Justice: What's the Right Thing to do? Episode 10: Justice, Community and Membership

What is politics about?

Part 1. The Good Citizen

For Aristotle, politics is about forming character塑造性格. It’s about cultivating the virtue of citizens培养公民的美德. It’s about good life. The end of state, the end of the political community, he tells us in Book Three of the Politics is not mere life, it’s not economic exchange only, it’s not security only, it’s realizing the good life.

“Amy polis （城邦，都市国家）which is truly so called, and is not merely one in name, must devote itself to the end of encouraging goodness （致力于提高美德）. Otherwise, political association sinks into a mere alliance. （否则，政治的联合便只是一种同盟而已）”—Aristotle

“Law becomes a mere covenant, a guarantor of man’s rights against one another, instead of being — as it should be — a way of life such as will make the members of a polis good and just.（法律便只是一种契约，法律便只是个人权利的保证人，而不是使城邦中人变得善良、正直的一种生活方式。）”— Aristotle

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

That’s the purpose of politics, of polis, then Aristotle says, we can derive from that the principles of distributive justice; the principles that tell us who should have the greatest say, who should have the greatest measure of political authority（谁该拥有最大程度的政治权力）.

Aristotle’s answer: Those who contribute most to the purpose of the community are the ones should be most rewarded.

But why does Aristotle claim that political life, participation in politics is somehow essential to living a good life? Why isn't it possible for people to live perfectly good lives, decent lives, moral lives, without participating in politics?

Aristotle gives two answers to that question. He gives a partial answer, a preliminary answer, in Book One of the Politics where he tells us that only by living in a polis and participating in politics do we fully realize our nature as human beings. Human beings are, by nature, meant to live in a polis. Why?

It’s only in political life that we can actually exercise our distinctly human capacity for language, which Aristotle understands is the capacity to deliberate about right and wrong, the just and the unjust.

And so, Aristotle writes in Book One of the Politics, that the polis, the political community exists by nature and is prior to the individual(城邦，政治共同体先于个体而自然存在着). Not prior in time, but prior in its purpose. Human beings are not self-sufficient, living by themselves, outside a political community.

“A man who is isolated, who is unable to share in the benefits of political association, or who has no need to share, because he’s already self-sufficient, such a person must be either a beast or a god.” — Aristotle

We only fully realize our nature, fully unfold our human capacities, when we exercise our faculty of language(要实现天性，全面发挥我们的能力，就必须锻炼我们的语言能力)，which means when we deliberate with our fellow citizens about good and evil, right and wrong, just and unjust. But why do we only exercise our capacity for language in a political community?

Aristotle gives a second part, a fuller part of his answer in the Nichomachean Ethics. There he explains that political deliberation, living the life of a citizen, ruling and being ruled in turn, sharing in rule, all of this is necessary to virtue.

Aristotle defines happiness not as maximizing the balance of pleasure over pain, but as an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue. And he says that every student of politics must study the soul, because shaping the soul is one of the objects of legislation in a good city.

But why is it necessary to live in a good city in order to live a virtuous life? 为什么为了过上好的，有道德的生活，必须生活在一个好的城市里？Why can’t we just learn good moral principles at home or in a philosophy class or from a book?

Aristotle says virtue isn't acquired that way. Virtue is only something we can acquire by practising, by exercising. It’s the kind of thing we can only learn by doing.

Part 2 Freedom vs. Fit

Rawls rejects teleological accounts of justice, because he says that teleological theories of justice threaten the equal rights of citizens.

How does Aristotle address the issue of individual rights and the freedom to choose?

If our place in society is determined by where we best fit, doesn't that eliminate personal choice? What if I am best suited to do one kind of work, but I want to do another?

One of the most glaring objections to Aristotle’s views on freedom is his defence of slavery as a fitting social role for certain human beings.

If we can't agree on what the ends or the goods of our shared public life consist in, how can we base justice and rights on that?

Modern political theory takes that worry about disagreement over the good as its starting point, and concludes that justice and rights and constitutions should not be based on any particular conception of the good or the purpose of political life, but should, instead provide a framework of rights that leaves people free to choose their conceptions of the good, their own conception of the purpose of life. (让人们能自由选择自己所认为的善)

Kant and Rawls say precisely because people disagree in pluralist societies, about the nature of the good life, we shouldn't try to base justice on any particular answer to that question. So they reject teleology, they reject the idea of tying justice to some conception of the good. What’s at stake in the debate about teleology, say Rawlsian and Kantian liberals is this:

If you tie justice to a particular conception of the good, if you see justice as a matter of fit between a person and his or her roles, you don’t leave room for freedom, and to be free is to be independent of any particular roles, or traditions, or conventions that may be handed down by my parents or my society.

In order to decide as between these two broad traditions, whether Kant and Rawls are right, we need to investigate whether the right is prior to the good (权力是否优先于善) and we need to investigate what it means to be a free person, a free moral agent? Does freedom require that I stand toward my roles, my ends, and my purposes as an agent of choice? Or as someone trying to discover what my nature really is?

#PoliticsVirtue