The Shadow of Unfairness

The Shadow of Unfairness The Shadow of Unfairness A Plebeian Theory of Liberal Democracy JEFFREY EDWARD GREEN 1 1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Green, Jeffrey E. (Jeffrey Edward), author. Title: The shadow of unfairness : a plebeian theory of liberal democracy / Jeffrey Edward Green. Description: New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015043794 (print) | LCCN 2016005457 (ebook) | ISBN 978–0–19–021590–3 (hardcover: alk. paper) | ISBN 978–0–19–021591–0 (E-book) | ISBN 978–0–19–061136–1 (E-book) | ISBN 978–0–19–060067–9 (Online Component) Subjects: LCSH: Representative government and representation. | Democracy. | Social status—Political aspects. | Political participation—Economic aspects. Classification: LCC JF1051.G743 2016 (print) | LCC JF1051 (ebook) | DDC 321.8—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015043794 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America For my parents, Joan and Franklin Green CONTENTS Preface ix 1. The Shadow of Unfairness and the Logic of Plebeianism 1 2. Why Ordinary Citizenship Is Second- Class Citizenship 29 3. Reasonable Envy: The Heart of Plebeian Progressivism 67 4. Learning How Not to Be Good: A Plebeian Perspective 101 5. Solace for the Plebeian: The Idea of Extrapoliticism 130 Acknowledgments 165 Notes 169 Works Cited 223 Index 241 vii PREFACE In our time it is the mark of philosophical discourse to speak in impersonal terms, divorced from the vagaries of personal biography, and the book you hold here will obey this stricture. At the same time, where can philosophical inspiration come from if not the conditions of one’s own personal life? Moreover, no one reads philosophy merely to get at the desubjectivized truth of the matter— as if philosophy were pure logic unalloyed with any trace of authorial expressivity. Rather, in encountering philosophy we expect to have our eyes opened through engagement with a singular mind and all the origi- nality, creativity, uniqueness, and no doubt proclivity to error this implies. For some, the melding of the personal and impersonal is a reason to be suspicious of philosophy. For those drawn to philosophy, however, it is perhaps what instills philosophy with its strength and beauty. Either way, philosophizing— at present at least—involves a particular person aiming to speak and argue in an impersonal way. One way to resolve this tension between the personal and impersonal is to believe that both poles are in fact ultimately the same. Hobbes, for instance, states in the introduction to his magisterial Leviathan that the underlying method of his philosophy is “Nosce teipsum, Read thy self” which teaches that “whosoever looketh into himself, and considereth what he doth, when he does think, opine, reason, hope, feare, &c, and upon what grounds; he shall thereby read and know, what are the thoughts, and Passions of all other men, upon the like occasions.”1 Emerson says something similar when he pro- claims, “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men— that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost.”2 A different way to reconcile the impersonal idiom of philosophy with the particularity of the person who philosophizes is to see this particularity as residing ix x Preface exclusively in what today would be described as “academic research”: the study of the world and the reading of books. When Machiavelli briefly discusses his biography in his prefatory letter to The Prince, he presents the two main personal assets he brings to his political philosophy as “a long experience with contem- porary affairs una[ lunga esperienzia delle cose moderne]” and “a continual reading of the ancients [una continua lezione delle antique].” 3 The preface to Machiavelli’s other masterpiece, The Discourses on Livy, likewise points to his deep study of history as the single most important personal element informing and legitimat- ing his authorial voice.4 We have, then, at least two different kinds of reading: the internal reading of oneself, on the assumption that one’s inner truth will be recognized as true by others, in the manner of Hobbes; and the external reading of the world and texts, following Machiavelli. Both are ways the personal biography of the author might be brought into harmony with the impersonal pursuit of philosophical truth. The reflections I put forward in this book have been shaped by both forms of reading. But if my external reading is obvious and reveals itself on virtually every page that follows, the internal reading that also has guided this book remains hidden and, so, is something I feel compelled to confess and acknowledge in this preface. What, then, is the content of my reading of myself? It is nothing other than my sense of being a plebeian: that is, someone who, despite living in a liberal- democratic regime espousing free and equal citizenship, knows himself to be merely an ordinary citizen with a political voice dramatically diminished com- pared to the powerful few who are not ordinary; someone, moreover, who at forty- two years feels his political ordinariness ossifying into a state of perma- nence; someone who, crucially, recognizes that the differentiation of the ordinary from the exceptional cannot be explained entirely in terms of ambition or merit, but also stems at least in part from other factors, above all wealth, that make it impossible to understand it as fully fair; and thus someone who experiences his political ordinariness not with blandness as a matter of indif- ference, but rather problematically as an enduring source of concern. What will come ultimately from my translation of this personal experience of being a plebeian into an impersonal philosophy of plebeianism remains to be seen, but at this moment I can at least repeat the words of Nietzsche, written in his own preface to one of his Untimely Meditations: “I have made an effort to describe a feeling which has tortured me often enough; I revenge myself in making it public.”5 The venture of this book is that my own plebeianism is not particular to me or to the American and Swedish polities of which I am citizen, but is a fundamental and inescapable feature of any liberal- democratic regime. Of course, if I am right, what is universal is not the plebeian identity itself— since the Preface xi very idea implies that there always will be some who escape its confines— but the Few- Many distinction as a permanent feature of political reality. Coming to grips with this distinction—insisting on its enduring presence in liberal democracy over and against willful blindness to it and, even more, trying to show how it might be enlisted for progressive ends—is the ambition of what I write here. 1 The Shadow of Unfairness and the Logic of Plebeianism There is strong shadow where there is much light. — Goethe, Götz von Berlichingen 1.1 The Idea of the Shadow of Unfairness The purpose of this book is to understand the meaning of liberal democracy and, in particular, the key moral ideal informing it: the ideal of free and equal citizenship. The book is guided by the twin goals of intellectual honesty (the desire to understand liberal democracy as it really is, with regard to both its possibilities and limits) and progressive purpose (the desire to contribute to the ongoing process, in operation at least since the rebirth of democracy at the end of the eighteenth century, whereby democratic principles and practices are continually revamped in light of ever- evolving conceptions of social justice). It is guided, moreover, by the belief that these two goals are mutually reinforcing: that, in particular, an honest account of what can and does go on in liberal democracies would only lend precision and force to a progressive spirit— and that, from the other side, one of the central roles of a progressive mindset is to provide a pen- etrating and sober assessment of reality. The fundamental idea informing this book is the idea of theshadow of unfairness, by which I mean the inescapable sense citizens in any imaginable liberal democracy will have that its arrangements, however just, are not wholly so— or, more precisely, the sense that no matter how much the ideal of free and equal citizenship might inform the institutions and practices of a well- functioning liberal- democratic state, this ideal does not, and can never, fully describe political life in even the most advanced and enlightened liberal democracy.

Load more