The Elements of Justice4/24/2006 |
|||||||||||||||
Book Review Robert Nozick wrote that “there is room for words on subjects other than last words.” David Schmidtz, philosophy professor at the University of Arizona, has just produced a great work of “words other than last words.” The book is Elements of Justice, and considering that it deals with one of the oldest and thorniest philosophical issues, that of justice, it is not surprising that Schmidtz shies away from “last words” on the topic. One shouldn’t mistake the lack of “last words” for a lack of seriousness or insight, though. Rather, it is just this appreciation of the philosophical problems that leads Schmidtz to adopt this method. Taking justice seriously may mean that we can’t create a formula or strict system of justice that will answer all the relevant questions and put all disputes to rest. Elements of Justice is an investigation, not a manual, and the joy of reading the book is the joy of exploring new horizons with an experienced guide. Schmidtz’s prose is light and approachable, even for the non-specialist, and reading Elements of Justice feels more like having a conversation with a very intelligent and thoughtful friend than dutifully reading a systematizing treatise. Schmidtz has many of the same philosophical virtues of Nozick without some of the vices. They both write books that are fun to read while addressing topics in ways that are rarely ponderous and seem willing to take risks in their work that many would be unwilling, or unable, to take. Whereas Nozick can sometimes be verbose and overreaching (see Philosophical Explanations) Schmidtz is economical, saying more on some pages than most people will say in a book. In Elements of Justice, Schmidtz develops a pluralistic theory of justice that tries to show how four basic elements fit together in a coherent theory. A pluralistic theory is inevitably less elegant and impressive than a monistic theory of justice might be. Wouldn’t it be simpler if Schmidtz just gave us some method to determine whether an act is just or unjust? Wouldn’t it be simpler if there were just one complete standard of justice? Schmidtz suggests that a periodic table with only one element would be simpler, but wouldn’t lead to good science. Things may look complex because they are complex. The desire to have a simple, elegant solution to a problem does not guarantee that such a solution exists. According to Schmidtz, theories, including theories of justice, are maps and “no map represents the only reasonable way of seeing the terrain.” He argues that most theories tend to be global, that is they try to answer all of the relevant questions. Theories do not need to answer every question to be useful, however. They just need to get you where you need to go. Schmidtz develops a theory that will hopefully get us where we want to go, namely to a free and prosperous society that respects persons as separate and active agents. Elements of Justice is a short book that is pregnant with ideas. At its best, this work points the way toward the proper method of philosophy. All too often, outsiders and philosophers themselves see analytic philosophy as a game. Schmidtz writes, “If we could get past ‘philosophy to win,’ analytic philosophy would be a process of formulating generalizations for context that admit of further refinement.” Philosophy is about creating general principles, not rulebooks. As Schmidtz states, “Moral wisdom is less like knowing answers to test questions and more like simply being aware that the test has begun.” Philosophers help shine a light on the important issues and principles--they try to make us aware of what is at issue and what is at stake. Sometimes just being aware of the landscape is an important part of getting where you need to go. The best map in the world won’t help you if you aren’t aware of your position on it. With the idea of a theory as a map in mind, Schmidtz analyzes four areas, what he calls “elements,” which together constitute justice. These elements are equality, desert, reciprocity, and need. Each is important, and each taken as the whole of justice would not only create an incomplete view of justice, it might even lead to a system of injustice. For instance, if equality is considered the whole of justice, that is, if we create a system of “justice as equality” we are bound to forget our other commitments and try to create equality at the cost of all other things, including justice conceived more generally. As Schmidtz claims, “equality along one dimension entails inequality along other.” Political equality before the law may be, in some sense, incompatible with equality of economic outcome. Whose equality are we to prefer? What type of equality? According to Schmidtz, we care about equality, but we also care about desert, reciprocity, and need. An understanding of each of these elements or principles informs our understanding of the other principles and may check their excesses. For Schmidtz, we need all four principles to arrive at a robust theory of justice. Many in the classical liberal tradition are often wary of treating equality as an essential element of justice. Schmidtz argues, though, that it is a mistake to be wary of equality, rightly conceived. Equality rightly conceived is a political rather than a metaphysical notion. One of the most important and notable ideas to come out of the classical liberal tradition is, in fact, this notion of political equality. We notice that people are not the same; we notice that they are not equal in any physical or intellectual sense, but we also recognize that this inequality should have “no bearing on how people ought to be treated as citizens.” In some sense then, political equality is necessary because of metaphysical inequality. As Schmidtz rightly states, “society’s purpose is not to measure relative performance but to be a good place to live.” We need political equality to ensure that, in a world of metaphysical inequality, we will not be arbitrarily oppressed and so that all people have “a real chance to live well, as free and responsible individuals.” Trying to go from an idea of political equality or equality of opportunity to an idea of metaphysical equality or equality of shares inevitably runs into problems. Most notions of equality of shares conceive of society or of the economy as a zero-sum game, that is, a game where if someone wins another loses. Schmidtz argues forcefully, and I think successfully, that this model of society is mistaken. Again, equality is important to a correct understanding of justice, but equality must be checked and informed by notions of desert, reciprocity, and need. Notions of desert have, at least since Rawls, probably been underappreciated in contemporary liberal theories of justice. The idea that no one deserves their place in society, that no one deserves their natural endowments and, hence, that no one deserves most or all of the success or failure underlies many contemporary versions of philosophical liberalism. Schmidtz boldly responds that, “the most prominent contemporary versions of philosophical liberalism are mistaken.” According to Schmidtz, desert is important and it “plays a central role in everyday moral life, and for good reason.” What does it mean to say that “someone deserves their success”? Does it mean that we have to claim that they were responsible for every element of their success to be rightly deserving of that success? Schmidtz argues that this is ultimately not what we mean when we talk about “deserving.” The typical philosophical notion of desert is a historical notion that looks to see if past actions justify present rewards. Schmidtz turns this notion on its head by arguing that we can deserve things not on the basis of what we have done, but on the basis of what we will do. Desert can be a forward looking notion as well as a backward looking one. We can deserve opportunities, even opportunities that we receive as a result of luck, by “not wasting them—by giving them their due....” This is the sense in which we can “deserve a chance”; we deserve it in the sense that we are making a promise when we accept the chance or opportunity to make ourselves worthy of it after the fact. In this sense, desert is “balancing the scales” by doing justice to an opportunity. This is not the only sense of desert that is relevant, Schmidtz claims:
Desert is important because it respects our status as separate and active agents, that is, persons who have the ability to make choices and to be responsible for those choices. In this way, desert must be an important element of justice. Schmidtz has contributed mightily to a proper understanding of desert in this work and if someone stops reading after the section on desert they will still gain something. As with desert, reciprocity is often seen as suspect in some liberal conceptions of justice. Some theorists worry about ideas of reciprocity not lining up properly with notions of cooperation. The idea is that if we think reciprocity is important, we are apt to think that repaying favors is an important aspect of justice and because of this, we may see benevolence as a type of exchange that fulfills a debt. Schmidtz argues, however, that it is somewhat unimportant whether notions of reciprocity endorse cooperation, because they tend to induce cooperation. As Schmidtz writes, “When people reciprocate, they teach people around them to cooperate. In the process, they not only respect justice, but foster it.” Schmidtz’s presentation of reciprocity is an important contribution to the literature that will hopefully widen the debate on the topic. The final element of Schmidtz’s theory of justice is need. Schmidtz argues that “need-claims are among justice’s irreducible primary elements” and that need, not unlike the other three elements, is important in clarifying and informing an understanding of the other elements of justice. This is one of the more interesting and wide ranging sections of the book and I can’t hope to do justice to it here, but Schmidtz basically argues that what people need is to be treated like human beings. That is, we need to take rights and the separateness of persons seriously to really give people what they need. Schmidtz argues that if we don’t do this, “we don’t get justice....” In this sense, what we need and what we want are related. We need to be treated as human beings in the sense that we need to take individual rights seriously, but we also want to live in a prosperous and free society. Schmidtz, throughout this work, argues that by respecting the elements of justice, we also ensure the creation of a better, more prosperous society. If justice is a neighborhood, by respecting justice, we make that neighborhood a better place to live. This should not be too surprising because as Schmidtz argues justice is a “functional response to an evolving problem.” The problem is, “how do we live together in peace, freedom, and prosperity?” The solution is justice. Ultimately, Elements of Justice is an important work of philosophy not only because it points us in the right direction to understand justice, but because it makes us look at the underlying structure of justice differently. Like all great works of philosophy, it makes us step back and look at the problem with fresh eyes. It takes an old question, “what is justice?” and shows it to us in a way that makes us reconsider our old notions. Schmidtz challenges us to start thinking again. By using his method to look at fundamental notions of justice, we are not able to fall back on pat responses or to retreat to Rawls and Nozick to answer all of our questions. We are forced to confront justice on its own terms. Elements of Justice may not be the last word on justice, but it is a good place to start trying to reproach questions of justice. |
book reviews
