tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4058766287077382431.post7268157015504881774..comments2024-03-23T04:01:39.348-04:00Comments on Understanding Society: Influences and argumentsDan Littlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15953897221283103880noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4058766287077382431.post-13917967841614403392010-03-23T17:07:38.832-04:002010-03-23T17:07:38.832-04:00I stumbled upon this post and wanted to know what ...I stumbled upon this post and wanted to know what your thoughts would be on a perspective such as Nietzsche's - that an overwhelming majority of philosophic thought is rooted in and guided by prejudices such as the common use of the subject-predicate format ("I" and "am") and the author's prior moral perspective and ulterior motives.<br /><br />For example, he specifically calls out Kant (which you discuss) for being a part of this. In a case like this, the philosopher (Kant) has already formed his theory or some idea in his subconscious and all of the ornate and seemingly logical/analytical dialogue which flows from some "initial" question is guided from the start in an effort to justify his view. The motive may be self-glorification, self-humiliation, etc.<br /><br />This is obviously a very over-simplified overview.mcclurethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02254287537955717777noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4058766287077382431.post-24982271915904249152010-03-23T02:29:24.297-04:002010-03-23T02:29:24.297-04:00But wasn't the importance given to the equal o...But wasn't the importance given to the equal opportunity principle an indication of how seriously he took the civil rights movement? I am not decided on whether I agree with Sen's criticism, and I think I remember Robert Paul Wolff raising the question of whether the attenuation of market inequalities mandated by the difference principle is compatible with the operation of market society in the first place. <br /><br />Or to put the point more practically. It would seem obvious that Employee Free Choice Act would benefit the least advantaged workers (I really recommend Steven Greenhouse's book The Big Squeeze), but the Heritage Foundation and an economist at UCLA (Ohlian?) argue that the rising real wage resulting from unionization and state-imposed collective bargaining would depress profitability and thereby future investment. That would lead to even more unemployment, which would have harsh effects on the least well-off. <br /><br />In fact these "neo-liberal" economists would make an argument for depressing the real wage either by union busting or perhaps by inflation that outstrips real wage growth so that profit prospects and thereby investment would pick up (the left Keynesians such as Akerlof and Shiller argue that there are ways to raise effective demand without cutting down wages in the hopes of encouraging more real investment and that the positive effects on real investment by real wage reductions could be swamped by pessimism over an even smaller final market given the compression of wages). <br /><br />Still the economists could justify the attack on these workers by saying that these policies would still benefit the least well off, viz. the unemployed. <br /><br />That is, if neo-liberal economics has hegemony (and it seems to enjoy that in the Obama administration as there is no indication that Jared Bernstein has been able to move the President to champion the EFCA), I don't see how a Rawlsian can make a much of a case for redistributive social democratic policies on the basis of the difference principle.Rakesh Bhandarinoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4058766287077382431.post-48325119613326429772010-03-22T23:36:24.379-04:002010-03-22T23:36:24.379-04:00Rakesh,
Thanks for these good reflections. Thomas...Rakesh,<br />Thanks for these good reflections. Thomas Pogge does a good job of taking a Rawlsian perspective on international justice issues. He comes to much more radical conclusions about international inequalities than Rawls probably would have done. I have to agree about how surprising the "parochialism" is; you could say much the same thing about Rawls's complete disregard of issues of racial inequality, in the context of the decade of the Civil Rights struggle in the United States.Dan Littlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15953897221283103880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4058766287077382431.post-5657145458322586762010-03-22T18:40:37.348-04:002010-03-22T18:40:37.348-04:00I'm reading Amartya Sen's Idea of Justice ...I'm reading Amartya Sen's Idea of Justice presently. Just as Marx's decision to focus on a pure and self-enclosed capitalist mode of production could be criticized for abstracting from the inequality of nation states and the structural importance of what Kenneth Pomeranz has called a new kind of colony in his most interesting book The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World, Sen criticizes Rawls for accepting the parameters of the nation-state in his construction of an idealized original position. <br /><br />I am guessing that Sen found Rawls' parochialism a bit astonishing as The Theory of Justice was conceived at a time that the US was at war in Vietnam (I do recommend the documentary The Most Dangerous Man in AMerica: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers; I had the pleasure of meeting Ellsberg recently). From what I can make out, Rawls' reflections on International Justice were not expressed for two decades after the publication of The Theory of Justice. I think the relevant book here is Laws of the People. <br /><br />But this parochialism built into a "Westphalian" understanding of the social contract tradition seems to be the primary reason that Sen emphasizes the moral insight to be gained from the position of an impartial spectator as conceived by Adam Smith. <br /><br />Sen is also surprised by how little attention Rawls gave to Smith and economic theorists in general. <br /><br />It would seem to me that Rawls' Theory of Justice served as a justification for the Great Society created via social democratic interpretation of Keynesian policies. And I wonder how Rawls responded to the Keynesian experiment going up in stagflationary ashes.Rakesh Bhandarinoreply@blogger.com