MVE%206030%20The%20Good%20Society%20and%20its%20Educated%20Citizens

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MVE 6030The Good Society and its Educated
Citizens

• Topic 2
• Liberals Idea of Good Society
• The Idea of Justice

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Core Values of HK Society

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Core Values of Mainland China

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Why Justice?Formulation of the Problem

• Three levels of social values
• Ethical value It refers to desirable traits and
  features we attributed to human behaviors,
  actions, and conducts.
• Moral value It refers to desirable traits and
  features attributed to human interactions and
  relationships among fellows humans.

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Why Justice?Formulation of the Problem

• Three levels of social values
• Political values It refers to the ethical and
  moral values taken by a given society as of
  prominent importance that they should be imposed
  onto all members of that society coercively.
• Accordingly, discourse of political value entails
  the legitimacy of a public authority (the modern
  state) in substantiating those prominent values
  onto the civil society which falls under its
  sovereignty.

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Why Justice?Formulation of the Problem

• Distinction between theoretical (pure) and
  practical reasons
• Justice is the first virtue of social
  institutions, as truth is of system of thought. A
  theory however elegant and economical must be
  rejected or revised if it is untrue likewise
  laws and institutions no matter how efficient and
  well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if
  they are unjust. Being first virtue of human
  actives, truth and justice are uncompromising.
  (Rawls, 1971, Pp. 3-4)

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Why Justice?Formulation of the Question

• Distinction between theoretical (pure) and
  practical reasons
• Theoretical reason It refers to humans
  abilities and methods to address and verify the
  question of what is true.
• Practical reason It refers to humans abilities
  and methods to address and vindicate the question
  of what is good, desirable and valuable.

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Why Justice?Formulation of the Question

• Practical reason as humans methodical efforts to
  vindicate the question of what is good have
  elicited different perspectives within the fields
  of ethics and political philosophy
• Emotivism or libertarianism
• Consequentialism or utilitarianism
• Deontological perspective
• Perspective of institutionalism
• Perspective of realization-focused comparison

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Why Justice?Formulation of the Question

• The backgrounds and significance of Rawls theory
  of justice
• John Rawlss book A Theory of Justice has been
  characterized as a deontological perspective of
  practical reasoning. More specifically, his
  formulations have been categorized as a Kantian
  approach to the question of what is good society

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Why Justice?Formulation of the Question

• The backgrounds and significance of Rawls theory
  of justice
• Kants concept of categorical imperative
• Kant stipulates that there is only a single
  categorical imperative and it is this act only
  in accordance with that maxim through which you
  can at the same time will that become a universal
  law. (Kant, 1996, p. 73) or I ought never to
  act except in such a way that I could also will
  that my maxim should become a universal law. (P.
  57)

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Why Justice?Formulation of the Question

• The backgrounds and significance of Rawls theory
  of justice
• Kants concept of categorical imperative
• .
• Universal here means an action is morally
  permissible if you would be willing to have
  everyone act as you are proposing to act. An
  action is morally wrong if you are not willing to
  have everyone act as you are proposing to act.
  (Rogerson, 1991, p. 108)

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Why Justice?Formulation of the Question

• G.A. Cohen, one of the outright critics of Rawls
  theory of justice, underlines that

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Why Justice?Formulation of the Question

• The publication of John Rawlss A Theory of
  Justice in 1971 was a watershed. Before A Theory
  of Justice appeared, political philosophy was
  dominant by utilitarianism, the theory that sound
  social policy aims at the maximization of
  welfare. Rawls found two features of
  utilitarianism repugnant. He objected, first, to
  its aggregative character, its unconcern about
  the pattern of distribution of welfare, which
  means that inequality in its distribution calls
  for no justification. .

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Why Justice?Formulation of the Question

• G.A. Cohen
• .But, more pertinently Rawls also objected to
  the utilitarian assumption that welfare is the
  aspect of a persons condition which commands
  normative attention. He recommended normative
  evaluation with new arguments (goods instead of
  welfare quanta) and new function (equality
  instead of aggregation) from those arguments to
  values. (Cohen, 2011, P. 44 see also, Cohen,
  2008, Pp. 11-14)

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Rawls Theory of Justice

• Justice as fairness John Rawls formulates his
  theory of justice from the idea of Justice as
  Fairness, which was published in the form of a
  journal article in Philosophical Review, vol. 64,
  no. 1, Pp. 164-194 in 1958. He wrote in the paper
  that

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Rawls Theory of Justice

• Justice as fairness
• It might seem at the first sight that the
  concepts of justice and fairness are the same,
  and that there is no reason to distinguish them,
  or to say that one is fundamental than the other.
  I think that this impression is mistaken. In this
  paper I wish to show that fundamental idea in the
  concept of justice is fairness and I wish to
  offer an analysis of the concept of justice from
  this point of view. (Rawls, 19991958, p. 42)

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Rawls Theory of Justice

• Justice as fairness
• The meaning of fairness Fundamental to justice
  is the concept of fairness which relates to right
  dealing between persons who are cooperating with
  or competing against one another, as when one
  speak of fair games, fair competition, and fair
  bargains. The question of fairness arises when
  free persons, who have no authority over one
  another, are engaging in a joint activity and
  among themselves settling or acknowledging the
  rules which define it and which determine the
  respective shares in its benefits and burdens. .

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Rawls Theory of Justice

• Justice as fairness
• The meaning of fairness . A practice will
  strike the parties as fair if none feels that, by
  participating in it, they or any of the others
  are taken advantage of, or forced to give in to
  claims which they do not regard as legitimate.
  This implies that each has a conception of
  legitimate claims which he thinks it reasonable
  for others as well as himself to acknowledge. A
  practice is just or fair, then, when it satisfies
  the principles which those who participate in it
  could propose to one another for mutual
  acceptance under aforementioned circumstances.
  (Rawls, 19991958, p. 59)

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Rawls Theory of Justice
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Rawls Theory of Justice

• Two Principles of Justice
• Rawls stipulates at the outset that justice is
  the first virtue of social institution (P.3) and
  the primacy of justice over other social
  values. Hence, the basic structure of a just
  society is to be constituted in accordance with
  the two principles of justice.
• First Principle Each person is to have an equal
  right to the most extensive total system of equal
  basic liberties compatible with similar system of
  liberty for all.

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Rawls Theory of Justice

• Two Principles of Justice
• Second Principle Social and economic
  inequalities are to be arranged so that they are
  both
• to the greatest benefits of the least advantaged,
  and
• attached to offices and positions open to all
  under conditions of fair equality of
  opportunities. (Rawls, 1971, p. 302)

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Rawls Theory of Justice

• Applications of the principles These principles
  primarily apply to the basic structure of
  society. They are to govern the assignment of
  rights and duties and to regulate the
  distribution of social and economic
  advantages.These principles presuppose that the
  social structure can be divided into two more or
  less distinct parts. (Rawls, 1971, p. 61),

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Rawls Theory of Justice

• Applications of the principles
• The First Principle applies to those distinct
  aspects of the social system that define and
  secure the equal liberties of citizenship. The
  basic liberties of citizens are, roughly
  speaking, political liberty (right to vote and to
  be eligible for public office) together with
  freedom of speech and assembly liberty of
  conscience and freedom of thought freedom of
  person along with right to hold (personal)
  property freedom from arbitrary arrest and
  seizure as defined by the concept of the rule of
  law. These liberties are all required to be
  equal, since citizens of just society are to
  have the same basic rights. (p.61)

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Rawls Theory of Justice

• Applications of the principles
• The Second Principle applies to those aspects of
  social system that specify and establish social
  and economic inequalities. More specifically, it
  appliesto the distribution of income and wealth
  and to the design of organizations that make use
  of differences in authority and responsibility,
  or chains of command. (p. 61)

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Rawls Theory of Justice

• Interpretation of the second principle
• Rawls qualifies that the two constituent phrases
  in the Second Principle, namely to everyones
  advantage and equally open to all need further
  interpretation.
• Rawls interprets the two phrases as follows
  (Rawls, 1971, p. 65)

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Rawls Theory of Justice
(Result)
(Process)
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Rawls Theory of Justice

• Priority and lexical orders between principles of
  justice
• The priority of liberty The First Principle,
  namely the principle of liberty has lexical
  priority over the Second Principle. This
  ordering means that a departure from the
  institutions of equal liberty require by the
  first principle cannot be justified by, or
  compensated for, by greater social and economic
  advantages. (p. 61)

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Rawls Theory of Justice

• Priority and lexical orders between principles of
  justice
• Within the Second Principle, the priority of
  democratic equality over the other three systems,
  in other words, the priority of difference
  principle and equality as equality of fair
  opportunity over principle of efficiency and
  equality as careers open to talent.

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Rawls Justification of his Theory of Justice
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Rawls Justification of his Theory of Justice

• The idea of original position
• In reality, most of the situations in which
  humans enter into cooperation or competition are
  not in fair terms. That is they are not in equal
  footings when engage in a bargain and one of the
  parties may has an upper hand over their
  partners. The worst scenario the parties found
  themselves in a situation where they have to
  strike a balance not in the most favorable terms
  of both parties. In other words, the best that
  each can do for himself may be a condition of
  lesser justice rather than of greater good. It
  is at this point that the conception of the
  original position embodies features peculiar to
  moral theory. (Rawls, 1971, p. 120)

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Rawls Justification of his Theory of Justice

• The idea of original position
• Accordingly, the conception of original position
  is a conceptual device initiated by Rawls to
  insure that fundamental agreement reach in it
  are fair and yield the name of justice as
  fairness. (Rawls, p. 17)
• The original position is defined in such a way
  that it is a status quo in which agreements reach
  are fair. It is a state of affairs in which the
  partners are equally represented as moral persons
  and the outcome is not conditioned by arbitrary
  contingencies or the relative balances of social
  forces. Thus justice as fairness is able to use
  the idea of pure procedural justice from the
  beginning. (Rawls, 1971, p. 120)

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Rawls Justification of his Theory of Justice

• The conception of the veil of ignorance
• The idea of the original position is to set up a
  fair procedure so that any principles agreed to
  will be just. The aim is to use the notion of
  pure procedural justice as a basis of theory.
  Somehow we must nullify the effects of specific
  contingencies which put men at odd and tempt them
  to exploit social and natural circumstances to
  their own advantage. Now in order to do this I
  assume that the parties are situated behind a
  veil of ignorance. (Rawls, 1971, p. 136)

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Rawls Justification of his Theory of Justice

• The conception of the veil of ignorance
• It is assumed, then, that the parties do not
  know certain kinds of particular facts.
• First of all, no one knows his place in society,
  his class position or social status nor does he
  know his fortune in the distribution of natural
  assets and abilities, his intelligence and
  strength, and the like. Nor, again, does anyone
  know his conception of the good, the particulars
  of his rational plan of life, or even the special
  features of his psychology such as aversion to
  risk or liability to optimism or pessimism.

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Rawls Justification of his Theory of Justice

• The conception of the veil of ignorance
• It is assumed, then, that the parties do not
  know certain kinds of particular facts.
• More than this, I assume that the parties do not
  know the particular circumstances of their own
  society. That is, they do not know its economic
  or political situation, or the level of
  civilization and culture it has been able to
  achieve. The persons in the original position
  have no information as to which generation they
  belong. (Rawls 1971, p. 137 the Roman
  numberings are mine)

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Examining the Liberal Assumptions underlying
Rawls Theory of Justice

• Rawls endeavors of constructing A Theory of
  Justice, i.e. formulating a practical reason
  vindicating his ethical positions that (a) The
  good society is a just society, i.e. justice is
  the first virtue of social institutions and (b)
  Just society constitutes its basic social
  structure in accordance with the two principles
  stipulated by Rawls have triggered heated
  discussions in the field of ethics since its
  publication in 1971.

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Examining the Liberal Assumptions underlying
Rawls Theory of Justice

• For more than forty years, the debate has
  retrieved times and again. One of the major
  focuses of discussion has been to reveal and
  examine the underlying assumptions, on which
  Rawls whole scholarly enterprise is built. For
  example, Stephen Mulhall and Adam Swift from the
  communitarian perspective (1996) have underlined
  five of such underlying assumptions.

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Examining the Liberal Assumptions underlying
Rawls Theory of Justice

• The conception of the person
• It has been underlined by Mulhall and Swift
  (1996, Pp. 10-13) that the conception of the
  person as stipulated in Rawls conception of
  original position is a bearer of right to choose
  freely and equally with no preconception of ends.
  However, such an assumption of the conception of
  the person has been criticized by commentators
  most notably communitarians in the follow terms

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Examining the Liberal Assumptions underlying
Rawls Theory of Justice

• The conception of the person
• It has been accused that such an assumption of
  the conception the person is practically invalid,
  in the sense that the very conception of the
  person qua person is by definition her conception
  of ends, good, and her plan of life.

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Examining the Liberal Assumptions underlying
Rawls Theory of Justice

• The conception of the person
• The second query on Rawls conception of the
  person is about its scope. It has been questioned
  that whether Rawls free and equal chooser can
  exercise her rights to choose across all domains
  of life or they are specific to some particular
  domains and scopes of life only. Furthermore, it
  has been queried that whether these scope-free
  rights to choose apply to all cultures. The query
  is based on the phenomenological conceptions that
  the person is defined existentially by her lived
  experiences and lifeworld.

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Examining the Liberal Assumptions underlying
Rawls Theory of Justice

• The conception of the person
• Following this line of inquiry, Rawls conception
  of the person may further be questioned in terms
  of it status (metaphysical or empirical status),
  its source and origin (ahistorical or temporal
  historical specific). This line of query is
  derived primarily from MacIntyres conception of
  the person that she is defined by her practice,
  narrative and tradition.
• Given the conception of the person has been
  pre-emptied with her validity, scope, status and
  origin the final query on it will be whether
  such a person could still be able to practically
  reason about her own good and desirability.

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Examining the Liberal Assumptions underlying
Rawls Theory of Justice

• Asocial individualism
• According to Rawls conception of the original
  position, the free and equal choosers are related
  to one and other in game situations (either
  cooperation or competition) in disinterested
  terms. Such an assumption about relationship has
  been characterized by Mulhall and Swift as
  asocial individualism (Pp. 13-18) However, such
  the assumption has been questions in following
  terms.

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Examining the Liberal Assumptions underlying
Rawls Theory of Justice

• Asocial individualism.
• With reference of psycho-sociological
  perspective, the person with her unique
  self-conception, self-interpretation, the very
  conception of the good, and her ability to
  practical reason, are to the large extent the
  outcomes of her growing and socializing process
  within a network of interpersonal relationship
  and a cultural-linguistic matrix. Cutting away
  from these networks of references, it is hard to
  imagine how the free and equal chooser could
  practically and morally make any informed and
  justified choice.

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Examining the Liberal Assumptions underlying
Rawls Theory of Justice

• Asocial individualism.
• Given the assumption of asocial individualism,
  the practical and moral choice that Rawls free
  and equal chooser could have made will be nothing
  but in favor of individual right and liberty.
  Thus the seemingly impartiality in original
  position is in fact bias against conception of
  communal goods.

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Examining the Liberal Assumptions underlying
Rawls Theory of Justice

• Universalism
• Another concern about Rawls conclusion of his
  just society is that whether he assumes his
  conception of just society is valid universally
  and cross-culturally. Hence, it is questioned
  that his conception of just society could have
  been culturally specific to Western liberal
  societies only.
• Furthermore, Michael Walzer has specifically
  queried whether Rawls theory of justice can
  universally applied across various spheres in
  modern society, such as commodities in
  marketplace, public offices, occupations,
  education, love and kinship, religious
  affiliations, partisanship and citizenship, etc.
  

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Examining the Liberal Assumptions underlying
Rawls Theory of Justice

• Subjectivism or objectivism
• It has been underlined specifically by Michael
  Sandel that Rawls has assumed that his free and
  equal choosers make their rational choice mainly
  based upon their desires and more specifically
  their subjective preferences. .

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Examining the Liberal Assumptions underlying
Rawls Theory of Justice

• Subjectivism or objectivism.
• .Sandel makes reference with the following words
  of Rawls
• We can say that the rational plan for a
  person is the one which he would choose with
  deliberative rationality. It is the plan that
  would be decided upon as the outcome of careful
  reflection in which the agent reviewed, in the
  light of all the relevant facts, what it would be
  like to carry out these plans and thereby
  ascertained the course of action that would best
  realize his more fundamental desires. (Rawls,
  1971, P. 417 my emphasis)

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Examining the Liberal Assumptions underlying
Rawls Theory of Justice

• Subjectivism or objectivism.
• Given its conception of the person and asocial
  individualism, Rawls rational choosers in her
  original position could not have any concrete and
  objective assumptions to made reference with
  except her own subjective preferences and
  desires. Hence, it has been queried that if Rawls
  choosers were given back their personal
  identities, their socio-cultural backgrounds, or
  even the concrete and strategic situations could
  they have made totally different choices on the
  principles of justice and the conception of good
  society.

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Examining the Liberal Assumptions underlying
Rawls Theory of Justice

• Anti-perfectionism and neutrality
• Lastly, it has been queries that in his endeavor
  to formulate a theory of good society, Rawls
  seems to have assumed that the state should have
  taken a completely neutral position in all
  aspects of public affairs, so as to allow Rawls
  free and equal choosers to make whether decisions
  on the principles of justice and their
  conceptions of the good society.

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Examining the Liberal Assumptions underlying
Rawls Theory of Justice

• Anti-perfectionism and neutrality
• Mulhall and Swift underline that such an
  assumption and political position of neutrality
  is hard to justify in arguments and more
  importantly impossible to accept in effects.
  Taken for examples of cases in homicides and/or
  genocides, it is hard to imagine that even in the
  hypothetical situation of original position that
  the state or other forms of legitimate public
  authority could have stay neutral on the issues.

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Topic 2Liberals Idea of Good Scoiety

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