Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do? Episode 11: "THE CLAIMS OF COMMUNITY"

funding for this program is provided by additional funding provided by today we turn to Kant's reply to Aristotle Kant thinks that Aristotle just made a mistake it's one thing Kant says to support a fair framework of Rights within which people can pursue their own conceptions of the good life it's something else and something that runs the risk of coercion to base law or principles of justice on any particular conception of the good life you remember Aristotle says in order to investigate the ideal Constitution we have first to figure out the best way to live Kant would reject that idea he says that constitutions and laws and rights should not embody or affirm or promote any particular way of life that's at odds with freedom for Aristotle the whole point of law the purpose of the polis is to shape character to cultivate the virtue of citizens to inculcate Civic excellence to make possible a good way of life that's what he tells us in the politics for Kant on the other hand the purpose of law the point of a constitution is not to inculcate or to promote virtue its to set up a fair framework of Rights within which citizens may be free to pursue their own conceptions of the good for themselves so we see the difference in their theories of justice we see the difference in their account of law or the role of a constitution the point of politics and underlying these differences are two different accounts of what it means to be a free person for Aristotle we're free insofar as we have the capacity to realize our potential that leads us to the question of fit fit between persons and the roles that are appropriate to them figuring out what I'm cut out for that's what it means to lead a free life to live up to my potential Kant rejects that idea and instead substitutes his famously demanding notion of freedom as the capacity to act autonomously freedom means acting according to a law I give myself freedom as autonomy part of the the appeal part of the moral force of the view of content of Rawls consists in the conception of the person as a free and independent self capable of choosing his or her own ends the image of the self is free and independent offers up if you think about it a powerful liberating vision because what it says is that as free moral persons we are not bound by any ties of history or of tradition or of inherited status that we haven't chosen for ourselves and so we're unbound by any moral ties prior to our choosing them and that means that means that we are free and independent sovereign selves we're the authors of the only obligations that constrain us the communitarian critics of Kantian and Rawls in liberalism acknowledge that there is something powerful and inspiring in that account of freedom free independent choosing self but they argue it misses something it misses a whole dimension of moral life and even political life it can't make sense of our moral experience because it can't account for certain moral and political obligations that we commonly recognize and even prize and these include obligations of membership loyalty solidarity and other moral ties that may claim us for reasons that we can't trace to an act of consent alasdair macintyre gives an account but he calls a narrative conception of the cell it's a different account of the self human beings are essentially storytelling creatures MacIntyre argues that means I can only answer the question what am i to do if I can answer the prior question of what story or stories do I find myself apart that's what he means by the narrative conception of the self what does this have to do with the idea of community in belonging MacIntyre says this once you accept this narrative aspect of moral reflection you will notice that we can never seek for the good or exercise the virtues only as individuals we all approach our circumstance as bearers of particular social identities I am someone's son or daughter a citizen of this or that city I belong to this plan that tried this nation hence MacIntyre argues what is good for me has to be the good for someone who inhabits these roles I inherit from the past of my family my city my tribe my nation a variety of debts inheritances expectations and obligations these constitute the given of my life my morale starting point this is in part what gives my life its moral particularity that's the narrative conception of the self and it's a conception that sees the self as claimed or encumbered at least to some extent by the history the tradition the communities of which it's a part we can't make sense of our lives not only is a psychological matter but also as a moral matter in thinking what we ought to do without attending to these features about us now MacIntyre recognizes that this narrative account this picture of the encumbered self puts his account at odds with contemporary liberalism and individualism from the standpoint of individualism I am what I myself choose to be I'm a biologically be my father's son but I can't be held responsible for what he did unless I choose to assume such responsibility I can't be held responsible for what my country does or has done unless I choose to assume such responsibility but MacIntyre says this reflects a certain kind of moral shallowness even blindness it's a blindness at odds with the full measure of responsibility which sometimes he says involves collective responsibility or responsibilities that may float from historic memories and he gives some examples such individualism it's expressed by those contemporary Americans who deny any responsibility for the effects of slavery upon black Americans saying I never owned any slaves or the young German who believes that having been born after 1945 means that what Nazis did to Jews has no moral relevance to his relationship to his Jewish contemporaries McIntyre says all of these attitudes of historical amnesia amount to a kind of moral abdication once you see that who we are and what it means to sort out our obligations can't be separated shouldn't be separated from the life histories that define us the contrast he says when the narrative account is clear for the story of my life is always embedded in the story of those communities from which I derived my identity I am born with the past and to try to cut myself off from that past is to deform my present relationships so there you have in McIntyre a strong statement of the idea that the self can't be detached shouldn't be detached from its particular ties of membership history story narrative now I want to get your reactions to the communitarian critique of the individualist or the voluntarist the unencumbered self but let's make it concrete so that you can react to more than just the theory of it by looking at the two different accounts of moral and political obligation that arise depending on which of these conceptions of the person one accepts on the liberal conception moral and political obligations arise in one of two ways there are natural duties that we owe human beings as such duties of respect for persons Quay persons these obligations are universal then as Rawls points out there are also voluntary obligations obligations that we owe to particular others insofar as we have agreed whether through a promise or a deal or a contract now the issue between the liberal and communitarian accounts of the self is there another category of obligation or not the communitarian says there is there is a third category that might be called obligations of solidarity or loyalty or membership the communitarian argues that construing all obligations as either natural duties or voluntary obligations fails to capture obligations of membership or solidarity loyalties whose moral force consists partly in the fact that living by them is inseparable from understanding ourselves as the particular persons we are what would be some examples and then I want to see how you would react to them examples of obligations of membership that are particular but don't necessarily flowed from consent but rather from membership narrative community one situation the most common examples are ones to do with the family the relation between parents and children for example suppose there were two children drowning you could save only one of them one was your child the other was a stranger's child would you have an obligation to flip a coin or would there be something morally obtuse if you didn't rush to save your child now you may say well parents have agreed to have their children so take the other case the case of children's obligation for their parents now we don't choose our parents we don't even choose to have parents there is that asymmetry and yet considered two aging parents one of them yours the other strangers doesn't it make moral sense to think that you have a greater obligation to look after your aged parent then to flip a coin or to help the strangers now is this traceable to consent not likely or take a couple of political examples during World War two French Resistance pilots flew bombing raids over occupied France one day one of the pilots received his targets and noticed that the village he was being asked to bomb was his home village he refused not disputing that it was as necessary as the target he bombed yesterday he refused on the ground that he couldn't bring himself it would be a special moral crime for him to bomb his people even in a cause that he supported the cause of liberating France now do we admire that if we do the communitarian argues it's because we do recognize obligations of solidarity take another example some years ago there was a famine in Ethiopia hundreds of thousands of people were starving the Israeli government organized an airlift to rescue Ethiopian Jews they didn't have the capacity to rescue everyone in Ethiopia they rescued several hundred Ethiopian Jews now what's your moral assessment is that a kind of morally troubling partiality a kind of prejudice or as the Israeli government thought is there a special obligation of solidarity that this airlift properly responded to well that takes us to the broader question of patriotism what morally speaking is to be said for patriotism there are two towns named Franklin one is Franklin Texas and the other is just across the Rio Grande River Franklin Mexico what is the moral significance of national boundaries why is it or is it the case that we as Americans have a greater responsibility for the health and the education in the welfare and public provision for people who live in Franklin Texas then equally needy people just across the river living in Franklin Mexico according to the communitarian account membership does matter and the reason patriotism is at least potentially a virtue is that it is an expression of the obligations of citizenship how many are sympathetic to the idea that there is this third category of obligation the obligation obligations of solidarity or membership how many are sympathetic to that idea and how many are critical of that idea how many think all obligations can be accounted for in the first two ways all right let's hear from the critics of the communitarian idea first yes my biggest concern with the idea of having obligations because you're a member of something or because of solidarity is that it seems that if you accept those obligations as being sort of morally binding then there's a greater occurrence of overlapping obligations a greater occurrence of good versus good and I don't know if this sort of framework allows us to choose between them good in much your name so you worried that if we recognize obligations of membership or solidarity since we inhabit different communities their claims might conflict and what would we do if we have competing obligations yes well one solution is that we could view ourselves as ultimately members of the human community and that then within that we have all these smaller spheres of that you know I am an American or I am a student at Harvard and so the most important community to be to be obligated to is the community of human beings and then from there you can sort of evaluate which other ones are most important to you so the most univer and what's your name Nikola so Nikola you say the most universal community we inhabit the community of humankind always takes precedence yes Patrick are you satisfied No why not um it seems rather arbitrary that we should choose the universal obligation over the more specific obligation I might also say that I should be obligated first to the most specific of my obligations for instance take my family as a small unit of solidarity perhaps I should be first obligated to that unit and then perhaps to the unit of my town and then my country and then the human race good thank you let's I want to hear from another critic of the communitarian view we have the objection well what if Goods collide who objects to the whole idea of it who sees patriotism is just a kind of prejudice that ideally we should overcome yes patriotism reflects a community membership that's a like a given I think the problem is that whereas some memberships are natural narratives the narrative of citizenship is a constructed one and I think a false one because as the river is just a historical accident it makes no sense that because the lottery of birth threw me into the United States as opposed to Mexico that that's the membership that I should be a part of good and what's your name Elizabeth Elizabeth who has a reply yes I think in in general uh we have to ask where do our moral obligations arise from anyway and I think basically there'd be two places from which they could arise one would be kin another one would be reciprocity and isn't the closer you are associated to other people there's a natural reciprocity there in terms of having interactions with those people you interact the neighbors on your street with the other people in your country through economic arrangement I don't know and you don't know those people in Franklin Texas any more than you know the people in Franklin Mexico do you presumably you're naturally more connected with the people in your own country in terms of interaction and trade than you are with people in other countries good who else I'll go ahead yeah I think that a lot of the basis for a patriotism can be compared to like school spirit or even house fear that we see here where freshmen are sorted into houses and then within a day they have developed some sort of attachment or a pride associated with that house and so I think that we can probably draw a distinction between a moral obligation for communitarian beliefs and sort of just a sentimental emotional attachment good way to say you stay there what's your name Rina what about go back to my example about the obligation of the childhood the parent would you say the same thing there it's just a maybe or may not be a sentimental toy but it has no moral weight well I mean I'm not entirely certain that accident in the initial stage is something that will preclude like moral obligations later and so you know just because we were randomly sorted into a house or just because we don't choose who our parents are what country born into doesn't necessarily mean that we won't like develop an obligation based on some type of benefit I guess just sort of see your obligation to your parent that's greater than two agent parents around the world is only because and insofar as you're repaying a benefit that your parent gave you when you were growing up yeah I mean I would say that if you look at cases of adoption where you know you have a biological parent somewhere else that you don't interact with and then you have a parent you know who adopted you most people would say that if you had to pick between them in the case of you know aging parents that your obligation would lie more with the person who raised you and who had exchanges with you meaningfully may ask you one more question about the parent sure do you think that a person with a bad parent owes them less I don't know because I've never had a bad parent I think that's a good place to end thank you we'll continue with this next time thank you if I were working on an egg problem set for example and I saw that my roommate was cheating that might be a bad thing for hoot for him to do but I wouldn't turn him in you would not turn him in I wouldn't turn him in and I think that I would argue that's the right thing to do because of my obligation um you know you don't have a duty to tell the truth to report someone who cheated today I'd like to take I'd like to consider the strongest objections to the idea that there are obligations of solidarity or membership then I want to see if those objections can be met successfully one objection emerged in the discussion last time Patrick said well if obligations flow from community membership and identity we inhabit multiple communities doesn't that mean that our obligations will sometimes conflict so that's one possible objection and then Rina said these examples meant to bring out the moral force of solidarity and membership examples about parents and children about the French resistance fighter asked to bomb his own village in drawing back about the airlift by Israel of Ethiopian Jews these examples they may be intuitively evocative Rina said but really they're pointing to matters of emotion matters of sentiment not true moral obligations and then there were a number of objections not necessarily to patriotism as such but to patriotism understood as an obligation of solidarity and membership beyond consent this objection allowed that there can be obligations to the communities we inhabit including obligations of patriotism but this objection argued that all of the obligations of patriotism or of community or membership are actually based on liberal ideas and perfectly compatible with them consent either implicit or explicit or reciprocity Julia rod how for example on the website said that liberalism can endorse patriotism as a voluntary moral obligation patriotism and familial love both fall under this category because after all Julia points out the content framework allows people free rein to choose to express virtues such as these if they want to so you don't need the idea of a non-voluntary particular moral obligation to capture the moral force of community values where's Julia okay so did I summarize that that fairly there is action Julia actually is in line with what Rawls says about this very topic you weren't aware of that you came up with it on your own that's pretty good Rawls says when he's discussing political obligation he says it's one thing if someone runs for office or enlist in the military they're making a voluntary choice but Rawls says there is I believe no political obligation strictly speaking for citizens generally because it's not clear what is the requisite binding action and who has performed it so Rawls acknowledges that for ordinary citizens there is no political obligation except insofar as some particular citizen willingly through an act of consent undertakes or chooses such an obligation that's in line with Julia's point it's related to another objection that people have raised which is it's perfectly possible to recognize particular obligations to one's family or to ins country provided honoring those obligations doesn't require you to violate any of the natural duties or requirements of Universal respect for persons quite persons so that's consistent with the idea that we can choose if we want to to express a loyalty to our country or to our people or to our family provided we don't do any injustice within the framework acknowledging the priority that is of the universal duties the one objection that I didn't mention is the view of those who say that obligations of membership really are a kind of collective selfishness why should we honor them isn't it just a kind of prejudice so what I'd like to do perhaps if those of you who have agreed who wrote and who have agreed to defect to press these objections perhaps if you could gather down all together will form a team as we did once before and we'll see if you can respond to those who want to defend patriotism conceived as a communal obligation now there were a number of people who argued in defense of patriotism as the communitarian view conceives it so let me go down now and join the critics the critics of communitarianism if there's a microphone that we could use somewhere okay thanks Kate who as the critics of patriotism communal patriotism gather their forces here Patrick if you want to you can join as well arena and others who have spoken or addressed this question are free to join in but I would like to hear now from those of you who defend patriotism and defend it as a moral obligation that can't be translated back into purely consent-based terms can't be translated into liberal terms where's Ajay Kumar Ajay everybody seems to know you all right let's hear from Ajay you said I in the same way I feel I owe more to my family than to the general community I owe more to my country than to humanity in general because my country holds a great stake in my identity it is not prejudice for me to love my country unless it is prejudice for me to love my parents more than somebody else's so Ajay what would you say to this group stand up I think that there's some fundamental moral obligation that comes from a communitarian responsibility to people and groups that form your identity I mean even like I'll give the example that you know there are a lot of things about our government right now that I'm not in favor of but part of my identity is that America value is a free society where we can object to certain things and I think that's an expression of patriotism as well and I'd go back to the parent example or even in Harvard I think you know I owe more to my roommates because they make up my Tenny than I do to the Harvard community as a whole and I think that applies to our country because there are certain things that growing up here yes we can't choose if we can't choose our parents things like that but it makes up part of our identity okay who would like to take that on hike yeah both the obligation to others simply by virtue of being in their their um being influenced by them I'm a German citizen and if I had been born 80 years earlier than I would have been a citizen of Nazi Germany and for some reason I just don't think that I would have to feel obligated towards Germany um because I benefited from action of Nazis I mean I guess my response to that would be you have hundreds of thousands of protestors the United States right now who hold up signs that say pieces patriotic and I'm sure there are people in this room who don't agree with that I personally do and I would say that they're strongly objecting to basically everything the Bush administration is doing right now but they still consider themselves loving their country because they're furthering the cause of what they see is best for the country and I tend to agree with that as a patriotic movement well but how is that then how do you still favor your country how is that so patriotic I mean isn't that more sentimental attachment where's the obligation they're not to bring this back to John Locke but I'd like to bring this back to John Locke so I mean in his conception of um you know when people joined society there's there's still some outlet like if you if you're not satisfied with your society you know you do have a means of exit even though we had a lot of concerns about how you're born and it's not very feasible he still provides that option if we want to say that your obligation to society is a moral one that means that prior to knowing exactly what that society is going to be like or what your position is going to be in that society that means that you have a binding obligation to like a complete unknown body that that could be you know completely foreign to all of your personal beliefs or you know what you would hope to be do you think that that kind of communal obligation or patriotism means writing the community a a blank moral check basically yeah like I think that we can you know I think it's reasonable to say that as you grow and as you develop within that community that you acquire some type of obligation based on reciprocity but to say that you have a moral obligation I think requires a stronger justification well anyone else like to address that I guess we could say that you you could argue that you're morally obliged to society by the fact that there is this reciprocity I think it's the idea that you know we participate in society we pay our taxes we vote this is why we could say that we owe something to society but beyond that I don't think there's anything inherent in the fact that we are members of the society itself that we owe and anything I think is insofar as we as the society gives something gives us protection safety security then we owe the society something but nothing beyond what we give this assign who wants to take that on Rahul I don't think we I don't think we give the community a blank moral check in that sense I think we only give it a blank moral check when we abdicate our sense of civic responsibility and when we say that the debate doesn't matter because patriotism is a vice I think that patriotism is important because it gives us a sense of community a sense of common civic virtue that we can engage in the issues even if you don't agree with the way the government is acting you can still love your country and hate the way it's acting and I think because out of that love of country you can debate with other people and have respect for their views but still engaging in debate if you just say that you know page 2 is a vice you drop out of that debate and you and you see the ground to people who are more fundamentalist who have a stronger view and who make worse the community it instead we should engage the other members of the community on that same moral ground well now this what we hear from a Jain Rahul is a very pluralistic argumentative critically minded patriotism whereas what we hear from ICANN the critics of patriotism here is the worry that to take patriotic obligation in a communal way seriously involves a kind of loyalty that doesn't let us just pick and choose among the beliefs or actions or or practices of our country what more what's left of loyalty if all we're talking about Ajay and Rahul if all we're talking about is loyalty to principles of justice that may happen to be embodied in our community or not as the case may be in if not then we can can reject its course I don't know I've sort of given a reply I got carried away I'm sorry who liked go ahead Julia yeah I think that patriotism you needed to find what that is it sounds like you know you would normally think that we are given a more weak definition here page which is amongst us but it almost sounds like your definition is merely to have some sort of civic involvement in debating within your society and I think that that kind of undermines maybe the moral some of the moral worth of patriotism as a virtue as well I think if you can consent to a stronger form of patriotism if you want that's a stronger I guess more obligation and even what you're suggesting what we really need to sharpen the issue is an example from the defenders of communitarianism of a case where loyalty can actually compete with and possibly outweigh universal principles of justice isn't that what that's the test they really need to meet isn't it all right so that's the test you need to meet or any any among you who would like to defend obligations of membership or solidarity independent of ones that happen to embody just principles who has an example of a kind of loyalty that can and should compete with universal moral claims respect for persons go ahead yeah if I were working on an egg problem set for example and I saw that my roommate was cheating that might be a bad thing for her for him to do but I wouldn't turn him in you would not turn him in I wouldn't turn him in and I think that I would argue that's the right thing to do because of my obligation him you know it may be wrong but that's what I would do and you know I think that's what most people would do as well right that's now there's a fair test he's not slipping out by saying he's invoking in the name of community some universal principles of justice what's your name stay there what's your name it's dan dan so what do people think about Dan's case that's a harder case for the ethic of loyalty isn't it but a truer test how I agree with Dan so loyalty Dan loyalty has its part a sense it how many disagree with Stan Peggy oh well I agree with Dan but I agree that it's a choice that we make but it's not necessarily right or wrong I mean I'm agreeing that I'm going to make the wrong choice because I'm gonna choose my roommate but I also recognize that choice isn't morally right so you're still translating even Dan's loyalty you're saying well that's a matter of choice but what's the right thing to do the most people put up their hand saying Dan would be right to stand by his roommate and not turn him in let's go ahead also I think as a roommate you have insider information and that might not be something you want to use that's might be something unfair to hold against you know you're spending that much time with the roommate obviously you're going to learn things about about him and I don't think it's fair to reveal that to a greater community but it's loyalty Wojtek you you agree with Dan that yes oil T is a ethic at stake here absolutely you don't have a duty to tell the truth to report someone who cheated not if you're if you've been advantaged into getting that kind of information before our critics of patriotism leave I want to give you another version a more public example of what will I guess we should call it Dan's dilemma Dan's dilemma of loyalty and I want to get the reaction of people to this this came up a few years ago in Massachusetts does anyone know who this man is Billy Bulger that's right who is Billy Bulger he was president the Massachusetts state Senate for many one of the most powerful politicians in Massachusetts and then he became president of the University of Massachusetts now Billy Bulger did you hear the story about him that bears on Dan's dilemma Billy Bulger has a brother named Whitey Bulger and this is Whitey Bulger his brother whitey is on the FBI's most wanted list alleged to be a notorious gang leader in Boston responsible for many murders and now a fugitive from justice but when when the US Attorney they called Billy Bulger then the president of the University of Massachusetts before the grand jury and wanted information on the whereabouts of his brother this fugitive and he refused to give it us attorney said just to be clear mr. Bulger you feel more loyalty to your brother than to the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and here's what Billy Bulger said I never thought of it that way but I do have a loyalty to my brother I care about him I hope that I'm never helpful to anyone against him I don't have an obligation to help anyone catch my brother and you would agree how many would agree with the position of Billy Bulger let me give one other example and then we'll let the critics reply the critics of loyalty as we'll describe it here's a an even more fateful example from a figure in American history robert e lee now robert e lee on the eve of the civil war was an officer of the Union Army he opposed secession in fact regarded as treason when war loomed Lincoln offered Lee to be the commanding general of the Union Army and Lee refused and he described in a letter to his sons why he refused with all my devotion to the Union he wrote I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives my children my home by which he meant Virginia the Union is dissolved I shall return to my native state and share the miseries of my people save in her defense I will draw my sword no more here's a real test Dan for your principle of loyalty because here is the cause of the war against not only to save the Union but against slavery and Lee is going to fight for Virginia even though he doesn't share the desire of the southern states to secede now the communitarian would say there is something admirable in that whether or not the decision was ultimately right there's something admirable and the communitarian would say we can't even make sense rina we can't make sense of Lee's dilemma as a moral dilemma and thus we acknowledge that the claim of loyalty arising from his sense of narrative of who he is is immoral not just sentimental emotional tug all right who would like to respond to Dan's loyalty to Billy Bulger's loyalty or to robert e lee's loyalty to virginia what do you say it Julia okay well I think that this is these are some classic examples of you know multiple spheres of influence and that you have conflicting communities that your family in your country I think that's one reason why the idea of choice in your obligation is so important because how else can you resolve this you have if you're morally obligated and there's no way out of this need for loyalty to both communities your tract there's nothing you can do you have to make a choice and I think that being able to choose based on other characteristics than merely you know the arbitrary fact that you're a member of this community is important otherwise it's left to use randomness well Julia the issue isn't whether these whether Dan makes a choice or Billy Bulger or robert e lee of course they make a choice the question is on what grounds on what principle should they choose the communitarian doesn't deny that there's a choice to be made the question is which choice on what grounds and should loyalty as such way Andre now you want to alright go ahead what do you say why one of the things we've noticed in the three examples is that the people who've all chosen the most immediate community of which they're part the more local one and I think there's something to be said for that it's not just random they're there I mean there doesn't seem to be conflict because they know which one is more important and it's their family over the ak10 class their state over their country and their family over the Commonwealth of Massachusetts so I think that's the answer to which is more important you think that the local the more particular is always the weightier morally Andre well I mean there seems to be a trend in the three cases I would agree with that I think and I think most of us would agree that your family takes precedence over the United States perhaps which is why you go with dan dan loyalty to the roommate over act 10 and the truth yeah exactly I would because I mean I need truth-telling not the truth of act n yes all right so we understand yes but on the same example in terms of family you had cases in the civil war where brother was pitted against brother on both sides of the war where they chose country instead of family so I think the exact same more shows that different people have different means of making these choices and that there is no one set of values or one set of morality that communitarians can stick to and personally I think that's the biggest problem with communitarians that we don't have one set of standard moral obligations and tell me your name Samantha so Samantha you agree with Patrick Patrick's point the other day that there may be if we allow obligations to be defined by community identification or membership they may conflict there may they may overlap they may compete and there is no clear principled Andre says there's a clear principle the most particular the other day in Nicola who is sitting over here whereas Nicola said the most universal you're saying Samantha the scale of the community as such can't be the decisive moral factor so there has to be some other moral judgement all right let's first let's let our defence our critics of communal patriotism let's express our appreciation and thank them for their having stood up and responded to these arguments to find the issue let's turn to the implications for justice of the positions that we've heard discussed here one of the worries underlying these multiple objections to the idea of loyalty or membership as having independent moral weight is that it seems to argue that there is no way of finding principles of justice that are detached from conceptions of the good life as they may be lived in any particular community suppose the communitarian argument is right suppose the priority of the right over the good can't be sustained suppose instead the justice and rights unavoidably are bound up with conceptions of the good does that mean that justice is simply a creature of convention of the values that happen to prevail in any given community at any given time one of the writings we have among the communitarian critics is by Michael Walzer he draws the implications of justice this way justice is relative to social meanings a given society is just if it's substantive life has lived in a certain way in a way that is faithful to the shared understandings of the members so Walters account seems to bear out the worry that if we can't find independent principles of justice independent that is from conceptions of the good that prevail in any given community that we're simply left with justice being a matter of fidelity or faithfulness to the shared understandings or values or conventions that prevail in any given society at any given time but is that an adequate way of thinking about justice well let's take a look at a short clip from the documentary eyes on the prize goes back in the 1950s in the south here are some situated American Southerners who believe in the tradition in the shared understandings of segregation listen to the arguments they make about loyalty and tradition and see if they don't make you uneasy about tying arguments about justice to the shared understandings or traditions that prevail in any given society at the moment it's from eclipse this land is composed of two different cultures of white culture and a colored culture and I live close to them all my life but I'm told now that we've mistreated them and that we must change and these changes are coming faster than I expected and I'm required to make decisions on a basis of a new way of thinking and it's difficult difficult for me it's difficult for all of them well there you have it narrative selves situated selves invoking tradition doesn't that show us that justice can't be tied to the shared understandings of goods that prevail in any given community at any given time or is there a way of rescuing that claim from this example think about that question and we'll return to it next time don't miss the chance to interact online with other viewers of justice join the conversation take a pop quiz watch lectures you've missed and learn a lot more visit justiceharvard.org it's the right thing to do funding for this program is provided by additional funding provided by

Channel: Harvard University

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Keywords: Harvard Univerisity, Harvard Alumni, Michael Sandel, WGBH, Justice

Id: iOotE9_OGGs

Length: 55min 10sec (3310 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 08 2009