Respecting Persons in Theory and Practice PDF
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Respecting Persons in Theory and Practice Essays on Moral and Political Philosophy Copyrighted material Respecting Persons in Theory and Practice Copyrighted material Respecting Persons in Theory and Practice Essays on Moral and Political Philosophy JAN NARVESON ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham + Boulder + New York + Oxford ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, Maryland 20706 ‘www.rowmanlittlefield.com 12 Hid's Copse Road, Cumnor Hill, Oxford OX2 913, England Copyright © 2002 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Britis Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available ISBN 0-7425-1329-7 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 0-7425-1330-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) Printed in the United States of America ©"Mhe paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American ‘National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANS/NISO 23948-1992 Contents Preface vii Introduction. xi L_Ubilitarianism and Formalism 1 2._A Puzzle about Economic Justice in Rawls’ Theory. 13 3._Marxism: Hollow at the Core a 4. On Recent Arguments for Egalitarianism 49 S._Moral Realism, Emotivism, and Natural Law 63 6. _Justice as Pure Efficiency: Pareto Efficiency, Justice, and the Free Market-A Pure Efficiency Conception of Justice 9 7._Toward a Liberal Theory of Ideology-A Quasi-Marxian Exploration __97 8._Property Rights: Original Acquisition and Lockean Provisos Ww 9. Deserving Profits 131 10. Fixing Democracy 163 LL The Anarchist'sCage ag 12. Have We a Right to Nondiscrimination? 203 13. Collective Rights? 225 14, The Drug Laws: More Nails in the Coffin of American Liberalism 243, 15. Children and Rights 265 16. Natural Resources, Sustainability, and the Central Committee 279 ‘About the Author Contents SBR Preface This selection from articles I have composed during nearly forty years was stimulated by an invitation from James Sterba, who was then philosophy editor at Rowman & Littlefield. The essays assembled here do not form a tightly connected set, though they are connected enough, in a looser way. One main principle of selection was that I still regarded the item as reasonably interesting; a secondary one was to present work from over my entire academic life. Thus one of my earliest papers, from the 1960s, opens the collection, followed by two from succeeding decades; most, however, were composed since 1990, and six of the sixteen here were not previously published. Most of them will surely be new to most readers, especially those who perchance have seen my most- anthologized article, about pacifism.’ Those that were published elsewhere are here reproduced almost as they were, with only minor corrections and alterations to suit the stylistic requirements of Rowman & Littlefield. Apart from the title of the first paper, none of these papers reflects my utilitarian period, as we might call it, which stretched from my graduate student days (at Harvard, 1956-61) to roughly the mid-1970s. As many readers will be aware, Ino longer see much philosophical utility in Utilitarianism; but that is not the main reason for the exclusion. Rather, I felt that it would make more sense to collect together, in future, some of the many papers on that subject that Thave composed over the years, both before and after my abandonment of that general view, into a volume devoted to an exploration of Utilitarianism, which, after all, rer a remarkably influential theory in the literature. At that mid-1970s turning point, I came to realize, as I would now put it, that utilitarianism was a mistaken theory. What persuaded me of its error? The answer is easy to pinpoint: at a workshop on Contractarian Theory at the University of Toronto in June 1974, I heard and then read David Gauthier’s seminal paper, “Reason and Maximization,” which challenged the foundational theory I had supposed to be the right one. My foundational efforts were presented in the final chapter of Morality and Utility. The persuasion was not instantaneous, but after the seeds of doubt were planted, they took rather firm root. This disaffection was further promoted at the end of that same year when I wrote a longish review of Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia, and while my treatment was still laced with utilitarianism, and I expressed many doubts about his book, in the end I think that Nozick appreciably influenced my viii Preface subsequent thinking. In fact, after that my general view moved in the direction of accepting contractarian foundations and libertarian substance, both being fleshed out in my 1988-89 book, The Libertarian Idea. Readers may be a little surprised to find no papers here discussing, as such, the moral and political theory known as Libertarianism, the subject of one of my books and the label which, with perhaps a caveat or two, most nearly applies to the general view I am inclined toward in these matters. One reason, again, is that having written The Libertarian Idea, | thought pethaps it would be better not to discuss it head-on in a shorter essay, though I have of late produced some treatments of that type." Since that time I have contemplated the need for “Son of Libertarian Idea,” which would be a book of refinements, adjustments, restatements, and the like. That hasn’t happened, but many of the essays in the present collection certainly reflect a libertarian viewpoint. I hoped, however, that they have some independent interest as well. The pieces reflect a long-held view that philosophers are eligible to contribute both to very abstract studies of the concepts of ethics and to fairly concrete-level discussion of matters of current concern. Many of my essays of the latter type are to be found in my Moral Matters,’ but the present collection contains several more. They are balanced fairly well between moral and political discussions, which indeed overlap to the point of near indiscemnability. Essays 1 and 5 are the most nearly purely meta-ethical of these essays; but in fact, all are theoretical in a fairly straightforward sense of the term. Specialized or narrow issues in morals don’t remain so; the need for a good answer to the question, “But why?” presses itself on intelligent people, who will not be satisfied with a shrug of the shoulders or an appeal to supposedly accepted social norms, or of course to religious views or to sheer assertion. My dealings with topics such as property rights, nondiscrimination, and the drug laws, as well as the several others explored here, are exercises in Casuistry, in the sense that they literally apply some quite general ideas to a range of fairly specific and quite concrete subjects. Those general ideas are to some degree developed and defended in context, and are certainly appealed to as having more weight than a purely intuitive appraisal of the matter in dispute could produce. Still, this is not a textbook or a monograph. Finally, I note that few of these papers devote very much space to replies to critics, or to specific discussion of the many philosophers of the day with whose views, as will be obvious, I fairly sharply disagree. Academic hard disks, such as mine, are filled with discussions and replies that don’t see print. Perhaps there is room for another book; in this one, only Rawls and Marx are treated at any appreciable length, while many others come in only for brief mention, or none. Noninclusion of the many others who deserve response is due not to lack of replies, or (usually) to not having read the relevant philosopher, but to lack of space, Panach essay has a note identifying publisher, or places it was read and worked on, or both, usually thanking members of audiences near and far, mostly anonymous, for helpful discussion. Beyond that, no one individual is owed specific thanks for this book, except James Sterba, with whom I have had many useful disagreements and to whom I am grateful, both for his good temper in
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