Fabian Wendt

The Value of Peace

Why should peace be considered a value? Wendt argues that peace is intrinsically valuable and has specific and non-specific instrumental value for most people most of the time. He also debates John Gray ’s value pluralist argument for giving peace pride of place. He argues that value pluralism cannot show that peace has a special place among all values. What is special about peace is that it is in the interest of almost everyone.

Rawls, Stability and Public Justification

Why should we regard public justification as a value? In this chapter, Wendt discusses six Rawlsian answers to this question. He argues that none of these answers can show that we should conceive public justification as a strictly necessary requirement for the moral justification of constitutional essentials (or laws more generally). But he also argues that one Rawlsian answer successfully shows that public justification should at least be conceived as one value among others: public justification has instrumental value because it contributes to stable peace.

The Deontic Morality of Compromising

Wendt makes some explorations in what he calls the deontic morality of compromising. He proposes and partly defends some principles regarding people’s moral duties in the process before a compromise is made, and some principles regarding people’s moral obligations after a compromise was made.

Peace and Non-interference

Wendt discusses Chandran Kukathas ’s conception of peace. According to Kukathas’s conception, peace requires complete non-interference in all internal affairs of freely associated groups. Wendt argues that this is not the conception of peace we should adopt if we want a conception of peace that is feasible without moral consensus, something that allows us to live together in the face of moral disagreement.

Public Justification: The Basic Idea

Public justification means, basically, multi-perspectival acceptability. It is not to be identified with moral justification. A more precise conceptualization of public justification has to deal with (at least) the following four issues: What is to be publicly justifiable? Who is the relevant constituency of public justification? How far should members of the constituency be idealized? Do justifying reasons have to be public reasons?

Respect and Public Justification

It is often argued that public justification is a requirement of respect for persons. In this chapter, Wendt assesses this claim. He tries to show that the requirement of respect for persons is not sufficient to ground a strict principle of public justification, but that it indeed is a source of the value of public justification. Public justification has constitutive moral value because it constitutes an expression of respect for persons.

Community and Public Justification

Is public justification valuable because it contributes to some sort of community among citizens? Wendt distinguishes three different interpretations of that claim and argues that a ‘community of mutual moral accountability’ is indeed constituted by publicly justifiable moral rules. For that reason, public justification has constitutive value. Against Gerald Gaus , he argues that this rationale for public justification cannot show that public justification should be conceived as a strictly necessary requirement for the moral justification of laws and moral rules. It should be conceived as one value among others.

Peace and Public Justification as Second-Level Values

In this chapter, Wendt substantiates the claim that peace and public justification are indeed values on the second level and not on the first level of moral evaluation. They thus provide moral reasons to make compromises. He also discusses what kind of moral reasons these are, he says a few words on other second-level values, and he discusses one of Simon May’s arguments against principled reasons to compromise in politics.

Peace and Modus Vivendi Arrangements

In this chapter, Wendt presents an account of peace. Roughly speaking, peace is understood as the reasonably stable relative absence of violence, based on modus vivendi arrangements. Modus vivendi arrangements, in turn, are understood as the institutional instruments to realize peace. They are accepted as a second-best, but they need not be based on a compromise. In order to count as a modus vivendi, they have to satisfy certain minimal moral criteria.

Two Levels of Moral Evaluation

In this chapter, Wendt distinguishes two levels of moral evaluation. The distinction, he argues, is necessary if we are to understand the conceptual possibility of making moral compromises for moral reasons. On the first level, one evaluates what the best arrangement would be. On the second level, one evaluates what the best arrangement would be under circumstances of disagreement about what the best arrangement would be. In a moral compromise, one agrees to a second-best arrangement from the perspective of the first level of moral evaluation. One can do so for moral reasons on the second level of moral evaluation.