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Towards a Non-Ideal Theory of Justice in Europe Report on the workshop ‘’Ideal and Non-Ideal theories of Justice’’: Towards a Non-Ideal Theory of Justice in Europe Bert van den Brink, Simon Rippon, Tom Theuns & Miklos Zala This Report was written within the framework of Work Package 2 “Philosophical Foundations for a European Theory of Justice and Fairness’’ June 18 Funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union Acknowledgements First of all, we would like to thank our workshop participants, Ali Emre Benli, Oana Crusmac, Colin Hickey, David Jenkins, Hwa Young Kim, Aaron Landau, Sem de Maagt and Pedro Teixeira. As will be evident to those who know his work, the report is intellectually indebted in no small part to the work of Jonathan Wolff. We thank him Want to learn more about what we are working for his keynote speeches in both the workshop and the on? plenary conference, and for his detailed comments in discussion. Frank Vandenbroucke, a member of the ETHOS Visit us at: advisory board, also gave very pertinent advice at the : https://ethos-europe.eu conference and workshop. The Center for Social Studies Website (CES), University of Coimbra were kind hosts of both the Facebook: www.facebook.com/ethosjustice/ workshop and the first annual conference overall. We are also grateful to Eszter Kollar, Trudie Knijn, and Maria Paula Blog: www.ethosjustice.wordpress.com Meneses for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this report. Twitter: www.twitter.com/ethosjustice Hashtag: #ETHOSjustice Youtube: www.youtube.com/ethosjustice European Landscapes of Justice (web) app: http://myjustice.eu/ This publication has been produced with the financial support of the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of the authors and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Commission. Copyright © 2018, ETHOS consortium – All rights reserved ETHOS project The ETHOS project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 727112 3 About ETHOS ETHOS - Towards a European THeory Of juStice and fairness, is a European Commission Horizon 2020 research project that seeks to provide building blocks for the development of an empirically informed European theory of justice and fairness. The project seeks to do so by: a) refining and deepening the knowledge on the European foundations of justice - both historically based and contemporary envisaged; b) enhancing awareness of mechanisms that impede the realisation of justice ideals as they are lived in contemporary Europe; c) advancing the understanding of the process of drawing and re-drawing of the boundaries of justice (fault lines); and d) providing guidance to politicians, policy makers, advocacies and other stakeholders on how to design and implement policies to reserve inequalities and prevent injustice. ETHOS does not merely understand justice as an abstract moral ideal, that is universal and worth striving for. Rather, it is understood as a re-enacted and re-constructed "lived" experience. The experience is embedded in firm legal, political, moral, social, economic and cultural institutions that are geared to giving members of society what is their due. In the ETHOS project, justice is studied as an interdependent relationship between the ideal of justice, and its real manifestation – as set in the highly complex institutions of modern European societies. The relationship between the normative and practical, the formal and informal, is acknowledged and critically assessed through a multi-disciplinary approach. To enhance the formulation of an empirically-based theory of justice and fairness, ETHOS will explore the normative (ideal) underpinnings of justice and its practical realisation in four heuristically defined domains of justice - social justice, economic justice, political justice, and civil and symbolic justice. These domains are revealed in several spheres: a) philosophical and political tradition, b) legal framework, c) daily (bureaucratic) practice, d) current public debates, and e) the accounts of the vulnerable populations in six European countries (the Netherlands, the UK, Hungary, Austria, Portugal and Turkey). The question of drawing boundaries and redrawing the fault-lines of justice permeates the entire investigation. Alongside Utrecht University in the Netherlands who coordinate the project, five further research institutions cooperate. They are based in Austria (European Training and Research Centre for Human Rights and Democracy), Hungary (Central European University), Portugal (Centre for Social Studies), Turkey (Boğaziçi University), and the UK (University of Bristol). The research project lasts from January 2017 to December 2019 4 Executive Summary This report assesses the state of the art in ideal and non-ideal theory in political philosophy, and proceeds on this basis to make some practical methodological recommendations for integrating empirical and normative work toward a European theory of justice. It is based on the findings of the Ideal and Non-Ideal Theories of Justice workshop, held on February 23-24, 2018 at Coimbra University (Portugal), as part of the ETHOS annual conference. Abstracts of papers presented are included in Appendix 1. Selected working papers presented are included in Appendix 2. A major part of the task of the ETHOS project is to bridge the gap between empirical and normative work. This raises the ‘is-ought problem’, identified by David Hume. Hume observed that normative propositions (e.g., ‘Domestic violence is wrong’) are entirely different from empirical ones (e.g., ‘Domestic violence occurs in every country’), and that it is thus unclear how the second could ever logically ground the first. This makes the idea of an ‘empirically grounded’ (normative) theory of justice appear paradoxical. However, the paradox is at least partially dissolved by noting that it is only empirical propositions alone that cannot generate normative conclusions. Accordingly, we advocate ‘hybrid empirical-normative theorizing’ in which empirical and normative work collaborate to generate the premises that ground normative conclusions about European justice. The contrast between ideal and non-ideal theory concerns the ways in which theorizing about justice ought to be empirically informed. Hence, we have much to learn from philosophical debates on how theories of justice can and should be non-ideal. Following Valentini, we identify three main dimensions on which a theory can be ideal or non-ideal. The first is ‘full’ versus ‘partial’ compliance. (Ideal) full-compliance theory makes the idealizing assumption that persons in general accept and comply with the demands of justice. The second is (ideal) ‘fact- insensitivity’ versus ‘fact-sensitivity’ (e.g. sensitivity to empirical facts about human motivation). Finally, the third is the dimension between theorizing an (ideal) ‘end-state’ of complete justice, or articulating ‘transitional’ improvements towards greater justice. We note that transitional theory has an important advantage in light of value pluralism: while there is intractable disagreement about what full justice would be, we can often agree about gross injustices. We thus advocate what we call, following Wolff, ‘real world political philosophy’, a bottom-up approach to justice in which one starts from manifest injustices. Voting rights for disabled persons can illustrate this approach well. We consider four models of disability: ‘medical’, ‘radical social’, ‘minority group’, and ‘human variation’. We show how these models suggest different remedies to the disadvantages faced by disabled persons, and highlight two concerns of justice that are salient: recognition and redistribution. In a case where the minority group model plausibly applies (e.g., a person with a mild mental impairment is denied voting rights) we argue that the solution is recognition based. In a case where the human variation model plausibly applies (e.g., a non-ambulatory person who cannot access public buildings to vote) we argue that redistributive considerations ought to be observed. Real world political philosophy is ‘partial’; it does not provide a complete and systematic theory of justice or injustice, but rather focuses on identifiable injustices. This is a vitally important point for the ETHOS project, which responds to a grant call asking us to work towards a European theory of justice and fairness that rests on solid empirical ground. Our research and analysis so far indicates that a (unitary or monolithic) European theory of justice and fairness is not a feasible goal; the ETHOS project should rather direct its efforts toward developing some theory that helps us better understand, evaluate and recommend responses to European injustices. iii Contents Acknowledgments ____________________________________________________________________ i Executive Summary __________________________________________________________________ iii Towards a Non-Ideal Theory of Justice in Europe ___________________________________________ 1 A. Introduction __________________________________________________________________________ 1 B. Non-Ideal Theory and Theorizing (In)Justice in Europe ________________________________________ 2 1. The Relevance of the Ideal/Non-Ideal Debates for Theorizing Justice In Europe ____________________________ 2 2. What is Non-Ideal Theory in Contemporary Political Philosophy? ________________________________________ 3 3. Real World Political
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