Philosophy and Politics with Bryan Magee (1977)

during the Second World War there was a strong shared feeling among the Western allies that what they were fighting for was the freedom of the individual and that this meant in practice defending liberal democratic institutions this feeling saturates the only major work of political philosophy to have been written during that war the open society and its enemies by Karl Popper published in 1945 and for a couple of decades after the war there was something like a liberal consensus in the Western democracies so much so that in the anglo-saxon world academics started talking about the end of ideology as if there were no more political arguments left to have over fundamentals and in England a slogan which came to be widely quoted in academic circles was political philosophy is dead well perhaps a reaction against this was inevitable sooner or later and when it began to show itself in the mid 1960s it came from both directions right and left conservatives began to feel that in some ways there was now too much freedom for the individual for instance as regards sexual permissiveness and pornography and the use of drugs and a failure to keep down crime especially crimes of violence and they felt - that a whole generation of young people had now been allowed to grow up in this atmosphere without the restraints of traditional disciplines and punishments and that the results manifesting themselves were disastrous meanwhile from the far left many of whose members were among the new so-called permissive generation Liberal Democratic regimes were being attacked for entirely different reasons from that quarter they were accused of making little serious attempt to redistribute wealth or abolish poverty the societies over which they presided was said to be class ridden and racist and sexist and worst of all they were held responsible for the unnecessary prolongation of a bestial war in Vietnam so debate over fundamentals in politics began again in earnest and now the debate was about the validity and the very kind all democratic institutions that formerly had been taken for granted perhaps because these controversies were at their hottest in the United States it was there that the chief figures to be thrown up by this new wave of political thought emerged as far as analytic philosophers working in universities are concerned far and away the most influential figure to emerge from this situation has been John Rawls a professor at Harvard with his book a theory of justice another much-discussed book is an icky state and utopia by another Harvard professor Robert Nozick if one were to add a third name to this list it would be that of our protagonist in this program Ronald Dworkin also an American and a former professor at Yale but now resident in England as professor of jurisprudence at Oxford professor Dworkin x' recent book taking rights seriously has been met with acclaim which ranges all the way from the Severus tacca Demick approval to a feature article in Time magazine which letter I take to be an indication that it's having some influence on popular as well as academic thinking professor talking before I start questioning you specifically about your work and that of your colleagues is there anything you would like to add to what I just said by way of introduction to this program about the historical and social context in which your work has emerged well I think one or two things interesting it's it's interesting isn't it the degree to which many of the social problems in America that you spoke about came out of the racial issue how many of them had to do with the civil rights movement in the first instance and then with the special problem caused by extensive welfare programs and cities like New York which principally helped the blacks and which were increasingly at the expense of people who formerly thought of themselves as the working classes the taxi drivers for example who began to question premises that were no longer benefiting them but benefitting people still were saw there's another dimension to it I think that was interesting and that is this when the Left attacked first policy in Vietnam and then liberalism generally they took themselves to be attacking not just a particular political theory but the whole idea of a rational well worked out political theory in general so I think you can say that when for example Jack Rawls wrote his book a theory of justice that you've mentioned it was on the one hand a defense of traditional liberal values it was also at the same time a defense of the whole idea of using philosophy to support political positions the academic roots or a precursor so to speak of this new emergence of political thinking I think that the most important development in the Academy that directly fed into the rebirth of political philosophy was an economics economists had for a long time being concerned in around the vague way with the whole idea of what makes a society better off but in the period just after the war there was a great deal of concern with doing that in a formal way that is attempting to give numbers and figures and graphs to say when a society by virtue of some change that helped some people to the disadvantage of other people when you could say that nevertheless the society was better off as a whole the work of Kenneth arrow was very important in this country count on Hicks and so forth so it seems to me the developments in formal economics welfare Theory economics were very important in America particularly developments in academic law were also important in this country it's not generally thought of the law schools are not generally thought places where it debates a political principle take place but they are in the United States one of the reasons for that of course is the importance of the Supreme Court in deciding issues of great constitutional principle and in the period after the war through the 50s indeed through the 60s great issues of principle were decided by the Supreme Court they for large part they had to do with the questions about how you could treat accused criminals for example but since these questions were decided by courts they were questions for argument at the level of principle took place in law school and Nozick's book for example which you've mentioned sure seems to be the print of a legal style of thinking about social questions so I do think these two developments economics on the one hand long were academic precursors in your friends yeah I said earlier that Rawls was far and away the most influential of the analytic philosophers to have emerged from this recent situation I take it you would agree with that yes absolutely there's no doubt that you see Rawls name now in so many different contexts it's it's hard to read a legal treatise for example without seeing him mention too every time talks to the nation in this country as well as in America on social policy questions of welfare always the almost obligatory reference now at all sometimes in such languages to make me think they don't understand the book but nevertheless it's an obligatory reference great influence is it possible for you before we get down to a specific consideration of what he says to say why he's having this kind of influence yes I think the principle I think there are two reasons why first something we've just said that is that he stands not only for a particular theory but for a majestic demonstration of the power of argument in politics I think people are once again attracted to the idea that a sustained argument which begins with things that are said to be take plausibly taken to be first principles can come down and actually tell us what to do about tort law about the distribution of milk to schoolchildren or something of that sort I think that impresses people very much secondly we'll come on to this no doubt but I think the conclusions that he reaches have quite a part in the argument enormous intuitive appeal to people of goodwill they're very attractive conclusions well now let's stop considering them what I know this is a very tall order but is it possible for you to characterize comparatively brief in this context a television discover what it is that Rawls is saying yes I I think for that purpose it would be a good idea to take up two topics in the book first is the topic of the method he suggests and employs and the second the conclusions he reaches now and I think it's useful to distinguish them because some people are impressed with the one and not the other the method is a it's in it's intriguing Rawls tells us that when we're concerned with questions of justice what rules that could govern the basic structure of a society would be just that the we ought to think about those in the following way we ought to tell ourselves a fairy story first on we ought to imagine a congress of men and women who don't belong any particular society yet who come together in a kind of constitutional convention they're going to agree among themselves on a constitution how their society is to be run and they're like everybody else these people they have specific identities specific weaknesses specific strengths interest the only thing that makes them different is that they suffer from a total amnesia there was crippling kind of amnesia they don't know who they are they don't know whether they're old or young men or women black or white talented or stupid in particular is very important they don't know what their own individual moralities are theirs they don't know each one has some conception of what he wants his life to be like what his preferences are in sexual morality and so forth but no one knows what his views are on those questions so it's as if as in Rawls's phrase they were separated from their own personalities by a veil of ignorance now these amnesiacs nevertheless must agree on a political constitution Rawls says if we ask ourselves what people in this strange situation would agree upon by way of a constitution that the answer to that question will be for that reason principles of justice this is a somewhat far-fetched thing to ask people to assume isn't it well it's it's a course for us to ask them to assume that it ever has happened or could have it's a dramatic way of asking people to imagine themselves making considered choices in their own self-interest but without knowing things which separate one person from another and that's of course just a way enforcing a certain consumption of equality on political decisions but but for the moment can we I think it's better to not to leave behind the myth because the myth has itself great power now the question is what would people in this situation agree upon and that's the second question mainly the second topic namely what conclusions does this method yield these are two and Rawls calls them the two principles of justice they are principles I should say for a society with a certain measure of economic development so that there's enough to feed everyone once you'll reach that point says Rawls people in the original position is it cause this strange situation would agree on the following two principles first everyone shall have to the greatest degree possible the basic liberties which Rawls enumerates these basic liberties are the political the conventional political liberties Liberty devote liberty to speak on political matters freedom of conscience they also include freedom to hold personal property to be protected in your person not to be arrested suddenly and without due cause and so for the conventional what you might call liberal liberties protected in this way secondly the second principle of justice no inequality in society and distribution no difference in wealth is to be tolerated unless that difference works for the benefit of the worst off group in the society it's a very dramatic principle the second principle it means that if you could change society by making it overall poorer so the middle class for instance was work substantially worse all you should do so if the result of that is to benefit the lowest off group in the society so we have two principles the first is the principle that says there are certain liberties that must be protected the second is the rather more egalitarian principle that says look to the situation of the worst off group every change the social structure should benefit that group the two principles are related through what Rawls calls the principle of priority he calls it a lexicographic ordering and says that the first principle dominates over the second what that means is that even if for example it would benefit the worst or group in the society to abridge political liberties take away rights of free speech even if that would benefit the worst job groups in society you must not do it only when Liberty has been protected to the full are you entitled to consider the economic questions raised by the second principle when you do come to those economic considerations you must benefit the worst off class but you can't do that until everyone's liberties a sufficiently protected what do you yourself regard as the chief shortcomings of the theory I think that Rawls relies too much on rather technical arguments appealing in a very lurid way to recent work in economics about what people in his original position would do and I think those arguments are to some degree flawed that it doesn't seem to me inevitable that people in his original position would come up with just what else I think what's more important and what I wish he had stressed more is the deep theory that underlies the use of this device the sort of thing that you asked for when you say quite rightly why should what people decide in this rather strange situation why should that have to do with justice so I think it's a weakness that he as it were hides the real crest appears to hide the real question but I also think that's the great strength of the book that is this is the kind of a book in which the usefulness the importance of the book is not exhausted by the particular arguments it made it presents us with an enterprise and says to us look if you if these conclusions are appealing to you if the idea that we must think about justice by thinking about them through these devices of fairness is it all appealing why is that so doesn't this tell us something about our philosophical capacities doesn't it tell us something about our moral capacities that we think this doesn't help to structure how we think about no it's an enterprise Rawls book one of the reasons why it's so important that it's launched an enterprise of thinking along these lines of which he would be the first to say that this book is only at the beginning each person who reads it will have a different vision of what the enterprise is I for one have a particular way of reading this book that makes it seem more important to me and and that is this it does seem to me that the great question the root question for liberalism by liberalism of course I don't mean party politics and that I'm not referring to the Liberal Party as a party in this country I mean that the the philosophic doctrine the philosophic political theory called liberalism the root question it seems to me is this there are two possible approaches to the question of what is just what is justice and community one theory says that the answer time what is justice what arrangements of goods in society is just depends upon the answer to a further question namely what kinds of lives should men and women lead what counts as excellence in a human being one theory says treat people as excellent people according to some theory would wish to be treated the liberal rejects that notion of justice he says that justice has a call upon institutions which is independent of any particular notion of what the good life is but rather can appeal to people as a way of regulating society that can be agreed upon rationally by people who hold very different kinds of theories of let's say personal morality this book is an attempt to show how far unappealing and altruistic and humane political theory can be generated consistent with the basic posture that of liberalism on this conception namely that it's neutral amongst the various personal moralities that people hold that's a very important ambition would it be a fair paraphrase of what you've just said to say this that people both to the left and to the right of liberals differ from liberals in one very important respect namely this that both conservatives and people of the radical left tend to regard the individual as predominantly a social animal and to think that a political theory not only usually does but should embody within itself a conception of how individuals should live whereas the liberal is someone who thinks that how individuals should live is ultimately something for individuals themselves to decide and therefore though you're not looking for a theory of society which itself takes that decision yes and not not because I agree with that no not because the liberal is skeptical not because the liberal says there is no answer to the question how should human beings live but rather because he insists for a variety of reasons as the answer must be given for each person by each person for himself and that it's the utmost insult to attempt to decide socially that question for individuals and one of his criticisms of the conservative or the radical left would be that they assume that it's the same answer for everyone where as part of his belief is that different individuals will have different answers for themselves yes not because he assumes the different answers are right he needn't be a relativist no no for just because he insists that it robs people of personality and dignity to answer for them whether they give the right or the wine and in fact far from believing that the answers are necessarily right the the real liberal will passionately believe in the right of others to live in ways of which he disapproves yes well now this book of roles and one very striking thing about it is that it spawned an instant literature and it was only published in 1971 and already half a dozen years later there are several other books in print on the library shelves in book shops about it yes this is very remarkable I can't remember when when a whole literature emerged quickly out of a single book as it's done out of this you've said what knew yourself regard as the as the most interesting or important discussion points in rules are there any others with which you may not necessary your self directly sympathize very strongly which are nevertheless interesting to large numbers of the other critics or writers about this book large part of the work on Ross has been as you indicate critical that is they have pointed out the flaws in the argument that lead from the original position to the conclusion I we I described one of the arguments a minute ago and I said he's assuming that people are all conservative whereas they might be gamblers another part of the literature is can I think more interesting part literature is critical of the conclusions and this comes from both the right and from the left the criticism from the right says that it's absurd to suppose that we should be ridden by concern for the worst dog group there are value is more important for example cultural values that it's important to perpetuate even if mal distribution inequitable distribution as the result criticism from the left is more complex it fixes first of all on the first of the principles that I offered and sense Rawls says that when Liberty and further quality conflict Liberty is to be preferred and there are positions on the left would contest this and say that it's a bourgeois middle class the bro view the second criticism from the left fixes on the second principle when I described it I said the second principle said there shall be no inequalities except as benefit the worst off group a criticism but it's safe from the far left holes that inequalities are bad even if they do benefit the worst off group so that we should prefer a society of complete equality even if everyone is worse off including those who would be worst off under a rauzein distribution that strikes me as being a masochistic to but it is held by some seriously oh it is indeed who make the argument that envy or resentment is itself such a divisive thing that the self-respect the damage to self-respect that comes from seeing others better off in a social structure is such a malign influence on personality that it's it's wrong to suppose in effect that they can be better off if they're materially better off but other people are better off still yes it's a view that's very strongly held I would say of all the criticisms of Rawls the one most fiercely contested is this seemingly cut off your nose to spite your face view well I don't think I want to go any further into that what I'd like to do professor Dworkin is I think you've given if I may say so an excellent exposition of roles in an almost impossibly short space of time and I'd like to move on now for Rawls to the other important book that I named depart for your air namely Anarchy state and utopia by Robert Nozick weave I wouldn't ask you to deal with that at such length as we've just discussed rules but I think it's not so important to do so is it hasn't been quite so influential but could you do as it were do more briefly yeah no Zeke what you've just done four roles I'll try Nosek starts his argument with remarkable proposition remarkable in its simplicity individuals have rights he says and there are some things that cannot be done to them without violating their rights well that's an unexceptional statement of course that sound then we find out what these rights are and it turns out that the nosy kyun rights have this force that it is wrong either to injure a person or take away his property for any reason except with his consent unless to do so is necessary to protect someone else's rights to his property or his person now this means this is very very strong indeed it's so strong that one might ask is it possible to have a state at all that respects that principle and surprisingly the first third and the most densely argued part of Nozick's book is presented as a defense of the state itself against the anarchist Rawls sorry Nozick obviously takes this is no mean question and obviously it isn't after all if you take my property away from me then you have violated my rights I have a right to take it back but a state claims a monopoly of the power to use force the state claims the right to stop me from taking back my property against you I've got to go to the police and ask them to do it it prevents you from taking the law into your own hands yes as every state must yes but what it's done is to violate my right because it stopped me from doing something which I have every right according to Nozick to do namely to protect my own property which were wrongly taken from me nevertheless knows it could grieved that if everyone did take the law into his own hands that be anarchy so the question is what's wrong with anarchy and his argument here is very elaborate it may or may not work there's a considerable doubt about it but in any event the upshot of the argument is that that there can be a state there can be what knows it calls a night watchman state which means a state that exists simply to protect property and person punish people on behalf other people question then arises can the state do any more than that after all modern states do a lot more than that they tax you and me and use our our the money they get in taxes to help other people to do things in the common interest knows it gives that question a very firm answer no the state may not do anything except act as a night watchman it may not tax for example for any purpose other than supporting the place there's no doubt a lot of people listening who would feel some sympathy with that view yeah and Nosek has been rather popular in certain political circles for at least this part of his views now what argument could he give for this defense of what he calls the minimal or Nightwatchman state what his argument is this in large part its arguments typically ingenious in complex but I think the the main thrust of it comes to this he asks us to distinguish between two kinds of theories about what he calls justice in distribution you each have certain things in society which we own and the question is is that distribution just now says knows like one theory is what he calls a historical theory and that says this the present holdings are just what you own you justly own provided people gave it to you voluntarily either as a gift or in return for what you did for them if however it was taken away from anyone else by taxation for example and then given to you the holding is not just this of course makes Holdings I mean this of course would tolerate the most inequitable distribution you can imagine the second kind of theory says Nozick of Justice doesn't appeal just to history as his does who gave what who to what but rather offers some general pattern and says let us look at how the thing ended up the simplest form of an a pattern to theory as knows it cause them is a Galit Aryan theory unless things ended up equal it's wrong even if it was all done voluntarily now Nozick says only a patterned theory could oppose his view of the limited power of the state because if the state is going to intervene to take money away from some and give it to others it must be in pursuit of a pattern Nozick therefore wishes to argue that any patterned theory is intolerable and his argument goes like this he says suppose you could collect all the holdings every one sweep up everyone's well and they distributed all according to your favorite pattern suppose you're in a gala Terry and you distribute the same amount every one now you turn your back and people are going to begin trading with one another suppose he says users here the name of a very famous American basketball player called Wilt Chamberlain he said suppose Wilt Chamberlain plays basketball extremely well which he does and people wish to pay money he doesn't wish to play basketball but people give him money ask him to play basketball he's going to end up with more money than anybody else in order to stop that you are going to have to interfere with liberty to a constant degree to stop these transactions stop people from doing what they wish to do you're going to have to have a dictatorship you will not preserve a patent a pattern of Justice if that's what you want without the most serious inroads on people's freedom therefore you can't have a patent theory of justice therefore the only tolerable state is his state namely the Nightwatchman or minimal state well this seems to be based fundamentally on a concept of the importance of free exchange yes that'd be right yes it seems to be absolutely the route it comes back to this notion of consent yes anytime you lose something it must be with your consent yes yes what would you what would you advance us the chief criticisms of Nozick's there too first that his notion of what basic rights people have namely this right not to lose their property except with their consent simply arbitrary there is some appeal in that right but there's also plenty of appeal in competing rights which would have to sanction inroads against it for example I see nothing less appealing just as an intuitive beginning point with the notion that people have a right to the concern of others when they are in desperate situation themselves now that obviously is going to sanction things being done that know that no zzyx basic principle wouldn't permit no sake has no argument for his basic right in my view he simply presents it as a starting point and therefore it's an arbitrary state that starts too far along with an arbitrary position secondly and I think is the Wilt Chamberlain argument I gave you I think well illustrates his arguments tend to be all-or-nothing arguments they're ingenious but they're there many of them of the form it would obviously be impossible to prevent any exchanges therefore it follows that automatically if that's a great injustice a little interference with Liberty is a also an injustice possibly a smaller one and of course that doesn't follow and in fact in in in American society and British society we do have the state interfering constantly with these exchanges but it will be quite untrue to say that this constitutes dictatorship yes exactly it's certain threshold of interference a threshold of degree and obviously taxing a man taxing Wilt Chamberlain at the end of the year and saying you've got to give back half of what you've earned is not the kind of interference with liberty that it would be to say no one can pay money to see him play basketball those are two different things I want finally to come to your own work professor to walk in how do you perhaps in the light of the discussion we've had up to this point how do you relate what you're doing to what Rawls and Nozick are doing well if you look at it from a certain distance some people would say great distance I think we're all working the same street in a way that is if you take the conception of liberalism that I offered a few minutes ago and you very well summarized by saying that the liberal has this view which distinguishes him both from the left and the right namely that the right way to live must not be a matter of political concern then each of us it seems to me can be seen as in some way protecting or trying to defend that idea of liberalism but nevertheless we disagree I tend of course I mean as you will have gathered I tend to be much closer than sympathy to Rawls than to knows it but one way of summarizing the disagreement it seems to me it would be to pay attention to this supposed conflict between liberty and equality people make a great deal of this you might say that and Nozick is off on one side Nosek says liberty is everything quality counts for nothing except as it's the accidental result of free transactions which is extremely unlikely so liberty is everything equality counts for nothing when Rawls puts together his two principles it looks at least on the surface as if he's attempting to make a compromise between the two that is he selects certain basic liberties the political liberties and but he says these do come first and these do oppose equality and if equality would be better served by invading them nevertheless they must not be evaded now I'm very anxious to contest the whole idea that the rights of the individual that we call liberty are antagonistic to equality I've tried to stress in my work the degree to which rights of the individual only makes sense as the consequence of a very deep kind Galit Arianism and therefore i wish as it were to change the terms of debate by asking about the claim of right does this is this right necessary to protect equality rather than by saying how much equality need we give up in order to achieve it now if if the program that I thus proposed can be carried out it would seem to me to protect liberalism from an unnecessary position namely that liberalism somehow is onion concerned with the worst off people in society Rawls it seems to me shows that it that it's needn't be but I want to go a bit further than that and argue that there is in the motor of liberalism in that basic conception there is a drive towards equality so that at every moment the defense of liberalism is itself a defensive equality would it be would it be an acceptable sort of bold schematism of the theory of use to say that that Nozick goes for as it were rights without equality Rawls goes for equality without rights what do you want to do is to insist that the tool can only be even conceptualized in relation to each other that they are mutually supportive notions that third certainly is my view yes no the whole I need I doubt I want to say that the idea of rights itself is a very problematic idea it's something that can't be taken for granted has to be rooted in something else after all you say someone has a right then in the sense that I think is the most politically powerful what you're really saying is the general welfare must suffer if necessary in order to protect that right when you take that I claim seriously then it begs for a defense it's not intuitively defensible begs for a defense why must the general welfare suffer why much the majority lose out to protect for example someone's right to speak his mind and it's he does seem to me that the only possible defense of rights must lie not in finding some idea of important values which rank which oppose the Galit aryan notions better than the idea of the general welfare but something that supports both rights and the notion of the general welfare as part of an overall ideal namely equality it's an argument that has to be made out but if I can just for a moment show the general structure of how that argument would go why for example do we care about prosperity why do we all work so that now you will say well to make it to make people better off to make the community as a whole better off yes but why is it a good thing to make people better off isn't there in the very idea that gains one can be canceled must be set off against disadvantage to other in some sort of balance struck isn't that idea only defensible they argue that it is if you're suppose that the point of that war is to make sure that no one is being favored over anyone else in society it's often thought that utilitarianism which is the philosophy of improving the general welfare somehow pursues as Bentham is supposed to have said the idea the pleasure in itself is good or that seems too absurd the pleasure in its outlook it seems to me that the true defense of concern to improve the general welfare of society the true defense of that lies and something else that Bentham said namely only in that way can the governors of a society those in charge show equal concern and respect for each person because what you are saying to each person is you can't we cannot do this for you because to others would suffer if we did something along that line that is we cannot prefer you to those to it because to do so would be since you're only one to show favoritism to you so it does seem to me that the first Shibboleth of political theory that must be struck down is the notion that the general welfare utilitarianism is an anti Gallatin I it's rooted in a certain notion of equality but when we select political institutions in order to pursue that welfare then because we can only do that we can only use rough institutions like the marketplace or Parliament or Congress to achieve this there are certain structural inequalities that result for example people who aren't very clever will end up in a worse position not because their demands are expensive to satisfy so it would be showing them favoritism they're satisfied but because a marketplace is going to cheat them because they weren't lucky enough to be born having the qualities other people want there for redistribution of the result of the market is required not because it serves some value competitive with the value served by the market but only because only with redistribution can the package market plus redistribution fulfill the only justification for having the market in the first place which is a basically egalitarian justification now I've just taken economic rights as an illustration of how the argument must go but it does seem to me that we have to supply arguments for these rights and can't take them as primitive when you said a moment ago that you and Rawls are nosy got all in your phrase was working the same street yeah I think you said something extremely important because academics for example are quite commonly inclined to regard at least Rawls and Nozick as being polar opposites whereas in fact according to your analysis what they are both doing and you also are doing is defending liberalism I say but be true to say you're not just producing different defenses of Leona's and you're also defending different concepts of liberalism but nevertheless that is what you're doing against the text from both right and left one last question I'd like to ask you before we finish this discussion is what do you regard as the the Achilles heel so to speak of this position that sure that all three of you are in I mean where are the chief weaknesses of this position that you're all jointly defend yes and I suppose arising out of that the question where do you think the the most important or interesting work is likely to come in this kind of political thinking in the immediate future well could I just say that though it's I did say working the save straight I think it is important to emphasize that it's not we're not all defending the same theory we're all defending theories which make the same claim that is the claim to be the consequence of a liberal position I regard Rawls as sorry I regard Nozick's work as a challenge a very important challenge just because it draws what I think of as malign consequences from the position so I'm extremely anxious to say that isn't what liberalism is so in that way we're opposed to one another as the the Orthodox view has it but but if you go back to what I said unites us namely this notion that political theory a sense of justice must be distinct from any particular theory about what the good life is then I think the great weakness the problem is to defend against two attacks just at that fundamental point and the two attacks are one theoretical and one rather practical theoretical attack which must be met is this that the view of liberalism that I've just described rests on a nihilistic or otherwise unattractive or impoverished view of human nature of what human beings are you said at one point in our discussion these opposing views take the position man is social well of course the liberal doesn't deny that but the argument is that liberalism is committed to what's often called a shoe Mian or Benthamite or atomistic conception of human nature which is wrong now we don't have time to go into that but it does seem to me that first that it's not true but but absolutely necessary for liberal liberals now to demonstrate that it's not true and to show that the true father of liberalism sure well is not Jeremy Bentham who is in fact rather a difficult for liberals but Kant whose conception of human nature cannot be called impoverished now the practical problem is this there are certain things we all want government to do for example to select methods of education to sponsor culture which on the surface look as if they are endorsing one set of values against another and therefore contradicting the realism it does seem to me very important for liberals to develop their a theory which would make a distinction here between enriching the choices available to people and enforcing a choice upon people the crucial idea it seems to me is the idea of imagination the liberal is concerned to expand imagination without imposing any a particular choice upon imagination but I've simply named a problem Brian I have it it does seem to me that liberalism is rather weak at this point and needs a theory of Education a theory of culture support and so forth and that I think is the answer the question where where most political theory go you said just at the beginning of the program that for a long time people had said political philosophy is dead well political philosophy has been born again and is very lively but what hasn't quite happened yet is the integration the reintegration of political philosophy into the body of philosophy as a whole because of course no philosophical problem worth talking about can be pulled apart from the general body of philosophy and in the two questions I've just named and with the question of what theory of humanity what theory of mind is assumed by liberalism and the question of distinguishing between enriching and constricting imagination it's plain that political theory must escape what is normally thought to be the boundaries of questions of political institutions or strategy and must encounter as all the great philosophers of the past did the connections between political philosophy and philosophy it's just philosophy and it's very striking that nearly all the greatest political philosophers of the past like Plato Aristotle Locke Kant a Kant were general philosophers whose political philosophy was just part of their general so that's the next step thank you very much professor talking thank you

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Published: Mon Sep 18 2017

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[u/Nee_Nihilo]

The role that the Vietnam War and welfare played in a shift against classical liberalism in the 20th century.

Dworkin passed away in 2013, while Magee died just this year; RIP to them both, they both made significant contributions to furthering liberal and philosophical thought.