[0:00]Uh I know this is a very tall order, but is it possible for you to characterize comparatively briefly, I mean, within the context of a television discussion.
[0:08]I'll try.
[0:11]What it is that Rolls is saying? Yes, I, I, I think for, for that purpose, it would be a good idea to, to, to take up two topics in, in the book.
[0:20]The first is the topic of the method he suggests and employs, and the second, the conclusions he reaches.
[0:27]And I think it's useful to distinguish them because some people are impressed with the one and not the other.
[0:31]The method is um arresting, it's intriguing.
[0:39]Rolls tells us that when we're concerned with questions of justice, what rules that could govern the basic structure of society would be just,
[0:48]that the we ought to think about those in the following way.
[0:53]We ought to tell ourselves a fairy story, for a start.
[0:56]We ought to imagine a Congress of men and women who don't belong to any particular society yet, who come together in a kind of constitutional convention.
[1:07]They're going to agree among themselves on a constitution, how their society is to be run.
[1:12]And they're like everybody else, these people.
[1:15]They have specific identities, specific weaknesses, specific strengths, specific interest.
[1:20]The only thing that makes them different is that they suffer from a total amnesia, a crippling kind of amnesia.
[1:27]They don't know who they are, they don't know whether they're old or young, men or women, black or white, talented or stupid.
[1:38]In particular, and this is very important, they don't know what their own individual moralities are.
[1:44]That is, they don't know each one has some conception of what he wants his life to be like, what his preferences are in sexual morality and so forth.
[1:51]But no one knows what his views are on those questions.
[1:54]So it's as if, as in Rolls's phrase, they were separated from their own personalities by a veil of ignorance.
[2:02]Now, these amnesiacs, nevertheless, must agree on a political constitution.
[2:09]Rolls says, if we ask ourselves what people in this strange situation would agree upon by way of a constitution,
[2:16]that the answer to that question will be for that reason, principles of justice.
[2:22]This is a somewhat far-fetched thing to ask people to assume, isn't it?
[2:28]Well, it's it's of course far fetched to ask them to assume that it ever has happened or could happen.
[2:34]It's a dramatic way of asking people to imagine themselves making choices in their own self-interest,
[2:44]but without knowing things which separate one person from another, and that's of course just a way of enforcing
[2:50]a certain conception of equality on political decisions.
[2:56]But, but for the moment, I think it's better to not to leave behind the myth because the myth has itself great power.
[3:04]Now the question is, what would people in this situation agree upon?
[3:08]And that's the second question, namely, the second topic, namely, what conclusions does this method yield?
[3:15]These are two, and Rolls calls them the two principles of justice.
[3:20]They are principles I should say for a society with a certain measure of economic development so that there's enough to feed everyone.
[3:29]Once you reach that point, says Rolls, people in the original position, as he calls this strange situation, would agree on the following two principles.
[3:38]First, everyone shall have, to the greatest degree possible, the basic liberties which Rolls enumerates.
[3:49]These basic liberties are the political, the conventional political liberties, liberty to vote, liberty to speak on political matters, freedom of conscience.
[3:56]They also include freedom to hold personal property, to be protected in your person, not to be arrested suddenly and without due cause and so forth.
[4:04]The conventional, what you might call liberal liberties are protected in this way.
[4:10]Secondly, the second principle of justice, no inequality in society in distribution,
[4:16]no difference in wealth, is to be tolerated, unless that difference works for the benefit of the worst off group in the society.
[4:31]It's a very dramatic principle, the second principle.
[4:35]It means that if you could change society by making it overall poorer,
[4:40]so the middle class, for instance, was work substantially worse off, you should do so,
[4:48]if the result of that is to benefit the lowest off group in the society.
[4:52]So you have two principles. The first is the principle that says there are certain liberties that must be protected.
[4:59]The second is the rather more egalitarian principle that says, look at the situation of the worst off group.
[5:05]Every change in the social structure should benefit that group. The two principles are related through what Rolls calls the principle of priority.
[5:12]He calls it a lexicographic ordering.
[5:15]And says that the first principle dominates over the second.
[5:19]What that means is that even if, for example, it would benefit the worst off group in the society, to abridge political liberties,
[5:27]take away rights of free speech.
[5:31]Even if that would benefit the worst off groups in society, you must not do it.
[5:34]Only when liberty has been protected to the full, are you entitled to consider the economic questions raised by the second principle.
[5:43]When you do come to those economic considerations, you must benefit the worst off class, but you can't do that until everyone's liberties are sufficiently protected.
[5:52]What do you yourself regard as the chief shortcomings of the theory?
[5:55]I think that Rolls relies too much on rather technical arguments,
[6:01]appealing in a very learned way to recent work in economics about what people in his original position would do.
[6:09]And I think those arguments are to some degree flawed, that is, it doesn't seem to be inevitable that people in his original position would come out with just what he has.
[6:17]I think what's more important, and what I wish he had stressed more, is the deep theory that underlies the use of this device.
[6:30]The sort of thing that you ask for when you say, quite rightly, why should what people decide in this rather strange situation,
[6:34]why should that have to do with justice?
[6:37]So I think it's a weakness that he, as it were, hides the real quest, appears to hide the real question, but I also think that's the great strength of the book.
[6:44]That is, this is the kind of a book in which the usefulness, the importance of the book is not exhausted by the particular arguments it makes.
[6:52]It presents us with an enterprise and says to us, look, if you, if these conclusions are appealing to you,
[6:55]if the idea that we must think about justice by thinking about them through these devices of fairness is it all appealing.
[7:02]Why is that so? Doesn't this tell us something about our philosophical capacities?
[7:09]Doesn't it tell us something about our moral capacities that we think this?
[7:12]Doesn't it help to structure how we think about. Now, it's an enterprise, Rolls' book, one of the reasons why it's so important is that it's launched an enterprise of thinking along these lines,
[7:20]of which he would be the first to say that this book is only the beginning.
[7:24]Each person who reads it will have a different vision of what the enterprise is.
[7:29]I, for one, have a particular way of reading this book that makes it seem more important to me.
[7:37]And, uh, and that is this.
[7:40]It, it does seem to me that the great question, the root question for liberalism,
[7:45]By liberalism, of course, I don't mean party politics and I'm not referring to the Liberal Party as a party in this country.
[7:53]I mean the the the philosophic doctrine, the philosophic political theory called liberalism.
[7:58]The root question, it seems to me, is this.
[8:03]There are two possible approaches to the question of what is just.
[8:08]What is justice in community? One theory says that the answer to what is justice, what arrangements of goods in society is just,
[8:19]depends upon the answer to a further question, namely, what kinds of lives should men and women lead?
[8:24]What counts as excellence in a human being?
[8:29]One theory says, treat people as excellent people according to some theory would wish to be treated.
[8:37]The liberal rejects that notion of justice.
[8:40]He says that justice has a call upon institutions, which is independent of any particular notion of what the good life is,
[8:52]but rather can appeal to people as a a way of regulating society that can be agreed upon rationally by people who hold very different kinds of theories of let's say personal morality.
[9:05]This book is an attempt to show how far an appealing and altruistic and humane political theory can be generated consistent with the basic posture of liberalism on this conception,
[9:20]namely that it's neutral amongst the various personal moralities that people hold.
[9:24]And that's a very important ambition. You said what you yourself regard as the as the most interesting or important uh discussion points in Rolls.
[9:34]Are there any others with which you may not necessarily yourself directly sympathize very strongly, which are nevertheless interesting to large numbers of the other critics or writers about this book?
[9:46]A large part of the work on Rolls has been, as you indicate, critical.
[9:53]That is, they have pointed out the flaws in the argument that lead from the original position to the conclusion.
[10:00]I we, I describe one of the arguments a minute ago and I said he's assuming that people are all conservative, whereas they might be gamblers.
[10:06]Another part of the literature is and I think more interesting part of the literature is critical of the conclusions.
[10:12]And this comes from both the right and from the left.
[10:16]The criticism from the right says that it's absurd to suppose that we should be ridden by concern for the worst off group.
[10:27]There are values more important, for example, cultural values that it's important to perpetuate even if maldistribution or inequitable distribution is the result.
[10:35]Criticism from the left is more complex.
[10:41]It fixes, first of all, on the first of the principles that I offered and says,
[10:45]Rolls says that when liberty and further equality conflict, liberty is to be preferred.
[10:52]And there are positions on the left which contest this and say that it's a bourgeois, middle class, liberal view.
[11:00]The second criticism from the left fixes on the second principle.
[11:04]When I described it, I said the second principle said there shall be no inequalities except as benefit the worst off group.
[11:10]A criticism, let us say, from the far left holds that inequalities are bad, even if they do benefit the worst off group,
[11:19]so that we should prefer a society of complete equality, even if everyone is worse off, including those who would be worse off under a a Rollsian distribution.
[11:32]That strikes me as being a masochistic view, but but it is held by some serious people.
[11:37]Oh, it is indeed, who make the argument that envy or resentment is itself such a divisive thing,
[11:46]that the self-respect, the the damage to self-respect that comes from seeing others better off in a social structure,
[11:54]is such a malign influence on personality, that it's it's wrong to suppose in effect that they can be better off if they're materially better off,
[12:02]but other people are better off still. It has a view that's very strongly held. I would say of all the criticisms of Rolls, the one most fiercely contested is this seemingly cut off your nose to spite your face view.
[12:13]Now, I'd like to move on now for Rolls to the other important book that I named, apart from your own,
[12:20]uh namely, Anarchy, State and Utopia by Robert Nosik.
[12:24]Um, we've I wouldn't ask you to to deal with that at such length as we've just discussed Rolls, but I think it's not so important to do so.
[12:31]It hasn't been quite so influential, but could you, as it were, do more briefly than Nosik, what you've just done for Rolls?
[12:36]I'll try.
[12:39]Nosik starts his argument with a remarkable proposition.
[12:44]It's remarkable in its simplicity. Individuals have rights, he says, and there are some things that cannot be done to them without violating their rights.
[12:52]Well, that's an unexceptional statement, of course that's true.
[12:56]Then we find out what these rights are, and it turns out that the Nosikian rights have this force.
[13:03]That it is wrong, either to injure a person, or take away his property,
[13:13]for any reason, except with his consent, unless to do so is necessary to protect someone else's rights to his property or his person.
[13:24]Now, this means, this is very, very strong.
[13:28]Indeed, it's so strong that one might ask, is it possible to have a state at all that respects that principle?
[13:36]And surprisingly, the first third and the most densely argued part of Nosik's book is presented as a defense of the state itself against the anarchist.
[13:46]Rolls, uh sorry, Nosik obviously takes this is no mean question.
[13:51]And obviously, it isn't. After all, if you take my property away from me, then you've violated my rights.
[13:57]I have a right to take it back, but a state claims a monopoly of the power to use force.
[14:03]The state claims the right to stop me from taking back my property against you.
[14:07]I've got to go to the police and ask them to do it. It prevents you from taking the law into your own hands, as every state must.
[14:14]Yes, exactly. But what it's done is to violate my right, because it stopped me from doing something, which I have every right according to Nosik to do, namely to protect my own property, which you've wrongly taken from me.
[14:26]Nevertheless, Nosik agrees that if everyone did take the law into his own hands, there'd be anarchy.
[14:30]So the question is, what's wrong with anarchy? And his argument here is very elaborate, uh it, it, it may or may not work.
[14:39]There's a considerable doubt about it, uh but in any event, the upshot of the argument is that the there can be a state.
[14:46]There can be what Nosik calls a night watchman state, which means a state that exists simply to protect property and person, to punish people on behalf of other people.
[14:56]Question then arises, can the state do any more than that?
[14:59]After all, modern states do a lot more than that, they tax you and me and use our our the money they get in taxes to help other people, to uh do things in the common interest.
[15:09]Nosik gives that question a very firm answer.
[15:12]No, the state may not do anything except act as a night watchman.
[15:15]It may not tax, for example, for any purpose other than supporting the police.
[15:20]There are no doubt a lot of people listening who would feel some sympathy with that view.
[15:24]And Nosik has been rather popular in certain political circles.
[15:28]For at least this part of his views. Now, what argument could he give for this defense of what he calls the minimal or night watchman state?
[15:35]Well, his argument is this in large part.
[15:42]It's, uh arguments typically ingenious and complex, but I think the the main thrust of it comes to this.
[15:47]He asks us to distinguish between two kinds of theories about what he calls justice in distribution.
[15:54]You, we, we each have certain things in society, which we own, and the question is, is that distribution just?
[16:01]Now, says Nosik, one theory is what he calls a historical theory, and that says this.
[16:05]The present holdings are just.
[16:08]What you own, you justly own, provided people gave it to you voluntarily, either as a gift or in return for what you did for them.
[16:17]If, however, it was taken away from anyone else by taxation, for example, and then given to you, the holding is not just.
[16:25]This, of course, makes holdings, I mean this, of course, would tolerate the most inequitable distribution you can imagine.
[16:33]The second kind of theory, says Nosik, of justice, doesn't appeal just to history as his does, who gave what to what.
[16:40]But rather offers some general pattern and says, let us look at how the thing ended up.
[16:47]The simplest form of an a patterned theory is Nosik calls them, is an egalitarian theory.
[16:52]Unless things ended up equal, it's wrong, even if it was all done voluntarily.
[16:57]Now, Nosik says, only a patterned theory could oppose his view of the limited power of the state.
[17:04]Because if the state is going to intervene to take money away from some and give it to others, it must be in pursuit of a pattern.
[17:10]Nosik therefore wishes to argue that any patterned theory is intolerable.
[17:16]And his argument goes like this.
[17:19]He says, suppose you could collect all the holdings, everyone sweep up everyone's wealth, and distribute it all according to your favorite pattern.
[17:28]Suppose you're an egalitarian, you distribute the same amount to everyone.
[17:31]Now, you turn your back, and people are going to begin trading with one another.
[17:38]Suppose, he says, he uses here the name of a very famous American basketball player called Wilt Chamberlain.
[17:43]He says, suppose Wilt Chamberlain plays basketball extremely well, which he does.
[17:49]And people wish to pay him money. He doesn't wish to play basketball, but people give him money, ask him to play basketball.
[17:55]He's going to end up with more money than anybody else.
[18:00]In order to stop that, you are going to have to interfere with liberty to a constant degree.
[18:05]To stop these transactions, stop people from doing what they wish to do, you're going to have to have a dictatorship.
[18:10]You will not preserve a patent a pattern of justice, if that's what you want, without the most serious inroads on people's freedom.
[18:22]Therefore, you can't have a pattern theory of justice. Therefore, the only tolerable state is his state, namely the night watchman or minimal state.
[18:28]Well, this seems to be based fundamentally on a concept of the importance of free exchange.
[18:33]Is that right? That seems to be absolutely the root. It comes back to this notion of consent. Anytime you lose something, it must be with your consent.
[18:41]Yes, yes. What would you, what would you advance as the chief criticisms of Nosik's theory?
[18:46]Two. First, that his notion of what basic rights people have, namely this right not to lose their property except with their consent, simply arbitrary.
[18:57]There is some appeal in that right, but there's also plenty of appeal in competing rights, which would have to sanction inroads against it.
[19:05]For example, I see nothing less appealing, just as an intuitive beginning point with the notion that people have a right to the concern of others when they are in desperate situation themselves.
[19:18]Now, that obviously is going to sanction things being done that that Nosik's basic principle wouldn't permit.
[19:24]Nosik has no argument for his basic right, in my view.
[19:28]He simply presents it as a starting point and therefore, it's an arbitrary state.
[19:31]He talks, he starts too far along with an arbitrary position.
[19:35]Secondly, I think, as the Will Chamberlain argument I gave you, I think well illustrates, his arguments tend to be all or nothing arguments.
[19:42]They're ingenious, but they're they're many of them of the form, it would obviously be impossible to prevent any exchanges.
[19:50]Therefore, it follows that automatically, um if that's a great injustice, a little interference with liberty is a only also an injustice, possibly a smaller one.
[20:01]And of course, that doesn't follow. And in fact, in, in American society and British society, we do have the state interfering constantly with these exchanges, but it would be quite untrue to say that this constitutes dictatorship.
[20:12]Yes, exactly.
[20:15]It's certain threshold of interference, a threshold of degree and kind.
[20:19]Obviously, taxing a man, taxing Wilt Chamberlain at the end of the year and saying you've got to give back half of what you've earned, is not the kind of interference with liberty that it would be to say no one can pay money to see him play basketball.
[20:29]Those are two different things. And it in American society and British society, we do have the state interfering constantly with these exchanges, but it would be quite untrue to say that this constitutes dictatorship.
