Rawls, Just Savings and Priority Principles

It is sometime now since I last blogged about Rawls.I left the discussion of Theory at that point where Rawls discussed properties of social systems. In this posting, by contrast, still following the logic of tracing the sections of Chapter V of the work (concerned with "distributive shares") I will look at sections 44-46. The first of these sections concerns the principle of "just savings", a principle that, in the last of the sections mentioned, is revealed to put in play a further principle of priority of the principle of equality of opportunity over the difference principle. The middle one of these sections, by contrast, has a more supplementary function in terms of giving reasons why considerations of which generation one belongs to should not be determinative for selection of principles and how this is not a point that violates democratic concern.


Section 44 is ostensibly concerned with "justice between generations" though anyone who has grappled with the questions that attach to this in works at least from Reasons and Persons onwards is highly unlikely to be satisfied with Rawls' treatment. However, if we look at what Rawls actually treats in this section we can see that, whilst much more limited in scope than much work concerned with "future generations", it does provide the basic outlines for a further clarification of one of the principles of justice in an illuminating fashion.


The real question set in the section is described well by Rawls as a concern with the "social system"'s capacity to meet the two principles of justice and this concerns, as he puts it here, an understanding of how the social minimum is set. After mentioning the "common sense" proposal that it be set so as to reach customary expectations, Rawls points out that this provides no guideline concerning when and where such expectations can be accepted as reasonable. By contrast, adoption of the difference principle indicates a means by which distribution can be governed. However, this applies not merely within a generation but also between them. This requires each generation to put aside "a suitable amount of real capital accumulation". And this is the means by which the question of justice between generations arises within the theory of justice.


Having set it out in this way Rawls proceeds to make a series of concessions concerning the need for intuitive guidance when thinking through these questions. So, as is almost instantly admitted, there are "no precise limits" on what the rate of savings should be. But this does not prevent there from being, as Rawls puts it here, "significant ethical constraints" governing the means by which savings are accumulated (note that he does not write of these as "political constraints"). Amongst these constraints are a number of reasons for not governing the mechanism of appropriation of savings by means of the principle of utility, not least because this principle tends to be excessively demanding on present generations.


By contrast to the principle of utility, the theory of justice as understood by Rawls is grounded on seeing the original position as the basis of an appropriate savings principle. Contrary to his earlier remarks in this section, however, Rawls appears not to take the basis of the savings principle to really be the difference principle after all, not least because there is no way to apply it retrospectively to previous generations and since the standing of each generation has to be somehow given place in the theory it might well seem that there has to be a different principle than the difference principle governing justice between generations.


Looked at from the standpoint of the original position there are two ways in which we can imagine the veil of ignorance applying to the question of generations. It is possible to view it from the perspective of present time entry which would favour present generations relative to previous ones or from a standpoint which adopts a principle we could wish any and every generation could have followed. Since, in principle, the veil of ignorance can be sufficiently thick for us not, in any case, to know which generation we belong to, the latter conception of the original position has the advantage for Rawls. And it is on this basis that the question of just savings is approached.


So when the question of savings is broached the means by which it is addressed are in terms of how much savings would be undertaken if we assumed that all other generations had followed the same criterion (a kind of universalisation procedure). Given this formulation the right principle of just savings would thus ensure a schedule was adopted that determined rates. This would affect the degree to which rates could be reasonably set as a wealthier society would have more to spare for savings than a poorer one. However, as noted earlier, the general conception of the level of such savings is left generally intuitive and the "strains of commitment" are invoked as one of the reasons why it would be correct to leave them intuitive. The general rationale for the savings in question also has to be constantly kept in view as one of ensuring that a material base "sufficient to establish effective just institutions within which the basic liberties can be realized". 


The features of the contract approach that are specific with regard to just savings are best captured by saying that it addresses from a standpoint of justice a problem that democratic theory generally has great difficulty comprehending. Given a view that democratic decisions are grounded on reference to present parties there appears no way of ensuring that demands of future generations have any way of being represented at all (and this partly underlines the fascinating difficulties Parfit encountered in Reasons and Persons final part). But the original position does have a way of representing them, as all parties to this position are equally virtual so that differences of generation should not be considered distinct in principle from other differences.


The reason why this equal representation of distinct generations meets a "democratic" demand according to Rawls is that the basic democratic demand is that "what touches all concerns all". Each generation passes on to the next a fair equivalent in real capital by means of just savings. Having pointed out this first element of the contract position Rawls goes on to indicate that the second element concerns the definition of the aim of accumulation that it has adopted which is that such accumulation should be concerned with the attainment and maintenance of just social arrangements. So the just savings principle is a kind of coordination between generations of the means by which these aims can be met. "The savings principle represents an interpretation, arrived at in the original position, of the previously accepted natural duty to uphold and to further just institutions." Finally, given the contract conception there is no special value placed on attaining great abundance since the good society is not now viewed primarily as one with a high material standard of living.


The just savings principle is next related by Rawls to his two principles of justice by means of the reference to the standpoint of the least advantaged in each generation. This requires that the difference principle is constrained by reference to the just savings principle. Once the veil of ignorance has been understood in the appropriately thick manner it has become possible to again see the relationship of the just savings principle to the difference principle but also to comprehend that the application of the difference principle at any given point of time is constrained by reference to the continuing operation of the general coordination between generations that the just savings principle represents.


It is this striking restraint that the just savings principle operates upon the difference principle that leads Rawls to consider in section 45 the introduction of some further remarks concerning "time preference" in order to further make clear the reasonableness of this restraint upon the difference principle. We should not prefer a lesser present to a greater future good simply because of the former's nearer temporal position (again, echoes here are clear of Reasons and Persons though the latter work does, of course, post-date Theory). The just savings principle cannot be distorted in application by loose preference for a given generation. This does not prevent us from assuming interest rates are an appropriate means by which just savings can be measured. But there are no grounds for giving the living a simple preference over those as yet unborn. Collective saving for the future is a public good.


However the questions of "democracy" are again here considered by reference to the actual preferences of a given public at a given present. It is often the case that the demands of such a public are taken to be constitutive of the demos. But Rawls articulates the claim of future generations as a restraint on this preference and indicates that a judiciary informed by principles of justice would reflect this. Further, the first sustained mention of civil disobedience in Theory concerns the appropriateness of resistance to a democratic legislature that overlooked its fiduciary care for future generations.


Section 46 turns next to other cases of the priority of justice now that the priorities that arise from a consideration of just savings have been elucidated. At this point Rawls considers the general conservative case that inequalities of wealth and authority that appear to violate the second principle of justice may be justified if they provide sufficiently large economic and social benefits. Keynes' suggestion that it is an argument of this sort that justifies capitalism is mentioned with the point made that this does not justify the condition of the poorest in the circumstances in question as right but only as preferable to the alternatives. The basic point about the inequalities mentioned by Keynes is that they violate the principle of fair equality of opportunity and more conservative positions such as those of Burke and Hegel are referred to here as indicating rationales for violation of this principle. However it has to be pointed out that this conservative case has to meet a very strong condition, namely, that of showing that elimination of inequalities would limit the opportunities of the disadvantaged in a more serious way than they are presently.


The consideration of these conservative positions is not mentioned here by Rawls in order to reply to them in a systematic sense but to indicate that some recognition of inequality of opportunity may well be built into a basic structure if failure to recognise it would have greater costs and in making this point Rawls refers, as he often does, to the social costs that arise from the simple existence of the structure of family arrangements. Further, recognition of the difference principle and the priority rules that follow from it do not require attainment of perfect equality of opportunity. 


Section 46 concludes with the important "final" statement of the two principles of justice for institutions which includes the formulations not just of the two principles but of their accompanying priority rules. The first principle is now stated in the following way: "Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all". This principle has altered little from earlier formulations and still bears important comparison with the supreme principle of right as stated by Kant in the Doctrine of Right. The second principle is stated, by contrast, in a more extensive manner than previous formulations allowed as follows:
"Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both: (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity." Notably the difference principle is now explicitly constrained by the just savings principles whilst the principle of fair equality of opportunity, by contrast, is left much as it was in previous formulations.


Finally Rawls states the two priority rules. The first priority rule concerns the priority of liberty or the priority of the first principle of justice over the second. Basic liberties can be restricted, according to the first priority rule, only for the sake of liberty. There are two cases which allow this: "(a) a less extensive liberty must strengthen the total system of liberties shared by all; (b) a less than equal liberty must be acceptable to those with the lesser liberty". The second priority rule concerns the priority of justice over efficiency and welfare but this also mandates that the principle of fair opportunity has priority over the difference principle. There are two cases in which these priorities are expressed: "(a) an inequality of opportunity must enhance the opportunities of those with the lesser opportunity; (b) an excessive rate of saving must on balance mitigate the burden of those bearing the hardship".


With the attainment of the final form of the principles of justice and their accompanying priority rules Rawls reaches a key turning point in Theory. It remains to be seen to what extent and in what way the structure of the rest of the work really belongs to the theory of justice and how it helps us to formulate a political reasoning that contributes to the aims of this theory.

Parfit, Humanity and Consent (IV)

After perusing the various drafts that went into the making of Parfit's account of consent in On What Matters, most recently in the pre-publication version, I want, in this posting, to simply lay out the structure and general content of Chapter 8 of volume 1, ostensibly concerned with the topic of "possible consent". When you look at the chapter as a whole and break down the movement of its argument there are some straightforwardly surprising characteristics of it.


So, for example, the Chapter opens, as the earlier drafts did, with a description of Kant's formula of humanity and, in particular, with the way that this formula is related to the discussion of false promising. It is by means of this connection that Parfit is enabled to focus less on the sense of Kant's formula itself as on the apparent reference to treating people in ways to which they could not possibly consent though the latter reference appears only in connection with this example of false promising and not when the three other  examples to which the formula is related are discussed. 


It is by means of this account of consent in the treatment of false promising that Parfit describes and criticises views of Christine Korsgaard and Onora O'Neill who, in being treated in such a concise manner, certainly have cause for complaint of Parfit's compressed conception of their readings. The point of Parfit's first section in this chapter is, however, not primarily one that arises from exegetical concerns. It is rather to stress problems with viewing the wrongness of coercion to lie mainly in the claim that it makes consent impossible since, as he correctly points out, certain types of coercion are precisely not generally regarded as wrong despite clearly being seen as examples of coercion. Hence when we object to coercion, it would seem, there is a ground for this objection that does not rest simply on its being coercion that is being exercised.


The second section of the chapter moves to clarify this point by focusing on what it is about consent that matters to moral claims on its behalf. Here Parfit repeats the claim of his earlier drafts that the wrong-making character of appeals to consent cannot reside, as some remarks of Korsgaard and O'Neill might lead us to think, on appeal to the "Choice-giving principle" that states simply that it is wrong not to give other people the power to choose how we shall treat them. Such a naive principle is, indeed, one that it would be hoped should not arise from any kind of careful Kantian thought since it would appear that, on its ground, we should simply, for example, buy anything that someone wants to sell to us. By contrast to this principle Parfit instead emphasises what he terms the "Consent principle" which states that it is wrong to treat people in ways to which they could not "rationally consent". This emphasis on "rational consent" does have the potential problem that it appears to build quite a bit of normativity into the general notion of reason but Parfit does not appear to follow Kant in understanding this to be a reference to the "end of acts". 


Parfit presents Kant's point in the following way: "Kant must mean that, when we are choosing how we shall treat other people, we ought always to act with some aim that these people would be able to share" (181). But this "being able to share" that Parfit refers to here is not simply a way of stating the conceivability of a shared end as it rather requires the rationality of this end to be acceptable to others. However, this rationality is not understood here by reference simply to the "end of acts" because this would not in itself include discussion of the means by which ends can be achieved. That Kant's account does, however, include some constraint on this is clear enough when we remember that the Formula of Humanity involves reference to treating others as ends in themselves but this part of the Formula is not included in the chapter in question as Parfit has, for the purposes of the argument of this chapter, deliberately foreshortened the formula.


The third section of the chapter concerns reasons to give consent and here Parfit dismisses Rawls' attempt to view the "Consent Principle" in terms derived from Kant's Formula of Universal Law. Oddly enough, however, one of Parfit's reasons for dismissing this view of Rawls appears to consist in the simple assertion that Kant was inconsistent! It is usual, in interpreting philosophers, not to adopt this view unless it is absolutely necessary to make the best of their positions but here Parfit seems to assume it rather breathtakingly easily. More importantly, in this section, Parfit fills out his understanding of consent by suggesting that it is consent in the act-affecting sense that Kant means and, further, this consent has to be understood as "informed". These additions lead Parfit to refine the "Consent Principle" and he then adds some conditions on its acceptability as he takes it to be the case that it should not require us to act in ways we normally condemn and nor should it rule out too many acts we usually assume to be required.


The fourth section of the chapter then proceeds to defend the "Consent Principle" from the charge that it is superfluous. In replying to this objection Parfit argues that there are two general aims a moral principle can have, firstly, that they provide a reliable criterion of wrongness by showing that acts of a certain kind are wrong and, secondly, they can be explanatory, describing one of the reasons why wrong acts can be said to be wrong. After enumerating these points Parfit goes on to claim that the Consent Principle, if correct, offers more than a reliable criterion of wrongness (and is thus explanatory). 


The fifth section of the chapter moves on to discussing "actual" consent pointing out, by using the example of rape, that reference to it is often crucial for us in determining the wrongness of acts. This section is surprisingly long and after agreeing with the need to include reference, in some sense, to "actual" consent, Parfit moves on to look at the objection that it is possible that the Consent Principle concedes too much to actual consent. In considering this objection Parfit is, in a sense, reprising the objections to Korsgaard and O'Neill with which he began his argument in the chapter except that now he saddles them with what he terms a "Veto Principle" as opposed to the absolute objection to coercion and deception he opened by presenting them as having. Just as the "Choice-giving" principle that led to such absolute positions was earlier exposed as false so now is this "veto principle" similarly rejected and it is argued that the Consent Principle need not imply the Veto principle which would give others the automatic right to object to anything to which they either do not or would in fact refuse consent. 


It is useful, despite the repetition it involves, that Parfit does discuss the "Veto Principle". It is useful because, until this point, he has not clarified sufficiently his earlier statement to the effect that coercion is not, despite appearances to the contrary, necessarily wrong. In amplifying now Parfit discusses the notion of "irreversible" consent. It is frequently not possible to give irreversible consent but we can give such consent to things that we might later regret having consented to without it being irrational that we have nonetheless given this "irreversible" consent. So, for example, the inevitable pain that might come from certain kinds of operation might well, during the experience of its being undergone, lead us to regret having consented to the operation without this making it irrational that we in fact gave "irreversible" consent earlier.


Parfit's next move is to replace the "Veto Principle" with appeal to what he terms the "Rights Principle" which instead claims that everyone has rights not to be treated in certain ways without their actual consent. So there are certain kinds of act that would be veto-covered as the earlier principle intended but which kinds of act might well be difficult to determine given the rebuttability of many claims. However Parfit does argue that the opportunity to refuse consent does arise from the Rights Principle.  But there is a restriction on the application of this Rights Principle since the opportunity to refuse consent "must be given by people who have sufficient understanding of the relevant facts". So it does not apply to infants, the mentally ill or those under the influence of seriously distorting drugs (including being drunk, a rather problematic exclusion I think). Further Parfit also attenuates the application of the principle by stating that influences distort judgments in various degrees with the result that decisions made under some types of influence may not be entirely over-ruled but can be given less weight (a provision that would require much care).


These points also lead to Parfit bringing in temporal considerations for the first time since he argues that present consent matters more than past consent which, in its turn, matter more than retroactive endorsement. The basis of this present bias is, however, simply grounded on the reference of present beliefs to acceptance of truth since we act on the assumption at present that the beliefs we have now are true. 


The penultimate section of the chapter concerns deontic beliefs which are introduced in order to discuss the sense that wrong-making characteristics do not only arise from reference to consent. Some acts, in principle, could be wrong even though there was general rational consent to them suggests Parfit (which partly defuses the earlier sense that quite a bit of normativity was built in to his sense of "reason"). Included here, for Parfit, would be voluntary euthanasia, cruelty to animals, and, potentially, suicide (interestingly, the last of these is the first example Kant gives of application of the Formula of Humanity). So we have beliefs about wrong-making characteristics being involved with certain types of act regardless of reference to consent in relation to them. The beliefs that are so held are described by Parfit as 'deontic' reasons. Having said this, it is less than obvious that this section provides a way of dealing with such claims seriously.


The final section of the chapter looks at extreme demands that might be thought to arise from the Consent Principle which repeats the problem about the intuitive acceptability of principles that Parfit made earlier in the chapter. Here Parfit considers a revision to the Consent Principle that might be thought to be needed to prevent it from demanding too much of us which brings in reference to not requiring that we bear too great a burden (though Parfit does not specify clearly enough how to understand what "too great" would be). Finally, Parfit is aware of the fact that the Formula of Humanity has only been partially treated in this chapter and indicates the need to treat, in the following chapter, the reference to not treating others merely as a means. However, whilst this recognition is good, it is odd to have Kant named again at the end of the chapter when he has been missing from it for a considerable number of sections and when the focus on consent in general has not been systematically justified as a correct response to his general argument in terms of the discussion of humanity. It is, after all, only with regard to one example out of four when discussing the formula of humanity that Kant even refers to consent. So the suggestion that "half" the sense of the formula has been caught in the chapter is certainly peculiar.

Nelson Potter, Kant and Respect

A little while ago I wrote about Nelson Potter's response to the argument of Groundwork I. However, one part of Potter's response to the argument that was not treated in this earlier posting concerns his "appendix" that addresses the role of "respect" in the discussion of Groundwork I. The "third proposition" of the argument of Groundwork I is that "duty is the necessity of an action from respect for the law" (Ak. 4: 400). Kant states that this proposition is "the conclusion" from the first two propositions of his argument. 


Potter presents the third proposition as a subjective account of the nature of action from duty. The key to it, however, is that it treats "respect", putatively something that could be regarded as a "feeling", as worthy of inclusion in a rational determination of moral action. In order to demonstrate this point it is necessary for Kant to provide an account of how the "feeling" of respect is something distinct from feelings generally considered since the latter have been treated, under the heading of "pathology", as unworthy of being part of a purely rational account of morality.


Now the argument of Kant here is one that distinguishes between "inclination" and "respect" and in doing so he views the former as attached to objects as the effects of actions. In doing so Kant is placing inclination in relation to passivity whereas respect, by contrast, is viewed as part of spontaneous willing. Similarly, Kant views inclination as something towards which I cannot have the "feeling" of respect. By contrast to the object related to as an effect to which inclination is tied, Kant emphasises the "ground" of my will as something that can be an object of respect. This "ground", however, is none other than "the mere law by itself". In other words respect attaches to the law as the third proposition stated. 


Potter analyses the claim in this argument and divides it into three parts. Firstly, he argues that taking the object of respect to be the ground of the determination of the will is equivalent to viewing its object as purely formal in nature. This is a point worth making, not least since Kant does not make it explicit in his compressed argument. Secondly, Potter argues that respect is an effect and not a cause of the law. This point is not stated by Kant here but Potter supports it on the ground that viewing respect as a cause of the law would entail that acting from the law was acting in response to a feeling. However, since Kant is indicating the special quality of the feeling of respect, as a feeling that is not a product of receptivity, it is less obvious than Potter suggests that Kant could not have viewed respect as part of what allows the law to act upon us (though seeing respect like this does require eschewing reference to causal vocabulary at all). Thirdly, Potter points out that the feeling of respect is "self-produced", precisely the point I have just used to put his second point into question.


What Kant specifically writes about respect in the footnote introduced into the argument of Groundwork I that concerns respect is that if we recognise something immediately as a law for us then we recognise it "with respect" and this latter recognition "signifies merely the consciousness of the subordination of my will to a law" (Ak. 4: 401n). So respect is a kind of recognition whereby a law is taken to have validity for us. This recognition involves the sense that the validity of the law requires our will's conformity to its command. So respect shows us the requirement that we act in accordance with that which we respect. It thus appears, from this statement that the action of respect is part of the means by which the law has efficacy for us, just as I suggested above.


Potter summarises the unique character of the "feeling" of respect in claiming that it is unique in "its cause, its object, and its effects in action". The cause of the appearance of the feeling is not due to the stimulus of sense and this marks out respect as a special feeling. The object of respect is the ground of the will, not the effect of the will. Finally, however, the relation of respect to the effect of the action of the will is mentioned by Potter though this appears merely to be his odd way of referring to the spontaneity of respect's appearance.


Potter indicates, however, that he is unsure what role the feeling of respect has in the determination of "moral value" or in Kant's moral philosophy generally. The reason why Potter is puzzled about these points is that respect is not something that is part of the content of the maxims of duty although it is, as he admits, part of our awareness of the moral law. Since Potter views respect as only derivative of the law, he also takes it to arise only after the formation of maxims. But this is not required to make sense of Kant's view as I have suggested. Rather, the formation of the law seems to require recognition of the need for the will to be subordinated to its command, that is, to recognise the validity of its demand upon us. Unless this validity is granted the command of the law will have no efficacy and respect is the means by which this validity is given. Potter effectively has to recognise this and states it as our awareness of being put under obligation. So another way of putting the point would be to say that the recognition that the law has put us under obligation in a certain way is to operate with respect with regard to the law.


Essentially despite raising difficulties concerning the formulations of Kant's view Potter does accept the necessity of respect and does so in terms of its belonging to the "subjective" side of morality's pull. What is missing from his analysis however is the development of this point in terms of the means by which the recognition that respect effects us concerns the way the law commands us, not merely the recognition that it command us.

Kantian Enlightenment in *Twin Cities*

A new e-journal has been launched, the Twin Cities Review of Political Philosophy and I was invited to contribute a piece on Kant's view of enlightenment. It is included as part of a response to the general view of enlightenment and is contrasted with a piece on Foucault's view of the topic. My piece is available here.  The journal is a bold new venture which focuses primarily on publication of undergraduate pieces in philosophy and the supplementary pieces otherwise included have a primarily pedagogic intent. Check out the whole first issue and seriously think of following!

Ford Madox Brown: "Pre-Raphaelite Pioneer"?

It's a while since I last blogged about art works and it is perhaps not surprising that the occasion of my again doing so is an exhibition I recently visited at Manchester Art Gallery.The exhibition is the first full-scale display of the work of Ford Madox Brown in the UK since 1965 which was itself the centenary of Madox Brown's own retrospective of his work in 1865. I approached the exhibition with some excitement which I found difficult to explain to myself since, on the whole, my general view of Pre-Raphaelite art has not been favourable. This exhibition succeeded, however, both in altering my general view of this movement and in decisively introducing me to an artist who I now do not doubt was one of the most important of the 19th century. 


The exhibition's title stakes out a kind of claim that is, in some respects, insufficiently ambitious with regard to Madox Brown. The suggestion that he was a "pioneer" of the Pre-Raphaelites is true in a sense since he began producing serious paintings prior to the formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 and yet, after the Brotherhood was formed did find himself, to a certain degree, in alignment with it. However, one of the oddities of the presentation of him as a "pioneer" of the Pre-Raphaelite style is all that it does not address concerning the general comprehension of this style and the way in which this exhibition demonstrates how far away in many respects Madox Brown was from what that general comprehension would suggest. Putting it bluntly, and to quote Henry James (himself, unfortunately, no friend of the art of Madox Brown), Pre-Raphaelite art generally gets seen through the vein of its representations of young women who conform to a languishing type "with a strictness that savours of monotony". Alongside this representation of long, languid women with flowing curly hair we generally represent mythic, Arthurian images, occasional religious subjects and an idealised conception of the past age (as reflected in the very name "Pre-Raphaelite"). Perhaps it is time this whole image was, however, vigorously questioned.


This exhibition in presenting Madox Brown as perhaps the "original" Pre-Raphaelite certainly goes some way to showing a quite different side to their art than this popular image suggests. Madox Brown was unlike the figures who formed the Brotherhood in a number of respects. Firstly, he came from a different generation being older than they (which is where the "pioneer" notion comes from). Secondly, he was born and educated abroad which gave him a different type of induction into art than was given to the "classic" figures of the Brotherhood. Amongst other things it ensured that Madox Brown was imbued with some academic values that remained important for his artistic practice even though that practice belied in many respects his original training. Amongst other things this training culminated in the production of history paintings on a large scale and both the scale and this conception remained important for his later work. Thirdly and finally, Madox Brown presents rather more varied subjects than the classic figures of the Brotherhood and is most importantly more focused on reacting to the present around him, particularly in his key works.


The exhibition brings together 140 works divided between 11 themes and is curated by Julian Treuherz, a former curator of Manchester Art Gallery and author of the exhibition catalogue.  The initial sight on beginning to view the exhibition is a set of paintings that are devoted to the artist himself and his family with the striking original impression coming from his painting of the family of his first wife, The Bromley Family. This picture produces an immediate feel of immersion in a remote and perhaps somewhat quaint historical period and is an example of a kind of Biedermeyer portraiture. Madox Brown's wife is in the centre of the composition holding a set of flowers whilst behind her two men are engaged in conversation and in front of her two women sit in dark clothing, one of whom appears distant. Whilst it is in many respects a conventional portrait the immediate feeling of historicisation it accompanies does induct the viewer into the sense of a strange world that will require accommodations of a sort that may be unexpected. 


The second subject area is what is classed as Madox Brown's "early period" and includes the striking Manfred on the Jungfrau that I have often walked past on previous visits to the gallery. Whilst this composition shows a scene of Romantic agony the colouration is confusing given that Madox Brown (or FMB for short) altered it some decades after it was first exhibited. A more important indication of the early style is The Execution of Mary Stuart which, dating from the very early 1840's already shows an accomplished style and is, unsurprisingly, a form of history painting. The figure of the fallen Queen is presented with large hips. She looks down on a servant who has fainted and is being held up by another who is weeping. The Queen's finger is lifted to her lips, with a stern indication of the need to hush. This picture, whilst not striking in itself, is indicative of a formed talent which is surprising given the comparative youth of FMB at this point. The Body of Harold Brought Before William the Conqueror, by contrast, suggests an inclination to adopt the "Norman yoke" view of English history whilst, in its colour combinations, already appearing to point forwards in his career.


The second area of the exhibition signals FMB's alleged "change of direction" that emerges from his first visit to Rome and the death of his first wife and it is here that one gets one's first set of surprises since the alignment with the Pre-Raphaelite vision one is expecting to now emerge goes in a different direction than one would have anticipated relying on the stereotype one possesses of the notion of their style. For example Oure Ladye of Saturday Night belies its archaic title by showing the Christ child as modern English and as FMB himself put "powdered, combed and begowned" so that whilst it is apparently Mary who tends him she appears to be doing no more (as the title states) than giving her child his weekly bath! The child captivates with his frank and quite un-God-like stare and the angel who brings the bowl to wash the child in appears bored. The lack of fit between expectation and execution is matched by the elaborate frame the picture is presented in which includes the inscription "Our Ladye of Good Children".  Next to this striking and unexpected work is the portrait of the industrialist James Bamford subtitled by FMB A Holbein of the 19th Century and which shows an unidealised figure staring straight at the viewer as he holds a recently unsealed letter. The portrait of a basic typical figure of the 19th century already shows a commitment to the present that ensures this painting fits well with the homely mother and child engaged in 19th century bathing.


The section "the draughtsman" exhibits a series of sketches, mainly in chalk, intended to convey some sense of the ability of FMB to simply draw. Most striking to me here was the simple Life Study of Male Nude that captures a frontal view of a standing figure from the waist up and demonstrates an attention to muscular structure that we will see brought out in fuller detail in later works. The subsequent section on landscape painting contains a number of important surprises. The Pretty Baa-Lambs exceeds its somewhat fey title not just in its compositional success but also in being, at least partly, an example of a very early plein-air painting capturing, as it does, bright sunshine and having been executed, at least with regard to the landscape, in the open air. The mother and child figures central to the picture demonstrate a relation to the environment whereby education is enacted. The somewhat fearful and oddly proportioned child is being shown the lambs while a servant behind collects grass for some unknown purpose. The mother is, surprisingly, dressed in 18th century clothing but FMB himself claimed the main point was simply capturing the sunlight. 


By contrast to The Pretty Baa-Lambs, the slightly later painting An English Autumn Afternoon is presented in an oval and was apparently painted, at least initially, as a view from a window. At the front of the work are two figures, a man and a woman who look out on scenery from Hampstead in late October. Their view, and ours, takes in roofs, back gardens, sheds and orchards and culminates in a country horizon. As with The Pretty Baa-Lambs the major effect is the conveying of an impression of what was there then, under those conditions of light and reinforces the sense of FMB's pioneer status beyond that of any relation to the Pre-Raphaelites. 


The centre of the exhibition is taken up with the theme of the "painter of modern life", the phrase Treuherz borrows from Baudelaire and includes some of the most striking pictures in the exhibition. The Last of England is chosen to illustrate the cover of the catalogue and dates from the mid-1850s. It captures an emigration scene as two central figures prepare to leave England for other shores taking with them (wrapped in the woman's coat) a child. Behind them there are rowdy exchanges between other passengers and a strong presentation of a rather green sea. Dominating the visual field though is the magenta head-scarf of the female half of the couple, caught, as it appears, in the wind and which leads one back to the plain and yet central face of the woman in question. The man beside her is distinct in colouration, wearing brown to her grey but his lips echo the colour of her scarf as his expression contrasts with hers suggesting a more bitter experience or perhaps one less centred on the future generation. This very fine picture again concentrates on the present and the central woman in the work lacks all the idealised qualities of Pre-Raphaelite women.


Stages of Cruelty is similarly unexpected in giving us an image of a form of femme fatale but one whose sinister figuration lacks compensatory beauty and who is accompanied by a small girl intent on hitting a dog with a red flower. The woman is shown turned away from a somewhat crazed male lover who looks up at her from behind a wall. The whole effect conveys a different side of Baudelaire to that  which gives its name to this part of the exhibition.


The culmination both of this part of the exhibition and of the whole exhibition has to be given in the monumental Work, a piece on which FMB laboured for the best part of a decade. Any quick description of the work fails to do justice to its conception or its amazing success. The conventional comparisons attached to it connect it to either Courbet's realist works or to William Powell Firth's The Derby Day but neither of these works. The connection to Firth is obvious in terms of the scale of the composition and its crowded character. Work is also similar to The Derby Day in having no obvious central figure though there is one in Work who FMB picked out as its "hero", a position that could only be occupied by a small child performer in The Derby Day. The relation to Courbet is also clear if we take The Painter's Studio as our comparison. Unlike The Painter's Studio, however, the focus of Work is not the work of the artist but rather that of manual labourers and this central focus in Work also gives the latter a general focus that is much more inclusive in its account of present day life than is captured in Courbet.


The general idea of Work is to capture a day in Hampstead on which some manual labourers work in a trench whilst a representative sample of the life of the society passes by and around them. If there is a centre in the painting it is the figure of the workman downing a draught of beer in the midst of his labour and from him the eye travels either downwards to the trench in which the "hero" of the painting is shown standing or upwards to a rich couple on horseback in the shade whose journey has been interrupted by the work being undertaken. At the left side of the work-men are a number of figures, a lady who drops a pamphlet that is being ignored into the trench, another who walks shaded by a parasol and a peculiar male figure who is dressed in rags and carrying weeds in a basket. On the right of the workmen the eye travels from a beer-seller wearing a sumptuous jacket and sporting a black eye to a ragamuffin set of children, the eldest girl of which is busy scolding her mischief-making younger brother. At the far end of the right side stand two spectators engaged in conversation who are none other than Thomas Carlyle and the Reverend Maurice (a leader of the Christian Socialist movement). On the road below these two an election campaign is in progress, some sleep on a hillside and, pictured briefly, a policeman moves on an orange-seller.


The total effect of this painting is very difficult to convey. It requires close and repeated viewing to capture half of the figures in the work and even after giving it this it is further helpful to read deeply the literature that exists on the painting to capture further the number of motifs it conveys. The work is displayed with preparatory drawings, including of the navvy's arm which show well the study of musculature already apparent in the earlier male nude. The painting as a whole is an astonishing commentary on the society it captured and is a major piece of work which, presented as the centre of this exhibition receives an attention it is worthy of being given rather more often. Alone it shows the major quality of FMB's art and gives a feeling of the waste that his lack of recognition in his time and since represents. It also demonstrates at one fell swoop how much more important an artist he was than the reference to the Pre-Raphaelites alone would suggest.


The next section on FMB, the "story-teller", presents a set of narrative paintings, some of which, such as Jesus Washing Peter's Feet, appear conventional enough. However, as the works up to this point should have taught us, FMB is consistently surprising. So, for example, Elijah and the Widow's Son, in presenting a resurrection scene suggests some subversions both in its treatment and in its subject. The subject overturns the concentration on the resurrection of Lazarus as Elijah has here brought a boy back to life. The treatment shows vivid and odd combinations. The prophet is shown in a very colourful cloak, the boy's beauty conveyed through a careful concentration in his face and the mother's acceptance of his return demonstrated through a posture that points upwards to the shadow of a dove. The combinations in the picture suggest allegorical sense without much clue given as to how to take them and yet in the far front corner of the painting a farm-yard combination of hen and chick suggest something everyday in the miraculous occurrence. Whatever the story here is FMB has left much open to conjecture.


Cromwell on His Farm reminds one of The Pretty Baa-Lambs in its scale and does also include quite a few farm animals including a horse that appears to have a concentration quite different to its rider. The picture captures Cromwell in 1630, at a time of doubt, prior to the commencement of his life's mission and engrossed in reflection. This is to be interrupted, however, by the appearance at the gate beside him, of a servant calling him to dinner. The great man is also flanked by common labourers whose place both in the picture and the economy of the farm is given some prominence. Whilst the picture fore-fronts a kind of grand claim for Cromwell it is also urging a perspective on greatness surrounded as it is by an everyday life that it depends on and which it is required to pay attention to (as Carlyle and Maurice are shown doing in Work).


The section on portrait painting includes a number of vivid subjects. Perhaps most striking is the pair of pictures The English Boy and The Irish Girl, both dating from 1860. The portrait of the boy shows a contented figure who has a whip in one hand and a top in the other. He stares directly and disarmingly out at the viewer and has long locks that suggest a kind of archaic look particularly given his smock. By contrast the girl has her head to one side, is wearing strong lip-stick and holds a flower whilst draped in a red shawl. She appears distant and possibly troubled and also older than her years unlike the boy who rests easily in childhood. Another picture of a girl Mauvais Sujet shows again disturbance. This girl is caught in the midst of a lesson but is concentrating on biting an apple so that her teeth are on display and her face suggests, as in The Irish Girl, a far-away look that indicates unhappiness with her situation. If The Irish Girl has at least the compensation of her red shawl, this girl, by contrast, dressed in a spotty green top, can boast only an ear-ring and has a much more unkempt hair-style.


So many of the portraits are spectacular that it is almost unfair to select from amongst them but perhaps the finest is Iza Hardy, a friend of the family who is captured here in browns that are simply exquisite. Her head to one side, she again appears ill at ease and her seated posture in an arm-chair blends her into her surroundings visually in a way that her expression distances her person from. Almost everything in this picture is perfect and it would be worth visiting the exhibition simply to see it.


The final part of the exhibition proper features designs of FMB, including plate glass windows, cabinets and furniture, the latter a testimony to his failed attempt at engaging with William Morris and Burne-Jones. But perhaps the final surprise is that, round the corner from the gallery, in the Victorian Manchester Town Hall, there are a series of murals that FMB was commissioned to add to the central room of the place. These works are, again, unexpected as they are not simple exercises in medievalism at all but indicate a very playful side to FMB. Included here are The Expulsion of the Danes From Manchester which contrives to make the Danes in question very comical, John Kay, Inventor of the Fly Shuttle, which shows the inventor being bundled out of the room to rescue him from Luddites and The Opening of the Bridgewater Canal at which the Duke opening it is up-staged by a passing barge that contains two very large babies. The feel of these works, like much else in FMB's oeuvre, is of an unclassifiable talent who was certainly much more than a "minor" adjunct of the Pre-Raphaelites and whose major works exceed almost any presentation of the latter's style.

Parfit, Humanity and Consent (III)

In my last posting I looked at the additions Parfit made to his 2002 analysis of the implied reference to "consent" in the Formula of Humanity in his first draft of On What Matters which was entitled Climbing the Mountain. In his subsequent 2008 draft of On What Matters, the last full version before the publication of the work earlier this year, Parfit returns to the topic in Chapter 8 of his manuscript.


The Chapter opens again with the usual discussion of the problem with how Korsgaard and O'Neill are said to take the Formula of Humanity. However, when he reaches the account of "rational consent" Parfit this time refers to a point not included in either of the two previous treatments. This concerns  a problem with thinking that referring to shared ends will suffice to make rational consent sufficiently inclusive. Here Parfit points out that whilst there can be an agreement on ends this does not necessarily translate into an agreement concerning the appropriate means for attaining these ends. 


Subsequently a reference to Rawls appears which cites him as interpreting the consent principle as meaning that we consent rationally to some act if and only if or "just when" we could will it to be true that the agent's maxim is a universal law. This requires invocation of the Formula of Universal Law.  The reason why Rawls refers to this is due to Kant's general claim that all the formulas mean the same thing or are "statements of the same law". Rawls assumes that this means that Kant cannot have added something to the content of the law when he states one formula rather than another. But Parfit does not accept this view and assumes, rather, that there is something in the Formula of Humanity that is not included in the Formula of Universal Law. In making this assumption Parfit is following the precedent of, for example, Allen Wood, who, likewise, assumes that the Formula of Humanity has importantly different implications than the Formula of Universal Law. This point is not a small one since the discussion of the relationship between formulas of the categorical imperative has been a major source of disputes between interpreters of Kant. Unfortunately, whilst Rawls' reason for assuming that the Formula of Humanity is not significantly different to that of Universal Law, seems rather simplistic, it is hardly helpful of Parfit to simply stipulate that he does not accept this view without arguing on both philosophical and textual grounds for taking the formulas to be different. Such an argument does require, further, some discussion of what Kant means by claiming that there is no new "content" added in any of the formulas.


Parfit also adds in this draft a claim to the effect that rational consent has to be "informed" consent, a proviso not previously made clear. The Consent Principle now becomes:

"It is wrong to treat people in any way to which they could not rationally consent in the act-affecting sense, if these people knew the relevant facts, and we gave them the power to choose how we treat them."

The notion of "treating" is also to be understood in a sufficiently broad way so as to include, for example, breaking promises to the dead. The notion that is really involved for the consent to which the principle refers is "sufficient reason" in the sense that we consent to that which we do not have sufficient reason to refuse to consent. This implies a shorter formula of the Consent Principle which Parfit also gives but which I'll leave aside here. 

There are clear constraints upon the Consent Principle since it should be both plausible in itself and have plausible implications. These constraints are clear concessions on Parfit's part to intuitive or common-sense conceptions of what morality requires and forbids and echo the concession made in Climbing the Mountain to the point that beneficence that makes oneself in need of beneficence is misdirected. These points are subsequently mobilised by Parfit to suggest that the Consent Principle cannot be integrated with either egoistic or "subjective" (desire-based) views of the good. 

The appeal to "sufficient reason" is later finessed by Parfit into a view about "facts" that pertain in situations such that they are what make the beliefs concerning the rationality of consent plausible or otherwise. However, Parfit's subsequent consideration of examples leads to the same view as in Climbing the Mountain, namely that the Consent Principle may be too demanding (and hence fail to meet the constraint of having plausible implications). Further, it is not alone sufficient to describe what it is for something to be morally right since it turns out that it is possible to rationally consent (on Parfit's view) to things that are morally wrong. And, as in Climbing the Mountain, this turns out to be the ground on which Parfit moves to the discussion in the Formula of Humanity concerning treating others in such a way that they are not "merely used as means".

Parfit, Humanity and Consent (II)

In a recent posting I looked at Parfit's account of the formula of humanity in his original 2002 lectures, the "germinal core", so to speak, of On What Matters. What is apparent from the consideration given in 2002 is that the discussion of "rational consent" is separated out from the reference to not treating persons "merely as a means" in Kant's formula. This separation of the reference to "rational consent" from the discussion of what is involved in not treating someone "merely as a means" in 2002 continues in Parfit's subsequent drafts of what eventually became On What Matters.


The second version of Parfit's work is the manuscript that goes under the name Climbing the Mountain which is available courtesy of Pea Soup. In Chapter 4 of this work we find a correlate of what was the first lecture of 2002 and it opens in a very similar way discussing, as it does, the Formula of Humanity and drawing out the same problems with the readings of Korsgaard and O'Neill that were already stated in 2002. Similarly, examples are appealed to that are meant to show problems with desire-based "subjective" views of reasons. Finally, the rape example is again used to bring out problems with thinking of consent only in terms of "possibility" and to show the need for some sense of "rational" consent.


New material begins to be discussed in Climbing the Mountain when Parfit turns to "deontic beliefs" concerning other reasons than consent for finding something to be wrong. Considering independent reasons for finding something to be wrong Parfit now builds into the "consent principle" a sense that we cannot consent to something that we have other reasons to find wrong. However, after making this point, Parfit's discussion takes an unexpected turn as the kinds of examples he goes on to consider lead in the direction of considerations touching on beneficence. This leads, in a now fairly traditional style to indications of why I should sacrifice things that would satisfy myself in order to morally help others. 


In support of what may appear here to be consequentialist question-begging, however, Parfit can cite Kant's remarks concerning how the ability to be beneficent depends itself on situations that are unjust and on Kant's claim that it is possible to "participate in the general injustice even if one does no injustice". However, in the passage from the Doctrine of Virtue where the most extensive account of beneficence is given Kant also allows that practicing this virtue at one's own expense is something that is not permissible since it would merely create a new case of someone needing beneficence, something that Parfit concedes and uses to temper his account of the duties here involved. In conceding this Parfit indicates that acts that would be morally permissible are not necessarily morally required.


What Parfit does not sufficiently explain here is how he has been led from "rational consent" to these questions concerning beneficence. The bridge appears to be that others could and would consent to my doing acts that would decisively aid them even if this required me to engage in considerable sacrifice. So the link seems to be one in which the consent of others appears as a kind of demand upon me by virtue of what it makes permissible for me. It is not so obvious however that a concern of this sort was at the heart of the false promising case that led Parfit, along with others, to assimilate the Formula of Humanity to a principle of rational consent.


Further, since some acts are wrong despite our being able to consent to them, it follows that the Formula of Humanity has not been well captured in being assimilated to the notion of "rational consent". This concludes the additional material of Climbing the Mountain on this topic.

Luigi Caranti in *Kant Studies Online*

A new article has been published in Kant Studies Online. It is by Luigi Caranti and addresses Kant's refutation of idealism in the Fourth Paralogism. You can find the article here.

The London School of Philosophy

As is unsurprising in view of the way that present UK government policy has led to a serious assault on the humanities many philosophers, myself included, have looked to establish a new life for philosophy outside established university structures. Along these lines I have discovered the existence of the London School of Philosophy, an initiative launched by seven people who were formerly employed by Birkbeck College and have determined to offer independent non-government-funded education for the people of London. This initiative is fully deserving of wider support and certainly is something that more people need to know about. The curriculum on offer is very moderately priced and will be delivered at Conway Hall. Anyone in London who wishes to undertake short courses that will give them a grounding in a wide range of philosophical matters should certainly look at their offer and consider enrolling. All power to such a venture, may it survive and prosper!

Parfit, Humanity and Consent

The second part of the first volume of  On What Matters is derived from the earliest core of the project since the discussions here invoke the Tanner Lectures Parfit gave in 2002. As a consequence, I think it is useful to open a discussion of the specific ways in which Parfit mobilises arguments at different stages of the composition of On What Matters. In this posting I'm going to begin looking at the first of the original Tanner Lectures which is headlined "Rational Consent" and whose purpose is mirrored in Chapters 8-11 of On What Matters.


A central reason why this discussion is of particular interest to readers of this blog is that Parfit opens the first Tanner Lecture with a statement of Kant's formula of humanity and the subsequent discussion concerns different types of interpretation of it. However, what is picked out by Parfit's discussion is not something specifically stated by Kant in the formula but an implication that is drawn from it. This implication concerns an important sense in which we could be said to treat people as ends-in-themselves.This is that we should act towards them in such a way that our conduct is one that could meet their possible consent.


The immediate rationale for Parfit's passing from the formula of humanity to this question of possible consent concerns the way the formula of humanity is applied to the four examples Kant considers in the second part of the Groundwork. In ruling out lying promises Kant refers to the fact that if I make a lying promise I am treating someone merely as a means and not also as ends in themselves because "the one I want to use for my purposes by such a promise cannot possibly agree to my way of proceeding with him and thus himself contain the end of this action" (Ak. 4: 429-30). It is due to the fact that the one to whom the lying promise would be made could not consent to this promise as it would conflict with ends they had themselves that it is clearly wrong to make such a promise.


After using this example to make the transition from the formula of humanity to a question about possible consent Parfit subsequently cites some contemporary Kantian views about the rationale for Kant making the kind of claim he does about the lying promise case. The first cited is Christine Korsgaard. Korsgaard, in her paper on lying, included in Creating the Kingdom of Ends points to the strength of Kant's argument in the lying promises case since he stresses that there is something "impossible" about the one affected being able to consent with the purposes I would have in view in making the lying promise. Korsgaard turns to an evaluation of what it is in the situation that makes it "impossible" for the one affected to consent and she stresses in doing so that the one affected has "no chance" to consent. What she appears to mean by this is that the affected party has no way of consenting as they do not know what it is that they are being asked to consent to. This leads her to say: "knowledge of what is going on and some power over the proceedings are the conditions of possible assent; without these, the concept of assent does not apply".


Parfit also cites Onora O'Neill as adopting a view of a similar sort since she also says that deception rules out genuine consent though, in the citation from her Parfit gives, less is here indicated as to why this would be. Finally, Parfit derives from Korsgaard a comparison of deception with coercion as fundamental moral evils, clearly due to the suggestion she has made that deception is, in a sense, a form of coercion as it manipulates the other for one's own ends.


When the full argument is drawn out in this way, however, then it certainly appears, as Parfit indicates, as if something must have gone wrong somewhere since the mere actual absence of consent is not evidently sufficient to make an action wrong. So operating on someone without their consent (as they are too ill to give it) is not obviously wrong and, similarly, I can make a decision for someone who I am unable to contact that may well not be wrong simply because they have failed to consent to my making it. So the argument concerns not such actual consent but only some form of conceivable or possible consent.


Now, once the ground has moved to possible consent we seem to be getting to the rationale of Kant's argument but Parfit introduces now a complication by means of the thought experiment he calls "deadly knowledge". In this thought experiment I know someone is a murderer but, if I don't lie to you about this, your knowledge that they are the murderer will leave you vulnerable to also being murdered since you know this person and would not be able to conceal your knowledge of their status. Parfit suggests that this case is importantly analogous to the ones already considered where we did not take actual consent to be the key to characterising the moral quality of the action.


Not only does Parfit make this case but he indicates that the situation is importantly similar with regard to coercion as I can agree to be coerced to do something that I regard as good for me. So, for example, I might have to be tied down in order for some painful operation to be carried out as otherwise the pain would lead me to try to prevent the operation being carried out although consciously I am aware that it is better it is carried out. So, in a sense, I can adopt the end of being coerced here (can consent to it). In fact, although Parfit does not note this, arguments of similar form are important for Kant's philosophy of right.


So if the case of lying promises indicates a commitment on Kant's part to a view about possible consent it has to be understood in a way distinct from how Korsgaard and O'Neill have presented it. On their view the importance of consent turns on a possibility of being able to give it. This commits them to an act-affecting conception of consent which Parfit terms the "Choice-giving principle" and which he formulates as stating: "it is wrong to deny people the opportunity to choose how we treat them". Since this principle does not give us any way of dealing with cases where we are unable to communicate with others, however, Parfit refines it further so it becomes the "Veto principle" and refers then not merely to whether they could consent but whether they would if they had the opportunity.


When they are fully stated, however, as Parfit, points out, these principles in fact cover more ground than Korsgaard's statements might have led us to expect. This is so because they rule out more than just deception and coercion since when we don't tell people what it is we are going to do, simply don't tell them, we are not, at least not directly, deceiving them. Similarly, when we act without their consent, we need not be coercing them.


After making these points Parfit turns to his real target, which is to suggest the basis for viewing the interpretation of Korsgaard and O'Neill as faulty. With regard to the "Choice-giving principle" Parfit has an easier task since, if a publisher sends a book proposal to me for consideration and I recommend rejecting it, I act in a way to which you would not consent but this is insufficient to make the act I have performed wrong. This shows the weakness of the "choice-giving principle", however, since Kant was surely speaking of rational conceivability in quite a different way to such a case and that the "Choice-giving principle" can be undermined by it indicates well that it does not capture Kant's thought.


However the statement of the principles that arises from Korsgaard and O'Neill has another difficulty which is that it applies only to cases where there is a situation between two parties and not many. In the latter case I often cannot relate to the consent of all the parties in question and yet this is surely not sufficient to mark out any action performed as therefore wrong? 


It is at this point that Parfit indicates an alternative way of viewing Kant's argument to that which appears to arise from the construal of it given by Korsgaard and O'Neill. The point about the argument they have given is it points to the wrong kinds of reason why someone cannot be said to be involved in consent. It is not, as Korsgaard puts it, a question about having the opportunity to consent (which produces the "Choice-giving principle"). It is, rather, whether there are "decisive reasons" for refusing possible consent. That is why Parfit views Kant's claim as concerning a "rational consent principle" and indicating what is wrong is action to which there could be no rational consent. The lying promise case does appear to support the reference to opportunity to consent but it is only part of Kant's consideration in the Groundwork as, immediately after mentioning it, he refers also to attacks on the freedom and property of others. Such cases do not involve denial of opportunity to consent though they are cases of coercion.


Parfit also stresses the point that even the lying promise case refers to the one affected being able to contain in themselves the end of my action. This reference is assumed by him to indicate a need to discuss not merely conceivable consent but also rationally conceivable assent. However, whilst this rational consent view is certainly an improvement on the "Choice-giving" view it remains problematic since the question of how to understand rational consent has yet to be specified and one common way of viewing it would be that we could not rationally consent to anything that would be "bad" for us. However, again, when faced with multiple persons, it can be right to act in favour of one over another without having done anything wrong and even the one adversely affected by this cannot say that the simple application of this rule has wronged them. So they could give rational consent in principle to operating by a rule that had adversely affected them in application.


At this point, however, Parfit's discussion falls back upon the intentional view of reasons that was elaborated in the first part of On What Matters since he refers now to "facts that give us reasons". Not only is this true, however, but he also indicates that even were we to share this view that we still have difficulties since there are many kinds of "facts" in a situation and the relative weighting to give them is often difficult to determine. 


Parfit subsequently goes on to refine the rational consent proposal further to build in what he terms "unconditional" consent which would be something not subject to revision later. This is partly intended to rule out rape on the grounds that the rapist could state that the one raped could rationally consent to the act even if they don't "actually" consent to it! Parfit is indicating with the unconditionality clause that the absence of actual consent here is not something that can be hypothetically substituted for in the example in question.The overall effect of Parfit's argument is to suggest that the examination of the rightness of an action turns on its rationality not on its presumptive possibility of being vetoed.