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Dates: 9th, 10th and 11th June 2021.
Please note that the sessions will occur from 9:00 to 18:00 (9AM to 6PM). All times will be Braga Time Zone (WET or GMT+1) - see clock bellow with local time. Scroll down to view the links to access the sessions. |
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Session 12 - Democracy, the just economy and the foundations for a stable social union
[RAWLS session]
10th June, 09h00 - 10h45, GREEN room - Chair: Leonardo Menezes
The Economic Principle of Political Liberalism: A Comparison of Rawls and Sugden, Paolo Santori (Italy)
Keywords: Rawls, Sugden, Principle of Mutual Benefit, Political Liberalism, Second Principle
Abstract: In his 2018 book, The Community of Advantage, economist Robert Sugden sets out his principle of mutual benefit. This paper inquires the role that Sugden’s principle occupies in Rawls’ Political Liberalism, i.e., if it would be chosen by contracting parties in the original position and what the implications of the agreement would be. The outcome integrates Rawls’ and Sugden’s systems, proposing a new economic principle for political liberalism as: ‘Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they have to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; second, they have to be progressively reduced, extending, as much as possible, the opportunities of mutual benefit to all.’
Democratic equality and Rawls’s criticism of welfare state capitalism, Juan Antonio Fernández Manzano (Spain) Keywords: Capitalism, democratic equality, principles of justice, welfare state
Abstract: Throughout his intellectual career, Rawls outlined the main characteristics of a well-ordered society and came to the conclusion that not every political-economic system is compatible with justice as fairness. Starting from the principle of democratic equality both as the interpretive key of the principles of justice and as connector that unites the egalitarian requirements of the second principle of justice with the democratic ideal of the first, Rawls will try to clarify the characteristics that a political framework would need to have in order to be able to curb the tendencies of liberalism towards undemocratic inequality. Although the principles of justice are not adhered to any specific political or economic system, this does not mean that they do not implicitly carry a certain ideal of social institutions and a concept of public good. In a first analysis, in his 1971 Theory of Justice, Rawls makes an initial distinction between the two prevailing models taken as ideal types: the model of public ownership of the means of production, with greater weight of the public sector, and the model of private property of the means of production or property-owning democracy, where the public sector plays a minor role. It will be in the revised version of the Theory of Justice, 1999, when Rawls points out the differences between property-owning democracy and welfare state capitalism. In Justice as fairness. A restatement, 2001, Rawls will broaden the cast of possibilities and take into consideration five political, social and economic systems: laissez-faire capitalism, welfare-state capitalism, state socialism with a command economy, property-owning democracy, and liberal socialism. The dividing line will be established between the first three models, incapable of realizing the principles of justice, and the last two, compatible with them.
This work carries out an analytical study that traces the different stages of this process, reconstructs and interprets the main arguments by which the welfare state is discarded and sustains, against some interpreters (Vallier, 2015; von Platz, 2020), the solidity of the conclusions that lead Rawls to declare the incompatibility of every known form of capitalism to satisfy the requirements of justice, even when capitalism sets itself the goal that no one should fall, whether by accident, illness, loss of employment or misfortune, below a certain quality threshold of life.
Those who interpret Rawls as a social democratic defender of the welfare state or those who try to defend, supported by arguments in a Rawlsian key, a capitalism with a human face are not aware that Rawls's critique of capitalism is deeper than is usually recognized.
From Rawls to a New Social Contract, Paula Mateus (Portugal) Keywords: social contract, reciprocity, cooperation, ideological narrative, distributive justice
Abstract: Rawls chooses to inscribe his theory of justice in the social contract narrative, although no new contract has been concluded around him when he writes. He could be thinking of the great revolutions, taking the contract as a relatively close real event, or at a more distant one, or even foreseeing a future social and political act. But he wasn't. For Rawls, the social contract is a purely hypothetical decision-making device, unmatched by any real agreement.
We will see that, besides the asymmetries, Rawls' political theory received some important legacies from Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. From Hobbes he kept the thesis that the contract involves the expectation of reciprocity between individuals. From Locke, Rawls seems to have withheld the idea that, although the right to property is a natural one, it is up to the government to stipulate the terms in which it can be exercised, notably by preventing monopolies, which both philosophers saw as politically damaging. With Rousseau he shares the reconciliation between freedom and government: the one who participates in decisions and exercises his citizenship submits to the General Will – the true sovereign – which is also his will, acquiring civic and moral freedom.
Some of the premises of the social contract tradition appeared in the idea of an Original Position: a) the contract does not define any design of the good; b) the contract cannot be a negotiation, but an act where free and equal persons choose the constituent lines of the society in which they want to live; c) although humans are 'calculating' advantages and disadvantages, they admit restrictions on their behavior, respect for the rights of others and the advantage of cooperation – they are rational, but they also have a sense of social justice. Others inheritances are less explicitly in the idea of society as a fair system of cooperation, which seems to gain prominence in Rawls' theory until Justice as Fairness, the Restatement.
Now, just as Rawls outlined his idea of social contract from this tradition, not repeating it, it is also urgent today to draw a new social contract, looking at Rawls as a source of inspiration. We will argue, as Rawls does, in favor of the thesis that the basis of the contract should be the idea of society as a fair system of cooperation between free and equal individuals and that the contract should promote the greatest constellation of freedoms possible and equal opportunities. However, we will defend a dated social contract, that is, a contract designed to respond to the demands of today: inequality, poverty, insecurity. The urgency of the contract is directly related to the destructive potential of these problems, political, socially, and economically. And we will also defend a contract that is not merely hypothetical, but a universalist moral narrative, an ideological formulation capable of breaking down traditional barriers between left and right, conservatives and liberals, and proposing new distributive concerns.
[RAWLS session]
10th June, 09h00 - 10h45, GREEN room - Chair: Leonardo Menezes
The Economic Principle of Political Liberalism: A Comparison of Rawls and Sugden, Paolo Santori (Italy)
Keywords: Rawls, Sugden, Principle of Mutual Benefit, Political Liberalism, Second Principle
Abstract: In his 2018 book, The Community of Advantage, economist Robert Sugden sets out his principle of mutual benefit. This paper inquires the role that Sugden’s principle occupies in Rawls’ Political Liberalism, i.e., if it would be chosen by contracting parties in the original position and what the implications of the agreement would be. The outcome integrates Rawls’ and Sugden’s systems, proposing a new economic principle for political liberalism as: ‘Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they have to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; second, they have to be progressively reduced, extending, as much as possible, the opportunities of mutual benefit to all.’
Democratic equality and Rawls’s criticism of welfare state capitalism, Juan Antonio Fernández Manzano (Spain) Keywords: Capitalism, democratic equality, principles of justice, welfare state
Abstract: Throughout his intellectual career, Rawls outlined the main characteristics of a well-ordered society and came to the conclusion that not every political-economic system is compatible with justice as fairness. Starting from the principle of democratic equality both as the interpretive key of the principles of justice and as connector that unites the egalitarian requirements of the second principle of justice with the democratic ideal of the first, Rawls will try to clarify the characteristics that a political framework would need to have in order to be able to curb the tendencies of liberalism towards undemocratic inequality. Although the principles of justice are not adhered to any specific political or economic system, this does not mean that they do not implicitly carry a certain ideal of social institutions and a concept of public good. In a first analysis, in his 1971 Theory of Justice, Rawls makes an initial distinction between the two prevailing models taken as ideal types: the model of public ownership of the means of production, with greater weight of the public sector, and the model of private property of the means of production or property-owning democracy, where the public sector plays a minor role. It will be in the revised version of the Theory of Justice, 1999, when Rawls points out the differences between property-owning democracy and welfare state capitalism. In Justice as fairness. A restatement, 2001, Rawls will broaden the cast of possibilities and take into consideration five political, social and economic systems: laissez-faire capitalism, welfare-state capitalism, state socialism with a command economy, property-owning democracy, and liberal socialism. The dividing line will be established between the first three models, incapable of realizing the principles of justice, and the last two, compatible with them.
This work carries out an analytical study that traces the different stages of this process, reconstructs and interprets the main arguments by which the welfare state is discarded and sustains, against some interpreters (Vallier, 2015; von Platz, 2020), the solidity of the conclusions that lead Rawls to declare the incompatibility of every known form of capitalism to satisfy the requirements of justice, even when capitalism sets itself the goal that no one should fall, whether by accident, illness, loss of employment or misfortune, below a certain quality threshold of life.
Those who interpret Rawls as a social democratic defender of the welfare state or those who try to defend, supported by arguments in a Rawlsian key, a capitalism with a human face are not aware that Rawls's critique of capitalism is deeper than is usually recognized.
From Rawls to a New Social Contract, Paula Mateus (Portugal) Keywords: social contract, reciprocity, cooperation, ideological narrative, distributive justice
Abstract: Rawls chooses to inscribe his theory of justice in the social contract narrative, although no new contract has been concluded around him when he writes. He could be thinking of the great revolutions, taking the contract as a relatively close real event, or at a more distant one, or even foreseeing a future social and political act. But he wasn't. For Rawls, the social contract is a purely hypothetical decision-making device, unmatched by any real agreement.
We will see that, besides the asymmetries, Rawls' political theory received some important legacies from Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. From Hobbes he kept the thesis that the contract involves the expectation of reciprocity between individuals. From Locke, Rawls seems to have withheld the idea that, although the right to property is a natural one, it is up to the government to stipulate the terms in which it can be exercised, notably by preventing monopolies, which both philosophers saw as politically damaging. With Rousseau he shares the reconciliation between freedom and government: the one who participates in decisions and exercises his citizenship submits to the General Will – the true sovereign – which is also his will, acquiring civic and moral freedom.
Some of the premises of the social contract tradition appeared in the idea of an Original Position: a) the contract does not define any design of the good; b) the contract cannot be a negotiation, but an act where free and equal persons choose the constituent lines of the society in which they want to live; c) although humans are 'calculating' advantages and disadvantages, they admit restrictions on their behavior, respect for the rights of others and the advantage of cooperation – they are rational, but they also have a sense of social justice. Others inheritances are less explicitly in the idea of society as a fair system of cooperation, which seems to gain prominence in Rawls' theory until Justice as Fairness, the Restatement.
Now, just as Rawls outlined his idea of social contract from this tradition, not repeating it, it is also urgent today to draw a new social contract, looking at Rawls as a source of inspiration. We will argue, as Rawls does, in favor of the thesis that the basis of the contract should be the idea of society as a fair system of cooperation between free and equal individuals and that the contract should promote the greatest constellation of freedoms possible and equal opportunities. However, we will defend a dated social contract, that is, a contract designed to respond to the demands of today: inequality, poverty, insecurity. The urgency of the contract is directly related to the destructive potential of these problems, political, socially, and economically. And we will also defend a contract that is not merely hypothetical, but a universalist moral narrative, an ideological formulation capable of breaking down traditional barriers between left and right, conservatives and liberals, and proposing new distributive concerns.
Session 13 - Problems of political legitimacy and authority
[GENERAL session]
10th June, 09h00 - 10h45, RED room - Chair: António Baião
Hierarchical Group Agency and Legitimacy: The Delegation Theory of Legitimate Political Authority, Ludovica Adamo (Italy)
Keywords: group action; authority; legitimacy; Bratman; Shapiro
Abstract: Recently, the theory of action has started focusing on large-scale, joint activities, namely, those activities that members of large-scale groups perform together toward common goals. Drawing on Michael Bratman’s (1993, 2014) account of shared agency, Scott Shapiro (2011, 2014) sees states as hierarchical, large-scale groups, where an authority plans for its subjects. However, his account does not address normative questions, such as the one concerning the legitimacy of political authorities. When, if ever, is it legitimate for states to plan for their subjects?
In this paper, I adapt Shapiro’s programme to answer this normative question concerning the legitimacy of political authority. By analysing political societies as instances of large-scale, hierarchical group agency, I present the delegation theory of the legitimacy of political authority. This theory argues that political authorities are legitimate when they a) provide their subjects with adequate plans that respond to reasons, and when b) the subjects delegate their planning powers to the authority.
Firstly, following Bratman (2007; 2018), I explain how individual practical reasoning functions. I highlight that agents form plans and intentions that motivate them to act in the pursuit of their goals. Intentions and plans motivate individuals to act by giving them reasons for action. I, then, argue that plans and intentions help individuals to respond to reasons by organising and coordinating their conduct.
Secondly, I focus on the legal case, namely, the case of agents who, qua members of political societies, act together in the pursuit of common goals under the state’s direction. As Shapiro (2014) notes, states can plan for their subjects, where these authoritative plans organise and coordinate the subjects’ behaviour to make them act as the authority ordered. Coordinating group members’ behaviour in political societies is essential to achieve social order, ensure the population’s safety and promote justice among other things. This large-scale co-ordinational activity seems to require complex institutional arrangements that states are better suited to carry out than individuals.
However, from the need for large-scale, social coordination, and from the fact that states can better achieve that coordination, it does not follow that it is legitimate for them to do so. Agents can plan their conduct, but they are (largely) prevented from doing so when subjected to authority. When, if ever, is that legitimate? We can acknowledge the importance of social planning and follow it, but that alone would not give us an obligation to obey the state’s laws that stem from that social planning.
I argue that for the authority to be legitimate and for the subjects to have an obligation to obey its laws, a) the authority needs to provide adequate plans that respond to reasons and b) the subjects need to delegate their planning powers to the authority. The last part of the paper explains what counts as an adequate plan. It also shows what delegation amounts to and how, from a practical reasoning’s perspective, it is built in the subjects’ adherence to the law. The paper aims to answer a normative question about authority through the theory of action.
References
Bratman, M. E. 2018. Planning, Time, and Self-Governance: Essays in Practical Rationality. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Bratman, M. E. 1993. Shared Intention. In Ethics, 104(1): 97-113.
Bratman, M. E. 2014. Shared Agency: A Planning Theory of Acting Together. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bratman, M. E. 2007. Structures of Agency: Essays. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Shapiro, S. J. 2011. Legality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Shapiro, S. J. 2014. Massively Shared Agency. Rational and Social Agency: The Philosophy of Michael Bratman (pp. 257-289). In: Vargas, M. and Yaffe, G. eds. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Tacit consent revisited, Matej Cibik (Slovakia) Keywords: Legitimacy, consent, Locke, authority, right to rule
Abstract: Though historically important, the notion of tacit consent plays little role in contemporary discussions of political legitimacy. The idea, in fact, is often dismissed as obviously implausible. Our ambition in this article is challenge this assumption. After considering the inadequacies of Locke’s original conception of tacit consent, as well as the problems of the rival accounts of political legitimacy (especially the hypothetical consent theories and the Weberian social-scientific approaches), we develop a new, non-Lockean conception of legitimacy based on tacit consent. In short, we hold that if the inhabitants of the state have free access to information and ample options to display active dissent towards their government, yet choose not to do so, then they tacitly consent to the government, thus making it legitimate.
[GENERAL session]
10th June, 09h00 - 10h45, RED room - Chair: António Baião
Hierarchical Group Agency and Legitimacy: The Delegation Theory of Legitimate Political Authority, Ludovica Adamo (Italy)
Keywords: group action; authority; legitimacy; Bratman; Shapiro
Abstract: Recently, the theory of action has started focusing on large-scale, joint activities, namely, those activities that members of large-scale groups perform together toward common goals. Drawing on Michael Bratman’s (1993, 2014) account of shared agency, Scott Shapiro (2011, 2014) sees states as hierarchical, large-scale groups, where an authority plans for its subjects. However, his account does not address normative questions, such as the one concerning the legitimacy of political authorities. When, if ever, is it legitimate for states to plan for their subjects?
In this paper, I adapt Shapiro’s programme to answer this normative question concerning the legitimacy of political authority. By analysing political societies as instances of large-scale, hierarchical group agency, I present the delegation theory of the legitimacy of political authority. This theory argues that political authorities are legitimate when they a) provide their subjects with adequate plans that respond to reasons, and when b) the subjects delegate their planning powers to the authority.
Firstly, following Bratman (2007; 2018), I explain how individual practical reasoning functions. I highlight that agents form plans and intentions that motivate them to act in the pursuit of their goals. Intentions and plans motivate individuals to act by giving them reasons for action. I, then, argue that plans and intentions help individuals to respond to reasons by organising and coordinating their conduct.
Secondly, I focus on the legal case, namely, the case of agents who, qua members of political societies, act together in the pursuit of common goals under the state’s direction. As Shapiro (2014) notes, states can plan for their subjects, where these authoritative plans organise and coordinate the subjects’ behaviour to make them act as the authority ordered. Coordinating group members’ behaviour in political societies is essential to achieve social order, ensure the population’s safety and promote justice among other things. This large-scale co-ordinational activity seems to require complex institutional arrangements that states are better suited to carry out than individuals.
However, from the need for large-scale, social coordination, and from the fact that states can better achieve that coordination, it does not follow that it is legitimate for them to do so. Agents can plan their conduct, but they are (largely) prevented from doing so when subjected to authority. When, if ever, is that legitimate? We can acknowledge the importance of social planning and follow it, but that alone would not give us an obligation to obey the state’s laws that stem from that social planning.
I argue that for the authority to be legitimate and for the subjects to have an obligation to obey its laws, a) the authority needs to provide adequate plans that respond to reasons and b) the subjects need to delegate their planning powers to the authority. The last part of the paper explains what counts as an adequate plan. It also shows what delegation amounts to and how, from a practical reasoning’s perspective, it is built in the subjects’ adherence to the law. The paper aims to answer a normative question about authority through the theory of action.
References
Bratman, M. E. 2018. Planning, Time, and Self-Governance: Essays in Practical Rationality. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Bratman, M. E. 1993. Shared Intention. In Ethics, 104(1): 97-113.
Bratman, M. E. 2014. Shared Agency: A Planning Theory of Acting Together. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bratman, M. E. 2007. Structures of Agency: Essays. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Shapiro, S. J. 2011. Legality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Shapiro, S. J. 2014. Massively Shared Agency. Rational and Social Agency: The Philosophy of Michael Bratman (pp. 257-289). In: Vargas, M. and Yaffe, G. eds. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Tacit consent revisited, Matej Cibik (Slovakia) Keywords: Legitimacy, consent, Locke, authority, right to rule
Abstract: Though historically important, the notion of tacit consent plays little role in contemporary discussions of political legitimacy. The idea, in fact, is often dismissed as obviously implausible. Our ambition in this article is challenge this assumption. After considering the inadequacies of Locke’s original conception of tacit consent, as well as the problems of the rival accounts of political legitimacy (especially the hypothetical consent theories and the Weberian social-scientific approaches), we develop a new, non-Lockean conception of legitimacy based on tacit consent. In short, we hold that if the inhabitants of the state have free access to information and ample options to display active dissent towards their government, yet choose not to do so, then they tacitly consent to the government, thus making it legitimate.
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Day #1 (Wednesday, 9th June)
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Day #2 (Thursday, 10th June)
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Day #3 (Friday, 11th June)
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