Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?

The long passages from Sandel’s book below are paraphrased in English, not his published wording.

From the new season of Qipashuo (U Can U BiBi) a while ago, to the feminist debates after the Hitch carpool service came back online recently, to the freedom that young people in HK are fighting for: there are social issues every day, and everyone has their own view. But in the end, every discussion seems to turn into incomprehension and insults once people fail to convince each other.

I have always liked this kind of discussion, and I am curious about the logic behind different views. Often, while I discuss, I also rethink ideas I have held for a long time. The most interesting thing about this book is its many real cases, argued from the pro and con sides, each side rebutting the other. It is very satisfying to read, especially the problems it raises with the “libertarian” view that I used to hold.

It also works as an intro course to political philosophy. I got a first glimpse of the arguments of Kant, Aristotle and Rawls, philosophers I used to find very deep, and now I want to find their work and keep learning.

PS: I started watching the Justice course in college and never finished it. The book has a higher information density. Because the material is organized and abstracted, I can follow the logic of the argument more systematically. Theoretical knowledge also needs you to stop and think it over again and again, and videos often make you miss those moments when something clicks. My notes include many excerpts from the text, mainly because a lot of it was new to me and I wanted to record it, so it feels fresh every time I come back to it.

The change in thinking that happens as we go back and forth between the realm of action and the realm of reason is moral reflection. Moral reflection is hard to reach through one person’s introspection; it needs citizens to reason with each other.
The three approaches to justice each have their own logic and their own problems: The first says justice means maximizing utility or welfare—the greatest happiness for the greatest number. The second says justice means respecting freedom of choice—either the actual choices people make in a free market (the libertarian view), or the hypothetical choices people would make in an original position of equality (the egalitarian view). The third approach says justice involves cultivating virtue and reasoning about the common good.
What freedom is: as long as my action is determined by biology or conditioned by society, it is not truly free. In Kant’s view, to act freely is to act autonomously, and to act autonomously is to act according to a law I give myself—not according to the commands of nature or social convention. This was the point that hit the current me hardest while reading: freedom as autonomy
Effort, too, may be the product of a favorable upbringing. Most of it is decided by the family we grow up in and the social structure we live in. The more we see our success as our own doing, the less responsibility we feel toward those who fall behind.

Chapter 1: Doing the Right Thing

Whether a society is just depends on how it hands out the things we value: income and wealth, duties and rights, power and opportunity, public offices and honors. A just society hands these out in the right way and gives each person what they are owed. The hard part starts when we ask who should get what, and why.

In fact, we have already started on these questions. In weighing price gouging, the rival claims about the Purple Heart, and the government bailouts, we picked out three ways to distribute goods: welfare, freedom, and virtue. Each idea points to a different way of thinking about justice, and the book looks at the strengths and weaknesses of each.

Welfare—utilitarianism
Freedom—free-market thinking
Virtue—cultural conservatives and the religious right

Moral Reasoning

Before judging these theories of justice, we should ask how philosophical argument can even proceed in fields as contested as moral and political philosophy. It usually starts from concrete situations. Moral and political views show up as disagreements: between opposing camps in public life, and sometimes inside one person who feels torn and inconsistent when facing a hard moral question.

But how do we get from judgments about particular cases to principles of justice that should hold in all cases? In short, what form does moral reasoning take? To look at this, the book turns to two situations: a hypothetical story that philosophers discuss a lot, and a painful true story about a moral dilemma.

Moral dilemmas: some come from conflicting moral principles. In the runaway trolley story, one principle says we should save as many lives as possible; another says it is wrong to kill an innocent person, even for a good reason.

Other dilemmas come from not knowing how things will turn out. Hypothetical cases like the trolley remove that real-life uncertainty. This makes them imperfect guides to action, but useful tools for moral analysis: by setting aside contingencies (“What if the workers saw the trolley and jumped clear in time?”), they help us isolate the moral principles at stake and test how strong they are.

Moral Reflection

Life in a democracy is full of arguments about right and wrong, justice and injustice: abortion, taxing the rich to help the poor, affirmative action in college admissions, harsh interrogation of terror suspects. On each one, what one side sees as necessary or fair, the other sees as a wrong.

So how can we think for ourselves through these clashing claims about justice and injustice, equality and inequality, individual rights and the common good? This is the question the book tries to answer.

We can begin with this question: when people face a hard moral question, how does moral reflection arise on its own?

First we hold a view about what we should do, for example turn the trolley onto the side track. Then we look for the reasons behind it and the principle they rest on: “Better to sacrifice one life to avoid more deaths.” Then a case comes along that seems to break the principle, and we get confused: saving the most lives always seemed right, yet pushing the man off the bridge (or killing the unarmed goatherds) seems wrong. We feel the pressure of that confusion and want to sort it out. That is the impulse that leads to philosophy.

Facing this tension, we may revise our judgment about the right thing to do, or rethink the principle we started with. With each new case, we move between our judgments and our principles and use each to correct the other. The change in thinking that happens as we go back and forth between the realm of action and the realm of reason is moral reflection.

This view treats moral argument as an interplay between our judgments about particular cases and the principles we come to hold on reflection. It goes back to Socrates’ dialogues and Aristotle’s ethics. Even so, it faces a challenge:

If moral reflection means finding a fit between our judgments and our principles, how can it lead us to justice or moral truth? Even if we spend a lifetime bringing our intuitions and principles into line, how sure can we be that the result is more than a self-consistent set of prejudices? The answer is that moral reflection is not an individual pursuit but a public effort. It needs a partner in conversation: a friend, a neighbor, a comrade, a fellow citizen. When we argue with ourselves, the partner can be imagined. But we cannot work out the meaning of justice, or the best way to live, through introspection alone.

In Plato’s Republic, Socrates compares ordinary citizens to prisoners in a cave who only ever see shadows on the wall. Only the philosopher can climb out into the sunlight and see things as they are, so, Socrates suggests, only he is fit to rule the cave dwellers. Plato’s point is that to grasp justice and the good life we have to rise above prejudice and daily routine. I think he is right, but only partly. The cave dwellers deserve their due: if moral reflection is a conversation between judgments and principles, it needs people’s opinions and convictions, however partial and crude, as its raw material. A philosophy that ignores the shadows on the wall can only produce a barren utopia.

Political Reflection

When moral reflection turns political, when it asks which laws should govern our life together, it has to step into the noise of the city: the arguments and events that stir up the public. Bailouts, price gouging, income inequality, affirmative action, military service and same-sex marriage are all material for political philosophy. They push us to state and defend our moral and political beliefs, not only to family and friends but also to demanding fellow citizens. Even more demanding are the political philosophers, ancient and modern, who think in radical and surprising ways about the ideas that animate civic life: justice and rights, obligation and consent, honor and virtue, morality and law. Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill and John Rawls are such figures, but the book does not present them in chronological order. It is not a history of ideas. It is a journey in moral and political reflection, meant not to show who influenced whom, but to get readers to put their own views of justice to critical examination: to find out what they really think, and where those thoughts come from.

Case1 Is it right for businesses to raise prices during a natural disaster? (Are anti-price-gouging laws justified?)

Pro:

This is not a normal free market. Normally, willing buyers choose to enter the market and meet willing sellers, and supply and demand set the price. In an emergency, buyers under duress are not free. They are forced to buy necessities such as a safe place to stay

First, high prices in hard times do not really serve overall welfare. Even if they bring in more supply, that gain is offset by the burden on people who can’t pay. For the rich, an inflated price for gas or a motel room in a storm is an annoyance; for people with small incomes it is real hardship, and it may keep them in danger instead of escaping. Any count of overall welfare has to include the suffering of people priced out of basic necessities in an emergency.

Second, supporters of anti-gouging laws insist that under some conditions the free market is not really free. As Crist put it, buyers under duress have no freedom; they are forced to buy necessities such as a safe place to stay. If you and your family are fleeing a hurricane, paying an inflated price for gas or shelter is not a truly free exchange. It is closer to extortion. So, to decide whether anti-gouging laws are justified, we have to weigh these competing claims about welfare and freedom.

Anti-price-gouging laws are really a moral objection to one vice: “greed”

Con:

Prices should be set by supply and demand. A price spike encourages suppliers elsewhere to keep providing goods, and it can speed up rebuilding.

Some people, including some who support anti-gouging laws, find the virtue argument awkward because it seems more judgmental than arguments from welfare or freedom. Asking whether a policy speeds recovery or growth doesn’t require judging people’s tastes: it assumes everyone wants more income and doesn’t judge how they spend it. In the same way, asking whether people choose freely under pressure doesn’t require judging their choices. The only question is whether, or how far, people are free rather than coerced.

Case2 Should veterans with PTSD get the Purple Heart?

Con: In military culture, PTSD is seen as a weakness and can’t be treated the same as a physical wound Pro: Psychological trauma, like physical injury, is a sacrifice made for the country

Case3 The trolley problem

You are driving a trolley down the track at 60 miles an hour. Ahead, five workers with tools are standing on the track. You try to stop, but the brakes have failed. You are desperate, because you know that if you hit them, all five will die. (Assume you know this for sure.) Then you notice a side track on the right with one worker on it, just one. You could steer onto the side track, kill that one worker, and save the five. Do you turn?
This time you are not the driver but an onlooker on a bridge above the track (there is no side track this time). A trolley is coming, and at the far end there are five workers. Again the brakes have failed, and the trolley is about to hit the five. You feel powerless to stop it, until you notice a very large man standing next to you. You could push him off the bridge onto the track, where his body would stop the trolley. He would probably die, but the five would be saved. (You thought about jumping yourself, but you are too small to stop the trolley.) Is pushing the large man onto the track the right thing to do?

Many people choose differently in the two cases. Why?

Maybe you don’t want to push the man off the bridge only because you are squeamish, a hesitation you should get over. Pushing someone to his death with your own hands does feel crueler than turning a steering wheel, but doing the right thing isn’t always easy. We can test this by changing the case a little. Say that, as the onlooker, you could drop the large man onto the track without pushing him: he is standing on a trapdoor, and you can open it by turning a wheel. No pushing, same result. Does that make it right? Or is it still morally worse than turning onto the side track as the driver?

Chapter 2: Utilitarianism

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) was an English moral philosopher and legal reformer who founded the doctrine of utilitarianism. Its main idea is simple and intuitively appealing: the highest principle of morality is to maximize happiness, so that pleasure outweighs pain overall. For Bentham, the right thing to do is whatever maximizes utility. By “utility” he means anything that produces pleasure or happiness and prevents pain or suffering.

Objection 1: individual rights Many people think the most obvious weakness of utilitarianism is that it fails to respect individual rights. Since it only adds up satisfactions, it can trample on individuals. Individuals do count for a utilitarian, but only as one set of preferences summed with everyone else’s. Followed all the way, this logic can allow treatment that ignores basic human dignity.
Objection 2: a common currency of value We cannot measure every value in one common currency. For example: smoking makes people die earlier, and it also brings in tobacco tax revenue.

Refined Utilitarianism

John Stuart Mill was the son of James Mill, a friend and follower of Bentham. His On Liberty is the classic defense of individual freedom in the English-speaking world. Its central principle: people should be free to do whatever they want, as long as they do not harm others. Government may not interfere with individual liberty to protect people from themselves, or force the majority’s idea of the best way to live on everyone. The only conduct for which a person answers to society is conduct that affects others. As long as I harm no one else, “his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”

Mill insists that the case for individual liberty rests entirely on utilitarian grounds: “It is proper to state that I forego any advantage which could be derived to my argument from the idea of abstract right, as a thing independent of utility. I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.” For Mill, we should maximize utility not case by case but in the long run, and over time, respecting individual liberty leads to the greatest human happiness. Letting the majority silence dissenters or censor free thinkers might maximize utility today, but in the long run it makes society worse off, and less happy.

The second objection says utilitarianism puts all values on one scale. Mill’s answer here also leans on moral ideals that are independent of utility. Soon after On Liberty, he wrote the long essay Utilitarianism (1861), where he tries to show that utilitarians can tell higher pleasures from lower ones.

For Bentham, pleasure is pleasure and pain is pain. The only basis for calling one experience better than another is how intense and how long-lasting its pleasure or pain is. So-called higher pleasures or nobler virtues are just the ones that give stronger, longer pleasure. Bentham sees no difference in quality between pleasures. “Quantity of pleasure being equal,” he wrote, “push-pin is as good as poetry.” (Push-pin is a children’s game.)

Mill offers a simple test: “Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure.”

Of these two great champions of utilitarianism, Mill is the more humane philosopher, and Bentham the more consistent one.

Chapter 3: Libertarianism

Libertarians favor unfettered markets and oppose government regulation, not in the name of economic efficiency but in the name of human freedom. Their central claim is that each of us has a fundamental right to liberty: the right to do whatever we want with what we own, as long as we respect other people’s right to do the same.

Libertarianism opposes three kinds of policies and laws: paternalism, morals legislation, and the redistribution of income or wealth

In Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick gives a philosophical defense of libertarian principles. He asks what the state may legitimately do, and concludes that only a minimal state, limited to enforcing contracts and protecting people from force, theft and fraud, is justified; any state with wider duties violates people’s right not to be forced to do things, and so is unjustified. He argues that distributive justice depends on two conditions: justice in initial holdings and justice in transfer.

I think the biggest problem with libertarianism is the justice of initial holdings? How do we evaluate natural talent?

Chapter 4: Markets and Morals

The case for free markets usually rests on two claims: one about freedom, the other about welfare.

The first is the libertarian case. It says that letting people make free exchanges respects their freedom, and laws that interfere with the free market violate individual liberty.

The second is the utilitarian case. It says free markets promote the general welfare: when two people make a deal, both gain. As long as the deal benefits both and hurts no one else, it must increase overall utility.

Case4 Military conscription and legalizing surrogacy

Pro: Libertarianism holds that a contract made between two consenting adults must be honored Con:

Flawed consent: any decision made before the child is born is made without full information; there is no way to be sure the information is complete
Goods that can’t be bought: neither babies nor women’s reproductive capacity should be for sale

Chapter 5: Kant

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) offers another account of duties and rights, one of the most powerful and influential any philosopher has given. It does not rest on the idea that we own ourselves, or on the claim that our lives and liberty are gifts from God. It rests on the idea that we are rational beings who deserve dignity and respect.

Five years after Jeremy Bentham’s Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals launched a fierce attack on utilitarianism. It argues that morality is not about maximizing happiness or any other end, but about respecting persons as ends in themselves.

Of the three approaches to justice from the book’s introduction: the utilitarian one asks what maximizes welfare or overall happiness; the second links justice to freedom, as libertarians do when they say a just distribution is whatever free exchange in an unfettered market produces, and that regulating the market is unjust because it violates freedom of choice; the third says justice means giving people what they morally deserve, distributing goods to reward and promote virtue. With Aristotle (Chapter 8), this virtue-based approach ties justice to reflection on the good life. Kant rejects the first approach (maximizing welfare) and the third (promoting virtue), because neither respects human freedom. So Kant is a strong advocate of the second approach, the one that ties justice and morality to freedom.

Objections to Utilitarianism

Because making a person happy is different from making him good, and making him prudent in pursuing his own interest is different from making him virtuous Kant holds that every person deserves respect, not because we own ourselves, but because we are rational beings, able to reason, and also free beings, able to act and choose freely.

Kant sees that we are rational beings and also sentient beings, which for him means we can act on our senses and feelings. So Bentham was right, but only half right: we do like pleasure and dislike pain, but he was wrong to insist they are “our sovereign masters.” Kant thinks reason can be sovereign, at least some of the time. When reason governs our will, we are not driven by the desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Our capacity for reason is closely tied to our capacity for freedom. Together they make us distinctive and set us apart from mere animal existence; they make us more than creatures of appetite.

Defining Freedom

We often think of freedom as doing what we want without obstacles. Kant disagrees. His idea of freedom is stricter and more demanding.

Kant’s reasoning: when we chase pleasure or avoid pain the way animals do, we are not really acting freely; we act as slaves to our desires and cravings. Why? Because whenever we act to satisfy a desire, everything we do is for the sake of some end given outside us.

People often argue about how far nature or nurture shapes behavior: is the craving for a Sprite (or another sugary drink) in our genes, or stirred up by advertising? For Kant, that debate misses the point. As long as my action is determined by biology or conditioned by society, it is not truly free. For Kant, to act freely is to act autonomously, and to act autonomously is to act according to a law I give myself—not according to the commands of nature or social convention.

One way to see what Kant means by acting autonomously is to compare it with its opposite. Kant coined a word for that opposite: heteronomy. When I act heteronomously, I act according to determinations given from outside me.

Heteronomy: doing something for the sake of something else, which is for the sake of something else again, and so on. When we act heteronomously, we act for ends given outside us; we are instruments of the purposes we pursue, not the ones who set them.

Autonomy: when we act autonomously, according to a law we give ourselves, we do something for its own sake, as an end in itself. We are no longer instruments of ends given from outside. This capacity to act autonomously gives human beings their special dignity. It marks the difference between persons and things.

Defining Morality

For Kant, the moral worth of an action lies not in its consequences but in the intention behind it. What matters is the motive, and it must be a particular kind of motive: we must do the right thing because it is right, not for some hidden reason.

If we act from some other motive, such as self-interest, rather than from duty, the action has no moral worth. Kant holds that this applies not only to self-interest but to every effort to satisfy our wants, desires, preferences and cravings. He calls these “motives of inclination,” sets them against the motive of duty, and says only actions done from duty have moral worth.

In practice, duty and inclination often go together, and it is hard to know our own motives, let alone other people’s. Kant doesn’t deny this, nor does he think only cold-hearted people can act with moral worth. His example of the misanthrope is there to isolate the motive of duty, so that sympathy and compassion don’t cloud it. Once we see the motive of duty, we can see what gives good actions their moral worth: their principle, not their results.

Defining Reason

I read this part several times before I understood a little of it

But how can reason do this? Kant distinguishes two ways reason can command the will: two kinds of imperative. The more familiar one is the hypothetical imperative, which uses instrumental reason: if you want X, do Y. If you want a good business reputation, treat your customers honestly. “If the action is represented as good in itself, and therefore as necessary for a will that in itself accords with reason, then the imperative is categorical.” The word “categorical” sounds like obscure jargon, but it isn’t far from its everyday meaning. By “categorical,” Kant means “unconditional.”

Categorical imperative: universalize your maxim && treat persons as ends

Now we can see the link Kant draws between morality and freedom. To act morally is to act from duty, for the sake of the moral law, and the moral law is a categorical imperative that requires us to treat persons with respect, as ends in themselves. Only when I act in line with it am I free. Whenever I act on a hypothetical imperative, I act for some interest or end given from outside, so my will is not really my own: it is set by outside forces, by the needs of my situation or the wants I happen to have.

Only by acting autonomously, according to a law I give myself, can I escape the commands of nature and circumstance, and such a law cannot depend on my particular wants and desires. So Kant’s demanding ideas of freedom and of morality are linked: acting freely (autonomously) and acting morally, according to the categorical imperative, are the same thing.

This way of thinking about morality and freedom leads Kant to a devastating critique of utilitarianism. Any attempt to base morality on a particular interest or desire (such as happiness or utility) is bound to fail. “For what they found was never duty, but only the necessity of acting from a certain interest.” And any principle based on interest “was always bound to be a conditional one, and could not serve as a moral law.”

Chapter 6: The Case for Equality—John Rawls

Q: How do we make a real contract that carries moral force

John Rawls (1921–2002), an American political philosopher, gives an illuminating answer to this question. In A Theory of Justice, he argues that the way to think about justice is to ask what principles we would agree to in an initial situation of equality.

The thought experiment: imagine we gather to choose principles without knowing where we will end up in society. We choose behind a “veil of ignorance” that hides who we are for the moment: our class, gender, race or ethnicity, politics or religion, our strengths and weaknesses, whether we are healthy or frail, well educated or a dropout, from a stable family or a broken one. Not knowing these things, we would in effect choose from an original position of equality. Since no one would have more bargaining power, the principles we agreed to would be just.

This is Rawls’s idea of the social contract: a hypothetical agreement made in an original position of equality. He asks what principles we, as rational and self-interested people, would choose in that position. He doesn’t assume we are all driven by self-interest in real life, only that we set aside our moral and religious convictions for the sake of the thought experiment. So what would we choose?

First, he reasons, we would not choose utilitarianism, because any of us could be the one who gets sacrificed. Nor would anyone choose pure laissez-faire libertarian principles that let people keep everything they earn in a market economy. Each person would reason: “I might turn out to be Bill Gates, but I might also turn out to be homeless. So I want to avoid a system that could leave me with nothing and no help.”

The first principle gives all citizens equal basic liberties, such as freedom of speech and religion, and it takes priority over considerations of social utility and general welfare. The second principle concerns social and economic equality. It doesn’t require an equal distribution of income and wealth, but it allows only those social and economic inequalities that benefit the least advantaged members of society.

How does Rawls know that, behind the veil of ignorance, people won’t gamble and choose a very unequal society in the hope of landing at the top?

This is my question too. Some people who like risk might rather try their luck: emperor or pauper, so be it

Rawls thinks people won’t take that kind of risk when choosing the principles that govern their basic prospects in life. Unless they know they love risk (a trait the veil of ignorance hides), people don’t place high-stakes bets. But his case for the difference principle doesn’t depend entirely on people in the original position being risk-averse. Behind the veil of ignorance is a moral argument that stands on its own, apart from the thought experiment. Its main idea: the distribution of income and opportunity should not rest on factors that are arbitrary from a moral point of view.

Contracts have two moral limits. First, the fact of an agreement doesn’t guarantee that the agreement is fair (do both sides have the same information?). Second, consent is not enough to create a binding moral claim: a contract like this doesn’t work as a means of mutual benefit, so it doesn’t respect the ideal of reciprocity.

So far I have argued that consent is not a sufficient condition for moral obligation. A lopsided deal can fall so far short of mutual benefit that its voluntary nature can’t save it from blame.

Now I want to make a further, more provocative claim: consent is not a necessary condition for moral obligation either. If the mutual benefit is clear enough, a moral claim of reciprocity can hold even with no act of consent.

The author didn’t really convince me here. Even if the result benefits both sides, without consent it doesn’t count as making a contract

We tend to think every moral claim involves consent, but if we don’t grant reciprocity its own weight, our moral lives are hard to make sense of. Take marriage. Suppose that after twenty faithful years I find out my wife has been seeing another man. I could be morally outraged for two different reasons. The first appeals to consent: “We had an agreement. You made a vow and broke your promise.” The second appeals to reciprocity: “I’ve been faithful all this time; I deserve better than this. This is no way to repay my loyalty.” The second complaint doesn’t mention consent and doesn’t need it. It would still seem morally valid if we had never exchanged vows and had just lived together as partners for all those years.

So I would stand on the first position, consent, which is about how seriously you take a promise

Unequal Birth and Luck: The Argument from Moral Arbitrariness

The circumstances you are born into are not your doing, so it is unfair for your life prospects to be set by such arbitrary factors. People with good family backgrounds and good educations have a clear head start. Letting everyone enter the race is good, but if the runners start from different places, the race is hardly fair. That is why Rawls thinks the distribution of income and wealth produced by a free market with formal equality of opportunity can’t be called just. The most obvious injustice of the libertarian system, he says, is that it lets distributive shares be shaped by factors that are highly arbitrary from a moral point of view.

[Improvement] One way to fix this unfairness is to correct social and economic disadvantages. A fair meritocracy tries to do this by going beyond merely formal equality of opportunity. It removes obstacles to success by providing equal chances for education, so that people from poor families can compete on an equal footing with the privileged. On this view, the distribution of income and wealth that comes out of a free market is just, but only if everyone has the same chance to develop their abilities. Only when everyone starts at the same line can we say the winners deserve their prizes.

[Pro] Rawls concludes that the meritocratic conception of justice is flawed for the same reason as the libertarian one (though to a lesser degree): both base distributive shares on factors that are morally arbitrary. Once we are bothered by how either social contingency or natural chance affects people’s shares, then on reflection we are bound to be bothered by the other too, because, morally speaking, the two look equally arbitrary. Once we see that both theories reflect moral arbitrariness, Rawls thinks, nothing short of a more egalitarian conception will satisfy us. But what would that be? Fixing unequal education is one thing; fixing unequal natural talent is another. If it bothers us that some runners are faster than others, should the gifted ones run in lead shoes? Some critics of egalitarianism think the only alternative to a meritocratic market society is a leveling equality that puts handicaps on the talented.

[Con] “Harrison Bergeron,” a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., is a dystopian science-fiction story that gives voice to this worry. It is set in 2081, when everyone is at last equal: nobody is smarter, better-looking, stronger or quicker than anyone else. Agents of the United States Handicapper General enforce this total equality. Citizens of above-average intelligence have to wear a tiny mental-handicap radio in one ear, and every twenty seconds a government transmitter sends a sharp noise to stop them from “taking unfair advantage of their brains”

I read the short story. It’s about the Handicapper General pulling everyone’s gifts down to the average. http://www.dushu369.com/waiguomingzhu/HTML/59454.html

[Pro]: Total equality is not the only alternative to a meritocratic market society. Rawls’s alternative, which he calls the difference principle, corrects the unfair distribution of talents and endowments without handicapping the gifted. How? We encourage the gifted to develop and use their talents, while recognizing that what those talents earn in the market belongs to the community as a whole. We don’t hobble the fastest runners; we let them run and do their best. But we recognize in advance that the prizes don’t belong to them alone, and should be shared with those who lack such gifts.

Four kinds of distributive justice; the first three all involve luck 1.Feudal or caste system: a fixed hierarchy based on birth 2.Libertarianism: a free market with formal equality of opportunity 3.Meritocracy: a free market with fair equality of opportunity 4.Egalitarianism: Rawls’s difference principle

[Con 1: Incentives] Why would talented people bother to use their talents?

Rawls’s answer: if we need these incentives to help the least advantaged, the difference principle allows income differences for the sake of incentives. Paying CEOs more or cutting taxes for the rich just to raise GDP is not enough. But if the incentives produce economic growth that leaves the people at the bottom better off than they would be under a more equal arrangement, the difference principle allows them. One thing to note: allowing pay differences for incentives is not the same as saying successful people have a special moral claim to the fruits of their work. If Rawls is right, income inequality is just only when it produces results that end up helping the least advantaged, not because CEOs or sports stars deserve to earn more than factory workers.

[Con 2: What about effort?]

This part is actually an argument I’ve seen a lot lately

Rawls rejects the meritocratic theory of justice on the grounds that people’s natural talents are not their own doing. But what about the hard work people put into developing those talents?

Rawls answers that even effort may be the product of a favorable upbringing. In his view, even the willingness to make an effort, to try, and so to be deserving in the ordinary sense depends on a happy family and social environment. Like other factors in success, effort is shaped by contingencies we can’t take credit for: how hard a person is willing to try is affected by their natural abilities and skills and by the options open to them, and, other things being equal, the better endowed are more likely to try hard…

There is a deeper reason to doubt the claim that people deserve what they earn through effort and hard work: meritocrats praise effort, but they don’t really believe effort alone should decide income and wealth. Picture two construction workers. One is strong and builds four walls a day without trouble; the other is weak and can’t carry two bricks at once. However hard the weak one works, he needs a week to do what the strong one does in a day. No defender of meritocracy would say the weak but hardworking man deserves higher pay because he made more effort. Or take Michael Jordan. He trained very hard, but some lesser-known players trained even harder, and no one says they deserve a bigger contract than Jordan as a reward for their hours. So while meritocrats talk about effort, what they really think deserves reward is contribution, or achievement. And whether or not our work ethic is our own doing, our achievements depend, at least in part, on natural talents we can’t take credit for.

Successful people often overlook how much of their success is contingent. Many of us are lucky to have, at least to some degree, the talents our society happens to value. A capitalist society rewards entrepreneurial drive; a bureaucratic one rewards getting along easily with your bosses; a mass democracy rewards looking good on TV and speaking in short, appealing sound bites; a society ruled by law rewards going to law school, with the logic and reasoning skills that bring a high score on the admissions test.

So we are entitled to the benefits that the rules of the game promise for using our talents. But it is a mistake, and a conceit, to think we deserved, in the first place, a society that values the talents we happen to have.

Chapter 7: The Affirmative Action Debate

The recent debate here is about the gaokao system (bonus points for ethnic minorities, lower cutoffs for poor students, and so on)

Is it fair to take race and ethnicity into account in hiring or college admissions? To answer this, consider the three reasons supporters of affirmative action give for doing so: correcting for bias in standardized tests, compensating for past wrongs, and promoting diversity.

Supporters: it comes down to the university’s own purpose. Ranking first in grades isn’t enough on its own; many factors work together as a whole, and ethnicity, like athletic talent, can be one of them

Then what is the difference between racial discrimination and affirmative action?

This is Dworkin’s answer. Racial exclusion under segregation rested on the contemptible idea that one race may be inherently worth more than another. Affirmative action involves no such prejudice; it only claims that, given how important diversity is in key professions, being Black or Hispanic “may be a socially useful trait.” A rejected applicant like Hopwood may not find this distinction satisfying, but it does carry real moral weight. The law school is not saying Hopwood is inferior, or that the minority students admitted in her place deserve an advantage she doesn’t. It is only saying that racial and ethnic diversity in classrooms and courtrooms serves the school’s educational purpose. Unless pursuing that purpose somehow violates the rights of those who lose out, disappointed applicants can’t rightly say they were treated unfairly.

What is unsettling about cutting the link between justice and moral desert is hard to put into words. The idea that jobs and opportunities are rewards for those who deserve them runs deep, maybe deeper in the US than elsewhere. Politicians keep saying that those who “work hard and play by the rules” should get ahead, and they encourage those who have lived the American Dream to see their success as a mirror of their virtue. At best this belief is a mixed blessing, and its persistence is an obstacle to social stability. The more we see our success as our own doing, the less responsibility we feel toward those who fall behind.

Here is the rejection letter the law school should have sent Hopwood: Dear Ms. Hopwood: We regret to tell you that your application has been rejected. No offense is meant: we don’t look down on you, and we even think you are as deserving as those we admitted. It is not your fault that you arrived in a society that happens not to need what you have to offer. The people admitted instead of you don’t deserve their places either, and earn no praise for the traits that got them in. We are simply using them, and you, as means to a broader social purpose. We know this is disappointing. Just don’t add to the disappointment by thinking the rejection says something about your inner moral worth. We are sorry, in one sense: it’s too bad you happened not to have the traits society happened to want when you applied. Better luck next time. Sincerely yours…

And here is the admission letter, short on flattery, that a philosophically blunt law school might send to the applicants it accepts: Dear Successful Applicant: We are pleased to tell you that your application has been accepted. It turns out you happen to have the traits society needs right now, so we plan to put your qualities to work for society by training you in law. Congratulations, but not because you deserve credit for the qualities that got you in (you don’t). Congratulations in the way a lottery winner is congratulated: you were lucky to have the right traits at the right time. If you accept, you will eventually be entitled to certain benefits for using your potential this way, and that is worth celebrating. You, or more likely your parents, may want to celebrate in a deeper sense, as if the admission reflected your gifts, or at least the conscious effort you put into developing them. But the idea that you deserve the fine character behind that effort is just as doubtful, because your character depends on many lucky circumstances you can’t claim credit for. Desert doesn’t apply here. All the same, we look forward to seeing you this fall. Sincerely yours…

A letter like this might ease the sting for those who were rejected and deflate the arrogance of those who got in. So why do universities still send (and applicants still expect) admission letters full of congratulations and praise? Perhaps because universities can’t fully let go of the idea that their role is not only to advance certain purposes, but also to honor and reward certain virtues.

Chapter 8: Aristotle’s Political Philosophy

Aristotle’s political philosophy rests on two central ideas 1.Justice is teleological. To define rights, we have to work out the telos (the purpose, end, or essential nature) of the social practice in question. 2.Justice is honorific. To reason or argue about the purpose of a practice is, at least in part, to reason or argue about which virtues it should honor and reward.

For Aristotle, justice means giving people what they deserve, giving each person their due. In general, we think “equal things should go to equal persons.” Suppose we are handing out flutes. Who should get the best ones? Aristotle’s answer: the best flute players. He reasons from the purpose of a good to the right way to distribute it, which is an example of teleological reasoning. [“Teleological” comes from the Greek telos, meaning purpose, end, or goal.] Aristotle holds that to decide how a good should be distributed, we have to look at the end, or purpose, of the thing being distributed.

What Is the Purpose of Politics

When we talk about distributive justice today, we mostly mean the distribution of income, wealth and opportunity. For Aristotle, distributive justice is not mainly about money but about offices and honors. Who should have the right to rule? How should political authority be distributed?

So before we can say how political rights and authority should be distributed, we have to look into the purpose, or end, of politics. We have to ask: “What is the political association for?”

Today we no longer think politics has a particular, substantive purpose; we think it should make room for the many goals citizens may hold. Isn’t that why we have elections, so that people can choose, at any time, the purposes they want to pursue together? Giving the political community a purpose in advance would seem to take away citizens’ right to decide for themselves, and it risks imposing values not everyone shares. Our reluctance to give politics a particular end reflects our concern for individual rights. We see politics as a procedure that lets each person choose their own ends.

Aristotle doesn’t see it this way. For him, the purpose of politics is not to set up a framework of rights that is neutral among ends, but to form good citizens and cultivate good character. Any polis that is truly a polis, and not just in name, must devote itself to promoting goodness. Otherwise a political association sinks into a mere alliance… Otherwise the law, too, becomes a mere covenant… “a guarantor of men’s rights against one another,” instead of being what it should be: a rule of life that makes the members of the polis good and just.

Aristotle criticizes the two main regimes that claim political authority: oligarchy and democracy. Oligarchy says the rich should rule the polis; democracy says free birth is the only criterion for citizenship and political authority. But both overstate their claims, because both misunderstand the purpose of the political community.

Oligarchy is wrong because the political community does not exist only to protect property and promote prosperity; if it did, property owners would deserve the biggest share of political authority. Democracy, for its part, is wrong because the political community is not only about letting the majority live as it likes. What Aristotle calls “democracy” is what we would call majoritarianism, and he rejects the idea that the purpose of politics is to satisfy the preferences of the majority.

Both overlook the highest end of the political association, which for Aristotle is cultivating civic virtue. The end of the state is not “to provide an alliance for mutual defense… or to ease economic exchange and promote economic intercourse.” For Aristotle, politics is about something higher: learning how to live a good life. Its purpose is to let people develop their distinctive human capacities and virtues: to deliberate about the common good, to gain practical judgment, to share in self-government, and to care about the fate of the community as a whole.

“A polis is not an association for residence on a common site, or for the sake of preventing mutual injustice and easing exchange.” These conditions are necessary for a polis, but not sufficient. “The end and purpose of a polis is the good life, and the institutions of social life are means to that end.”

If the political community exists to promote the good life, what does that mean for handing out offices and honors? Aristotle treats politics the way he treats flutes: he reasons from the purpose of the good to the right way to distribute it. “Those who contribute most to this kind of association” are those with outstanding civic virtue, the people best at deliberating about the common good. Those with the greatest civic excellence, not the richest, the most numerous or the best-looking, deserve the most political recognition and influence.

Since the end of politics is the good life, the highest offices and honors should go to people like Pericles, who have the greatest civic virtue and are best at seeing what the common good is. Property owners should have a say, and the views of the majority should count for something; but the greatest influence should go to people of good character and judgment, to decide whether, when and how to go to war with Sparta.

People like Pericles (and Abraham Lincoln) deserve the highest offices and honors not only because they will make wise policies that leave everyone better off, but also because the political community exists, at least in part, to honor and reward civic virtue. Giving public recognition to those who have shown civic excellence serves the educative role that the good city plays. Here again we see how the teleological side of justice is bound up with its honorific side.

Chapter 10: Justice and the Common Good

So far we have explored three approaches to justice:

The first says justice means maximizing utility or welfare—the greatest happiness for the greatest number.

The second says justice means respecting freedom of choice—either the actual choices people make in a free market (the libertarian view), or the hypothetical choices people would make in an original position of equality (the egalitarian view).

The third approach says justice involves cultivating virtue and reasoning about the common good.

As you might expect, I favor the third approach. Let me try to explain why. The utilitarian approach has two flaws. First, it turns justice and rights into a matter of calculation instead of principle. Second, by putting all human goods on a single, uniform scale of value, it treats them as interchangeable and ignores the differences in quality between them. Theories based on freedom solve the first problem but leave the second. They take rights seriously and insist that justice is more than calculation. They disagree about which rights should outweigh utilitarian considerations, but they agree that some rights are fundamental and must be respected. Yet once they have marked off the rights that deserve respect, they take people’s existing preferences as given and don’t ask us to question the preferences and desires we bring into public life. On these theories, the moral worth of the ends we pursue, the meaning of the lives we lead, and the quality of the life we share all lie outside the realm of justice. This seems to me a mistake. We can’t build a just society just by maximizing utility or by securing freedom of choice. To build a just society, we have to reason together about the meaning of the good life, and create a public culture that can hold the disagreements that will inevitably come up. It would be very appealing to find a principle or procedure that could justify, once and for all, whatever distribution of income, rights and opportunities comes out of it. Such a principle, if we could find one, would spare us the mess and conflict that arguments about the good life are bound to stir up. But these arguments can’t be avoided. Justice is inescapably a matter of judgment. Whether we are arguing about bailouts, the Purple Heart, surrogate motherhood, same-sex marriage, affirmative action, military service, CEO pay, or the right to use a golf cart, questions of justice are tied to competing ideas of honor and virtue, pride and recognition. Justice is about distributing things rightly, and it is also about valuing things rightly.