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Social and Political Philosophy
This innovative, well-structured series is for students who have already done an
introductory course in philosophy. Each book introduces a core general subject
in contemporary philosophy and offers students an accessible but substantial
transition from introductory to higher-level college work in that subject. The
series is accessible to non-specialists and each book clearly motivates and
expounds the problems and positions introduced. An orientating chapter briefly
introduces its topic and reminds readers of any crucial material they need to
have retained from a typical introductory course. Considerable attention is given
to explaining the central philosophical problems of a subject and the main com-
peting solutions and arguments for those solutions. The primary aim is to educate
students in the main problems, positions, and arguments of contemporary phi-
losophy rather than to convince students of a single position.
John Christman
Second edition published 2018
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 Taylor & Francis
The right of John Christman to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Routledge 2002
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Christman, John Philip, author.
Title: Social and political philosophy : a contemporary
introduction / John Christman.
Description: 2nd Edition. | New York : Routledge, 2017. | Series:
Routledge contemporary introductions to philosophy | Includes
bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017017460 | ISBN 9781138841604 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781138841659 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Political science—Philosophy. | Social
sciences—Philosophy.
Classification: LCC JA71 .C485 2017 | DDC 320.01—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017017460
ISBN: 978-1-138-84160-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-84165-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-69332-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman and Gill Sans
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Case to Consider 74
Notes on Further Reading 75
4 Distributive Justice 78
Distributive Justice and Equality 80
The Chimerical Allure of an Equal Opportunity Principle81
Libertarianism83
The Self-Ownership Argument for Capitalist Property Rights84
Libertarianism Based on Liberty Alone87
Utilitarian Approaches to Economic Justice 90
Rawlsian Distributive Justice 92
Varieties of Egalitarianism 97
From Equality to the Welfare State 103
Chapter Summary 105
Case to Consider 107
Notes on Further Reading 108
5 Toleration, Pluralism, and the Foundations of Liberalism 111
The Canons of Liberalism 112
Liberalism and Neutrality 115
The Perfectionist Challenge 119
Utilitarian Liberalism: Perfectionism in Disguise? 123
The Response of Political Liberalism 126
Liberalism, Public Discourse, and Democracy 131
Chapter Summary 133
Case to Consider 135
Notes on Further Reading 135
This book is intended to serve two related purposes. The first is to provide a
text that would be useful in general survey courses on contemporary social and
political philosophy or as a companion text for more focused classes on related
topics. The series in which this book appears is designed to provide mid-level
undergraduate textbooks for students with some background in philosophy but
new to this particular subject matter. With this in mind, this book contains an
admittedly selective account of current trends in (for the most part) Anglo-
American social and political philosophy over the last 30 years or so. The book
is designed to serve as a main text but also could be paired with primary material
from the authors discussed.
The second aim of the book is to provide a general rendering of that material
for an audience outside of academia, though one with some familiarity with
philosophical methods and topics. The general reader should not need any spe-
cialized background in the history of philosophy or political theory to benefit
from this work, though a taste for abstract theorizing may well be a
prerequisite.
The central organizing principle of the book is to lay out in some detail the
guiding paradigm of political philosophy that currently dominates the field—
the “liberalism” inherited from the European enlightenment that undergirds the
constitutional democracies of the modern west—and to discuss particular con-
troversies within that paradigm. It then places that paradigm under scrutiny and
raises deep questions about the methodology, fundamental value commitments,
and philosophical presuppositions of that view. In this way, the book marks what
I take to be a profound shift in political philosophy (and perhaps Anglo-American
philosophy generally) toward asking fundamental questions about its own methods
and bases. Questions about “mainstream" philosophy from various quarters—from
feminists, critical race theorists, post-modern theorists, and others—have caused
many philosophers to rethink the standard techniques of philosophical analysis
that have dominated philosophy (in the Anglophone tradition) since the
seventeenth century. This book reflects the rumblings of that challenge by con-
sidering some of the basic questions raised, for political philosophy at least, from
those perspectives.
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
But this book is still very much an account of what counts as the “mainstream"
of political philosophy. And while chapters are given over to critiques concerning
feminism, race theory, and the like, the bulk of the book is a discussion of theo-
ries that do not mention gender, race, class, ongoing political struggles, or any
of the considerations that these critics want to place at center stage. The reason
for this is that, despite the author’s sympathy with many of these calls for a new
orientation in social philosophy, it would be inaccurate to write an introduction
to the current state of the art in this field without reflecting the actual material
that makes up this current practice. Perhaps another, even more valuable, book
would be entitled “A Revisionist Introduction to Current Political Philosophy”
where such a reorientation is carried out. But the present work has different
aims.
Similarly, the book reflects whatever biases, narrowness, and exclusionary
tendencies are found in current academic philosophy in the English-speaking
world, where “analytic” philosophy is the reigning method. For example, two
broad areas of political thought that are not covered here—again because they
have not been (yet?) fully brought into the parameters of most current work in
the field—are American pragmatism (which some recent analytic philosophers
have claimed inspiration) and the legacy of “Critical Theory” that emerged from
the Frankfurt school in Germany and the United States (except for brief discus-
sions in Chapter 8 and references to the work of Jürgen Habermas). Both these
traditions offer profound insights into questions of political philosophy, and
theorists currently working in this area would do well to include them to a greater
degree in their discussions.
But again, for the general reader who is interested in current trends in political
thought and for the student learning about mainstream social philosophy, the
constellation of topics included here offers, I hope, the best overview of that
landscape. I also hope, however, that the methodological and theoretical chal-
lenges to this mainstream raised here will make the boundaries of that landscape
less secure.
Acknowledgments
The writing of this book benefitted greatly from a number of persons to whom
I would like to express my thanks. My friends and colleagues in both the Phi-
losophy and Political Science Departments at Penn State University have been
particularly helpful through the process of writing this book, as have been
numerous other dear friends who always expressed interest and support and made
valuable suggestions on various aspects of the book. An anonymous reader for
Routledge gave me excellent suggestions (and induced me to rewrite a section
of Chapter 3 in a way that greatly improves the discussion), and the editorial
staff for the press was immensely helpful throughout the (alas extended) process.
Lori Watson read the entire manuscript and offered countless valuable sugges-
tions, both stylistic and substantive; I want to express my gratitude for her time
and thoughtfulness. Thanks also to Ella Campi and Daniel Campos for their help
with gathering bibliographical materials. Finally, as with all of my endeavors,
Mary Beth Oliver has been a tireless supporter and a constant inspiration. I thank
her here deeply (and again).
I should also add that Routledge put the first edition through a thorough
review, and several anonymous readers supplied copious comments that helped
me greatly in revising and expanding this volume. I often simply followed their
advice and/or used their suggestions. I here express my general gratitude to them
for these ideas and for the care they took in evaluating the earlier edition. And
I am grateful to Andrew Beck at Routledge for his support and patience during
the process of developing this edition.
1 Introduction
This is an exciting but challenging time to be studying social and political phi-
losophy. Conflicts in the world have opened up new fault lines among people
that make the search for common principles and legitimate social institutions
much more fraught. In both academia and in the streets, confrontations have
arisen that question the very terms with which we might try to justify social
practices, political power, and governmental institutions. Deep and perplexing
questions about how to conduct critical social inquiry itself are being raised both
by theoreticians and activists responding to new dimensions of social conflict.
When reason itself is the subject of political critique, it is sometimes difficult
to know where to start.
For an earlier generation, debates in political philosophy centered on the clash
between socialism and capitalism, framed (oversimply) as a conflict between
valuing (economic) equality and valuing (political and economic) liberty. How-
ever, in the current landscape, especially since the fall of the Soviet Union, the
model of a constitutional democracy with regulated but competitive economic
markets has come to predominate political understanding in most parts of the
world, including most former communist regimes. But this does not mean that
such a framework is therefore acceptable uncritically—quite the opposite—for
what political philosophy has now focused on are the fundamental evaluative
presuppositions of that framework, and the perhaps controversial principles about
individual citizens, social life, and sources of value that such a model presup-
poses. Moreover, various conflicts within and between societies have revealed
seemingly intractable cultural, religious, and ideological differences that threaten
the very possibility of peaceful, stable, and just social relations. When examined
against this backdrop, liberal democracy faces questions about its very founda-
tions, raised in a way that forces us to inquire into the ultimate legitimation of
political power itself.
Moreover, increased social mobility, broader cultural awareness, and economic
globalization have made traditional assumptions of insulated, homogeneous
societies in political thought quite suspect. Societies have become manifestly
multicultural, containing (or at least finally recognizing) a more fully diverse
population. Increased international communication has made interaction between
cultures and traditions more robust as well. This interaction has thrown into
2 Introduction
doubt centuries-old assumptions about the uniform identity, interests, and needs
of human beings; theorizing about “the rights of man” without inquiring into
the different kinds of “men” (people) being conceptualized is now highly
controversial.
More generally, in many areas of the academic world the presuppositions of
“modernity”—the cultural and philosophical orientation of the Western world
since the seventeenth century—have come under basic challenge. Post-modernism
in its various forms has raised fundamental questions about meaning, power, the
self, and the possibility of human knowledge that strike at the heart of the
worldviews that inform political and social theory. Post-modern critiques are
also often couched in explicitly political terms, where a focus on models of
rational thought, language, and selfhood that are presumed in the justifications
of human rights and justice is replaced by complex pictures of the dynamics of
power, decentered agency, unstable meanings, and the like. And such power
dynamics are alleged to structure self-consciousness, conceptual schemes, and
philosophical traditions, undercutting the pretensions of objectivity and detached
rationality assumed in them and in the theories of justice they support. Even
when thinkers conclude that such critical challenges ultimately fail, the force of
these critiques have nevertheless changed the terms in which political thought
is often couched. In this way, political philosophy is engaged with debates about
the fundamental elements of thought, language, and identity.
Social-political philosophy is the study of people living in societies, governed
by institutions and practices that mold, constrain, and in many ways constitute
the lives they lead. It is not merely an explanatory or descriptive enterprise, such
as sociology or (most parts of) political science, though it freely utilizes such
material; nor is it a historical recounting of how such institutions and practices
arose, though again, historical material is directly relevant to it. Rather, political
philosophy interprets and evaluates these phenomena. It constructs theoretical
accounts of the meaning and justification of social practices and institutions. Its
main task is normative, asking whether a particular social organization is good
or right or justified. However, it also includes the interpretive, asking how such
an organization should be best understood so that such normative questions can
be asked most clearly.
Social and political philosophy focuses on individuals in social settings and,
more particularly, on those norms and laws that shape citizens’ lives. Its subject
matter is “people,” whether viewed as individuals or as groups, but people
engaged in norm-guided practices and living within rule-governed institutions.1
The most important of such institutions is the state, with its various legal, politi-
cal, and economic functions, but many other institutions govern the way people
live in societies and hence are the proper focus of political philosophy. One
could say, then, that at the most general level political philosophy is simply the
study of power, of the institutional centers of social power that shape and con-
strain the lives of people living together.
Central to political philosophy are such questions as these: what is the ultimate
justification of political authority in an area to begin with; what is the most fair
Introduction 3
and just distribution of material goods and social benefits for a society (and to
what degree should inequalities in wealth that capitalist economic markets pro-
duce be left uncorrected); how tolerant must the state be toward dissidents and
subversive groups; and to what extent should the state attempt to promote the
good of its citizens, as opposed to simply protecting their liberty to pursue their
own good (even if they predictably fail in doing so)? These last issues lead to
more abstract but also more fundamental questions of political philosophy. When
we theorize about what is just in a society, do we automatically (and problemati-
cally) assume only one kind of citizen to whom such justice will apply, surrepti-
tiously leaving out of account those who do not fit the mold? What priority
should be given to the rights and liberties of individuals in a society as opposed
to the protection of communities and cultures, especially when those aims con-
flict? Can we formulate a set of principles of justice for a society in a way that
abstracts from historical and continuing injustice found in that society, injustice
such as racism and sexism? And do the methods that we use to philosophize
about all these issues themselves mask patterns of exclusion, a privileged posi-
tion of thought, or an unsustainable reliance on objectivity and reason? These
are the sorts of questions we will examine here.
However, centralized political institutions are not the only focus of analysis,
as social attitudes, values, and practices of the citizens of such states must also
be interrogated in a manner separated from a focus on government and law. Less
formal norms and expectations shape people’s lives in ways that are often much
more immediate and dramatic than is the case with laws: the nature of family
life, sexual attitudes and mores, a sense of social standing and recognition, are
deeply relevant to whether people living in a society feel well served by that
society. While I will suggest that the analyses of social practices themselves—
social as opposed to political philosophy—ultimately must be linked to questions
of the justice and legitimate authority of state institutions, we must also look at
social attitudes and practices themselves as a separate area of study.
This book will focus on contemporary social and political philosophy as
developed in Europe and the North Atlantic states, and primarily in the Anglo-
American philosophical tradition. It will tend to utilize the language and style
of the so-called “analytic” approach to philosophy, one usually contrasted with
the “continental” tradition. But it must be emphasized that political philosophy
lately has increasingly blurred this distinction, where the ideas of Hegel, Marx,
Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Foucault (considered in the “continental” tradition)
are placed alongside arguments by Locke, Mill, and Rawls (names associated
with the analytic mode). Nevertheless, while the broad title of this book may
indicate otherwise, it should be clear that this will be a survey of recent philo-
sophical work in a particular intellectual tradition, for the most part framed by
a particular philosophical method.
But this geographical and cultural localism should not prevent us from asking
pointed questions about its own privilege: why does a book purportedly survey-
ing contemporary political philosophy say nothing at all about theoretical reflec-
tions on politics from places like Japan, India, Africa, or South America? I won’t
4 Introduction
try to answer that question itself, though our discussion of racism and sexism
in Chapters 7 and 8 will refer to literature from other traditions. But I can say
here that it is a question that is itself one of political philosophy: why are
social institutions like universities arranged in a way that topics labeled in
general ways (“history of philosophy” sans phrase) actually exclude many
traditions of philosophy that occur outside of European and North Atlantic
traditions?
This book is structured in line with a certain shift in emphasis in (Anglo-
American) political philosophy that has occurred in the last 30 years or so.
Attention has moved from asking questions about political principles from within
the framework of what I will call the “liberal paradigm” to raising questions
about the legitimacy of that paradigm itself. For example, through much of the
1970s and ’80s, philosophers focused a great deal on such questions as what
economic justice amounts to and what the legitimate basis of political obligations
is.2 But the various positions on these issues were articulated within a framework
where the rights and interests of autonomous individuals, conceived as undif-
ferentiated by race, gender, culture, or communal connection, and generally
motivated by the rational pursuit of self-interest, were the assumed subject of
the principles under debate. And while questions of economic justice and the
like continue to be important, political philosophers have also begun asking more
basic questions about the assumptions lying behind this framework, questions
relating to the identity and motivations of the people assumed within it, the
metaphysical orientation presupposed by it, and various facts about social dynam-
ics, psychology, and institutional structure taken as true. In this way, controversies
over such things as the separation of church and state or affirmative action are
no longer necessarily seen as merely disputes within an accepted tradition of
political thought—one where the rights and liberties of the autonomous individual
are always paramount for example—but as disputes about the neutrality and
inclusiveness of that tradition itself.
Interestingly enough, the work of John Rawls—arguably the most important
political philosopher in the Anglo-American tradition in the twentieth century—
manifests the shift I am describing. Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (Rawls 1971)
is often credited not only with bringing up to date the tradition of enlightenment
liberalism that inspired, for example, the U.S. Constitution, but also with provid-
ing a framework for the discussion of political principles that had direct relevance
to actual controversies in the real world (such as the distribution of wealth in
society).3 Many philosophical controversies were played out within the framework
Rawls’s work represented, a view that saw all questions of obligation and right
as fundamentally focused on the free and equal individual person. But things
began to change in the 1980s when thinkers began questioning the basic assump-
tions underlying that model. Spurred greatly by the “communitarian” challenge
to liberalism, as well as the work of feminists, race-theorists, and other philoso-
phers aligned with ongoing political struggles in the real world, questions were
raised about whether arguments over political principles presupposed an overly
narrow conception of the persons on whose behalf those principles were meant
Introduction 5
of the liberal model in the third chapter (and in Chapter 4), but first, some
preliminaries.
I will refer to the paradigm of political philosophy being discussed here as
(interchangeably) “the liberal democratic model,” “philosophical liberalism,”
“political liberalism” (though this last term will be narrowed in scope in Chap-
ter 5), and simply “liberalism.” It is a general approach to the justification of
political authority that sees such authority as resting fundamentally on the rights
and choices of individual citizens, whose rational autonomy and freedom to
choose for themselves are respected by such authority. In particular, liberalism
is the view that the most fundamental role of the state is to secure justice for
citizens and not, for example, promote their flourishing or their virtue. Protecting
their rights and regulating social relations among them is the first priority of
political institutions, not trying to make sure such citizens live fulfilling or fully
successful lives.
So the protection of individual liberty, in particular the liberty to form and
revise one’s own conception of the good life, is fundamental. This means that
religious freedom, freedom of association, speech, and privacy, will have basic
importance. This priority is based on the equality of status that all citizens enjoy
in regimes organized by liberal principles. This equality of moral status is attrib-
uted to all persons because they are rational, autonomous agents. Therefore, the
concept of the “person” or “citizen” assumed in liberal theory is that of an
independent rational agent, one who has the capacity to reflect upon and alter
her choices and to form commitments with others (and with traditions, religions,
families, and nations) by way of this rational reflection.
In short, the liberal state is committed to a kind of neutrality regarding its
citizens’ pursuit of their own good. This is because such neutrality is required
by the more basic principle that every citizen is autonomous and of equal moral
standing and so deserving of respect. And given that citizens pursue (autono-
mously) diverse conceptions of value, the state violates that respect if it is not
neutral concerning those conceptions. This is why the liberal state is also com-
mitted to a principle of tolerance, tolerance for any value system or set of beliefs
that citizens may hold, as long as their pursuit of that value system does not
inhibit similar pursuit on the part of others. The question that we will have to
consider, however, is how to draw the line defining the limits of this tolerance:
for example, should liberal states tolerate those who advocate sexist or racist (or
any non-liberal) policies?
This relates to a question that will snap constantly at the heels of liberal theo-
rists: whether a liberal state can maintain the kind of neutrality to which it is
committed in light of the extreme diversity of its population. The increasing
globalization mentioned in the beginning of this chapter makes the assumption
of a culturally homogeneous population no longer tenable. Along with increasing
multiculturalism comes greater plurality of values, ways of thinking, social
structures, religious faiths, and political outlooks, many of which include views
that are diametrically opposed to certain aspects of a liberal culture. A trenchant
issue for liberalism will be whether it can retain its supposed neutral stance in
Introduction 7
light of such heterogeneity, or whether liberal philosophy itself is just one more
contender in the arena of political disagreement and not the impartial, objective,
framework within which all such disagreements can be worked out that it pretends
to be.
Indeed, what we are calling liberal political philosophy here emerged in
Europe out of the intellectual milieu of the Enlightenment, where faith in the
power of rational thought and the search for universal objective principles of
knowledge, science, and morality predominated. In the shadow of the Protestant
reformation and the development of the Cartesian worldview came the idea that
individuals themselves must be the source of judgments of what is good or right
for them (within severe limits of course). So political authority, formerly con-
sidered to rest on the divine right of monarchs working within a larger natural
(and divine) order, came to be thought of as resting ultimately on the consent
of the governed, expressed most notably by the idea of a social contract.
The social contract approach to political authority initially was meant to
manifest a conception of justice that conformed to the strictures of natural law,
where such law includes fundamental reference to the natural rights of individu-
als (such as the rights to life, liberty, and property). Further, this whole picture—
that political authority is grounded in a social contract—was considered to be
determined by objective reason and applied universally. It is not just Englishmen
or French people that ought to be governed by a social contract while citizens
of other nations can be dominated by a king or queen, but humanity as such
should be governed only by rulers authorized by those they govern in each nation
state. Reason told us so.
So liberalism arose out of a framework in which it is presumed that moral
conclusions can rest on ineluctable reason and apply to all human beings. Of
course, in their original versions, these political theories were never really meant
by their defenders to apply to all persons. Women, enslaved peoples, indigenous
victims of colonial expansion, non-property owners, and others were explicitly
left out of the social contract. So the claim to universalism, and perhaps also
the “objectivity” with which these conclusions were reached, might be brought
into serious question. The issue that remains for more recent versions of the
liberal view is this: given the history of exclusion in defining the groups to which
these supposedly “universal” liberal principles applied, can such principles ever
claim to be universal and objective?
However, before proceeding to considering such controversies, let us be clear
about some preliminary matters that will be of relevance throughout these
discussions.
Preliminaries I: Method
The humanities in general, and philosophy in particular, has no “method” securely
its own, comparable to the experimental and statistical methods of the sciences.
However, one might be able to detect an amalgam of “standard” modes of
approaching philosophical issues (moral and political issues in particular). The
8 Introduction
reigning “method” for moral and political philosophy, at least in the Anglo-
American analytic school of philosophy, directs that such thought proceeds
basically by analyzing the meanings of key concepts (such as “freedom,” “rights,”
or “neutrality”) and combining that analysis with logically structured arguments
showing the implications of particular positions using those concepts. Reference
to our “intuitions” is also thought to be important in assessing specific moral
principles based on the practical implications that can be drawn from them. So,
for example, when a principle implies that killing innocent people is sometimes
permissible we quickly reject this position for having counterintuitive implica-
tions. In both moral and political philosophy, then, much attention is given to
interpreting and analyzing key concepts, constructing arguments built up from
them, and scrutinizing the implications of views for their intuitiveness. (However,
as we will see, intuitions alone are not the sole measure of plausibility for a
position.)
This method of argumentation yields a structure with the following compo-
nents: a set of basic, axiomatic ideas, along with analysis of the key terms
constituting those ideas; a set of deductive inferences that lead to normative
conclusions whose implications in the real world are acceptable intuitively. Such
a model of philosophical method, simplified as it is, is most at home in analytic
philosophical traditions, where emphasis is placed on clarity of meaning of key
concepts and the testability of the hypotheses put forward (the resemblance to
scientific method here is not accidental). But it is important to keep in mind
various limitations of this method, not only as seen from alternative philosophical
traditions such as continental philosophy but also from within analytic philosophy
itself. The most obvious point to make about relying on (deductive) arguments
like this is that they will at best show that some conclusion or criticism is true
only if the axiomatic first principles from which it is derived, as well as any
other premises imported into the argument, are also true. But this just pushes
the inquiry back to those premises and first principles themselves. It might have
once been thought (and is still thought by some) that substantive normative
conclusions can be drawn from “first principles”—claims that no reasonable
person could reject—so that such conclusions are consequently irresistible. But
the belief that “first philosophy” of this sort is likely to succeed is very dubious,
since there are many reasons to think that basic claims (upon which such philo-
sophical systems are built) are not indubitable or even meaningful by themselves,
independent of their place in a system of thought and belief that includes the
conclusions they imply (Larmore 1996: 4–16). This is especially so in political
philosophy, where the assumption of shared starting points, universal values, and
undeniable basic propositions is often precisely what is at issue.
And of course argumentation of this sort never really tells the whole story:
there are always unmentioned assumptions lurking in the background whose
truth is required for the argument’s cogency. Such background assumptions may
concern contingent facts about the world to which the conclusions are meant to
apply, or the psychological characteristics of the people governed by them, or
the sociological facts assumed for the societies they cover. This is not to say
Introduction 9
concepts such as “father” that embody a number of normative ideas about power
and responsibility that can be grasped only by knowing about various social
categories and norms. (Such assumptions would help explain the alarm we would
feel upon learning that the son in question was only one year old.)
However, one connection between so-called facts and values that continues
to be seen as valid is that expressed by the principle “ought implies can.” The
force of this claim, which really lies in its converse, is that no obligation—no
“ought”—can validly apply unless the action in question is at least possible. So,
if one cannot carry out the action, then it is not the case that one ought to do
so (the obligation is not really valid). In this way, all normative claims carry
with them some presumption about what is possible, and that presumption rests
on any number of descriptive or factual claims about the world and the people
in it. In this way, once again, we see the difficulty of keeping completely separate
the worlds of factual investigation from that of normative or philosophical
analysis.
Another important function of philosophical reflection that is not often stressed
in standard approaches is that of interpretation, where phenomena or concepts
are explicated not to reveal their necessary and sufficient conditions (their defini-
tions) but rather to creatively produce new ways of understanding them. Instead
of analyzing concepts as freestanding entities, the project of interpretation pro-
duces a rich explication of ideas and phenomena understood as part of a larger
context, similar to the project of interpreting a literary text. While admittedly
not objective in the manner of a scientific investigation (whose “objectivity” is
itself a matter of debate), interpretive activity brings forth new, but not ground-
less or unfounded, revelations about activities, ideas, and practices. At home in
the “hermeneutic” tradition of philosophy (a school most closely associated with
the philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer but that arises out of the hermeneutic
techniques of literary scholarship), interpretive analysis is unavoidable in any
rich theoretical understanding of political phenomena (Rorty 1991). For this
reason, room must be made in social and political thought for what we could
call “critical hermeneutics,” namely the practice of interpretive analysis of situ-
ations and the language we use to describe them. Unpacking the normative
presuppositions functioning in discourse, as well as critical investigation into the
language used in and applied to social situations, will be a centrally important
activity for us. As we will discuss further in Chapter 2, social situations and
dynamics can be subject to multi-layered analysis in order to better reveal the
power dynamics and social pathologies in many ongoing practices. Certain
gestures, for example—a raised fist, a song of protest, a street demonstration—
have an expressive power that cannot be reduced to the true-or-false propositions
that one might deduce from them. And insofar as understanding such gestures
is part of understanding the mechanics of democratic action, then a fully worked-
out political theory will have to make use of interpretive reflections of this sort
that go beyond conceptual analysis and deductive argumentation.4
Indeed, the analysis of concepts cannot take place outside of the real world
of politics—where meanings of key terms are fixed in part by the historical
Introduction 11
backdrop against which they are used, the practices in which they function, the
institutional sense given to them, and the like. For this reason, political theories
that formulate principles that are meant to be stable, clear, and unchanging in
their meaning and applications may appear suspect. Because of this suspicion,
some theorists will insist that, in the end, the meaning and scope of principles
must be the result of real-world, ultimately political, discussion and debate rather
than detached philosophical theorizing (Young 1990, Habermas 1996a, 1998,
Benhabib 1996, Fraser 1997, and Geuss 2008). All that political theory can do
is specify the necessary conditions for such discussion to take place.
In addition to putting forward an influential political theory, Rawls also
developed an approach to the methodology of political theorizing that we should
mention here, one that departs from merely analyzing concepts or constructing
foundationalist arguments from axiomatic first principles. This method is called
“reflective equilibrium.” This approach demands that we evaluate a given moral
or political view by testing it against our “considered judgments at all levels of
generality” (Rawls 1999a: 286–302; cf. also Rawls 1971: 19–21, 48–51). That
is, we consider the general coherence of the abstract principles comprising the
theory in terms of their internal relations and general surface plausibility (given
the arguments supporting them); we then examine the particular judgments that
such principles imply about specific cases in the world; and we consider the
entire package for its overall acceptability, considering its abstract plausibility,
internal coherence, and “intuitive” adequacy in particular cases.
So reflective equilibrium is a coherentist account of the validity of norma-
tive claims. In calling it coherentist, I mean to contrast it, on the one hand,
with various forms of “foundationalism,” in that it does not demand that we
proceed from indubitable first principles and derive conclusions via deductive
argument from them alone. It can also be contrasted with “intuitionism,”
which demands that we merely look at the street-level judgments in isolation.
But notice that this means that normative claims are always subject to review
in light of new understandings either of the moral principles themselves or
aspects of the world to which the principles are meant to apply, aspects that
may change or be seen in a new light by some powerful new interpretation
of them. In this way, we see again both the role that interpretation will play
in political theorizing and also how interdisciplinary the whole enterprise will
be. It also indicates that political judgments are seldom a hard and fast affair
but rather always open to reconsideration in light of new insights or
information.
In addition to presenting this philosophical method, Rawls also made an
assumption about the society to which his liberal political theory was meant to
apply that has been pointedly questioned in recent years as masking a potential
distortion in mainstream philosophy, namely that the people in that society can
be assumed to generally comply with the principles and laws supported in the
theory. That is, we imagine such principles as directed at societies that are not
marked by social ills, injustices, and a history of victimization and violence.
This assumption, marking what he called “ideal theory,” was necessary in order
12 Introduction
to clearly specify the nature of justice, so that we could then turn to the problems
caused by past and ongoing injustice in the real world.
This seemingly innocent assumption by Rawls has now been the focus of
much controversy and debate, as some have argued that proceeding in this way
blinds us to aspects of society that theories of justice must be sensitive to, such
as the entrenched disadvantages suffered by particular groups due to racism,
sexism, cultural oppression and so on. Looking directly at those problems and
engaging in philosophical interpretation and critique has been the subject of
various forms of non-ideal theory which avoids abstracting from actual social
realities in the way that Rawls and most other analysts typically did. In Chapter 7,
we will discuss this controversy in the context of discussing racism, but it is
relevant generally to the methodology of political philosophy on most any topic.
This rather detailed place-setting about method was necessary not just to be
clear about what will be going on in the coming pages, but also to introduce
ideas that will become relevant when we consider challenges to the liberal model
of political philosophy. For many of these challenges will question not only the
substantive principles of liberalism (the priority of individual rights for instance)
but also the methods by which political principles are justified and evaluated in
that tradition. Relying on detached reflection on concepts and arguments, where
the historical location or personal characteristics of the person reflecting is not
mentioned, will be the focus of critique for those who think that such philosophi-
cal reflections inevitably conceal the more basic power dynamics driving the
defense of theories and policies in question. (See Chapters 7, 8, and 9 for
discussion.)
she can impose such principles on herself, and hence manifest autonomy in doing
so (she is “self-governing”). Kant argued that every rational person, by virtue
of the structure of her reason and freedom (autonomy), is bound by certain
universal principles that she is able to apprehend and impose upon herself,
principles manifested in the Categorical Imperative that says that one should act
only if one can consistently will one’s intended act (one’s “maxim”) to be a
universal law for everyone (Kant 1785/1983: 14).
Second, Kantian morality views persons themselves as fundamentally valu-
able, as the seat of dignity and moral worth, so that no act or policy can be justi-
fied if it ignores or exploits some person in order to achieve some valuable goal
(the end never justifies the means). The second version of the Categorical
Imperative states that one must never treat humanity in oneself or others as a
mere means, only as an end in itself (ibid.: 36). In this way, Kantianism is fun-
damentally anti-paternalist—one can never interfere with a reasonable person
for her own good—and anti-utilitarian, since it is never right to sacrifice the
rights of one person for the greater good of others.
The duties not to use people, not to interfere with them against their will,
and the like that Kantian ethics sees as fundamental can best be expressed in
terms of the basic rights that all human beings enjoy, rights they hold simply
in virtue of their humanity and not based on any contract or convention. In this
way, doctrines of “human rights” are at home in Kantian theory (though a moral
theorist can justify the importance of protecting individual rights on other
grounds as well). This aspect of Kantian theory makes apparent how the domi-
nant strand of liberal political philosophy—where the protection of individual
rights is fundamental and the state is enjoined not to promote the good of citizens
against their will—rests on Kantian assumptions, as we will see. The funda-
mental obligation to respect persons as rational agents able to choose their
moral values for themselves is at once a Kantian demand as well as a paradig-
matically liberal one.
The third approach to morality that has dominated philosophical thinking in
the analytic tradition is what has come to be called “virtue ethics” or “virtue
theory.” Arising from the work of Aristotle, virtue theory begins with the concep-
tion of the ideal human life, one where a person’s enjoyment of moral happiness—
where she flourishes in the fullest sense of that term—is the fundamental moral
good. The view then defines a variety of character traits, called virtues, that are
thought to be necessary for the person to lead such a flourishing life, hence to
achieve that good. Institutions and social practices can be evaluated, then, accord-
ing to how they allow the development and accord with the demands of such
virtues. The highest achievement of a state will be to ensure that its citizens
flourish in this sense.
Moreover, human beings on this view are understood as fundamentally social
beings whose happiness can be understood only in terms of the social context
in which they live and grow. This may add a degree of relativism to the view,
such that what counts as courage in ancient Greece is different from what cour-
age demands in contemporary America. For this reason, as we will see, virtue
Introduction 15
ethics will provide the spring board for specifically non-liberal viewpoints, in
particular for communitarianism (see Chapter 6).
In addition to these standard views, moral theorists have been pressing alter-
native perspectives, motivated often by basic criticisms of these traditions. For
example, spurred by feminist critiques of both Utilitarianism and Kantianism,
“care ethics” has been put forward as better expressing the experiences of, and
the elements of life associated with, women. Care ethics stresses the importance
of protecting relations with others and places in a secondary position universal
obligations to do one’s objective duty or to maximize utility overall. (Some have
seen care ethics as somewhat congenial to a certain understanding of virtue
theory—see, for example, Stocker 1987.) What is especially distinctive about
this approach to morality is its insistence that one’s obligations are thoroughly
contextual and local, and that no amount of detached, impartial, and impersonal
theorizing can capture the specific nature of our moral needs and directives (see
Noddings 1984 for discussion). A mother has a set of obligations to a particular
child or children, for example, and those obligations are subtly shaped by the
contingencies of both (all) their lives. So one can notice straight away the sharp
contrast with, say, Kantian moral philosophy, in that the focus is on our relational,
affective, and contextually embedded moral commitments rather than our capacity
for detached reflection and individual choice (our rational autonomy). (We will
discuss this view in greater detail in Chapter 8.)
Other approaches to morality will be mentioned as we proceed. Such alterna-
tives will often be part of the critical motivation that guide challenges to liberal
political philosophy, so that not only the substantive politics but also the whole
approach to moral philosophy that liberalism presupposes will be questioned.
For this reason, as I mentioned, doing political philosophy these days involves
one in some rather basic (and hence very complex) philosophical conundrums.
Part I is concerned with laying out the contours of the liberal approach to
political philosophy, both methodologically and in terms of substantive principles.
We will proceed by considering various controversies that arise from within the
liberal paradigm, controversies that reveal its fundamental commitments and
(perhaps) weaknesses. The first such controversy involves the basic question of
political authority: how can centralized political power be justified at all in a
way that does not violate the basic moral claims of individual people whose
lives are shaped by that power (Chapter 3)? Included in this examination will
be a look at the social contract tradition of liberal thought which claims that
only when individuals have somehow agreed to the existence and pattern of
operation of political authorities are they acceptable.
Next, the issue of how to distribute society’s resources will be addressed in
Chapter 4. If people are considered as having fundamentally equal moral status,
as they are in the liberal tradition, what mechanism of property rights and eco-
nomic justice should be adopted in a just society? It is here that we will take
up the questions of distributive justice that, as I mentioned, have dominated the
philosophical landscape in the 1970s and 1980s, pitting free-market libertarian
views against radically egalitarian stands. More recently, however, there has been
much discussion of how to cash out the “equality” that must be recognized in
all citizens: even if we grant that all people are owed respect for their basic
equality, this still leaves open the question “equality of what?”
In each of these cases, however, the overall liberal approach to political
philosophy will be used as a paradigm within which these more particular ques-
tions can be raised. But we then will consider in more depth the nature of that
paradigm—the basic contours of liberal theory that, in the fundamental challenges
to that model, receive so much critical scrutiny. Central to our inquiry will be
the liberal claim that the fundamental obligation of the state is to secure justice
for its citizens while remaining neutral concerning their individual conceptions
of moral value and the good life. This will be challenged by “perfectionists”
who claim that advancing the good for people should be the primary aim of
governments, with protecting their rights (specified in principles of justice) merely
part of that project. This discussion will bring the fundamental commitments of
liberalism into sharper focus (Chapter 5).
It is here that liberalism will begin to be put on the defensive, particularly
concerning its allegedly neutral and universal applicability. Now in some recent
variations of the liberal approach, philosophers have specifically given up on the
universalist pretensions of classical liberalism. That is, instead of insisting that
the moral values supporting liberal democratic regimes are universal principles
grounded in reason and so applicable in principle to all peoples at all times in
history, these thinkers claim that liberalism is justified only as a “political” device
for establishing stable and peaceful relations among diverse people and groups,
but who exist at a certain point in history. The principles of liberalism, then,
such as the priority put on protecting individual liberty, equal opportunity, and
the reduction of unjustified inequalities, are said to be justified as a useful set
of principles around which some consensus can be gained among an increasingly
Introduction 17
structure thought and value, including the thoughts and values reflected in that
very philosophical method. In addition, the liberal view will be charged with
complicity in a more general pattern of thinking typical of the post-Enlightenment,
European worldview (that is, of modernity). The reliance on rationality, both in
assumptions about citizens and in its own philosophical methods, will be chal-
lenged by those who claim that rationality is itself an illusion—one resting on
an outdated faith in the settled nature of language, in the clear-cut meanings of
signs and symbols, and in the ability of people to understand their own motives
and thought processes. Once it is understood just how open-ended, variable, and
fuzzy meanings are (as are the thought processes, language, and motivations that
inform people’s choices), the philosophical method that liberalism rests upon
will be shaken. And liberalism will be forced to confront the profoundly variable
nature of identity and thought: it will once again have to confront the phenom-
enon of difference.
Finally, we will consider a departure from standard liberal models not so
much as a radical critique of those models but as an expression of the worry
that they are fundamentally incomplete. Liberal philosophy almost entirely focuses
on the legitimacy and institutional structure of the state, or, as Rawls puts it, the
institutions of the basic structure of a single society. But increasingly, important
questions in social and political thought are being raised concerning trans- and
inter-national settings. Questions of international relations, migration and refu-
gees, actions of sub-state entities such as militias and insurgency groups, and so
on have come to the fore both in philosophy and in discussions of world events.
Questions such as the viability and neutrality of a regime of universal human
rights, the ethics of policing borders and controlling migrating populations (as
well as attending to their needs), and overall global distributive justice must
therefore be confronted (Chapter 10).
Along the way through all of this abstract theorizing, I hope to explain how
disagreements at this level directly affect decisions of policy and public contro-
versy in everyday politics. I do this both by beginning each chapter with a refer-
ence to a relatively recent event to orient our thinking and by closing each
chapter with a hypothetical “Case to Consider.” The prompts at the top of each
chapter are meant to situate the abstract discussions that follow in the context
of actual events and social issues, while the cases are more hypothetical (though
realistic as well). These are presented both as examples to discuss and as test
cases for the particular policies that abstract theories may be committed to sup-
porting. For example, the liberal model posits a strict priority for the protection
of individual freedom (such as the freedom of speech) over the promotion of
other interests (such as promoting greater racial harmony). Does this mean that
codes on college campuses forbidding “hate speech” are always unjust? Or does
this mean that insofar as liberal theory implies that such codes are unjust, liberal
theory is itself biased and parochial? As we will see, debates such as this one
will make salient disagreements about the fundamental principles of social and
political institutions, where principles such as freedom of expression come into
direct conflict with the goal of promoting a healthy community atmosphere of
Introduction 19
mutual respect. In all these cases, discussion can center on both the question of
whether some dominant view supports the policy in question and whether, given
that it does support such a policy, that view is therefore problematic. In this way
the technique of testing theories by the method of reflective equilibrium can be
put to use.
As with any finite survey of such a complex array of material such as this,
the focus will admittedly be highly selective. As already mentioned, the philo-
sophical world being covered in these pages is that of the European (particularly
English-speaking) and North American philosophical traditions, and, even within
that locale, only certain strands are examined. Given that, many powerful philo-
sophical movements and issues will be left out. This is inevitable, though no
less unfortunate. Charges of narrowness of the scope of this study, then, will be
inevitable and understandable. My only response, in addition to mentioning
obvious limitations both of space and of my own abilities, is that I want to make
questions of exclusion, artificial claims of universality, and presumptions of
objectivity themselves central to the discussion, so that readers of this survey
will be afforded the theoretical space to raise questions about the structure of
the work itself, its own exclusionary structure and silent (and perhaps silencing)
background assumptions.
Notes
1 In general, the “people” we refer to here are adults, though of course the interests and
rights of children, and of families within which they are raised, provide a separate
and often neglected topic for social and political philosophy. See Chapter 2 for a brief
discussion of this issue.
20 Introduction
2 Indeed, some theorists have claimed that the defining focus of mainstream political
philosophy is on questions of distributive justice. (See Young 1990: 15–24).
3 Prior to Rawls’s work, ethics and political philosophy in the analytic tradition was
very abstract, focusing, for example, on the structure of moral language rather than
the plausibility of particular positions concerning substantive political issues.
4 This kind of critical hermeneutics takes place in other fields as well, such as what is
generally thought of as cultural studies. For this reason, it should be noted, political
philosophy has become increasingly interdisciplinary, utilizing work from the social and
behavioral sciences as well as the other humanities as part of its overall enterprise.
2 Social Philosophy and the Road
to the Political
During the presidential election in the U.S. in 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton
was quoted as saying that the supporters of her opponent, Republican Donald
Trump, included what she called a “basket of deplorables.” This phrase referred
to groups that openly espoused racist, Islamophobic, and xenophobic views,
according to their own self-avowals. Implicit in this charge is the claim that a
leader of a party and, subsequently a nation, must disavow association with
people who openly support attitudes and values that are in direct conflict with
the basic principles of a constitutional democracy. That is, even short of breaking
the law (which all would condemn), racist, religious, and other forms of intoler-
ance in society must be resisted, or so it was argued. The question this raises,
among others, is what the critical response should be toward attitudes and prac-
tices that might be legally tolerated but that are otherwise highly problematic
and what our philosophical approach should be to criticizing them.1
***
The title of this book refers to social and political philosophy, but what is the
difference between the two? What specifically distinguishes social philosophy from
ethics and moral philosophy, on the one hand, and political theory, on the other?
Is there a continuum from relatively individualized normative reflection (ethics)
to socially contextualized judgments (social philosophy) to analysis of institutions
of coercive power (political philosophy)? I think there is, but I also think that no
single such category of philosophical activity can be separated from the others.
Ethics is, in the end, continuous with political philosophy since solutions to ethical
questions cannot be fully articulated unless reference is made to the legitimacy of
the background institutions that structure the social settings in which those ques-
tions are raised, for those background factors shape and limit the options open to
us. I will repeatedly mention these connections as we proceed, but the reader
should also always be reflecting on the relation between social and political
practice.
Differentiations among these normative realms, then, are always to some
degree in question. We will nevertheless make them here if only to focus atten-
tion on some questions and controversies that are of pressing importance in the
22 Social Philosophy and the Political
current landscape. In this chapter, then, we will focus on what I take to be para-
digmatically social philosophy, temporarily abstracted from both individual ethi-
cal decision making and political principles attached to state institutions. The
latter, however, will be the focus of most of the rest of the book, although its
dependence on evaluating social practices of the sort we look at here will be a
theme we will revisit.
So we can separate, for now at least, the question of what the law should be
(and what its legitimacy is founded upon) from the question of what social
attitudes and practices ought to be. This latter question and its corollaries will
be the subject matter of social philosophy as I am using the term here. When
someone says “we live in a sexist society” they may be referring to unfair laws,
but more likely they will be talking about how certain social habits and behaviors
reveal misogynistic attitudes that make women’s lives unacceptably worse than
they should be, whether or not the proper response to such social ills would
directly involve changing that society’s legal and political institutions.
Further, it will be a mistake to simply lump such a critical endeavor into the
category of “ethics” or “moral philosophy,” for these latter phrases refer para-
digmatically to the reflections and actions of individual agents. Social practices,
as I will describe them, involve relatively larger patterns of activity and socially
defined habits (what Pierre Bordieu calls habitus) that cannot be reduced to the
separate actions of individual moral persons.4
Therefore, what follows is a brief discussion of a select group of controversies
pitched at the level of social criticism, leaving open—for now—whether the
authority of state (legal) action should be invoked in responding to the phenomena
in question. These overviews are meant merely to exemplify debates in social
philosophy and hopefully spur further examination of these and related issues.
Indeed, how and by whom certain social terminology is used will matter for
its acceptability and meaning. Members of certain groups who have been histori-
cally denigrated may claim the very terms used in that denigration and claim as
their own, using them to refer to each other within the group. But non-members
using those same terms cannot rid them of the socially derogatory baggage they
bear; such use by out-group members, then, can remain insulting. The word
“nigger” in American English (and elsewhere) may have this quality. Black
persons might use this term in ways that convey no direct racist connotations,
but white persons using that term virtually always do. And some such social
appropriation of previously derogatory language can become so complete that
the terminology becomes acceptable by everyone. The word “queer,” for example,
was taken to be a directly insulting word referring to homosexuals at one time,
where now it is a perfectly respectable name for some academic programs in
major universities!5
Similarly, one might identify with the suffering and injustice that have been
visited upon the group to which you belong, such as your race or ethnicity. But
in many locales (past and present) that injustice is not publicly acknowledged,
or at least its implications are ignored or suppressed in public discussion. In the
case of racism in the U.S., for example, emanating from but continuing long
after the existence of slavery as an institution, many have argued that an “epis-
temology of ignorance” has dominated public and academic discourse, in that
the legacy of slavery and the Jim Crow era (and the current conditions and
practices that bear their marks) is often skipped over or underplayed (Sullivan
and Tuana 2007).
We can call the general phenomenon being described here, following Miranda
Fricker, as “epistemic injustice,” namely situations where the terms of the domi-
nant discourses of a society may either contain ways of speaking (and hence
accepted modes of knowing) that reflect and contribute to unjust disadvantages
for certain groups. Fricker describes two main types of epistemic injustice. The
first is “testimonial injustice,” where a member of a marginalized group is not
granted the status as a reliable speaker in an exchange, either a formal proceed-
ing or a conversation. When a woman’s opinion is sloughed off as insignificant
or subject to “mansplaining,” she, qua woman in a sexist world, is refused equal
testimonial status in public discourse.
The second type of epistemic exclusion is “hermeneutic injustice.” This is
slightly more complex, in that it involves the semantic terrain of the given public
discourse—what concepts and terminology is available to express one’s interests
or explain one’s experiences. Fricker gives the example of being subject to sexual
advances in professional settings before there was a language of sexual harass-
ment to use to resist such behavior, or even describe what was happening and
why it was problematic. If a woman, say, received unwanted sexual attention in
her workplace, she may have had to endure it as part of the accepted culture,
not knowing how to object to it or raise the issue. This was because there was
no terminology to describe it, and hence no normative framework into which
such an objection would fit (Fricker 2007: Chapter 7).
Social Philosophy and the Political 27
The examples these theorists give to make the case for epistemic injustice in
such instances are relatively unassailable. However, it should be noted that dur-
ing any moment of social transformation, when the needs and experiences of
“silenced” groups are emerging into a newly developing language that gives
them voice, there are always opponents to that transition who will claim that
complaints about previously unacknowledged injuries are merely idiosyncratic.
Such resistance now seems almost quaint because we are looking at it from the
vantage point of a completed social transition (well, completed in some instances
at least, far from complete in others). From this vantage point, the resistance to
those who called for a richer language to capture the victimization of women in
the workplace, racial minorities as fully recognized equal members of a discursive
community, and so on, is seen as antiquated. But remembering such resistance
raises the more pointed question of how one tells when a call for new terminol-
ogy for a social experience of victimization is actually a valid expression of a
group interest or a personal difficulty being masked as a social complaint. Clearly
not every call to revise language in light of a particular spokesperson’s demand
need be heeded. So what are the criteria for determining this?
One response to this question is that any claims on the part of otherwise
marginalized and disadvantaged groups that their interests are not being expressed
adequately should get presumptive weight in our appraisal of the situation. For
example, when leaders of the black community in the U.S. began suggesting
that various older terms of reference for them, such as “Negro,” should be
abandoned and that terms like “African American” better capture their status as
minority (but equal) citizens, then the proper response is to defer to these claims.
Groups for which there is a clear record of victimization and injustice should
be given deference in claims that public understanding of their histories, experi-
ences, and interests have been (and are being) stifled by dominant terminology
and linguistic practices. This further underscores the point made earlier that
members of oppressed groups can be given social permission to use otherwise
derogatory language to refer to each other that out-group members do not have.
A similar line of questioning can be addressed to the project of exploring epis-
temologies of ignorance. Clearly, the studies of how the privileges of dominant
groups blind them to the histories of injustice that people of color experience are
crucially important both in pointing to the particular subject matters that have been
suppressed by dominant modes of discourse and accepted bodies of “knowledge”
and in theorizing about how power and knowledge interact in the public sphere to
produce and maintain these modes of ignorance and collective amnesia. However,
the cases evinced in such discussion—the victimization of African Americans by
white dominance in places like the U.S., for example—are, to my mind at least,
uncontroversial. Calling the suppression in question “ignorance” implies a truth
being denied, and in these cases there is little to object to that label.
However, the language of “ignorance” is inapt if, in other cases perhaps, it
is not settled whether the narratives and histories being denied are suppressed
“truths” or simply matters of disagreements concerning interpretation and evalu-
ation. We need further guidance about what counts as unjust suppression of
28 Social Philosophy and the Political
actual social histories and experiences rather than a possibly contentious claim
about how to interpret or understand that history.6
To both questions raised about the project of exposing epistemological injus-
tice, at least one general response can be advanced. That is, inclusion of a
multiplicity of voices in public and academic discussions of the topics in question
is crucial, and in fields (philosophy is a clear case of one!) where people of
color, women, disabled people, and other marginalized groups are woefully
underrepresented, there should be a robust suspicion that dominant modes of
conceptualizing social facts and social problems are truly capturing the experi-
ences and interests of everyone in society as they themselves understand them.
This question of contentious social interpretations reflecting unjust power
arrangements in a society will re-emerge in the following section, where we
consider various arguments concerning the ubiquity of pornography in society
and the ethical and political questions this raises.
Pornography
The question of whether graphic representations of sexual activity ought to be
regulated, controlled, or suppressed altogether is a seemingly ageless one. For
most of the history of such a question, the controversy has been whether states
should be able to (legally) suppress obscene or indecent material simply because
of its obscenity or indecency. The central question always was, then, how to
define or describe precisely the nature of the material that was to be banned, or
what counted as “obscene.”7 In recent decades, however, this issue has taken a
new shape as feminists have left aside the question of obscenity and argued that
pornography harms and/or offends women. The claim has been that the produc-
tion, dissemination, and use of pornographic material is a significant part of the
patriarchal culture we live in and hence contributes to the victimization of women.
Debates surrounding these claims have been fraught and complex, as other
self-described feminists have claimed that critics of pornography were simply
engaging in overly moralistic reasoning and that many of the images, films, and
so on that were the subject of initial feminist critique can and were used by
women in empowering ways, or at least in ways that should not be impeded by
state or social action.8
This controversy has largely been about whether sexually explicit material
can be made the subject of legal action or control because of the ways that
people, women in particular, are harmed or offended by it. However, as I will
suggest, debates about the status of pornography need not extend only to ques-
tions of what should be done in the legal arena. Before discussing those issues,
though, some distinctions should first be made to avoid much of the crosstalk
that has often plagued debates of this sort.
First, there is much discussion of what is meant by “pornography.” But in
asking what “pornography” refers to, we should separate two issues, namely the
classification question—what counts as pornography—and what we could call
the location question—what aspect of the broad and complex world we could
Social Philosophy and the Political 29
»On toivottavaa, että se aika pian koittaa, jolloin voin niistä tehdä
tilin venäläisille puoluetovereille».
Ja porvareilla on miljoonia.
(1918).
KARTTULAN TALLUSKYLÄN
TOVERIEN GRAMOFOONI
(1919)
MIKSI KAPINALLISESSA
VUOHENSALOSSA UUNIT
KAADETAAN
Lukijani:
(1919.)
PANNAAN PANTUJA
(1919.)
VENÄLÄISTEN KÄRSIMYKSET
— Tietysti Venäjällä.
Me huudamme riemuiten:
— Väärin! Väärin!
(1919.)
ISOÄIDIN TOIVOMUS
(1919.)
KUTKA PELASTIVAT LENININ?