View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by D-Scholarship@Pitt LOCKE’S PERFECTIONIST LIBERALISM: AN ARTICULATION AND DEFENSE by Evan Patrick Riley BA, Philosophy, University of Louisville, 1995 BA, Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Oxford University, 1997 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The College of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2008 UNIVERSITYOF PITTSBURGH COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Evan Patrick Riley It was defended on December 5th, 2008 and approved by Karin Boxer, Assistant Professor, Philosophy Stephen Engstrom, Professor, Philosophy Michael Goodhart, Associate Professor, Political Science Kieran Setiya, Associate Professor, Philosophy Director: Michael Thompson, Professor, Philosophy ii Copyright © by Evan Riley 2008 iii LOCKE’S PERFECTIONIST LIBERALISM: AN ARTICULATION AND DEFENSE Evan Riley, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2008 Locke’s view in the Two Treatises not only allows for but embraces interference with individuals on recognizably perfectionist grounds. It is plainly a form of perfectionism. Yet it is also an early paradigm of deontological liberalism for Locke sharply emphasizes the importance of moral duties to respect the basic rights of the sovereign individual. It is tempting to conclude that he is confusedly appealing to two opposed forms of moral and political theory, indeed to what we have come to see as two opposed forms of moral reasoning, viz. consequentialism on the one hand and deontology on the other. This temptation should be resisted. Perfectionism and deontology are not necessarily at odds with one another; some perfectionisms may coherently and productively also be deontological liberalisms. Locke’s is one such view. Respecting the constraints associated with justice through the exercise of practical wisdom may be held to be a constitutive element in the good life. Such a view is coherent and appealing insofar as it makes intelligible the relation of justice to flourishing without inviting the worries about tyrannizing that plague consequentialist forms of moral theorizing. This is theoretically unambitious as it rules out robustly explaining the iv nature of moral rectitude by appeal to the idea of maximizing the good. Yet it is not trivializing. Locke’s liberalism fundamentally calls for every human being to be brought into full practical reason and to be accorded a minimally decent scope for exercising that capacity in various productive ways in society with others. The dissertation culminates in a demonstration that Locke was correct to hold the kind of perfectionist liberal view that he did, rather than the standard libertarian view often still attributed to him. Standard libertarianism is especially vulnerable to a kind of collective self-defeat, for while perfectly respecting the relevant constraints of libertarian justice, the members of libertarian society may undermine the realization of one of their characteristic basic values. Such degeneration would be no accident; it is brought about through intentional actions fully morally legitimate on that conception. Locke was hence correct to defend his actual view rather than this alternative. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE.......................................................................................................................viii 1.0 INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................1 1.1 PERFECTIONISM SKETCHED.………………………………….......2 1.2 THE PROPER END……………………………………………………11 1.3 A WORRY DEFUSED…………………………………………………16 1.4 LIBERALISM SKETCHED…………………………………………...20 2.0 AGAINST HURKIAN PERFECTIONISM.………………………………….24 2.1 THE MISBEGOTTEN ESCHEWAL OF MORALLY EVALUATIVE CONTENT………………………………………………………………………25 2.2 AGAINST HURKA’S POSITIVE PERFECTIONISM……...............34 3.0 AGAINST RAWLSIAN ANTIPERFECTIONISM.……,..………………….39 3.1 RAWLS’S OBJECTIVISM AND THE DIFFICULTY.……..………40 3.2 THE INCONCLUSIVE ARGUMENT FROM THE BURDENS…...45 3.3 AN OBJECTION TO TREATING REASONABLE REJECTABIL- ITY AS DECISIVE……………………………………………………………..50 4.0 THE GENERAL PICTURE OF THE TWO TREATISES ON JUSTICE IN HOLDINGS.…………………………………………………………….………57 4.1 PRELIMINARIES……………………………………………………...63 vi 4.2 LOCKE’S GENERAL ANTILIBERTARIAN PRESUMPTION…..73 4.3 THE SANCTIONING OF REDISTRIBUTION….………………….84 5.0 LOCKE’S LIBERAL PERFECTIONISM POSITIVELY CONSTRUED..102 6.0 LIBERTARIAN SELF-DEFEAT....………….………………………………125 6.1 TWO VARIETIES OF LIBERAL JUSTICE REVISITED………..127 6.2 STABILITY, REASONABLENESS, AND THE REASONABLE STABILITY CRITERION……………………………………………137 6.3 MORAL LITERACY, MORAL EDUCATION AND FULLY BEARING A CONCEPTION.………………………………………..144 6.4 THE SELF-DEFEAT....……………………………………................152 6.5 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………..159 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………….................166 vii PREFACE I hereby thank my family and the members of my committee for their considerable patience and help throughout the writing of this dissertation. Any remaining obscurities and errors are of course my own responsibility. I also thank the editors of the Journal of Moral Philosophy for permission to use material from my forthcoming “Libertarian Self- defeat.” I refer to particular passages in Locke’s Two Treatises by using a Roman numeral to indicate which treatise is under consideration followed by an Arabic numeral indicating the section. viii 1.0 INTRODUCTION It is often presupposed that properly conceived perfectionist moral and political theorizing is consequentialist in character. John Rawls treats it this way as does Thomas Hurka.1 In this part of the dissertation I begin by showing that this is mistaken. It is conceptually coherent to combine recognizable perfectionism with a commitment to deontological liberalism. I go on to demonstrate, in a preliminary way, the attractions of this form of perfectionism, perfectionist deontological liberalism. I begin by discussing the general features of the perfectionist family. I endorse the thought that a view of human moral and political life is a form of perfectionism in the relevant sense when it expresses a recognizably teleological view of human nature that finds its proper end in human flourishing. The perfectionist’s account of abstract right, and justice, coheres with and is on her view made intelligible only in the light of her detailed account of such flourishing. On a robust perfectionist view achieving such flourishing requires the development of some characteristically human capacities. Typically, the flourishing is though to consist at least in part in the exercise of those 1 Rawls thinks all properly perfectionist theories are consequentialist, though he also allows some mixed-bag theories to include perfectionist principles. See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 1st edn (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971). Hurka thinks all the sensible perfectionist theories are consequentialist. See Thomas Hurka, Perfectionism, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). 1 capacities. Yet I argue against thinking that the only coherent forms of perfectionism are consequentialisms. I further that case through critical consideration of Thomas Hurka’s Perfectionism.2 I argue, pace Hurka, that perfectionist deontological liberalism is not merely coherent but otherwise prima face sensible. I also show that it is not vulnerable to some obvious objections that may be cogently pressed against Hurka’s preferred form of consequentialist perfectionist moral theory. I also argue that Rawls’s antiperfectionist scruples as displayed in Political Liberalism are not well grounded.3 My argumentative strategy there is to point up the absence of obvious general grounds for distinguishing the credentials of avowedly perfectionist deontological liberalism (hereafter PDL) from those of its neutralist brethren. 1.1 PERFECTIONISM SKETCHED Clearly, a commitment to perfectionism in moral and political philosophy can take a range of different forms and the use of the term is contested.4 Nonetheless, there is rough 2 See Hurka, Perfectionism, pp. 9-60. 3 See John Rawls, Political Liberalism, 2nd edn (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993, 1996.) 4 The general approach dates to Plato and extends through the history of moral philosophy. See Plato, Republic, trans. G.M.A. Grube, rev C.D.C. Reeve, (Indianapolis: Hackett, [380 B.C.], 1992). Useful recent short discussions include: Richard Arneson, ‘Perfectionism and Politics’, Ethics, Vol. 111, No. 1. (2000), pp. 37-63, Joseph Chan, ‘Legitimacy, Unanimity, and Perfectionism’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 29 (2000), pp. 5-42, and David McCabe ‘Knowing About the Good: A problem With Anti- perfectionism’, Ethics 110 ( 2000), pp. 311–338. Monographs defending explicitly perfectionist liberalisms include: Vinit Haksar, Equality, Liberty and Perfectionism, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980), Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom, (Oxford: Clarendon, 2 agreement on the most general features that a substantive normative view of human political and moral life will possess if it is a kind of perfectionism. In particular, it must be recognizably a teleological view and focused on some account of human flourishing. That is, such a view embraces an account of human flourishing, and thus of human nature, which is taken to have objective purport and to constitute the proper end of human life. On such a view, the proper account of human abstract right gets significance and content from the prototypical