Justice: What's the Right Thing to do? Episode 11: Liberalism: Political or Philosophical?

[What is Law for?]

For Aristotle:

The whole point of law, the purpose of polis, is to shape character, to cultivate the virtue of citizens, to inculcate civic excellence, to make possible a good way of life.

For Kant:

The purpose of law, the point of a constitution is not to inculcate or to promote virtue. It’s to set up a fair framework of rights within which citizens may be free to pursue their own conceptions of the good for themselves.

We see difference in their theories of justice and underlying these differences are two different accounts of what it means to be a free person.

[What is a free person?]

For Aristotle:

We are free insofar as we have the capacity to realize our potential. And that leads us to the question of fit. Fit between persons and the roles that are appropriate to them. Figuring out what I’m cut out for. That’s what it means to lead a free life, to live up to my potential.

For Kant:

Freedom is the capacity to act autonomously. Freedom means acting according to a law I give myself. Freedom is autonomy. Part of the moral force of the view of Kant and Rawls consists in the conception of the person as a free and independent self capable of choosing his or her own ends. The image of the self is free and independent. It offers us a powerful, liberating vision, because what it says is that as free moral persons, we are not bound by any ties of history, or of tradition or of inherited status that we haven’t chosen for ourselves.We’re unbound by any moral ties prior to our choosing them. We are the authors of the only obligations that constrain us.

Part 1 The Claims of Community

The communitarian critics argue that Kantian and Rawlsian liberalism cannot account for certain moral and political obligations, that we commonly recognize and even prize.And these include obligations of membership, loyalty, solidarity and other moral ties that may claim us for reasons that we can’t trace to an act of consent.

Alasdair MacIntyre gives an account what he calls a narrative conception of the self (叙事式自我观).

Alasdair MacIntyre: one of the world’s most influential living moral philosophers.

“Man is ….essentially a storytelling animal. That means I can only answer the question ‘what am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question of ‘what story or stories do I find myself a part?’”

— Alasdair MacIntyre

MacIntyre says, once you accept this narrative aspect of moral reflection, you will notice that we can never seek for the good or exercise of the virtues only as individuals.

“I am never able to seek for the good or exercise the virtues only qua individual… we all approach our own circumstances as bearers of a particular social identity. I am someone’s son or daughter, a citizen of this or that city, I belong to this clan, that tribe, this nation.” —Alasdair MacIntyre

“Hence, what is good for me has to be the good for someone who inhabits these roles. I inherit from the past of my family, my city, my tribe, my nation a variety of debts, inheritances, expectations and obligations.” — Alasdair MacIntyre

“These constitute the given of my life, my moral starting point. This is, in part, what gives my life its moral particularity. ” —Alasdair MacIntyre.

We can’t make sense of our lives, not only as a psychological matter, but also as a moral matter in thinking what we are to do without attending to these features about us. （如果不考虑我们的这些特征，我们就不知道我们生活的意义，不论是从心理上还是道德上。）

MacIntyre recognizes that this narrative account, this picture of the encumbered self (受限制的自我), puts his account at odds with contemporary liberalism and individualism.

From the standpoint of individualism, I am what I myself choose to be. I may biologically be my mother’s daughter, but I can’t be hold responsible for what she did, unless I choose to assume such responsibility. I can’t be held responsible for what my country does or has done, unless I choose to assume such responsibility.

“the story of my life is always embedded in the story of those communities from which I derive my identity.” — Alasdair MacIntyre

MacIntyre holds that the self can’t be detached, shouldn’t be detached from its particular ties or membership, history, story narrative.

Part 2: Where Our Loyalty Lies

Do we owe more to our fellow citizens than to citizens to other countries?Is patriotism a virtue or a prejudice for one’s own kind? If our identities are defined by the particular communities we inhabit, what becomes of universal human rights? One of the worries underlying objections to the idea of loyalty or membership as having independent moral weight is that it seems to argue that there is no way of finding principles of justice that are detached from conceptions of the good life as they may be lived in any particular community(我们生活在特定的群体中，对什么是美好生活，看法不一样). Is justice simply a creature of convention, of the values that happen to prevail in any given community at any given time?On the liberal conception, moral and political obligations arise in one of two ways （道德与政治义务经由两种方式产生）.

There are natural duties that we owe human beings as such, duties of respect for persons qua persons (将人视以人加以尊重的义务). These obligations are universal.

Then as Rawls points out, there are also voluntary obligations, obligations that we owe to particular others insofar as we have agreed whether through a promise or a deal or a contract.

Now, the issue between the liberal and communitarian accounts of the self is, is there another category of obligation or not?

The communitarian says there is a third category that might be called obligations of solidarity or loyalty or membership.

The most common examples (of obligations of membership) are ones to do with the family - obligations of children to parents. Another example is patriotism.

#CommunitarianismNarrativeSelf