A reader recently emailed me the following submission:
As a “new” reader of your blog...I’d like to suggest some material for your Underappreciated philosophy project (which seems itself underappreciated). As I am currently working on the opposition to equality, I’ve been at pain to find serious literature on this subject. Actually, it seems that the bulk of the debate is between various egalitarian theses; when it comes to the opposition to equality, most of what I find is either blatantly question-begging or addressed to a straw man (e.g. Rothbard’s “Egalitarianism: a revolt against nature”). Whatever the explanation of this turns out to be (perhaps conservative-minded brilliant people choose careers other than philosophy, perhaps they fail to get published, I don’t know), it has led to a lack of attention to (serious) conservative arguments. Thus I was quite happy to find some in Kekes’s work, most notably his Against Liberalism (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1997) and The Illusions of Egalitarianism (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2003), as I believe that, as philosophers, we should generally be happy to disagree strongly with serious theses, rather than with straw-man-objections and gross misunderstandings.
In this respect, even though I do strongly disagree with Kekes, it cannot be said that he uses abusive rhetoric and pays insufficient attention to the actual theses he objects to. He does use such rhetoric at times, but, so to speak, he generally does not attack windmills. Thus it seems to me that anyone interested in political philosophy (even more if one is interested in egalitarianism, as I am) should dive into Kekes’s work and take his objections into account, and rely on these when examining actual conservative objections to his/her own theses.
I haven't read Kekes' work in detail, and so perhaps am not the best person to judge whether his philosophy -- and specifically, his arguments against liberalism -- are underappreciated. For what it is worth, I do think there are good questions to raise about liberalism's overwhelming focus on autonomy (something that Kekes evidently criticizes; though he is by no means the only one to do this; communitarians have been objecting to liberalism on some such grounds for years). The only thing I can say about Kekes is this: I have read this short piece by him in City Journal, and I think it is awful.
Although I'm no big fan of Ronald Dworkin -- I broadly agree with Kekes' assessment of Dworkin's Sovereign Virtue, especially Dworkin's infamous "envy test" -- Kekes' discussion of Rawls is, by my lights, profoundly unfair, and really quite irresponsible as a public presentation of philosophical ideas.
Look, Rawls has his problems. Many political liberals, myself included, have taken Rawls to task for focusing on "ideal theory" (something Kekes savages Rawls for in his City Journal piece). But to presend that Rawls' focus on ideal theory is somehow an irreparable problem -- a refutation of liberalism -- is just silly. Yes, liberals have a bad history of focusing on ideal theory, to the detriment of nonideal theory -- and this is a big oversight. But it is also an oversight that we are working on. Furthermore, if people like me are right -- see e.g. my "First Steps Toward a Nonideal Theory of Justice" -- Rawls' ideal theory may well be correct as a theory of a just society, as well as extendable to nonideal conditions in a way that makes sense of the value of things other than autonomy.
Furthermore, Kekes' criticisms of Rawls' original position are quite silly. Kekes objects that the parties to the original position aren't flesh and blood human beings, but rather "puppets." This is absolutely incorrect. The original position models flesh and blood human beings deliberating from a position of fairness about principles they would want to govern society, and would be satisfied with once the veil of ignorance is raised and they find themselves in society, with real communal attachments, religion, personal views, etc.
Kekes also argues that Rawls' two principles of justice are incompatible, as Rawls' first principle requires equal basic liberties and the second principle "economic equality." One problem with this gloss, of course, is that Rawls' second principle doesn't require economic equality. It merely requires society's economic rules to be set up to the maximum advantage of the least well off. A second problem is that once this is understood, there is no conflict between the two principles. One can give people equal basic liberties and yet also make economic rules constrain the manner in which people can utilize their equal liberties.
Furthermore, Kekes contends that Rawls cannot distinguish between a poor but responsible single mother and a petty criminal -- that is, that Rawls' theory would have us treat both people exactly the same. This is also irresponsible. Rawls' priniciples of justice require that a society's economic scheme be to the maximum advantage of the worst off -- but this is perfectly consistent with holding petty criminals responsible for their actions. All Rawls' principles require is that society be set up so that the worst off have the best economic situation possible. If some people in society (e.g. the petty criminal) don't make the best of that situation, so much the worse for them. Furthermore -- although Kekes doesn't seem to realize this -- isn't there a problem with a society that gives rise to petty criminals? Rawls' theory of justice is explicitly designed to promote the self-respect of all, such that people have incentive to work. Apparently, Kekes didn't bother to actually read A Theory of Justice all the way through. If he had, he would know this.
Finally, Kekes -- again, wrongly -- takes Rawls to be irreparably committed to modern welfare state redistributionism (i.e. taking from the rich to give to the poor). Except that Rawls explicitly argued that the welfare state is bad, and unjust, because it doesn't give the poor the best economic situation they can have. Rawls instead defended something he called "property-owning democracy", which is essentially a scheme that doesn't take from the rich so much as it imposes rules on economic transactions at the outset that work to the maximum advantage of the poor.
To be clear, Rawls' theory of justice is not without its problems. But people like Kekes do no one any favors -- not the least themselves -- by setting up liberals like Rawls as straw men. Rawls was not a dummy. He should not be treated like one.
To continue the conversation: I agree with all your points about Kekes’s short piece (I read it myself some months ago, and found it was beyond “awful”). I am more interested in his properly philosophical arguments, and believe that at least the most relevant of them should be addressed. Even an argument grounded on a misunderstanding may point to an important issue, and although I disagree with Kekes’s contentions and conclusions, I take it that we should usually be attentive to first-hand objections and not only to what we assume a conservative would object.
To this extent I believe that Kekes, however erroneous his contentions, is a decent representative of philosophical conservatism.
Posted by: Pierre | 03/30/2014 at 08:13 PM
Hi Pierre: Fair enough. I hope to check out some of Kekes' work this summer (though, for what it is worth, it is hard to believe that someone who could write a piece like the City Journal piece could be a very good philosopher! The mistakes, again, are pretty elementary).
In any case, what are the arguments/objections you think are worth taking seriously? Perhaps, if you present some of them here, we could discuss them...You could either present them here in the comments section--or perhaps, better yet, submit them to me as new, separate posts (individual posts on the specific ideas/arguments you think are worth taking seriously).
Posted by: Marcus Arvan | 04/02/2014 at 12:46 PM
Well, when I began some research on the opposition to equality/egalitarianism, I had hard times finding relevant or serious arguments. Beyond the debate within egalitarianism, there seemed to be nothing but gross misunderstanding and straw-man-objections. So when I read a piece of Kekes’s for the first time (“A Question for Egalitarians”, http://philpapers.org/rec/KEKAQF -- see also Linda Barclay’s response, http://philpapers.org/rec/BARTAT), I was quite happy: his objection was severely flawed, but at least he did not claim at the outset “Egalitarians are dummies”. Only then I found his short piece: back to Quixote bravely attacking a windmill. But I thought for myself: “Hey, he *is* able to act as a responsible philosopher, don’t mind what he says to his jolly conservative fellows.” (Moreover it would be neither entirely fair to him, nor philosophically rigorous to hold that, because in one occurrence he pressed ridiculous objections based on a gross misreading of Rawls and Dworkin, *all* his work should be discarded.)
As regards his serious work: I didn’t read all his books/papers (there are plenty of them and time is a scarce resource). I read large excerpts from his *Illusions of Egalitarianism* and *Against Liberalism*, which at least meet minimal standards of intellectual rigor -- not to say that they succeed in their overall rejection of liberalism/egalitarianism, but they do not fail out of treating egalitarians like dummies. I do not have the books with me now, but to sum up, he systematically restates “classical” contentions, directly addressing actual arguments (which he has the honesty to quote at length). So for example (the most recent in my mind), he restates the common objections “We are different in so many respects -- How could we be said to be equal?” and “We are not of equal moral worth --- What could ground moral equality, if not an empty logical subject, and why would this extend to humans only, given that this empty logical subject is so devoid of content (i.e. the actual differences between us, including moral differences)?” In the end, it turns out that both objections are misguided, but he states them cleverly enough not to bring ridicule upon himself.
His following argument is not stupid either: he considers the thesis that we are morally unequal, and aptly acknowledges that it has been used to support “great evils” (racism, sexism, etc.), and yet claims that we should accept it (e.g. a criminal and a saint are not of equal moral worth). In the end it turns out that he is simply restating a very weak egalitarian idea, namely, that we should not be treated unequally on the basis of irrelevant traits of ours.
The point is that, when he is acting as a responsible philosopher, what he writes is interesting (not always so), and perhaps even helpful, because it sheds light on some difficulties or issues on which a greater clarity is required.
Posted by: Pierre | 04/02/2014 at 09:33 PM
Pierre: I'll have to trust you for now that when he acts as a "responsible philosopher", what he writes is interesting. I do look forward to reading his "A Question for Egalitarians" and Barclay's response (both of which I just downloaded).
Fwiw, the arguments you mention here don't seem very interesting to *me*, at least offhand. The first main classical objection you mention, "How could we be said to be equal given our many differences?", seems to me plainly misguided (as you yourself note). So, what's so interesting about it?
And what's interesting about the other argument (about criminals)? As you note, the idea that we shouldn't treat saints and criminals the same way is about the *weakest* egalitarian claim I can imagine -- one that there no really interesting questions about.
Anyway, I know this sounds closed-minded, but I *will* take a look at his and Barclay's articles, as well as at a book or two of his this summer, and try to read with an open mind.
Posted by: Marcus Arvan | 04/03/2014 at 05:51 PM
Marcus, I perfectly understand your doubts: my interest is, to a large extent, intuition-laden, and we know how difficult it may be to share an intuition. At the start, I was working on the opposition to equality (see below), but found few relevant material beyond what egalitarians themselves have assumed could be objections to their theses (e.g. Parfit assuming that an opponent would press the leveling down objection). Most, if not all of what I found was so grossly flawed that I couldn’t honestly cite it. It would have been necessary to *improve* the opponents’ arguments before I could examine their strength.
To the contrary, Kekes provides a clever (yet unsuccessful) and surprisingly systematic statement of otherwise common objections. So the basic ideas are not new, but at least they are cleverly articulated. Even better, except for his short piece, he does not take egalitarianism to be whatever ridiculous thesis he wants it to be (his “A Question...” is quite weak in this respect, but to me it was useful, since it eventually helped me to clarify my own position). So I’ve come to think that, if we are to address objections to egalitarianism, it’s not such a bad thing to address (inter alia) Kekes’s objections.
On why I work on the opposition to equality: there are two main reasons. One is mere philosophical curiosity. The other, more important one, is that I believe (rightly I hope) that we should make our positions both robust enough to resist conservative/libertarian criticism, and mild enough to accommodate the most insightful (if any) elements they bring to the debate. If, in the course of doing so, it turns out that conservative objections fail or that conservatism is not really consistent, I won’t say I’m unhappy with this. My thesis (I am (re-)drafting a paper on this) is that we should adopt a variant of democratic egalitarianism, because (a) it is the most robust position with respect to conservative/libertarian objections (they cannot seriously reject at least its weakest form), and (b) it is basic enough as to require no trade-off against other values: thus the fear that pluralist egalitarianism could give up equality for the sake of pluralism is avoided.
Posted by: Pierre | 04/05/2014 at 12:09 AM
Pierre: your project sounds very interesting, and I think I understand your interest in the topic better now. That being said, I just read Kekes' "A Question for Egalitarians" and thought it was one of the worst philosophy articles I've ever read (I think it's an embarrassment that Ethics published it). Barclay's response, on the other hand, is entirely on point. Kekes' question fundamentally misunderstands Rawls (to an almost unbelievable extent), and egalitarianism more broadly.
Posted by: Marcus Arvan | 04/05/2014 at 11:36 AM
Marcus, I may be more charitable than you are, but our divergence on this point most likely depends on our experience (mainly reading and discussing). I’ve read many really crappy pieces (Rand, Rothbard) before I “encountered” Kekes, and had many discussions with people unbelievably not thoughtful, so that even a slightly more thoughtful argumentation then looked like philosophical heaven :)
Posted by: Pierre | 04/05/2014 at 02:33 PM
Pierre: maybe. Or maybe you just have a bad comparison class? I guess I could understand why Kekes might look good...compared to Rand and Rothbard. But isn't this like saying that Burger King looks healthy compared to McDonalds?
I mean, Barclay is *absolutely* right in her response to Kekes. She is right when she writes on p. 85, "Kekes’s subsequent argument against Rawlsian egalitarianism relies
upon collapsing these two quite distinct senses of what counts as a serious inequality and thus misconstrues how egalitarianism should be applied."
She is also plainly right when she writes in her concluding paragraph: "Kekes’s argument consistently relies upon misconstruing egalitarianism in all its versions. Egalitarianism properly construed does not commit us to the absurd policy of directing resources away from women to compensate men for their shorter life spans. To the contrary, it is egalitarianism which seems to explain our intuitions that such policies would be absurd. Kekes’s arguments inadvertently strengthen the plausibility of egalitarianism rather than undermine it."
By my lights, Kekes' piece in Ethics is no better than his piece in the City Journal (which you accept as awful). They both plainly attack straw men, and are based upon very basic misunderstandings of what egalitarian theories of justice claim.
Posted by: Marcus Arvan | 04/05/2014 at 04:45 PM
Marcus, I wouldn’t say that Kekes looks really “good”. I’m really being charitable (maybe excessively so): to go on with your analogy, if the most healthy conservative food today is Kekes, I’ll eat the Greek salad rather than the double-decker-burger-with-bacon. Given what “ordinary” conservatives seemingly praise these days, this looks better than nothing. (PhilPapers’s “Political Conservatism” category is surprisingly undernourished, and a quick look at what gets a 5-star rating on Amazon suggests that thoughtful conservatism is a scarce resource.) I prefer *treating* Kekes’s argument as an unfortunate misunderstanding rather than as a straw man. I do not deny that, in the end, the difference between the two is thin. Obviously no one would assert the claim Kekes attributes to egalitarians (and obviously neither Rawls nor Dworkin asserted it), but, out of charity (and out of necessity to rescue conservatism from its own weaknesses when it is sensible to do so), I read Kekes’s argument *as if* he did not claim any actual egalitarian had asserted the thesis to which he (Kekes) objects.
So to be sure this is wrong in one sense, for Kekes *does* claim egalitarians cannot avoid being committed to that thesis. And anyway his argument turns out to be poor (and of course Barclay is right on it), but it does shed light on what a conservative may “fear” and what misunderstandings we should repeatedly make clear are to be avoided/averted.
Posted by: Pierre | 04/06/2014 at 12:09 PM