviving philosophical interest in the subject of justice.

Basically, what he is telling us is that John Rawls is one of the most important among the moon calves of his academic subculture - "the leading political philosopher of our time," p.52 -, which "fact" should be recognised by all of us since it is him, Sen, another moon calf of the academic establishment, who says so.

Rawls' famed theory of justice is in actual fact a concoction so lousy that Sen, unswervingly donning a reverential countenance, cannot help but tear it apart in the following pages. Of course, all the while, Sen saves the exalted reputation of Rawls by whispering to us about the enormous wisdom of Rawls errors and the intellectual advances lining the path Rawls has taken to arrive at this preposterous results.

Rawls' Original Theory of Justice - Justice as Fairness - The Original Position

Antics aside, Sen  presents a very clear picture of the essential features of Rawls theory of justice.

Rawls suggests to conceive of justice as fairness. According to him, justice is arrived at via procedures of fairness. Operationally fairness is defined as a situation - "the original position" - where everyone is magically stripped off her normal-life preconceptions (personal interests, prejudices etc.), even her sense of identity, by which measure she is placed behind a "veil of ignorance." The denuded soul or mind is supposed to be in a position to discover the basic principles of justice. In fact, the "veil of ignorance" appears to unite us in some sort of communism of the denuded souls. We have lost everything, except our ability to discover the most foundational principles of justice, which happen to be the very same for all of us. 

What's Wrong with Rawls' Theory of Justice as Fairness

Frankly, already at this point, I propose that the number of aspects that fatally disqualify the Rawlsian "original position" as a philosophically sound base of argument must be numerous. Among these, I am inclined to highlight the similarity of Rawls' misguided anti-social approach to justice with Rothbard's attempt to ground his theory of justice in the monadic world of Robinson Crusoe.

As for Rothbard see my The Elementary Errors of Anarchism (1/2), and The Elementary Errors of Anarchism (2/2). 

According to Sen, Rawls is an adherent of transcendental institutionalism, which I have explained in Amartya Sen on Justice (1). In seeking to come up with a recipe for perfect justice, Rawls endeavours to set up institutions

on the basis of a unique set of principles of justice emanating from the exercise of fairness, through the original position ...

(Sen, A. (2009), The Idea of Justice, p.58)

If I understand Sen's exposition correctly, Rawls seems to believe that by putting people into the original position and behind the veil of ignorance, he confronts them with an inevitably common view on the most basic principles of justice, whose discovery, in turn, is the result of practising fairness, while practising fairness produces impartiality. In his naive scholastic greed for apodicticity, Rawls approach spawns uniquely determined categories: justice, fairness, impartiality.

In fact, Rawls naively treats these categories as absolutes. In truth, they are relational categories, that is: they are defined and constantly altered owing to the fact that people have different ideas of what they imply, fight and negotiate over them - in the face of precisely what the "original postilion" is artificially denying them to bring to the table.

Impartiality

Rawls does not understand that, like justice and fairness, impartiality is not 

• unconditional, or 

• context-independent, or 

• a category or practice as such. 

His theory presupposes that impartiality can be an absolute in the sense of a state of affairs that fully and uniquely, primordially, if you like, represents the concept's unrivalled true form, its only valid instantiation.

First, we must establish what it is that we intend to treat impartially. The choice of the reference area will be partial. There is a parallel with the twin concepts of material and substantive rule of law.

The former regulates the operational rules for impartiality ("let everyone speak to make their case"). The latter refers to the purpose to which impartiality is put ("defend the dictatorship of the proletariat"). 

• It is possible to impartially pursue the aim of killing every Jew in Germany, using a set of rules that equally applies and is impartially applied to all people present in Germany at a given time.

What I am trying to get at becomes perhaps clearer when I alternatively suggest that

• it is possible to impartially pursue the aim of protecting every Jew in Germany from being arbitrarily killed, using a set of rules that equally applies and is impartially applied to all people present in Germany at a given time. 

The difference between the two regimes consists in the aim that is to be pursued impartially.

I see a parallel with the anarchist and minarchist principle of non-aggression which posits: do not initiate aggression against anyone, unless aggression has been initiated against you.

That sounds happily complete and ultimate. But, of course, it is not. It is actually just begging the question, what it is that we consider to be a case of aggression. People can have widely diverging views on this. So, the non-aggression principle settles absolutely nothing.

Similarly, an absolute concept of impartiality, such as invoked by Rawls, refers to something that has no operative or even theoretical meaning.

I suspect, this has to do with the circumstance that every conception of fairness or justice or any other  

• purpose that impartiality is intended to serve

• involves manifest interests that override impartiality considerations, and 

• subordinate whatever manner of applying impartiality happens to be pertinent or requisite to a set of foundational interests.

The upshot is that Rawls tries to conjure away the most basic condition of justice, fairness or impartiality: namely the fact that these concepts are emergent rather than a priori or transcendental or given in some pre-established and static form; they are, among other contributory aspects of emergence, themselves part of the network of human interaction and communication - we find out about them and bring them forth by engaging in relationships with one another - rather than stripping us from  what we cannot strip ourselves off - our identities, interests, preconceptions - and finding our denuded souls gazing at a screen of common beliefs.

To be continued in Amartya Sen on Justice (4) - Rawls and Beyond (b)