Kant, Sandel and Justice

Here in the UK Michael Sandel is hosting a series of TV programmes on the topic of justice, in accord with his Harvard course on the same topic and which was summarised in a different way in his recent book. Sandel's talent with public engagement cannot really be doubted. He is superb at bringing out how philosophical principles are already being tacitly invoked in daily arguments concerning politics and that such arguments do often involve commitments to views of the right and the good that are more substantial than many realize.


So my initial response to the TV programmes and to Sandel's general activity is a positive one as was indicated also today over at Crooked Timber by Chris Bertram. However, Bertram's enthusiasm for the series covered particularly the episode I saw last night and in which Sandel provided a contrast between Jeremy Bentham, Kant and Aristotle. This contrast covered a number of topics amongst which was the decision in Germany not to allow the firing down of an aircraft that it was alleged would have saved other lives. Bertram follows the lead Sandel offers in the programme to regard the decision as crazy. 


I'll return to the case in a moment but, prior to looking at such a particular, I have a general problem with the nature of Sandel's focus. In a programme on justice it was somewhat odd that Sandel focused exclusively on Kant's moral theory, citing the categorical imperative as an impressive contrast with the principle of utility. The point of this contrast was basically to subsequently present Aristotle as providing in some sense recognition of what was valuable in both the previous approaches and how to supersede the limits of each. However, whilst it is certainly the case that utilitarianism has a notorious problem with recognising justice as a specific subject and is constitutionally opposed to the notion of "rights" it is a distortion to think that a Kantian approach to the topic of justice is based primarily on the categorical imperative.


Kant's response to the topic of justice is laid out in the Doctrine of Right, not in the Groundwork and the formula that guides the latter work is the supreme principle of right. This principle concentrates on the conditions of external freedom and in the context of the elaboration of his account of justice Kant defends conceptions of public and private right that are grounded in the principle in question and not directly upon the categorical imperative. Since Habermas makes a similar error about Kant's view of justice in his otherwise seminal work Between Facts and Norms this is hardly an unusual error but it is an error none the less and distorts any serious contrast between Kant and Aristotle. Aristotle, like Kant, distinguishes the subject matter of politics from that of ethics and does not approach politics, as Sandel suggests, just from the standpoint of virtue.


In the light of these failings Sandel resorted in the programme to a fairly standard process of presentation that turns on hard cases, something common in elementary ethics classes and not to be despised in itself. It was in this context that he made Peter Singer admit that the utilitarian conception of the right thing to do does always come down to quantitative analysis. Oddly, when he turned to Kant, whilst he did approach a thinker from a Kantian philosophical background, it was not someone that has comparable standing to Singer, but instead went to Carolin Emcke who, despite her philosophical training, works primarily as a journalist. To Emcke he put the "hard case" of the shooting down of an airplane and she affirmed the unconditional nature of the dignity of the persons in the plane. The constitutional judgment makes clear further the commitment to the sense of such dignity.


The case in question is intended by Sandel to show the lack of attention to consequences in Kantian theory but what it in fact shows is that a certain type of interpretation of Kantian theory refuses to allow consideration of consequences. The point was to have a sharp division between Kant and utilitarians on the basis that Kant can give no basis for attending to consequences whereas the utilitarians can give no value to anything other than consequences. In this context, however, and as I will be focusing on in future postings, it leaves aside the growing debate over the question of whether Kantian ethics is so constrained that it can give no room for consequences. I have argued previously that this is not so and that Kantian ethics does have to be seen as consequence-sensitive. Others have increasingly been arguing for a version of Kantian consequentialism and it is has become less clear than Sandel's standard presentation would suggest that this is oxymoronic. Incidentally the case of the airline is, in any case, less obviously a knock-down argument against a view of Kantian ethics that refuses to incorporate concern for consequences than might be thought. It requires complete certainly that 1) the airline would definitely otherwise crash into a target full of civilians and there is no way at all that the hijackers could change their mind or be persuaded to act differently and 2) that there is further no possibility at all that the plane could not be retrieved from the hijackers. Such conditions are rarely met.


So in conclusion the basic problems with Sandel's presentation were the following: 1) it conflated Kant's ethics with his approach to justice and as a consequence did not focus on its alleged topic; 2) the same also occurred with Aristotle; 3) it had an asymmetry in the nature of the "specialists" appealed to; 4) it neglected the possibility of a position that combined the polarities in ethics whilst still including central elements of both and was not Aristotelian; 5) it failed to include any serious criticism of the Aristotelian view or to pose any "hard cases" in respect of it.


Despite all this it was certainly a worthwhile programme and if proper philosophical contestation could have more place on TV then this would be all to the good. Sandel's model of public engagement is definitely worth attention and it would be great if more philosophers of many different persuasions could be taken on board with such an enterprise.

Related articles

• Kant and shooting down hijacked airliners (crookedtimber.org)
• How Cameron's Big Society could have an unlikely saviour: Aristotle (telegraph.co.uk)
• Michael Sandel: a profile (telegraph.co.uk)
• Justice : A Citizen's Guide to the 21st Century - a review (fightingmonsters.wordpress.com)

Sandel, Kant and Patriotism

Michael Sandel has recently given an interview to Prospect magazine in which, amongst other things, he raises an objection against Kantian views of ethics and politics. The basic point Sandel makes is that since Kantian approaches turn on an appeal to universality that there are some key particulars that they cannot account for. The particular in question that Sandel refers to in this interview is patriotism. Sandel uses two examples to show the importance of this topic. The first example is Germany and the responsibility felt by contemporary Germans for the actions of their grand-parents, a responsibility felt to be of importance in matters both internal to the German states' organisation and also to its external relations. The second example is America and the notion, instilled within citizens of the US, that they each have a relationship to the constitution of the country and to central figures (such as Washington and Lincoln) in its history. In this case there is a relation to a positive self-image that is meant to transcend the particular circumstances of given individuals whose forebears might have been citizens of quite different polities.


Sandel's two examples are interesting both in themselves and in terms of the way they inflect his general question about patriotism. About a decade ago Pauline Kleingeld published an article in Philosophy and Public Affairs which responded to the general challenge Sandel has put again in his recent interview and did so by invoking the notion of "Kantian patriotism".


Since Philosophy and Public Affairs operates a pay-wall it is probably worth giving a quick summary of Kleingeld's argument in order to test its use as a response to Sandel. In brief, Kleingeld points out that patriotism does not have only one sense. She distinguishes between three different senses of the term. The first is "civic patriotism" which has an intrinsically political nature being concerned with shared political freedom and the institutions that sustain it. Such a form of patriotism is not based on ethnic traits but can embrace a reference to national traditions if they are based on political ones. This view is contrasted by Kleingeld to "nationalist patriotism" which has a key reference to a national group incorporated in it although such a group does not have to be one of shared ancestry and, importantly, the boundaries of the nation need not coincide with those of a state. However, embodied in this second view is an important comparison between the nation and the family so the lack of choice about belonging to a nation is, somewhat paradoxically, part of what one values in it. Finally, there is trait-based patriotism, which is inspired by love of certain qualities. This latter view can inspire love of a people not one's own though in such cases it is not usually called patriotism.


After distinguishing these three types of patriotism Kleingeld goes on to argue that the structure of Kant's arguments in the Doctrine of Right and in Perpetual Peace for republicanism should lead Kantians to embrace an identity as active citizens who are concerned to uphold and enhance traditions of engagement with the polity. This effectively leads her to endorse civic patriotism due to its lack of exclusivity.


There are some useful lessons from Kleingeld's analysis. It is clear, from thinking through the differences between these three different kinds of patriotism, that it is often the case that a given commitment to patriotism often partakes of mixtures of them. So Sandel's reference to American patriotism and its embrace of the constitution and a political history, is not purely a civic patriotism but also embodies trait-based patriotism and can, for some at least, be also a form of nationalist patriotism. The German case is more difficult because it is here a special set of obligations that are said to lie on the people in question due to crimes of their ancestors. This embodies a sort of nationalist patriotism but not one of pride in one's ancestors but a kind of shame in them. It inverts the nationalist case and tries to use it to instil a civic patriotism.


The German case involves a kind of addition of an "incentive" in Kant's sense on top of the normative commitment to republicanism. There are obvious reasons why this case arose but it also entails that the relationship to the constitution in question is not purely one of a civic sort.


Other examples could also be used to complicate the discussion. The example of South Africa would be one given the "truth and reconciliation" notion as a way of attempting to deal with a political history of conflict in which the majority were subordinated. It is not obvious, in some respects, however, whether this project is really as viable as it first seems.


In any case, what does emerge from combining Kleingeld's analysis with Sandel's is that the Kantian commitment to republicanism does contain special duties of citizenship in it. These special duties are sufficient to mandate a patriotism of a sort but the relationship to the other forms of patriotism is more difficult. Kleingeld effectively rules out the view that a Kantian could endorse either nationalist or trait-based patriotism but she does not sufficiently discuss the question of how these latter two forms of patriotism incorporate within them reasons for supporting traditions that could be civic as well as reasons for supporting non-civic identities.


The basic problem with nationalist patriotism, it seems to me, of the sort implied by Sandel's reference to America, is that it can involve a selective sense of the moral history of the nation in question. Whilst it is true that there are morally inspiring elements of American history there are many elements of that history that are rather darker including the founding genocide of the indigenous inhabitants, slavery, and international conduct that has often involved domination of others for a purely national interest. This is not to indulge in anti-Americanism since much can be said that is far from complimentary about most states. It is, however, to indicate a problem with national stories since they invariably only present nations in a good light, leaving aside that which is questionable.


Similarly, trait-based patriotism is open to the same objection. This does not, however, forestall entirely the point of Sandel's comment. The question of relations that are particular in their import is a salient one. It is just that the basis of these relations being the ones taken particularly seriously should not primarily rest after all on the cases of nationalist or trait-based patriotism.


The German case suggests a problem with dismissal of considerations that arise from nationalist matters (even if they are here in an inverse form to usual). But what this case shows is that the commitment to the civic becomes part of the identity of a people and that, after all, is compatible with a general civic view of patriotism. Indeed, it indicates reasons for generalizing it.

Related articles

• Michael Sandel: a profile (telegraph.co.uk)

Philosophy and Cultural Criticism

Baroness Onora O'Neill began a book review in yesterdays' Financial Times by declaring that: "Philosophers don't do cultural criticism". She added that what philosophers do is "write about arguments and categories, about truth and validity but not about how ideas are preserved or distorted or how they travel or vanish".  Whilst the point of the review was to recommend to us a book that she argues is an  exception to this rule it is a pretty strange statement and one that struck me as extraordinary enough to be worth examining.

The first thing about the statement that is peculiar is that Baroness O'Neill should be the one to make it. This is odd given that she was the BBC Reith Lecturer in 2002 (as is Michael Sandel this year), a position that, one might think, was all about cultural criticism, especially defined as a concern with how ideas are "preserved or distorted or how they travel or vanish". Not only does the evidence of Baroness O'Neill's own practice tell against her statement, her statement is also at variance with many of the central projects of contemporary philosophy.

How well does it describe, for example, the works of Charles Taylor or those of Robert Pippin, Martha Nussbaum or Alasdair McIntyre, John McDowell or Alain Badiou? Further, what about the fact that amongst the works of Jacques Derrida are included such titles as Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, Spectres of Marx and The Politics of Friendship? 

If we look to the more recent past it is evident that engaging in cultural criticism that was philosophically based was the whole point of the activities of the members of the Frankfurt School in addition to forming the central horizon of the works of such varied thinkers as Karl Popper, Bernard Williams and Maurice Blanchot. That such a varied set of names can be summoned shows, in fact, that the problem with Baroness O'Neill's statement is not that it is based purely on a conception of philosophy formed by Anglo-American thinkers in opposition to European ones. It is obvious that a practice of cultural criticism was as important for John Rawls as for Jean-Paul Sartre even though the differences between the way it was thought best to carry out such criticism certainly was related to very different views of the role of philosophy.

The distinction between philosophy and cultural criticism is further not one that would have met with any approval from thinkers of the past. An obvious counter-example to the claim can be found in the works of Kant. Does not Kant, after all, declare in the preface to the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason that: "Our age is, in especial degree, the age of criticism, and to criticism everything must submit" (Axln)? And was he not also the thinker who wrote such an array of critical reflections on culture as What Is Enlightenment?, the essay on the relation of theory and practice, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone and Perpetual Peace, amongst others? And is not the good Baroness herself most renowned precisely as a contemporary exponent of a Kantian view of moral philosophy? 

When we put together contemporary reference with that from the history of philosophy it becomes clearly apparent that philosophy certainly does do cultural criticism including analysis of how ideas are "preserved or distorted and how they travel or vanish". Not only does it do this but such analysis has, if anything, been a constant element of philosophy. The attempt to suggest otherwise, to convey a sense of it as a subject concerned only with "arguments" and "categories", "truth" and "validity" is not sensitive either to the history of the subject or its contemporary practice. 

Given the multiple ways in which the good Baroness' statement is obviously false it remains to be asked how she could possibly ever have ventured it to be the case. There are, it seems to me, two reasons why she may have done so. On the one hand, in making this statement, she is suggesting the need for philosophers to engage in a cultural combat that she takes it that they tend to shy away from. On the other hand, she is also indicating some caution about the practice of philosophy and its possible difficulty in engaging in such activity. Since analysis of the practice of philosophy does not support the view that philosophers are shy of such combat it also does not lead to a conservative sense of its ability to engage. Rather it is perhaps time for philosophers to be clearer about the often revolutionary nature of their discipline and to embrace the challenges it offers to engage with the general culture in ways not evidently open to those trained and based in other disciplines.