POLI 342 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Distributive Justice, Political Philosophy, Capability Approach
11 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
POLI363 Lecture 10:
Papers back next friday
Course evaluations coming out to know what to improve about course-
The Fetishism Worry Strikes back:
-The language that Rawls himself uses (ie all-purpose means) seems to suggest that
the primary goods are valuable only instrumentally, as means to some further thing.
-Shouldn’t we, then, be focusing on this further thing if we are trying to identify this
most fundamental concern of distributive justice?
-Again, it appears fetishistic to focus exclusively on certain background conditions
for the successful pursuit of one’s good, and ignore the good itself. If what explains
why the primary goods are valuable is that they help us pursue our ends whatever
these might be, what should we say about cases (whether these are real or
hypothetical) where they do not serve this purpose? Plausibly, we should say that
they are just not as valuable in such cases. But this is not what Rawls’ view implies.
-No longer clear that we need to move away from the theory of well-being.
-The question is why Rawls would be victimized by this.
Rawls' Response (or ‘why not well-being’)
-Expensive tastes problem
-Responsibility for forming/adjusting one’s own ends (grounded in conception of
the moral person) if they are incompatible with the theory of justice-
-Possibility of unjust ends
-"Pluralism about the good/liberal neutrality”
-Everyone has different conceptions of a good, what is compatible with the
theories of justice.
-The last point seems the most critical (and is the only one not really emphasized in
Dworkin). It may provide a way of grounding Scanlon’s proposal. Q: But what
about objective list theories of well-being? And what about opportunity for well-
being?
-Is it reasonable to assume that everyone is responsible for all of their
desires?
-the difference between the subjective list theory and Rawl’s theory?
For Discussion:
-Does Rawls have a convincing reply to the fetishism worry? Why or why not?
The Capabilities approach: (AKA the Human Development Approach):
-Extremely influential, both in academic political philosophy in the real world (ie
UN Human Development Reports)
-Unlike other theories we’ve looked at, has explicitly taken shape in response to
and been applied to, global issues of distributive justice.
-MDGs and SDGs
Document Summary
Course evaluations coming out to know what to improve about course- The language that rawls himself uses (ie all-purpose means) seems to suggest that the primary goods are valuable only instrumentally, as means to some further thing. Again, it appears fetishistic to focus exclusively on certain background conditions for the successful pursuit of one"s good, and ignore the good itself. Plausibly, we should say that they are just not as valuable in such cases. But this is not what rawls" view implies. No longer clear that we need to move away from the theory of well-being. The question is why rawls would be victimized by this. Responsibility for forming/adjusting one"s own ends (grounded in conception of the moral person) if they are incompatible with the theory of justice- The last point seems the most critical (and is the only one not really emphasized in. It may provide a way of grounding scanlon"s proposal.
