Journal of Political Philosophy最新文献

One might hope that philosophy could reconcile us to our social world and each other. To entertain this as plausible is to think there is some perspective one could reach via philosophical enquiry that shows our life and society to be as they are for good reason, allows us to see it all as in some sense rational. Hegel is no doubt the great exponent of this ideal, his system promising to trace history's patterns and conceptual development, while he is so optimistic as to believe that, at its end, we would achieve the perspective whereby every agent's own actions and situation can be made intelligible to themselves and others. This was meant to be true for us the readers, so we would be able to see for ourselves how what we do makes sense, given our circumstances, and is plausibly tending towards a good end.1

Of course, the problem is that there may not be such a perspective. Perhaps to see the world aright is to recognize it as a jumbled mess, with no progressive tendency towards greater coherence, and no satisfaction to be had in achieving superior insight. Perhaps there is no good end we are collaboratively working towards, no possible reconciliation with each other; maybe we are perpetually on the brink of descending once more into a Hobbesian nightmare. Hegel hoped to reassure us that the existence of that clarificatory perspective is guaranteed; as free agents, once we achieve self-awareness we necessarily mutually recognize one another as engaged in a fundamentally cooperative project tending towards justified ends.2 But, alas, not all of us have been convinced, and a kind of existential anomie can befall a thoughtful person who surveys our present socio-cultural situation.3 What if there really just is no excuse for how things are, and no good reason for me to carry on?

We ought then to make the social world worthy of reconciliation. The guiding idea here is that the ideal of reconciliation underlying Hegelian social thought is desirable, and if it is not yet possible given present social arrangements, we are called upon to change those arrangements until the ideal can be attained. To be clear, this is not a disagreement with Hegel's system at its deepest level; he may have jumped the gun on what a rationally reconcilable social order looks like, but in some sense that is a mere detail compared to his deeper point that we proactively seek a coherence that we can be reconciled to. Social and political philosophy can then play a dual role of identifying points at which our social order will throw up obstacles to attaining a coherent and reconcilable view of one's life, and suggesting means by which these obstacles can be removed.4

I shall illustrate these rather abstract ideas by constructing and analysing a narrative of the historical situation leading up to the current culture war; especially as it plays out concerning race, and black–white relations even more especially, among the middle class of the USA. The US being

It is good for people to flourish. But does the state have the authority to promote the flourishing of its citizens? Some political philosophers—perfectionists—hold that it does.1 For perfectionists, the state has the authority to pursue policies meant to promote the flourishing of its citizens, and it is appropriate for the state, or state officials, to take considerations about what will promote flourishing into account when exercising their authority. Traditionally for perfectionists, the fact that a policy will promote the flourishing of the citizens may legitimate the state's using its authority to pursue that policy, even if the policy does not promote any non-perfectionist aims— that is, aims other than flourishing.

Other political philosophers—anti-perfectionists—hold that the state acts illegitimately when it tries to promote flourishing.2 These philosophers hold that the state does not have the authority to try to promote flourishing and that flourishing does not legitimate the extension of state authority to pursue a particular policy. One influential anti-perfectionist argument for this conclusion is that, however good it is for people to flourish, considerations about flourishing are not the appropriate grounds for political authority, and so it is an illegitimate extension of authority contrary to people's rights when the state uses its authority to promote flourishing. Let's call this argument the legitimacy objection to perfectionism.3

How should perfectionists answer this argument? After discussing the legitimacy objection in Section II, I explore one common perfectionist response in Section III—that there are natural or political duties to promote people's flourishing that can ground the state's authority to promote flourishing.4 I am skeptical that responses of this kind are dialectically effective. Rather, in Section IV, I suggest that the appropriate space for perfectionist state action lies in using considerations about flourishing to select among courses of state action that the state may legitimately pursue for non-perfectionist reasons. This consideration-based perfectionism allows officials to take considerations about flourishing seriously, without extending the legitimate scope of state authority, thereby avoiding the legitimacy objection.

This shows that there are two distinct roles that flourishing could play within political life. On the one hand, flourishing could be something that the state is sensitive to in making its decisions. On the other hand, flourishing could be something that partially grounds the domain of legitimate state authority. The ability of consideration-based perfectionism to avoid the legitimacy objection shows how these roles can come apart—the state can be sensitive to flourishing even if flourishing does not partially ground the domain of legitimate state authority. Proponents of the legitimacy objection collapse together two distinct roles th