James A. Sherman

Justice: Authority – Introduction

We have been occupied with the capacity of autonomy, and the freedom to develop and exercise that capacity and to act on the conclusions reached through its exercise, for quite some time now. As we shift our attention from the question of what the State’s distributive ideal should be to the question of what grounds the State’s authority to pursue a scheme of distributive justice, and what limits on that authority should be in place, we must begin to consider a distinct but related type of freedom, which I will call “moral freedom.” An agent is morally free to perform an action ϕ if, and only if, that agent is not under a moral duty to refrain from ϕ-ing. The following chapters include a detailed discussion of the nature of moral duty and of the features that make it the case that one agent has a moral duty to another, including the moral duty to comply with the directives of a practical authority. In this introductory chapter, I limit myself to three brief tasks. First, I will say a few words about the relationship between autonomy-freedom and moral freedom. Second, I will provide a short introduction to the Hohfeldian analysis of rights. And third, I will discuss the relationship between the Hohfeldian formulation of rights and the social choice-theoretic formulation of rights. Although the apparatus and methods of social choice theory have thus far proved invaluable in formulating a precise characterization of autonomy-freedom, my final two chapters will deal with rights solely from a Hohfeldian perspective. Nonetheless, the social choice-theoretic approach to rights complements the Hohfeldian approach in an important way, by providing a way of evaluating whether an individual’s purported rights are actually being recognized and respected by his society.

The Theory of Equal Liberty

This chapter, which is the heart of the book, introduces a new theory of social justice, the theory of Equal Liberty. It is argued that the appropriate distributive goal of the State is to equalize each individual’s share of liberty, as this notion has been defined over the course of the earlier chapters. This theory of social justice satisfies a number of desiderata, including a commitment to equality, an appropriate respect for autonomous effort, and a commitment to preventing exploitation. The view is defended from numerous of possible objections. The issue of social justice is considered from the perspective of a single nation and a single generation, as well as from international and intergenerational perspectives, and the possibilities for reconciling these viewpoints is explored. Finally, the chapter turns to the practical question of what policy implications my theory of social justice has. The policy program of the Social Market Economy, developed in the work of the German Catholic economist, social theorist, and policy-maker Alfred Muller-Armack, provides an excellent practical counterpart to the theory of Equal Liberty. Pursuing the goal of Equal Liberty through this policy program is consistent with a number of other significant social goals, including economic efficiency, environmentally sustainable growth, and the protection of democracy from encroachments by economic power.

Liberty, Equality and Justice

This chapter provides an overview of existing varieties of egalitarianism, and introduces some of the problems faced by egalitarian theories of distributive justice. It also discusses the two most prominent types of non-egalitarian distributive theory, utilitarianism and prioritarianism. The discussion of egalitarian theories has a dual focus: what form should the theory take (strict equality, satisficing, maximizing the position of the worst-off, etc.), and what should the object of distributive concern be. With respect to the first issue, it is argued that views advocating equality-of-welfare cannot avoid decisive objections stemming from the moral importance of personal responsibility. Instead, the distributive focus should be on individuals’ shares of liberty in the precise sense in which this notion has been defined over the previous chapters, and that an egalitarianism of well-being subject to desert collapses into this view. Special attention is given to the equality-of-resources approach to distributive justice advocated by Ronald Dworkin. This theory is shown to be an incomplete version of a liberty-based egalitarian theory, not a rival to one. The chapter concludes with a partial defense of John Roemer’s equality of opportunity for welfare approach, which serves in some important respects as a model for the new theory to be developed in subsequent chapters.

Autonomy and Practical Reasoning

This chapter introduces the topic of rational deliberation. Excellence in deliberation is one dimension of personal autonomy, which is one of the liberal values central to the work as a whole. It begins with a critique of three philosophical theories: Robert Audi’s account of instrumental deliberation; and Henry Richardson’s and Elijah Millgram’s attempts to develop an account of deliberating about ends. The focus then turns to decision theory, and in particular the possibility of rigorous evidential and causal decision theories based on the work of Frank Ramsey, as extended by Richard Bradley and John Howard Sobel. This Ramsey-style decision theory serves as the background for the account of rational deliberation about ends developed in the following chapter, and that choice is defended along with an exploration of the potential for a Ramsey-style theory to provide an idealized account of instrumental deliberation. The chapter concludes with a discussion of some recent developments relevant to the task of modeling rational deliberation about ends.

Beyond the Old Economics

This chapter discusses the economic theory which serves as a background to the theory of social justice which will be developed in the following chapter. It begins with a detailed discussion of the dominant contemporary versions of neoclassical macroeconomics – New Keynesianism and New Classicism – and the microeconomic foundations which they share. The entire neoclassical project, the center of which is General Equilibrium Theory, is subjected to a deep and wide-ranging critique, which draws on both empirical evidence and formal results. This discussion of orthodox economic theory is necessary to immunize the theory of justice that will follow, and the policies that theory would require, from free market-based objections that the theory and policies are inconsistent with a robust and smoothly functioning national economy. The chapter then discusses the pioneering work of J.M. Keynes with a focus on the three crucial elements of his thought which contemporary economics fails to take sufficiently seriously: money, time, and uncertainty. The potential for the new discipline of agent-based computational macroeconomic modelling to provide genuine Keynesian analysis with the microeconomic foundations it needs is explored. The chapter then discusses the limits of Keynesianism and the need to incorporate Keynes’ insights into the broader framework of economic Institutionalism. Finally, a concluding argument against the minimal libertarian vision of the State is given.

A Neo-Aristotelian Theory of Individual Liberty

This chapter develops an enhanced version of a neo-Aristotelian capabilities-based characterization of individual freedom, building primarily on the work of Amartya Sen. It argues that we should understand individual freedom in terms of the opportunities that an agent has, first, to develop his capacity of autonomy, and then, to autonomously choose to develop and exercise his capabilities over the course of his life. This view of freedom satisfies a number of important desiderata, and overcomes a number of deficiencies and limitations in Sen’s own account. The chapter then turns to the question of how individual freedom should be measured. Drawing on recent developments in social choice theory, it proposes a comprehensive way of assessing how much freedom an individual has, taking both the number and the diversity of his opportunities into account. The chapter also discusses another important dimension of personal autonomy: self-control. The model of ends-deliberation already developed is again put to use in an original account of failures of self-control, a phenomenon known in the philosophical tradition as weakness of will. Finally, it argues that we should understand individual liberty, the guiding value of political liberalism, as a compound of individual autonomy and freedom, and provides a critical discussion of the politically conservative conception of freedom.

From Moral Duties to Moral Rights

This chapter develops a teleological account of individual rights, taking Joseph Raz’s influential but problematic view as the point of departure. It is argued that an individual’s moral rights emerge from the duties that are owed to him in virtue of his interests. The chapter discusses four features an individual’s interest must have in order to ground a duty that can be justifiably enforced. The relationship between each of these features and some essential aspect of the duty grounded by the interests is explored in detail. Moral rights are in turn grounded on the presence of enforceable moral duties. The place of the virtues within the theory of moral duties and rights is also discussed, as is the compatibility between the theory of moral duty and Jonathan Dancy’s moral particularism. This discussion provides an opportunity to complete the account of personal autonomy by describing a way to formalize Dancy’s theory of ethical deliberation—the last type of rational deliberation crucial to autonomy. This account of ethical deliberation is then integrated with the accounts of instrumental and ends-deliberation to provide a unified view of the rational dimension of autonomy. The chapter concludes with a defense of the theory’s various commitments against the view that morality is an evolved system of social rules, a discussion which relies on a number of results in evolutionary anthropology.

Autonomy and Rational Deliberation About Ends

This chapter develops a complete and well-motivated account of how a rational agent goes about figuring out what to value, a process referred to as deliberating about ends. It begins with a discussion of the concept of an end, the relationships between ends and means of different types, and the place of ends in practical reasoning, which draws extensively from Aristotle. It then proceeds to develop a precise, dynamic model of rational deliberation about ends. We should understand an agent’s ends-deliberation as the process of determining, from a base of pre-deliberative affective attachments, and on the basis of various types of evidence, which potential ends are most likely to make the greatest contribution to his well-being. The notion of well-being with which the agent begins is a thin one, which does not bias his reasoning in favor of any specific ends. Nonetheless, the evidence he can access regarding how choiceworthy his potential ends are relative to one another allows him to begin making rational choices among potential ends. As he begins to adopt some ends rather than others, the agent gradually formulates a more specific conception of a good life, and the body of evidence he may draw on when making future choices becomes more robust. The chapter concludes by relating this discussion to another aspect of autonomy: authenticity.

The Moral Justification of State Authority

This chapter concerns the foundation of legitimate political authority. This sort of authority is interpreted in terms of the possession of a right to rule—a right to compliance with one’s authoritative directives by those subject to them. The chapter discusses the conditions under which a political authority’s interest in maintaining social order is sufficient to ground such a duty—i.e. under what conditions this interest possesses all four of the features needed to ground an enforceable duty— and argues that when this duty can be justifiably enforced, the authority has a right to that compliance, and is therefore legitimate. The view developed is based on Joseph Raz’s widely influential theory of authority, and in particular on his Normal Justification Thesis. Raz’s own view is defended against some powerful objections to it that have been raised by William Edmundson. A number of major problems insolvable by Raz’s theory are raised, however, and it is shown that the new theory is able to diffuse all of them.

The Concept of Individual Freedom

This chapter concerns the concept of individual freedom, the relationship between the concept of freedom and the concept of autonomy, and the relationship between an agent’s freedom of choice and that agent’s values. It begins a search, continued in the following chapter, for a specific conception of freedom which is fit to play the role of a guiding moral and political value. After examining the negative concept of freedom—freedom from constraint—it considers the question of whether any other concept of freedom is necessary or useful. Both Isaiah Berlin’s attempt to formulate a positive concept of freedom, and more recent attempts to define “third” concepts of freedom, are found to collapse into specific aspects of a suitably general negative concept. John Christman’s argument that the concept of autonomy is a positive concept of freedom is then critiqued, and sufficient reason is found for keeping the two concepts distinct. The chapter concludes with a critique of Matthew Kramer’s attempt to provide a value-neutral account of the extent of an individual’s freedom.