JOSEPH H. CARENS
A CONTEXTUAL APPROACH TO POLITICAL THEORY Accepted 26 January 2004
ABSTRACT. This article explores the advantages of using a range of actual cases in doing political theory. This sort of approach clarifies what is at stake in alternative theoretical formulations, draws attention to the wisdom that may be embedded in existing practices, and encourages theorists to confront challenges they might otherwise overlook and to think through the implications of their accounts more fully. KEY WORDS: cases, contextual political theory, culture, Kymlicka, practice, reflective disequilibrium, Walzer
In this article I explore the benefits of a contextual approach to political theory. Let me say at the outset that I do not regard this as the only proper way of doing theory. There are many different sorts of theoretical approaches that can be helpful and illuminating, including ones that do not have anything in common with the approach I advocate here. I simply want to draw attention to one kind of approach that some contemporary theorists use that I think tends to be underappreciated. Many theorists use the word “contextual” to describe their projects and often they mean different things by this term. So, my first task is to explain what I mean by it. My goal is not to criticize the use others make of the term but simply to clarify the nature of the approach I want to recommend. I should also add that a number of contemporary theorists besides me already use some version of what I am calling a contextual approach, even though they may not label it as such. I mention Michael Walzer and Will Kymlicka below as two theorists who use this sort of approach, and there are many others as well. However, apart from my use of Walzer and Kymlicka for expository purposes, I will not try to claim particular theorists as belonging to this category. I see no point in getting into a debate about whether X or Y is or is not a contextual theorist. My agenda is simply to articulate the characteristics of a particular way of doing political theory, to explain its advantages, and to give it a name. I leave it to other theorists to decide for themselves if they want to identify their work with this approach. I am concerned in this article only with the question of what a contextual approach can contribute to the enterprise of theory. This is only one of the several ways in which one might want to speak about contextualism in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 7: 117–132, 2004. C 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
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morality, generally. For example, I am not concerned here with the question of what role principles or other factors ought to play in moral judgments or with the question of how best to reach a good moral judgment in a particular case. Nor am I attempting in this article to make any substantive moral judgments about particular cases. Instead, I am concerned only with what political theorists do in constructing their political theories or in criticizing the theories of others and in how a contextual approach can contribute to that. As a final preliminary, let me say that I am articulating a position in this article that I first advanced in my book Culture, Citizenship, and Community (Carens, 2000). I think I have managed to do a better job here than I did in the book of explaining what a contextual approach involves and why it is helpful. Nevertheless, the book itself is an attempt to use a contextual approach for political theory, so I will draw upon the book and refer to it at various points to illustrate the ways in which the contextual approach can be put into practice. A contextual approach to political theory has five interrelated elements. First, it involves the use of examples to illustrate theoretical formulations. Second, it entails the normative exploration of actual cases where the fundamental concerns addressed by the theory are in play. Third, it leads theorists to pay attention to the question of whether their theoretical formulations are actually compatible with the normative positions that they themselves take on particular issues. Fourth, it includes a search for cases that are especially challenging to the theorist’s own theoretical position. Fifth, it promotes consideration of a wide range of cases, and especially a search for cases that are unfamiliar and illuminating because of their unfamiliarity. Because doing political theory often involves criticizing the work of other theorists, I should add that this sort of contextual approach can be used to gain a critical perspective on a theory, even if the original theorist has not adopted this approach or has not fully carried it out. In the rest of this paper I will elaborate upon these elements as a way of explaining what I think a contextual approach has to contribute to the enterprise of political theory. I will spend most of the time on the second. It is the heart of a contextual approach, and the third, fourth, and fifth elements can be seen as implications of the second, i.e. ways of specifying further which sorts of actual cases ought to be considered. In the end, I will consider some challenges to the enterprise of normative theory and how a contextual approach might meet them. First, a contextual approach involves the use of examples, because examples perform a crucial clarifying function for theory. Theories aim to generalize and that inevitably entails abstraction from particularity, but sometimes theories are presented at such a level of generality and abstraction that it is hard to tell what they really mean. Whenever students in my classes make a general statement, I respond by asking them to give me an
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example. Usually they can, and that helps to explain the point they want to make. Sometimes they cannot, and that is often an indication that they are not so sure of what they want to say. Often in such cases they adopt the language of some theorist they have read, language that seems persuasive to them but which they cannot really elaborate upon except in terms of the theory itself. Then the question arises whether they have really understood the theory (or perhaps whether the theory itself really makes sense). One danger of abstract theoretical language is that it can create a world of its own, disconnected from reality. People can move these symbols around, engaging in fierce debates about them, without ever stopping to ask what is really at stake in alternate formulations. I teach Hegel on a regular basis, and I have read countless papers, some of them published, that deploy Hegel’s language with great skill without ever moving outside it. It is as though Hegel’s language were its own self-contained universe. I do not think Hegel is vacuous. On the contrary, I think he has a great deal to tell us about the world we inhabit. But I also think that it is difficult to understand what that is unless one can use examples to illustrate Hegel’s points (something that I admit is not always easy to do). The difficulty of knowing what Hegel means is obvious. On the other hand, some theories appear at first glance to be quite clear while being couched in abstractions that conceal their indeterminacy. Different people may accept some theoretical account only because they interpret it differently and are implicitly using conflicting examples as illustrations of the theory. If they bring their conflicting examples to light, they become aware of their disagreements and can pursue the issues more effectively. I do not mean to overstate this point. Theories are always underdetermined to some degree and give rise to interpretive disputes. It is not unusual for people to agree on a principle and disagree about its application to a particular case. But degrees do matter. If people claim to agree about a theory but never or rarely agree about what the theory entails for concrete cases, then we rightly begin to wonder whether they really agree about the theory in any meaningful way or whether the theory itself is not merely underdetermined but altogether empty. In the past, American pragmatists sometimes talked about the cash value of philosophical concepts. In these days of global capitalism that sort of phrase embraces the market mentality more fully than I think is appropriate. Nonetheless, the phrase does capture something about the importance of examining theories in the light of their concrete implications for policies, practices, and institutions. In short, examples help us to understand a theory, to have some sense of what it really means. So far, I have been focussing on the clarifying function of examples, and, for these purposes, even hypothetical examples can be useful. But hypotheticals are designed to prove a point (even if they sometimes escape
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the control of their inventor). So, they tend to be narrow, limited, and one-dimensional. Real cases are richer, more complex, and ultimately more illuminating. So, the second element of a contextual approach is to explore actual cases where the fundamental concerns of the theory are in play. I am using the term “case” here in an open-ended way. The basic idea is just to pay attention to how actual people have dealt or are dealing with problems relevant to the theory. That raises possibilities for constructing, challenging, and revising theories in at least two ways. First, thinking about real cases can make us conscious of what issues need to be addressed in a given sort of theoretical inquiry. That can set the agenda for our own theoretical work or point to gaps in an existing theory, gaps that conflict with the theory’s own announced aspirations. Second, thinking about how we deal with real problems can make us conscious of conflicts between our theory and our practices. That may make us want to revise our practices, but it may also make us want to revise the theory. Let me elaborate upon each of these points. To illustrate the first point, let me cite the work of Michael Walzer, whom I regard as one of the leaders in employing the kind of contextual approach to political theory that I am advocating. Walzer’s work reveals how much we can learn as political theorists if we connect our theoretical inquiries to ordinary moral and political life—to the actual moral judgments we make, to the typical normative language we use, to the principles we invoke, to the kinds of things we identify as worth arguing about, and to the specific claims we put forward when we talk about justice or freedom or democracy in ordinary life. If some theorists speak abstractly about deliberative democracy, Walzer talks concretely about ordinary political practices such as stuffing envelopes, knocking on doors, raising money, and getting out the vote, and he challenges theorists to say how such activities fit into the idea of deliberative democracy. If some theorists try to simplify distributive justice—for example, by constructing a single list of primary goods as the objects of distribution and identifying a highly restricted set of principles of justice—Walzer reminds us of the complexity of the goods we actually value, of the range of principles we use in distributing them, and of the ways both of these vary across time and space and asks how those practices could be accounted for in terms of primary goods and limited principles. I do not see how one can read Walzer without coming to appreciate the importance for political theory of taking account of actual moral views and practices. If a theory cannot help us to assess the merits of ordinary moral claims, it is limited in ways that may not be apparent if one stays within the framework of the theory and considers only the examples that the theorist himself or herself puts forward. In this way, a contextual approach provides us with a better critical perspective
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simply by helping us to keep a fuller range of relevant considerations in view. This leads to another way in which real cases challenge theory. They may draw our attention to practices that we regard as morally defensible, perhaps even morally required, that conflict with some theory we are being asked to accept. Faced with such a conflict, we may want to revise our practices, but we may conclude upon reflection that it is the theory that requires modification rather than the practice. To illustrate this point, let me cite the work of Will Kymlicka, another theorist whom I regard as a practitioner of a contextual approach (Kymlicka, 1989, 1995). Kymlicka is perhaps the leading exponent of a liberal version of multiculturalism. Typically, Kymlicka begins by drawing attention to the various ways in which most liberal states recognize various forms of culture and identity and shows that this pattern conflicts with the standard versions of liberal theory that call for states to be neutral in such matters. Kymlicka suggests that we should not simply assume that the standard versions are right and the practices wrong, but instead should treat this conflict as a puzzle that needs to be explored. Frequently, he focuses on the similarities between some practice that is either ignored by standard liberal theories or simply assumed by them to be legitimate (e.g., some way in which the state is not neutral but supports the culture of the majority) and some practice that is criticized by standard theories as a violation of neutrality (e.g., demands by a minority group for their culture to receive some sort of state support). So, the starting point for his analysis is an elementary sense of fairness. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, to use the familiar English saying that expresses the point. Of course, it is possible to argue that neither goose nor gander should have sauce (e.g., on the principle that we should not be eating geese at all). Defenders of liberal neutrality do sometimes say that there should be no state support for either majority or minority cultures. Kymlicka responds to this move by emphasizing that some forms of cultural support and recognition are unavoidable, especially with regard to the choice of language, the drawing of boundaries, and the use of public symbols. There is no political equivalent to vegetarianism when it comes to culture. A policy of strict neutrality is impossible, and so we cannot avoid the question of why minority cultures should not be entitled to the same sorts of support that majority cultures receive. The underlying presupposition of this sort of contextual approach to theory is that actual social and political practices sometimes contain embedded wisdom. Societies may come over time to do the right thing in response to concrete problems without managing to articulate in theoretical terms why it is the right thing. Part of what gives Kymlicka’s theory such power is that he draws attention to the fact that the multicultural institutions and
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practices that he endorses have often been adopted only as the result of long political struggles by subordinated and marginalized groups who advanced their demands in the name of justice. The idea that established institutions and practices may contain forms of wisdom that theories fail to capture is a Burkean insight, of course, but I do not see why it should be restricted to conservatives. In the version I am advocating, a contextual approach to theory does not entail granting normative priority to the way we do things now. It simply imposes an obligation to reflect upon the way we do things and what that may teach us. Practice is not given a privileged position in relation to theory. It is simply given standing. It is something that should be taken into account, a perspective that should not be ignored. Political theorists often use their theories to criticize practice, and rightly so. It is fair to say that the institutions and practices of liberal states often fail to live up to liberal principles and that they deserve criticism for this failure. It is also the case, however, that political theories—whether those of liberals or of the critics of liberalism—may fail to live up to liberal practice. That is what a contextual approach to theory enables us to see. Practice can provide a critical perspective on theory. If practice can be used to criticize theory but theory can also be used to criticize practice, how can we tell how to resolve a conflict between theory and practice? The answer is that we have to move back and forth between the two. In this process, intuitive moral judgments about practice play an important role in identifying which issues require further reflection. Often enough, both theory and intuition agree in the critical assessment of some practice. It may be obvious that the practice is wrong, even if it is difficult to change because is deeply entrenched and serves powerful interests. Discrimination based on race and gender persisted (and continues today) long past the point when anyone could pretend that it was morally justifiable. The challenge comes when there is a conflict between our intuitive moral judgments and a theory that we find attractive, as we find, for example, in the conflict between the theoretical view that the state should be neutral toward culture and identity and the intuitive judgment that some of the ways in which liberal states support cultures and identities are morally permissible or even morally required. That is when it is necessary to move back and forth between the two. This back and forth movement is not a simple oscillation. It involves further probing at both ends. One cannot simply rest content with the original intuition. It has been challenged by the theory. So, it is necessary to try to identify, articulate and reflect upon the reasons why the practice seemed morally defensible, and perhaps to reconsider it. In other words, what is needed is a more theoretical account of practice. This theoretical account of practice can then be used either to confirm or to challenge the original theory.
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The examples I cited from Kymlicka were ones in which his (and my) view was that theory should be modified in the light of practice. This need not be the case, however. One might conclude upon reflection that there is something wrong, perhaps even profoundly wrong with existing practices. This is what I have myself argued is the case with regard to a number of practices in liberal states in relation to immigration. Similarly, it would be possible to argue that, even upon reflection, the idea that the state should be neutral between competing conceptions of the good is a correct principle of liberal justice, despite the fact that it conflicts with existing practices in liberal states. That is what libertarians like Chandran Kukathas do, using this principle as the basis for a radical critique of existing liberal institutions and practices. I do not agree with this line of argument for substantive reasons that I cannot spell out here, but there is nothing in the contextual approach that I am advocating that would rule it out. A contextual approach to theory does not limit the radical potential of a theory or determine its ideology. It simply ensures that the theory will engage with existing realities. Let me summarize the implications of this discussion of why it is useful for political theorists to discuss actual cases. In a contextual approach to theory, one moves back and forth between practice and theory, connecting theoretical claims about justice, equality, freedom, and other moral categories to actual cases and practices where we have some intuitive views about the rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness of what is going on. The idea is to engage in an ongoing dialectic that involves mutual challenging of theory by practice and of practice by theory. Rawls talked about the mutual correction of our moral theories and our moral intuitions, using the phrase “reflective equilibrium” to describe the goal. I am doubtful that this dialectic ever reaches an end. What I favor could be better described as reflective disequilibrium, the mutual unsettling of complacent certitudes in theory and practice by their juxtaposition against one another. The third element of a contextual approach to theory is that it leads theorists to pay attention to the question of whether their theoretical formulations are actually compatible with the normative positions that they themselves take on particular issues. This may seem so obvious as not to be worth stating, but as I will show in a moment, even the best theorists often fail to do this. It is easy to get caught up in the search for a theoretical formulation that seems suitably general and to forget to check whether one actually believes in the generalization. This is an extension of the point just made about the importance of moving back and forth between one’s theories and one’s moral intuitions. Let me illustrate the importance of this element by showing how it can be used to criticize two theorists whom I have already identified as among the best at using a contextual approach: Michael Walzer and Will Kymlicka. Each of them constructs a theoretical
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account that is at odds with the moral views he actually holds according to his own writings. Take Walzer first. Walzer insists that we pay attention to ordinary moral judgments, but he constructs a theoretical account of morality that is incompatible with the kinds of moral judgments he makes himself. I summarize here an argument made at much greater length in chapter 2 of my book. In Spheres of Justice, Walzer says that every substantive account of justice is rooted in the shared understandings of a political community and that it is a mistake to criticize local conceptions from outside (Walzer, 1983). Yet he himself says (in the same book) that it is unjust to expel people from the states where they live (Walzer, 1983, pp. 42–43). He has in mind here the expulsion of people of Asian descent from Kenya and Uganda. In making this argument, Walzer makes no reference to the local understandings of the political communities in question. If he had paid closer attention to this claim and to other moral claims he makes in the book, he would have noticed that he himself sometimes makes arguments that apply to all states, sometimes makes arguments that apply to a subset of states (e.g., liberal democracies), and sometimes makes arguments that apply only to one state. That is a pattern that does not fit well with his theoretical account of justice as entirely a matter of shared local understandings. Had Walzer addressed this conflict, he would have found it necessary either to discard the first two sorts of arguments (which, however, constitute the bulk of the book) or (more likely) to construct a more complex theory of morality that explains why it is sometimes appropriate to make some moral judgments about what is done in other states without reference to their local understandings but sometimes not appropriate to do so. This distinction is in fact a characteristic feature of the moral views of most people in liberal states but one that has not received much theoretical attention. In sum, Walzer’s excellent theoretical work would have been even better if he had pursued his own contextual instincts more fully, and a reader who takes a contextual approach by juxtaposing Walzer’s own practice with his theory acquires a valuable critical perspective on his work. Now consider Kymlicka. Again, I am summarizing here an argument that is spelled out in my book, and readers will have to look there for the full analysis and the evidence to support the claim that follows. As I noted above, Kymlicka draws attention to the many ways in which liberal states recognize claims of culture and identity, and he clearly sees measures such as language rights for national minorities, self-government rights for aboriginal peoples, and some forms of symbolic recognition for immigrants as morally desirable policies. Yet when he tries to articulate a normative justification for such policies, he introduces a theoretical construct, his concept of “societal culture,” that actually provides moral support only for a very limited subset of the cultural groups whose claims he thinks
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deserve respect. Given the way he defines the term “societal culture,” it seems as though neither small national minorities, nor aboriginal groups, nor immigrants would have a societal culture that they would be entitled to protect and so would have no clear basis for any cultural claims at all, beyond those that flow from ordinary liberal individual rights. This is clearly not Kymlicka’s intention, but he does not notice the conflict, perhaps because he does not take up these cases once again after he has developed his theory and ask himself whether his theory really supports them as he intends. Again, a more consistent use of a contextual approach would have enabled him to avoid this problem in his theory (though it would also have made it more difficult to come up with a theoretical account that covered the range of cases he wants intuitively to defend). The fourth element of a contextual approach is that it includes a search for cases that are especially challenging to the theorist’s own theoretical position. One general admonition to theorists, not limited in any way to those using a contextual approach, is that it is wise to anticipate and meet objections to your own positions. In this process, it is always better to try to articulate the strongest version of the objections that you want to rebut rather than the weakest. If the objection comes from another theorist, look for the versions of his or her argument that seem the most challenging and persuasive, rather than a careless formulation that is easily dismissed. In that way, you will not simply be challenging a straw opponent of your own creation and ignoring the real issues. The fourth element of a contextual approach is simply the contextual version of this general prescription and another way of specifying the kinds of cases one should look for in one’s inquiry. Let me mention some of the ways in which I have tried to follow this approach in my own work. When I was reading the debates between liberals and communitarians in the 1980s, I found myself generally more sympathetic to the liberals, although I often thought that communitarian theorists were making important points, and, I was often unsure whether there was any real disagreement because the debates were often carried on at a high level of abstraction. At the same time, in working on the issue of immigration, I found myself defending various positions that I saw as rooted in liberal principles that seemed to leave little room for the claims of community and culture. For example, I defended the idea of open borders, at least in principle. (Carens, 1987) So, I thought it incumbent upon me to look for cases where I might intuitively feel that the claims of community were very strong in order to see whether those cases might challenge the liberal views that I had been espousing. This led me to research on aboriginal peoples in Canada and also to the case of Fiji, an island state with deep divisions between the descendants of the indigenous inhabitants and the descendants of immigrants from India (most of whom had come
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originally under a system of indentured labor). I do not have the space to describe these cases here. (Discussions of them appear in my book.) I will say, however, that I found both of them succeeded in challenging my liberal presuppositions in ways that I found fruitful. I have not abandoned my liberal commitments or indeed my theoretical position on issues such as immigration, but I now have a more complicated view of the ways in which the claims of culture and community should be taken into account and a deeper appreciation of their moral weight. I leave it to others to judge the merits of the arguments I advance in discussing these cases, but I am confident that turning my attention to cases that did not fit comfortably with my presuppositions has enabled me to reflect more deeply about citizenship, culture, immigration, and community than would otherwise have been the case. The fifth element of a contextual approach is that it promotes consideration of a wide range of cases, and especially a search for cases that are unfamiliar, and illuminating because of their unfamiliarity. This is an extension of the previous point. The idea here is not just to look for cases where one knows one’s intuitions are at odds with one’s theory but to look for cases where one is not sure what one’s intuitions are, cases that one can see are relevant but that are different from the examples that informed the construction of the theory in the first place. For example, India is a democracy, but when contemporary democratic theorists in Europe and North America write, how often do they ask themselves whether their ideas apply in India? All theories aim for some sort of generality, but often the generalizations depend upon some set of implicit presuppositions that the theorist many not even be conscious of. Kymlicka has argued, for example, that the theories of American liberals such as Rawls are profoundly marked by the centrality of race in American history, and that this has made it more difficult for them to see that justice may sometimes be served, rather than obstructed, by separate arrangements for different groups. Others have suggested that Kymlicka’s own theory has been distorted by a preoccupation with the case of Quebec. In my own case, I found that moving to Canada 18 years ago made a whole set of topics (e.g., language policy, aboriginal issues) seem more salient and made me aware that some of my American presuppositions about the institutions and policies entailed by liberal ideals of freedom and equality were not shared by many Canadians who clearly shared my basic normative commitments. Indeed, it was an appreciation for how much I had learned from the differences between Canada and the United States that made me want to see what I could learn about familiar normative questions about culture and identity in a case that was entirely unfamiliar to me, the case of Fiji. And, in fact, my immersion in that case helped me to see a whole range of issues in a new light.
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One alternative to taking up unfamiliar cases is simply to acknowledge the limiting presuppositions of one’s theory. One can say “My theory only applies in this or that context—in the United States or Canada or the Netherlands, or, more ambitiously, in North America or Europe or Western liberal democratic states”. That is appropriate in some respects. It is good to be aware of one’s limitations. But we can also learn a lot by trying to think about how our theories do or do not work in other contexts. That may even lead us to reconsider how well they really work in the contexts with which we are most familiar. Theorists such as Rawls and Walzer and Kymlicka are read and discussed around the world, and since people argue about how their theories do or do not work in a wide range of contexts, it would be nice if the theorists themselves turned their minds to this. Kymlicka, in fact, has done precisely this in a recent book where he engages in an extended exchange with scholars from Eastern Europe about whether or not his views on minorities are applicable in the Eastern European context (Kymlicka and Opalski, 2002). Admittedly, most of us do not have to worry quite so much about the worldwide reception of our theoretical work, but there is always the possibility that we will learn something as theorists if we try to expand our horizons a bit. Instead of simply acknowledging our limitations we might try to move beyond them. I have long thought that political theorists should take advantage of their institutional location in political science departments which, in North America at least, throws them together with colleagues who study what goes on in the rest of the world. If we are willing to consider a wider range of cases, our theories will have wider applicability (a virtue of theory) and we may learn something from less familiar cases that causes us to change our theoretical formulations or gives us insight into the cases that we think we already know. One of the differences between my approach and Rawls’ reflective equilibrium is that I want to pay attention not just to what Rawls calls “our considered convictions of justice” but also to our intuitive (less considered) judgments about a range of relatively unfamiliar (but real) issues and cases. My hope is that when we reflect upon the intuitive judgments we are making about unfamiliar cases and ask ourselves why we have these views, we will become conscious of moral considerations that are relevant to our general theories but that have been left out because the cases about which we have “considered convictions” do not readily bring these considerations to the fore. Part of the goal of the movement between practice (as embodied in unfamiliar cases) and theory is to bring those relevant but obscured considerations into view and to find ways to include them in our theories, thus making the theories better. Of course, the process of reflection may also lead us to revise our initial intuitive judgments about the unfamiliar cases.
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Let me turn finally to three challenges that have been posed to the enterprise of normative political theory by Jan van der Stoep through his reading of Pierre Bourdieu. Here are the three challenges as I understand them. First, normative theorizing neglects the ways in which moral reasoning serves certain interests (e.g., class, gender, ethnicity). Second, normative arguments take place in an institutional context that privileges some and subordinates others because of their differential access to the training and capacities provided by the institutions in which the normative arguments take place. Third, our standards of justice are rooted in particular historical traditions that may not be shared by others so that moral judgments may be forms of symbolic violence and may enact the unjust domination they ostensibly criticize. I regard these as important challenges, and I will try to show how a contextual approach, properly conducted, can meet these challenges. My response works at two levels. I will mention selected examples of contextual theory as a way of clarifying the meaning of the (relatively abstract) theory of van der Stoep/Bourdieu while simultaneously revealing the need for their theory to be more precise about how it applies to concrete issues. Thus, I can use the response to illustrate my general point about what a contextual approach can contribute to the clarification and critique of abstract theories. At the same time, I will show how a contextual approach can integrate the critical insights of van der Stoep/Bourdieu, thus producing a more satisfactory approach to the task of normative analysis. Consider first the challenge that moral reasoning conceals or justifies illegitimate group inequalities and social subordination. What does this mean? Is it a critique that applies in exactly the same way to all moral reasoning? One problem with that sort of reading, as van der Stoep himself notes, is that the critique of morality itself presupposes the moral perspective. To say, for example, that group inequalities and social subordination are illegitimate itself presupposes a moral standard of some sort, and presumably one where equality and freedom loom large. If what the critique really means is that some forms of moral reasoning that present themselves as universal and impartial really conceal and justify illegitimate forms of social inequality, then the obvious questions to ask are “Which forms of moral reasoning do this and how do they do it and are there any ways to avoid or at least minimize this tendency in the use of moral reasoning?” Those sorts of questions are best answered, I suggest, by looking at real cases where moral reasoning has been and is used to justify domination. For this purpose, some cases will work better than others. Everyone knows that there were people who served as moral apologists for slavery and Nazism and apartheid. If those were the examples used, the point would seem trivial. What makes the challenge interesting is the implication that
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forms of moral reasoning that we accept and practice ourselves perform this objectionable legitimating function. So, again, the task is to take a contextual approach, that is, to fill in this abstract claim by pointing to concrete examples from our own moral world in which conventional moral reasoning serves to disguise privilege or to make practices that should be criticized appear legitimate. This is precisely what many contemporary feminist and multiculturalist theorists have done. In many ways, the idea that conventional liberal moral reasoning conceals and legitimates unjust inequalities is a central theme of these literatures. As we have seen, for example, that is Kymlicka’s objection to the ideal of liberal neutrality. In my own work I have tried to be conscious of the danger that this first challenge identifies, and I have tried to meet the challenge in two ways. First, because much of the concealing and legitimating function of certain forms of moral reasoning is made possible by its abstractness, I try to render the abstractions concrete through the use of examples and thereby to reveal the problematic character of the abstract reasoning. Thus, in chapter four of my book I consider the general claim advanced by another theorist and sometimes echoed in public discourse that cultural differences explain and justify social inequalities in contemporary societies. I take up some concrete examples of social inequalities that some would attribute to cultural differences in order to clarify and contest this general claim, thus (I hope) undermining its capacity to perform this function of legitimating unjust inequalities. Second, I try to be conscious of and to draw attention to the ways in which even valid moral claims can serve morally problematic purposes because of the symbolic and political functions they perform when they are deployed in particular contexts. So, for example, elsewhere in the book I draw attention to the fact that criticisms of female genital mutilation are used to marginalize and stereotype certain groups of immigrants. That is a use of moral discourse that deserves moral criticism, even though the moral objections to female genital mutilation are well founded. In sum, a contextual approach to political theory can embrace, clarify, and advance the criticism of moral reasoning in the first challenge. The second challenge involves the fact that normative arguments are always developed and advanced within institutional contexts that privilege some and disadvantage others because of their background, training, and social position. Again, I think this critique is more powerful if it is not advanced simply as a generic feature of normative argumentation (even though it may in fact apply to all forms of normative argumentation) because, as van der Stoep notes, the critic cannot escape this institutional requirement either. Instead, the challenge should be to show how this institutionalization of normativity operates in particular contexts, and what the objections are to particular forms of institutionalization. Moreover,
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we should not rest content with a critique that merely points out problems. As Hegel reminds us, it is an illusion to suppose that you can attain real freedom just by saying “No” to everything concrete. If you do that, you are stuck in the negative moment. Because the institutionalization of normativity is inevitable, the power of critical observations will be enhanced if they are conjoined with some further exploration of alternative institutional contexts, especially if one can explain why these institutional alternatives should be regarded as morally preferable or at least why the conventional form of institutionalization should be regarded as especially problematic. By taking a contextual approach, one can show how the institutionalization of normativity occurs in real life and why a critical assessment of particular forms of institutionalization may be appropriate. In my own work, I explore these issues in a discussion of why some aboriginal people think that Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Canada’s constitutional bill of rights) should not apply to aboriginal governments. I cannot repeat the details of the argument here. The main point, that I make is this: The Charter is not a philosophical formulation of moral principles, but a set of legal concepts and categories that will be interpreted and applied by particular people (not, need it be said, aboriginal people), people selected and trained in certain ways (and not others), people attuned to certain considerations (and not others), people taught to regard certain forms of communication (and not others) as intellectually respectable and relevant. Who will have actual, effective power to make Charter claims and for what ends will they make them?...The Charter is not something that directly translates abstract individual rights into social realities. It is not applied liberalism, pure and simple, but liberalism applied in and through a set of legal institutions with their own distinctive norms, practices, interpretations, and modes of reasoning (Carens, 2000, pp. 191–192).
The point of this passage is precisely that normativity is institutionalized in the Charter in ways that are alien and disadvantageous to many aboriginal people, so that resistance to having it as their fundamental law cannot reasonably be seen simply as an entirely unwarranted opposition to justice and human rights. Of course, that leaves open the question of what should be done. That is a question that must ultimately be addressed, and we might conclude upon reflection (which would, of course, include the many conflicting views of aboriginal people themselves on this issue) that the best course of action is to have some version of the Charter apply to aboriginal governments (perhaps a version written by aboriginal people or interpreted by them). Whatever answer is given, it will not be one in which there is no institutionalization of normativity. So, one of the virtues of a contextual approach here is that, on the one hand, it can render vivid this challenge about the institutionalization of normativity, and, on the other hand, it presses home the importance of choosing among alternative
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institutionalizations, of distinguishing between better and worse even if none is perfect. The third challenge is to confront the fact that our understandings of justice and morality are rooted in particular traditions that may not be fully shared by others and that imposing these understandings upon them may involve forms of symbolic violence. One way to read this challenge is as a commitment to a strong version of moral and cultural relativism. I think such a view is ultimately impossible to sustain. After all, the view that there is something wrong with imposing understandings upon people who do not fully share them or something wrong with committing symbolic violence is a view that is rooted in our own moral traditions which also contain the view that there are certain kinds of behavior and action that deserve universal condemnation or certain kinds of protections (human rights) that everyone deserves to enjoy. One cannot simply assert the primacy of one component of the tradition over another without argument, and once one begins the argument, the most plausible view, I think, will be one that takes both of these views seriously and tries to hold them together, despite the tensions. In my book, I try to pursue this line of argument in my chapter on Walzer where I criticize Walzer’s relativism which seems to resemble Bourdieu’s. Van der Stoep himself seems to disagree with Bourdieu on this point because he sees Bourdieu’s commitment to interpret every sort of moral judgment and moral tradition only as an instrument of repression as a position that does not adequately respect the moral views of ordinary people. At the same time, van der Stoep thinks Charles Taylor is neglecting the dark, repressive side of culture when he appeals for an open dialogue between cultures that starts from an assumption that we have something to learn from cultures other than our own. I am sympathetic to both of van der Stoep’s concerns but confess myself a bit puzzled as to what his view entails in concrete contexts or indeed why he thinks we should take the fact that no open discussion between equal partners now exists as a challenge to the kind of hermeneutic stance that Taylor recommends. It seems to me that once we acknowledge this tendency toward inequality and domination we are better able to recognize that justice (i.e., our own conception of justice) requires us to find ways to counteract and minimize these tendencies both in the procedures we establish for exercising power and in the substantive judgments we make about what justice requires or permits in particular contexts. So, I think I would accept Taylor’s claim that openness to others should not come in the form of an abandonment of our own perspective and also his insistence we must strive to be open and to see what we can learn from others (while trying to be conscious of our own position of relative power). As always, to see what this might mean and whether it can be done requires us to look at concrete contexts where this sort of cultural disparity
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is present to see how we should respond. In the book I try to do this above all in my chapter on Fiji, where I argue at times for the moral relevance of certain standards which some Fijians want to reject and at other times defend respect for local understandings against critics who advocate a more conventional liberal position. Whether my account succeeds in navigating between Scylla and Charibdis, I will leave for readers of the book to judge. My claim here is simply that it is a mistake not to try to steer this middle course.
REFERENCES Carens, J.H., Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders. Review of Politics 49 (2) (1987), pp. 251–273. Carens, J.H., Culture, Citizenship, and Community: A Contextual Exploration of Justice as Evenhandedness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Kymlicka, W., Liberalism, Community and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Kymlicka, W., Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Kymlicka, W. and Opalski, M. (eds.), Can Liberal Pluralism Be Exported? Western Political Theory and Ethnic Relations in Eastern Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Walzer, M., Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. New York: Basic Books, 1983.
Department of Political Science University of Toronto Toronto, Canada MS2 3G3 E-mail:
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