Pluralism and Social Unity

Pluralism and Social Unity Author(s): William A. Galston Reviewed work(s): Source: Ethics, Vol. 99, No. 4 (Jul., 1989), pp. 711-726 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2381231 . Accessed: 18/03/2012 22:21 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Ethics. http://www.jstor.org Pluralism and Social Unity William A. Galston In the nearly two decades since the publication of A Theory of Justice, John Rawls has not significantly altered the content of the principles the denizens of the original position are said to embrace. But many other aspects of his theory have changed. Four shifts strike me as being of particular importance. First, Rawls has placed an expanded notion of ''moral personality'' at the center of his argument and has revised several aspects of his theory (in particular, the accounts of primary goods and of individual rationality) accordingly. Second, he has fleshed out his views on the good and on the role that a conception of the good can play within the priority of the right. Third, he now characterizes the overall theory as "political"-that is, as drawn in part from basic political facts that constitute practical constraints and as detached from broader phil- osophical or metaphysical considerations. Finally, he has come to view his theory of justice not as developed sub specie aeternitatis but, rather, as drawn from (and addressed to) the public culture of democratic societies. Underlying these shifts, I believe, is a core concern that has become increasingly prominent in Rawls's thought. Modern liberal-democratic societies are characterized by an irreversible pluralism, that is, by conflicting and incommensurable conceptions of the human good (and, Rawls now stresses, of metaphysical and religious conceptions as well). The grounds of social unity are not hard to specify in homogeneous communities. But where are they to be found in societies whose members disagree so fundamentally? The answer, Rawls believes, lies in the lessons liberal- democratic societies have slowly learned in the modern era. Alongside the "fact of pluralism" is a kind of rough agreement on certain basics: the treatment of all individuals as free and equal; the understanding of society as a system of uncoerced cooperation; the right of each individual to claim a fair share of the fruits of that cooperation; and the duty of all citizens to support and uphold institutions that embody a shared conception of fair principles. Once we devise a strategy for excluding from public discourse the matters on which we fundamentally disagree and for reflecting collectively on the beliefs we share, we can be led to workable agreements on the content of just principles and institutions. I believe that in focusing his recent thought on the problem of forging unity amid diversity, Rawls has posed exactly the right question. Ethics 99 (July 1989): 711-726 C 1989 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0014-1704/89/9904-0008$01.00 711 712 Ethics July 1989 I am less sure that he has arrived at the right answer. In addressing the fact of pluralism, I would argue, Rawls goes both too far and not far enough: too far, because in trying to avoid all deep differences of me- taphysics and religion and to set questions of truth to one side, he deprives social philosophy (including his own) of resources essential to its success; not far enough, because the grounds of agreement he professes to find latent in our public culture would be rejected by many individuals and groups who form important elements of that culture. The alternative, I would suggest, is to recognize that social philosophy, liberalism included, cannot wholly rest its case on social agreement and must ultimately advert to truth-claims that are bound to prove controversial. This is a problem for liberalism only if the concept of individual freedom central to liberalism is construed so broadly as to trump the force of such truth-claims. But there are no sufficient reasons to understand liberal freedom so expan- sively, and many compelling reasons not to.1 I Let me begin with Rawls's revised notion of moral personality. Moral persons are, Rawls tells us, "characterized by two moral powers and by two corresponding highest-order interests in realizing and exercising these powers. The first power is the capacity for an effective sense of justice, that is, the capacity to understand, to apply and to act from (and not merely in accordance with) the principles ofjustice. The second moral power is the capacity to form, to revise, and rationally to pursue a conception of the good."2 As members of a democratic society, we agree not only on the content of this conception but also on the capacity of all (normal) members of our society to fulfill it. Rawls's account of moral personality thus lays the foundation for what might be called a democratic teleology. Individuals choosing principles of justice will seek, first and foremost, to create cir- cumstances in which they can realize and express their moral powers. In addition, we as observers will appraise social institutions in light of their propensity to promote the realization and facilitate the expression of these powers. From the standpoint of both participants and observers, moreover, these goals will take priority over other concerns-in particular, over the realization of the specific conceptions of the good that individuals may embrace. (That is what it means to identify the moral powers as our "highest-order" interests.) 1. In defending these contentions I have drawn on three of my previously published articles: "Liberalism and Public Morality," in Liberals on Liberalism, ed. Alphonso J. Damico (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1986), "Moral Personality and Liberal Theory: John Rawls's 'Dewey Lectures,' " Political Theory 10 (1982): 492-519, and "Defending Liberalism," American Political Science Review 76 (1982): 621-29. 2. John Rawls, "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory: The Dewey Lectures 1980," Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980): 525 (hereafter cited as "Dewey Lectures"). Galston Pluralism and Social Unity 713 This expanded conception of moral personality places, if not a "thick" theory, at least a greater than thin theory, of the good at the very foundation of Rawls's conception of justice. An indication-and consequence-of this shift is a dramatically revised account of primary goods. In A Theory of Justice, these goods were defined relative to the undefined objectives of rational calculators. They were, Rawls specified, a class of goods "that are normally wanted as parts of rational plans of life which may include the most varied sorts of ends," and the specification of these goods depends on psychological premises.3 In the wake of the new account of moral personality, by contrast, "primary goods are singled out by asking which things are generally necessary as social conditions and all-purpose means to enable human beings to realize and exercise their moral powers ... the conception of moral persons as having certain specified highest-order interests selects what is to count as primary goods.... Thus these goods are not to be understood as general means essential for achieving whatever final ends a comprehensive empirical or historical survey might show people usually or normally have in common under all social conditions."4 I have discussed elsewhere, at length, the implications of Rawls's expanded conception of moral personality. Let me raise just two problems here. First, Rawls asserts that for an ideal conception of personality to be acceptable, "it must be possible for people to honor it sufficiently closely." Hence, "the feasible ideals of the person are limited by the capacities of human nature."5 In his view, nothing we now know, or are likely to learn, about human nature suggests that his own conception is beyond our capacities.6 But that view is at least controversial. One may wonder, for example, whether the men who drafted the U.S. Constitution would have embraced it. There is much evidence to suggest that they did not, that in their view the dominance of both passion and interest was such as to make an effective sense of justice the exception rather than the rule. While they did not wholly denigrate the social role of individual virtue, they felt compelled to rely heavily on what they called "auxiliary precautions"-that is, on institutions whose workings did not depend on the just motives of officeholders or of ordinary citizens. At the very least, I would suggest, the question of the feasibility of Rawls's ideal deserves much more than the cursory, almost dismissive, treatment he provides. Second, while Rawls's conception of moral personality may strike some as unattainable, it may strike others as unacceptable. Rawls says that he hopes to "invoke a conception of the person implicitly affirmed in [our] culture, or else one that would prove acceptable to citizens once 3. John Rawls, A Theory ofJustice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 260. 4. Rawls, "Dewey Lectures," pp. 526-27. 5. Ibid., p. 534. 6. Ibid., p. 566. 714 Ethics July 1989 it was properly presented and explained."7 But I wonder whether, for example, religious fundamentalists would regard the capacity to form and revise a conception of the good as a good at all, let alone a highest- order interest of human beings. They might well declare that the best human life requires the capacity to receive an external good (God's truth) rather than to form a conception of the good for oneself, and to hold fast to that truth once received rather than to revise it. Rawls's Kantian conception would strike them as a sophisticated, and therefore dangerous, brand of secular humanism. Nor would they be impressed with the sug- gestion that whatever may be true of their nonpublic identity, their public personality should be understood in Rawls's fashion. From their perspective, the disjunction between the public and nonpublic realms represents an injunction to set aside God's word, the only source of salvation, in de- termining the principles of our public order. I would argue, in short, that Rawls's conception of moral personality will appeal only to those individuals who have accepted a particular understanding of the liberal political community and that our public culture is at present characterized not by consensus but, rather, by acute conflict over the adequacy of that understanding. II The expanded account of moral personality is a part, but by no means the totality, of the second major shift in Rawls's position-the expanded account of the good and its enhanced role in the overall theory. In 1982 I published an article in which I argued that every contem- porary liberal theory relies, explicitly or tacitly, on the same triadic theory of the good, which asserts the worth of human existence, the value of the fulfillment of human purposes, and the commitment to rationality as the chief guide to both individual purposiveness and collective un- dertakings. This is, to be sure, a restricted theory of the good, but it is by no means a trivial one, for it is possible to identify approaches to social morality that deny one or more of its elements.8 In a recent paper, in part an explicit rejoinder to my argument, Rawls acknowledges the presence of these elements of the good in his theory. He writes that any workable conception of justice "must count human life and the fulfillment of basic human needs and purposes as in general good, and endorse rationality as a basic principle of political and social organization. A political doctrine for a democratic society may safely assume, then, that all participants in political discussions of right and justice accept these values, when understood in a suitably general way. Indeed, if the members of society did not do so, the problems of political justice, in the form with which we are familiar with them, would seem not to arise."9 7. Ibid., p. 518. 8. Galston, "Defending Liberalism," pp. 625-26. 9. John Rawls, "The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good," Philosophy and Public Affairs 17 (1988): 254 (hereafter cited as "Priority of Right"). Galston Pluralism and Social Unity 715 Nor is this the totality of the liberal theory of the good as Rawls now understands it. In another recent paper, he develops the notion of a workable political conception of justice for a modern democratic society as resting on the fact of pluralism, that is, on the existence of diverse and irreconcilable conceptions of the good. This "fact" does not, however, have the status of an unchangeable law of nature but is relative to specific institutions and policies. Rawls acknowledges that a public agreement on a single conception of the good can indeed be established and maintained, but "only by the oppressive use of state power."'0 The empirical fact of pluralism, then, rests on the normative commitment to noncoercion and to the achievement of "free and willing agreement.""11 This commitment to noncoercion goes very deep. It might be thought, for example, that pluralism makes sense only if no conception of the good can be known to be rationally preferable to any other. Rawls denies this: "The view that philosophy in the classical sense as the search for truth about a prior and independent moral order cannot provide the shared basis for a political conception of justice . .. does not presuppose the controversial metaphysical claim that there is no such order."'12 Even if there were such an order and it could be rationally specified, it could not properly serve as the basis for a political order unless it happened to be generally accepted by the citizenry, which would be highly unlikely in the absence of a coercive or at least tutelary state. In short, the claims of noncoercion-of individual freedom-trump even claims based on comprehensive philosophical truths. The freedom to choose one's own conception of the good is among the highest-order goods. Finally, Rawls's expanded conception of the human good offers an account of justice itself as a key element of that good. Citizens of a just society "share one very basic political end, and one that has high priority: namely, the end of supporting just institutions and of giving one another justice accordingly." This is the case in large measure because "the exercise of the two moral powers [the basic elements of moral personality] is experienced as good."'13 Not only, then, is justice a highest-order moral power and interest, but also there is an intrinsic impulse to develop and employ it in society. Yet Rawls hesitates to embrace this argument in its full rigor. In the very article in which he most decisively links justice to moral personality as an end in itself, he also asserts that justice must be compatible with the comprehensive conceptions of the good held by individuals: 'Just institutions and the political virtues expected of citizens would serve no purpose-would have no point-unless those institutions and virtues not only permitted but also sustained ways of life that citizens can affirm 10. John Rawls, "The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus," Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 7 (1987): 4 (hereafter cited as "Overlapping Consensus"). 1 1. Ibid., p. 5. 12. Ibid., p. 13n. 13. Rawls, "Priority of Right," pp. 269-70. 716 Ethics July 1989 as worthy of their full allegiance. A conception of political justice must contain within itself sufficient space, as it were, for ways of life that can gain devoted support. In a phrase: justice draws the limit, the good shows the point. "14 This assertion raises two very different kinds of issues. The first is conceptual: if doing justice is truly one of the two highest-order interests of moral personality, an end in itself, then why does it need a "point" outside itself? If individuals genuinely accept that justice is "supremely regulative as well as effective"' 5 and that citizens' desires to pursue ends that transgress the limits of justice "have no weight,"''6 then, to be sure, adequate space for conceptions of the good lends added support for just institutions but it cannot be vital to their acceptability. Conversely, if space for ways of life is indeed critical, then a purportedly just regime that is systematically biased against certain kinds of lives cannot expect wholehearted support from individuals who cherish those lives. This brings me to the second issue raised by Rawls's revised account of the relation between just institutions and individual ways of life. In his earlier account, Rawls had already conceded that certain ways of life were systematically likely to lose out in liberal society. But that did not imply (so he then argued) that this bias in any sense represented a morally relevant loss: "A well-ordered society defines a fair background within which ways of life have a reasonable opportunity to establish themselves. If a conception of the good is unable to endure and gain adherents under institutions of equal freedom and mutual toleration, one must question whether it is a viable conception of the' good, and whether its passing is to be regretted."' 7 The bias of liberalism, then, poses no special difficulty because the sorts of lives it tends to screen out are in themselves questionable from the standpoint of justice. In Rawls's more recent account, however, the bias of liberalism becomes much more problematic. He now repudiates the view that only unworthy ways of life lose out in ajust constitutional regime. "That optimistic view," he states flatly, "is mistaken." In its place, he endorses the view of Isaiah Berlin that "there is no social world without loss-that is, no social world that does not exclude some ways of life that realize in special ways certain fundamental values."' 8 In particular, a society constructed in accordance with the conception of justice as fairness will ask certain individuals and groups to give up for themselves their ways of life or to surrender any real chance of passing their most cherished values on to children. More- over, what Rawls calls "the facts of common-sense political sociology" tell us which ways of life are most likely to lose out-to wit, those that 14. Ibid., pp. 251-52. 15. Rawls, "Dewey Lectures," p. 525. 16. Rawls, "Priority of Right," p. 251. 17. John Rawls, "Fairness to Goodness," Philosophical Review 84 (1975): 549. 18. Rawls, "Priority of Right," p. 265. Galston Pluralism and Social Unity 717 presuppose more control over the immediate cultural environment than is feasible within liberal societies. This new position, it seems to me, poses a deep difficulty for justice as fairness. If I know that the principles adopted in the original position may impair my ability to exercise, or even require me altogether to surrender, the values that give my life its core meaning and purpose, then how can I agree in advance to accept those principles as binding- any more than I could subscribe to a procedure that might result in my enslavement as the outcome of a uti