1.1(3) (part 1, para. 1, line 3 of Derek Bowman’s “The Circumstances of Justice” 

We owe (or are due) things from each other and there are general principles (of justice) that specify just what it is that we owe to each other.  That the verb here is ‘specify’ suggests a normative, explanatory role:  the general principles explain why each of us owes it to each other to refrain from PHI-ing, but not to refrain from PSI-ing (or perhaps why each of us owes it to each other to refrain from PHI-ing in certain circumstances but not others).  However, one of several to-me controversial things that Rawls’ characterization of justice suggests is that these general principles do not do this work, but rather some slightly different work – the work of justifying the adoption (perhaps the public adoption) of a prescriptive norm (or a nested set of prescriptive norms with a certain structure).  That might go something like this:  each of us is to refrain from PHI-ing with respect to each other person (and all of us is to stand ready to enforce the prescription to refrain from PHI-ing by demanding that potential rule-breakers don’t break the rule and by punishing actual rule-breakers).  On this second way in which the general principles might work, they do something like specify conclusive reasons to construct a particular social practice.   Continue reading →

It appears that my book is officially out. In the hope of further enticing some of you to read it, or at least find a copy and flip through it, I here include a brief snippet from chapter 4 that may be of some interest. We pick up in the midst of my consideration of an alternative view (that of Mary Nichols in her Citizens and Statesmen) of what Aristotle means when he talks about ruling and being ruled “by turns” or “in part.” According to this alternative, I count as ruling “in part” with you provided that you rule me in a way that recognizes my existence as a distinct, independent, free person.

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Snippet of a classroom discussion at Al Quds University on chapter 2 of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, “Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion.”

Khawaja: So are there any topics that are taboo in Palestinian society, that people refuse to discuss?

Student: Yes, but there really shouldn’t be such topics. We should be able to discuss anything.

Khawaja: I see. But unfortunately, there are such topics?

Student: Yes, there are, like homosexuality and gay rights. These are topics that need discussion, but in our society, people act as though they can’t be discussed.

Khawaja: So what would you want to say on that topic?

Student: I’d prefer not to discuss it.

This is Part 4 of a four (or five) part series based on a conference-length version of a longer paper I’m currently preparing for submission to academic journals. Part 1 and Part 2 forcus on the idea of ‘circumstances of justice’ in Rawls and Hume, and each generated some deep and wide ranging discussions of the of the nature of justice and the treatment of justice in the history of philosophy. Part 3  added some brief critical analysis to the exegetical points of the first two parts.

In this section, I finally stick my neck out and offer my own account of the circumstances of justice – an account which I argue explains what is right about Rawls’s view by shedding his unsuitable Humean foundation. I believe this account addresses many of the concerns and objections raised in the comments on earlier sections,  but I look forward to hearing the fresh, new objections it generates.

My plan for Part 5, which is not yet included in the full paper, is to say something more about why all this matters for our understanding of justice, independent of the interpretive puzzles focused on in the first three sections.

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In Archaic and Classical Greek religion, snakes are associated with the dead and the dark, atavistic powers of the earth. The so-called chthonic (related to the earth) deities are often presented in contrast and even conflict with the Olympian gods, the justice, order, and patriarchy of the latter set in relief by contrast with the wild, unrestrained, and feminine character of the former (star witness: Aeschylus’ Oresteia). Religious symbolism is always underdetermined by the nature of the symbols, but this bit of symbolism has always seemed, at least broadly, quite natural to me. The association of snakes with the earth is quite natural, and the association of the earth with the dead is quite natural in a culture that buries its dead. So by symbolic transitivity, the association of snakes with the dead seems almost as natural. So too, though in a more indirect way, does the association of snakes with the feminine, since the link between the earth and women is common in many religions and hardly peculiar to the Greeks (the association of women with wild, unrestrained, irrational forces seems much less natural, but thoroughly Greek). Most of all, the association of snakes with things that we are supposed to find scary and dangerous makes perfect sense to me, because I am absolutely and unrestrainedly terrified of snakes. Among my reasons for finding ancient psychological theories that distinguish a rational and a non-rational part of the soul so plausible is that when I encounter snakes, the rational part of my soul seems to depart from my body altogether.

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