Justice as a Political and Not Metaphysical Concept

In his seminal essay, “Justice as Fairness,” John Rawls proposes a political conception of justice. He is attempting to delineate a notion of justice, that while it has moral elements, is not relying on larger moral conceptions (Rawls 225). This notion of justice is intended to be practical, political, and uncontestable by citizens in a modern democratic state. It is not a metaphysical or epistemological conception of justice, but a practical one (Rawls 230). The way he attempts to do this is by triangulating an understanding of justice in between two positions, what he calls “the liberties of the moderns” and the “liberties of the ancients” (Rawls 227). The liberties of the moderns are the basic and familiar rights to contemporary democratic citizens, e.g. freedom of thought, the rule of law, basic civil rights to person and property. The liberties of the ancients are more positive in that they focused on the values of public life. While conceding that this framework is “stylized” and “historically inaccurate” (Rawls 227), it is nonetheless useful for framing the originating perspective of justice as fairness. He provides two main principles, but the focus of this essay will be on the second innovation, which is the idea that these principles are more appropriate for being a democratic citizen. In other words, this essay will defend Rawls’s justificatory strategy of constructing a conception of democratic justice based on the acceptability of certain institutional forms. Unlike most of the other authors we’ve read in this course, Rawls does not focus on what is absolutely true; instead, in a sense, he focuses on what is useful. The thesis of this essay is that such a practical effort to ground political conceptions is the only plausible way to arrange a contemporary democratic society with deep value pluralism about metaphysical issues. In order to defend the perspective of Rawls, we will first outline its justification. Then we will discuss competing views about the relationship between the metaphysical and the political in Plato, Hobbes, and Nietzsche.

Rawls aims to look at the historical public political culture in order to find a “shared fund of implicitly recognized basic ideas and principles” (Rawls 228). He aims at extricating from a complicated political landscape, ideas that people already implicitly agree with and use that as a basis for justifying political life. There remains the fact that there might still be substantive disagreement, however. So, Rawls goes further: he then argues that we must find a principle of public agreement, so that we can understand and mitigate value conflict in a fair way (Rawls 229). Society s first understood as a “system of fair social cooperation between free and equal persons” (Rawls 229) and so the question then must be to explore the institutions which make that framework between justice and social equity possible. In order to be able to maintain such a system, we must avoid deeply contested metaphysical conceptions and focus only on political ones; in some senses, philosophy as “the search for truth about an independent metaphysical and moral order” (Rawls 230) must be abandoned. In order to defend this claim, this essay will evaluate attacks from different directions that claim either that all ethical reasoning is impossible or that ethical reasoning must have the qualities of truth which Rawls rejects as unnecessary. The premise underlying this essay is that contemporary society has plural values and people have real metaphysical disagreements that cannot be reduced to misunderstandings. In such a context, the only plausible way to construct a society is to found it based on principles that assume disagreement and aim to set up practical institutions.

The first attack comes from the very pinnacle of the values of the ancients in Plato’s Euthyphro. In this text, Plato (in the form of Socrates and his interlocutor Euthyphro) seems to be arguing that differences of opinion are on face impossible. He reacts with astonishment that there could be a situation where there is something that is both hated by the gods and loved by the gods. The dialogue itself is about the question of the definition of piety, but the application is broader. Socrates finds flaws with all the definitions of piety that Euthyphro offers, mostly on the basis that they are insufficiently universal. He reveals this methodological commitment in many ways, but he does so very clearly when he asks “ Is not piety in every action always the same? and impiety, again- is it not always the opposite of piety, and also the same with itself, having, as impiety, one notion which includes whatever is impious?” (Plato). The only definition of piousness that Socrates will accept is one that can apply to all persons and all actions, throughout all of time. It must be a definition that is reliant on the essence of piety; this is the only way he will accept the legitimacy of such an accusation. This is radically distinct from Rawls’s approach, which preemptively places the sort of answer that Socrates’ seeks off the table. He has no desire to find something transcendentally true for all times and persons. The value of this politically is obvious even in this dialogue. The context of this dialogue is that Socrates has been charged with impiety and will eventually be convicted and killed for it. Perhaps there is injustice there, but it is not an injustice that can simply be solved by the Socratic method of questioning every disagreement until it becomes consensus. There not only appears to be no natural agreement to achieve but, perhaps more importantly for Rawls, such a system of politics would be wildly impractical. The question cannot be what is absolutely true and to use Socrates's methods for determining such truth would leave society moribund. Unlike a philosophical dialogue, a question of policy cannot simply end because one of the interlocutors is in a hurry and must run off; there must be an answer. Insofar as this is the case, the value of Rawls’s sidelining of metaphysical questions becomes clear.

The next avenue of criticism might be from an author like Hobbes. Hobbes, on face, would seem to be compatible with Rawls in many ways. Hobbes appears to be organizing his ideal society around the idea of a covenant. He speaks a great deal about the laws of nature, but nonetheless, his justice is primarily institutional, and the question is about the nature of the institution that would be capable of leading to a just society. In his words,

The only way to establish a common power that can defend them from the invasion of foreigners and the injuries of one another, and thereby make them secure enough to be able to nourish themselves and live contentedly through their own labors and the fruits of the earth, is to confer all their power and strength on one man, or one assembly of men, as to turn all their wills by a majority vote into a single will. (Hobbes 79)

This, like Rawls, seems to take as given the idea that people will fundamentally disagree and that the only way to resolve the questions is by looking at the institutional form of a society. The locus of difference is (at least) twofold, however. First, Hobbes makes his argument from a fundamentally metaphysical perspective. The Leviathan originates with him discussing the nature of sense, imagination, and other metaphysical conceptions dependent on a very particular understanding of perception and causation (Hobbes 4). He moves from such foundational concepts to more explicitly normative conceptions of natural law, where he argues that the first law of nature is to “seek peace and follow it” (Hobbes 60) and the second law of nature is that an individual must defend himself or herself. Those are far more substantive agreements than Rawls wants to make. The second main point of disagreement is, interestingly, the opposite. Hobbes concludes from his substantive and normative evaluation of human existence that there can be no basis for society other than the will of the sovereign. Citizens of a commonwealth must give up their right to self-government entirely (Hobbes 79). Rawls, on the other hand, believes that there are more substantive restraints on political power that can be derived from the existing consensus and the basic premise that all persons are free. On both points of disagreement, Rawls seems to be making the better argument. Beyond even the historical fact that Hobbes’s physics is now known to be preposterous, founding ethical claims on epistemological ones is a losing proposition. The level of knowledge necessary to even evaluate such a debate is one that cannot be presumed to be shared by all citizens. Additionally, there is a sense in which it shouldn’t matter politically if two people disagree about the precise nature of causality. There is no practical reason why that should affect the framing of institutions. As to the second disagreement, it seems clear that there must be a way of understanding political justice that doesn’t just resolve to functional totalitarianism, like Hobbes. If we are to take seriously that people are free, Rawls’s method of determining the qualities necessary to maintain that seems far preferable to Hobbes abandoning the notion of freedom at all.

The last challenge comes from Nietzsche. Nietzsche, like Rawls, is deeply suspicious of metaphysical notions of truth. He does not believe in a metaphysical realism, which attempts to determine a reality that is definitive and objective (Cinelli 35), instead focusing on a perspectival understanding of everyone’s truth. In Nietzsche’s typically poetic language,

Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer coins. (Cinelli 26)

That is to say, truth is nothing more than a consensus, at best, a metaphor for individual perspectives and power. He questions the value of truth at all, asking why we even really want truth? (Cinelli 39). He appears to be claiming that the desire for truth is simply that of the dogmatic metaphysicians, and there is no need for truth in a well-lived individual life. Nietzsche goes far further than Rawls in this discomfort with metaphysics, however. In Cinelli’s words, for Nietzsche “Absolute, stable truth is denied. There are no ‘facts’” (Cinelli 42). All that is left is a question of preserving life. He appears to be denying that even simple sensory observation can have a truth value, with everything always filtered through a strong individual perspective. This is a subjective understanding of truth that cuts far deeper than Rawls, insofar as it would seem to deny the possibility of any intersubjective understanding being understood as true. Even basic facts would be questionable; I could not say someone is wrong to think the sky is purple, because my view of the sky being blue is filtered through my own perspectival lens every bit as much as their view is. While in a sense there is similarity, this seems fundamentally at odds with Rawls’s desire to provide a context for politics that would allow for a foundation that people could agree to. It also seems implausible; societies are remarkably stable, certainly more stable than Nietzsche’s views on truth would imply. While there is disagreement, deep basic issues have more consensus than not.

This paper aimed to address Rawls’s methodological commitment to a practical, political understanding of justice. In order to best test it, the paper looked at views that were both diametrically opposed to that commitment, such as Plato, and two that had strong similarities in Hobbes and Nietzsche. In all cases, however, the flaw was roughly the same; Rawls, unlike these other thinkers, takes seriously the social and political contexts of justice. For Rawls, justice needs to be useful in organizing a society and maintaining its function. Given that the metaphysical notion of truth is difficult to access, as Plato demonstrates, if not perhaps impossible, like Nietzsche argues, it seems clear that a robust understanding of the role of justice in society must be based on a far more utilitarian notion of truth.

Works Cited

Cinelli, Albert. "Nietzsche, Relativism and Truth." (1993).

Hobbes, Leviathan, in the version by Jonathan Bennett presented at www.earlymoderntexts.com

Plato. "Euthyphro." Trans. Jowett, Benjamin.

Rawls, John. "Justice as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical." Philosophy & Public Affairs 14.3 (1985): 223-51.