PROF. JAMES’S OFFICE HOUR: Tues. 10:30-11:30

Philosophy Department, HOB2, #205

 

Humanities Core: Winter 2006

Week 9-1 and 9-2

 

  1. THE PROGRAM
  2. Questions:
    1. Would it be morally wrong for the Core faculty to institute The Program?
    2. What if your life would go better than it is going now?
    3. What if relations within your household would also be more just?

     

  3. Principle of Sovereignty: A self-governing society has a moral right to be free from intervention by outsiders, even if intervention would make its members better off, or make its internal relations more just.
    1. Beitz rejects this principle: a society has no right not to be interfered with by outsiders—no right of sovereignty—unless it is just (or more likely to become just if left alone).
    2. Should we accept the Principle of Sovereignty, or not? If not, why? If so, in what sense?
        1. If we accept the principle, we might seem to be tolerating injustice that should be resisted.
        2. If we reject the principle, as Beitz does, this might seem to justify a new, disrespectful imperialism.

     

  4. Colonialism
    1. Economic competition
    2. Colonial populations will be better off
    3. Beveridge: "The rule of liberty that all just government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, applies only to those who are capable of self-government" (p. 157).
      1. Abbot Lawrence Lowell: the Anglo-Saxon race only mastered the "art of self-government" "by centuries of discipline under the supremacy of law" (p. 168). Other populations will get there, but it will take time.
      2. No consent

     

  5. Two objections to the Principle of Sovereignty
    1. Too weak: it doesn’t capture rights to national self-determination.
    2. Too strong: it forbids intervention when justice requires it.

     

  6. The Principle of National Self-Determination: people of common nationality have a right to be a self-governing society, free from interference by people of a different nationality.
    1. If a nation now shares a government with another nation, it has a right to secession.
      1. "Nation"?
      2. the BLUES and the PURPLES
    2. Principle of Inclusion: any government must extend economic, social, and political rights and opportunities equally to all of its subjects, regardless of regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, or gender.
    3. Beitz: "What is certain is that members of colonized groups have the right to just institutions; whether they have a right of self-determination depends on the extent to which the granting of independence would, in their particular circumstances, help to minimize injustice" (Beitz, p. 102).
    4. A separate right of national self-determination?

     

  7. Is the Principle of Sovereignty too strong?
    1. Beitz: a society has no right to be free of outside intervention unless and until its arrangements are just.
    2. A duty to intervene?

     

  8. Why not imperialism?
    1. Lowell: colonial rule founded on belief in justice, the belief that "all men are created equal" (p. 165). It should govern "with a single eye to their own welfare," by someone who "can do justice to all the races" (p. 169).
    2. Beitz rejects imperial rule on empirical grounds.
      1. Lowell: rule by a small minority is "always liable to produce tyrannical abuse" (p. 169).
      2. J. S. Mill: people are generally in the best position to determine their own interests (Beitz, p. 84).
      3. Betiz: "the heart of the case against colonialism" is that it tended to make local arrangements more unjust. The "European powers," created "new social problems, increased distributive inequalities, structural economic distortions… and absolute as well as relative deprivation in the lower classes" (Betiz, p. 101).

     

  9. Counterargument Assignment
    1. pp. 100-102: Beitz argues that colonial rule is unjustified, because its costs tend to be unacceptably high.
    2. One reconstruction:
      1. STEP ONE: Colonialism was justified only if it was justified paternalism, that is, only if was a way of benefiting a colonial population which lacks a "fair social-decision procedure" for collectively making choices for itself (p. 100, top).
      2. STEP TWO: A colonial population is properly benefited by alien rule only if, were its members in a position to rationally choose for themselves, they would (i) agree to its ultimate benefits, and (ii) accept the costs of being governed by an alien power (p. 100, middle).
      3. STEP THREE: Rational people would agree to the ultimate benefits of alien rule (e.g. infrastructure, development, education, technology). But they would not accept the usual costs of being governed by an alien power (p. 101, top). It creates "new social problems," including "absolute as well as relative depravation in the lower classes," and it does not generally help "prepare subject peoples for self-government."
      4. INTERMEDIATE CONCLUSION: Thus, colonialism was not justified paternalism (by STEP TWO and STEP THREE).
      5. CONCLUSION: Thus, colonialism was not justified (by INTERMEDIATE CONCLUSION and STEP ONE).
    3. Present a counterargument, which gives reasons to reject one or more of the premises. Then evaluate the counterargument.
      1. Give reasons
      2. Be sympathetic
      3. Construct a thesis statement

     

     

  10. Sovereignty rides again
    1. "Who is to say what is just?"
      1. Dangers of civil disorder.
    2. The Principle of Respect: when there is reasonable disagreement about whether an action or policy is unjust, you cannot force or coerce others to do what you think is just, even if your belief happens to be correct.
    3. The Principle of Conditional Sovereignty: a self-governing society has the right to be free from intervention by outsiders, so long as it is not unjust in ways that are beyond the bounds of reasonable disagreement about justice. In that case, outsiders cannot permissibly intervene, even if their view of justice happens to be the correct one.

     

  11. Human rights
    1. What sorts of injustices are beyond the bounds of reasonable disagreement about justice?
      1. To say that arrangements are not only unjust but that we can’t really reasonably disagree about their injustice, is to say that a society violates human rights.
      2. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR); the Genocide Convention (1948); the European Convention of Human Rights (1950); the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966); and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1966); the American Convention on Human Rights (1978); and the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights (1981).

       

    2. Some articles of the UDHR (at http://www.un.org/rights/50/decla.htm ).
      1. Article 4: "No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms."
      2. Article 16, part 1: "Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family…."
      3. Article 24: "Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay."

       

    3. You might wonder where exactly we should draw the line. If a society is not democratic but otherwise decent overall, does it qualify for right of sovereignty? At present, there is no general consensus on the matter.
    4. A compromise:
      1. Intervention can be permissible or even required when human rights are grossly violated.
      2. When human rights are more or less honored, however, a society has a genuine right of sovereignty: other societies cannot intervene, even when local conditions are in fact unjust.

     

  12. Beitz: respect for persons, not peoples
    1. "it is because all persons should be respected as sources of ends that we should not allow all states to claim a right of autonomy" (Betiz, p. 81).
    2. cosmopolitanism: in moral reasoning, we are to consider what is owed to individuals as such.
      1. Groups are not "organic wholes with the capacity to realize their nature in the choice and pursue of ends." (Beitz, p. 76)
    3. Individual consent?
      1. "…there are few, if any, governments to which all (or even some) of the governed have actually consented, and therefore…few, if any, governments that are in fact free associations." (Betiz, p. 78)
      2. Locke: "tacit" consent?
        1. A product of institutions, and so not a basis for their justification
      3. Hypothetical consent? (Beitz, p. 80)
        1. In practice, respecting what people would choose for their society is nothing more than respecting their society only if it is just.