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Journal Article•DOI•

In defense of transcendental institutionalism

James Gledhill1•
University of Hong Kong1
11 Jun 2014-Philosophy & Social Criticism (SAGE PublicationsSage UK: London, England)-Vol. 40, Iss: 7, pp 665-682
TL;DR: In this article, Amartya Sen argues that what we should not want is to follow the social contract approach revived by John Rawls, or transcendental institutionalism, in its theory of justice.
Abstract: What do we want from a theory of justice? Amartya Sen argues that what we should not want is to follow the social contract approach revived by John Rawls, or transcendental institutionalism, in its...

Summary (2 min read)

Jump to: [Keywords] – [Two Enlightenment approaches] – [Sen’s critique of transcendental institutionalism] and [Conclusion]

Keywords

  • It is commonly thought that, as William Galston puts it, ‘the point of ideal theory’, from the Ancient Greeks to the present day, ‘has been to elucidate the first principles that would be fully actualized in the most favorable circumstances conceivable, as a guide for action in the much less hospitable circumstances of ordinary political life’.6.
  • My central claim will be that Sen’s critique of a preoccupation with perfect justice is best interpreted as directed against transcendent theories of justice, particularly Cohen’s theory, and that when Rawls’s constructivism is properly interpreted as a form of transcendental institutionalism it is not vulnerable to this critique.

Two Enlightenment approaches

  • Sen treats transcendental institutionalism as the defining feature of the classical social contract approach of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant that is revived by Rawls.
  • It first seeks to establish the idea of happiness as the single rational good.
  • 21 Indeed, there are good grounds for seeing Sen’s target as not Rawls’s theory of justice per se, but a composite position that combines Rawls’s focus on institutions with Cohen’s understanding of the transcendent fact-independent status of fundamental principles of justice.
  • But this fails to distinguish sufficiently between justice as a highest good and justice as equal liberty, a distinction which, once made, shows why principles of justice understood as principles of equal liberty necessarily rather than contingently take as their focus social institutions, whose role is to constitute relations of equal liberty.

Sen’s critique of transcendental institutionalism

  • Sen puts his argument against transcendental approaches to justice in the following terms: Following a Kantian distinction between theoretical reason, practical reason, and judgment, a transcendental approach can agree with Sen that the authors don’t need knowledge of pure justice; indeed, to seek it is to mistake a question of judgment for a question of theoretical knowledge.
  • What the authors lack is an understanding of the justificatory grounds and ideal implications of their considered judgments.

Conclusion

  • But while Sen’s approach is not fundamentally incompatible with Rawls’s, and can complement it in a number of respects, Rawls’s theory offers a systematic framework of principles for orienting their thought and action that Sen’s approach lacks.
  • The importance of transcendental institutionalism is that it focuses their attention on the ideals implicit in existing social practices.
  • A realistic conception of political theory should be realistic about the way in which statesmen, from Lincoln to Obama, have made powerful and practical use of the language of ideal theory, so conceived.
  • Example, then-Senator Obama reflected that ‘The answer to the slavery question was already embedded within their Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time’.

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1
In Defense of Transcendental Institutionalism
James Gledhill
The University of Hong Kong
james.gledhill@gmail.com
Penultimate draft of paper published in Philosophy and Social Criticism 40(7): 665-82
Abstract
What do we want from a theory of justice? Amartya Sen argues that what we should not want is
to follow the social contract approach revived by John Rawls, or transcendental institutionalism,
in its preoccupation with perfectly just institutions. Sen makes an effective case against
approaches, such as G.A. Cohen’s, concerned with transcendent, fact-independent principles of
justice, but not against Rawls’s constructivist approach to justice when this is properly
interpreted as making a weak transcendental argument. Situating Rawls’s approach within the
tradition of the liberalism of freedom provides a basis for interpreting his Kantian constructivism
as a form of transcendental institutionalism, and for revealing the affinities between Rawls’s idea
of reflective equilibrium and Jürgen Habermas’s method of rational reconstruction. Such a
Kantian conception of justice, concerned with constituting relations of equal liberty between free
and equal citizens, remains essential for orienting our pursuit of justice.
Keywords
Capabilities; constructivism; justice; Rawls; Sen; transcendental arguments
There is mounting evidence that post-Rawlsian political philosophy is entering what, in Thomas
Kuhn’s terms, might be called a ‘crisis’ period. Increasingly, dissatisfaction is expressed with the
Rawlsian paradigm of ideal theory, but there is no consensus on an alternative.
1
The work of
Amartya Sen occupies a central place in these ongoing debates. Sen’s seminal Tanner lecture
‘Equality of What?’ became an exemplar for theorising about justice, as subsequent theorists
1
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). For the
idea that the time for ‘normal science’ problem-solving is over and a shift is required away from the ‘paradigm of
ideal theory’, see especially Colin Farrelly, Justice, Democracy and Reasonable Agreement (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2007).
2
proceeded on the basis that ‘there is something which justice requires people to have equal
amounts of’.
2
The idea of equality of capabilities that Sen has pioneered is one of the leading
answers to this question. In the latest phase of his work, however, Sen has turned to considering
the prior methodological question, ‘What Do We Want from a Theory of Justice?’
3
These
methodological reflections form the starting point of Sen’s critique of Rawls in The Idea of
Justice and the framework within which he argues the debate between the capability approach
and Rawls’s idea of primary social goods should take place.
4
The key contrast is that while
Rawls’s ‘transcendental institutionalism’ focuses on identifying a framework of perfectly just
institutions, Sen’s own comparative approach is concerned with ranking alternative feasible
social arrangements.
Sen’s call to reorient theoretical reflection away from perfect justice and towards the
manifest injustices that we face in practice has been sympathetically received, but the argument
that this necessitates a ‘paradigm shift’ away from ideal theory has met with greater scepticism.
5
So far, though, there has been little attempt to defend the tradition of transcendental
institutionalism that Sen criticises, or specifically the Kantian constructivist way in which Rawls
2
Amartya Sen, ‘Equality of What?’ Tanner Lectures on Human Values, 1979, http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu.
G.A. Cohen, ‘On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice’, Ethics 99 (1989), pp. 906-944, at p. 906; G.A. Cohen,
‘Equality of What? On Welfare, Goods, and Capabilities’, in Martha C. Nussbaum and Amartya Sen (eds.) The
Quality of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 9.
3
Amartya Sen, ‘What Do We Want from a Theory of Justice?’ Journal of Philosophy 103 (2006), pp. 215-238.
4
Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice (London: Allen Lane, 2009); Amartya Sen, ‘The Place of Capability in a Theory
of Justice’, in Harry Brighouse and Ingrid Robeyns (eds.) Measuring Justice: Primary Goods and Capabilities
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 240-41.
5
See e.g. Laura Valentini, ‘A Paradigm Shift in Theorizing about Justice? A Critique of Sen’, Economics and
Philosophy 27 (2011), pp. 297-315.
3
continues this tradition. In setting questions about ideal theory within a broad theoretical and
historical framework, Sen offers a productive basis for debate, but in order to avoid perpetuating
an influential but contestable view of Rawls’s ideal theory approach, it is necessary to properly
situate Rawls’s constructivism in relation to Kant and contemporary Kantianism. It is commonly
thought that, as William Galston puts it, ‘the point of ideal theory’, from the Ancient Greeks to
the present day, ‘has been to elucidate the first principles that would be fully actualized in the
most favorable circumstances conceivable, as a guide for action in the much less hospitable
circumstances of ordinary political life’.
6
If this is the case, then the attempt of Rawls’s Kantian
constructivism to make first principles even more practical than in Kant, by overcoming Kantian
dualisms and narrowing the gap between ideal principles and existing social practices, appears to
‘forget the point of having first principles’ in the first place and to abandon what is distinctive
about a Kantian approach.
7
However, if a specifically Kantian practical conception of ideal
theory can be rendered coherent, and shown to be directly action-guiding, then it may be that
there are other avenues open to political theory than seeking an alternative to ideal theory, such
as political realism.
8
Sen’s view of ideal theory is similar to Galston’s. Accepting G.A. Cohen’s
argument that Rawls allows contingent facts to compromise his search for ideal principles, Sen
assumes that if Rawls’s approach is at least to be coherent, and not fall uneasily between two
stools, then it must be interpreted as concerned with principles of justice for an ideal world.
In this article I will present the ideal theory approach of Rawls’s constructivism as a
continuation of a Kantian tradition of transcendental arguments in a non-metaphysical form that
6
William A. Galston, ‘Moral Personality and Liberal Theory’, Political Theory 10 (1982), pp. 492-519, at p. 513.
7
Galston, ‘Moral Personality and Liberal Theory’, p. 513.
8
On political realism as an alternative to ideal theory, see William A. Galston, ‘Realism in Political Theory’,
European Journal of Political Theory 9 (2010), pp. 385-411.
4
begins from existing social practices. While I will focus on similarities between the method of
reflective equilibrium in Rawls’s constructivism and the weak transcendental arguments of
Jürgen Habermas’s method of rational reconstruction, Rawls’s approach may also be compared
to that of Hannah Arendt.
9
Rawls and Habermas share a focus on a conception of political
judgment that Arendt derives from Kant’s model of aesthetic judgment.
10
Both are concerned,
that is, not only with political judgment as subsuming particulars under universal principles, but
also with a method of justification that seeks to make explicit the ideal principles that are implicit
in particular judgments.
My central claim will be that Sen’s critique of a preoccupation with perfect justice is best
interpreted as directed against transcendent theories of justice, particularly Cohen’s theory, and
that when Rawls’s constructivism is properly interpreted as a form of transcendental
institutionalism it is not vulnerable to this critique. I first contrast the ways in which Sen and
Rawls understand the Enlightenment social contract approach that Sen dubs transcendental
institutionalism. Then I assess Sen’s critique of transcendental institutionalism, showing how
when a distinction is drawn between transcendent and transcendental theories, Sen’s criticisms
can be defused. On this basis, I offer an interpretation of Rawls’s Kantian constructivism as a
form of transcendental institutionalism. Finally, I consider the light this analysis sheds on Sen’s
criticisms of Rawls’s focus on the basic structure of a domestic society as the first subject of
justice.
9
Carlos Thiebaut, ‘Rereading Rawls in Arendtian Light: Reflective Judgment and Historical Experience’,
Philosophy and Social Criticism 34 (2008), pp. 137-155.
10
On their shared concerns of Habermas and Arendt, see Ronald Beiner, Political Judgment (London: Methuen,
1983).
5
Two Enlightenment approaches
Sen treats transcendental institutionalism as the defining feature of the classical social contract
approach of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant that is revived by Rawls. It focuses first on
perfect justice, which transcends facts about existing societies, and second, ‘concentrates
primarily on getting the institutions right’ rather than a more general view of what is required to
realize justice.
11
By contrast, Sen advocates a comparative approach that he associates with a
range of thinkers who he sees as adopting an alternative Enlightenment approach, including the
Marquis de Condorcet, Jeremy Bentham, Mary Wollstonecraft, Karl Marx, J.S. Mill, and,
perhaps most saliently, Adam Smith.
12
The comparative approach differs from transcendental
institutionalism in first comparing feasible social arrangements, rather than pursuing perfect
justice, and second, in considering the foreseeable behaviour of actual individuals, as opposed to
assuming strict compliance with ideal institutional rules. Sen argues that justice concerns how
persons’ lives go, not simply the arrangement of institutional structures, and that comparative
judgments about reducing injustice and advancing justice do not require the prior identification
of ‘perfect justice’. As a result, his approach is both realization-focused and comparative.
Rawls also offers a taxonomy of different approaches in the history of moral and political
philosophy. While in some ways similar to Sen’s, it offers a countervailing view of the
significance of transcendental institutionalism. Rawls’s first contrast juxtaposes the focus of
classical Greek ethics on the highest good with the way modern moral and political philosophy
focuses on the prescriptions of right reason, and the deontic categories of rights, duties and
11
Sen, The Idea of Justice, pp. 5-6.
12
Sen, The Idea of Justice, p. 7.
Citations
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TL;DR: The Law of Peoples as discussed by the authors is an ideal normative framework for international law that accommodates a measure of realism and rejects the idea of a world-state, but it is not a model for the realistic utopia sketched in The Law of Nations.
Abstract: The Law of Peoples John Rawls Harvard 1999 John Rawls, the great political philosopher, has turned his reflections to questions of international justice, much as his philosophical ancestor Kant did toward the end of his career. Indeed, Kant's conception of a "pacific federation" of states in Perpetual Peace is Rawls's acknowledged model for the "realistic utopia" sketched in The Law of Peoples, which expands upon his 1993 essay by the same title (without, however, revising its basic argument). Despite differing philosophical constraints and geopolitical conditions, both Kant and Rawls aim to develop an ideal normative framework for international law that accommodates a measure of realism and rejects the idea of a world-state. Unfortunately, in its uncritical acceptance of so-called "decent hierarchical societies" even at the level of ideal theory, the normative claim of Rawls's Law of Peoples is undermined. This philosophical appeasement, meant to secure perpetual peace in our time through a moderately demanding Law of Peoples that liberal and "decent" hierarchical societies alike can endorse, departs fundamentally from Kant's cosmopolitanism. For Kant, the "First Definitive Article of a Perpetual Peace-as opposed to a temporary interruption of hostilities-is that each member state of the foedus pacif cum must have a republican form of government, which is partly founded upon "the principle of legal equality for everyone (as citizens)." By contrast, Rawls weakens his ideal of international justice to buy the assent of hierarchical societies, which by definition lack equality among citizens, at the price of sacrificing a theoretical basis for justifying reforms of the practices and institutions of these hierarchical societies above a minimal level of decency. Rawls's complex argument begins by extending the original position, in which principles of justice for the basic structure of society are chosen under epistemic constraints that ensure fairness, from a single liberal society to what he calls the Society of Liberal Peoples. In a second step, though still within ideal theory, he argues that the substantive principles comprising the Law of Peoples are also acceptable to decent hierarchical societies, which possess decent consultation hierarchies and common good conceptions of justice. Despite being inegalitarian, decent hierarchical societies do respect basic human rights, allow some dissent, and at least consult with representatives of groups whose members are denied full citizenship rights. …

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Journal Article•DOI•
On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice

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Joyce L. Jenkins1•
University of Manitoba1
01 Oct 2012-The Philosophical Quarterly
TL;DR: In this paper, the Tanner Lecture of 1979, Amartya Sen asked what aspect(s) of a person's condition should count in a fundamental way for egalitarians, and not merely as cause of or evidence of or proxy for what they regard as fundamental.
Abstract: In his Tanner Lecture of 1979 called “Equality of What?” Amartya Sen asked what metric egalitarians should use to establish the extent to which their ideal is realized in a given society. What aspect(s) of a person’s condition should count in a fundamental way for egalitarians, and not merely as cause of or evidence of or proxy for what they regard as fundamental? In this study I examine answers to that question, and discussions bearing on that question, in recent philosophical literature. I take for granted that there is something which justice requires people to have equal amounts of, not no matter what, but to whatever extent is allowed by values which compete with distributive equality; and I study what a number of authors who share that egalitarian view have said about the dimension(s) or respect(s) in which people should be made more equal, when the price in other values of moving toward greater equality is not intolerable. I also advance an answer of my own to Sen’s question. My answer is the product of an immanent critique of Ronald Dworkin, one, that is, which rejects Dworkin’s declared position because it is not congruent with its own underlying motivation. My response to Dworkin has been influenced by Richard Arneson’s work in advocacy of “equality of opportunity for welfare,” but my answer to Sen’s question is not that Arnesonian one, nor is my answer as well formulated as Arneson’s is.1 It needs much further refinement, but I nevertheless present it here, in a rough-and-ready form, because of its association with relatively fi nished criticisms of others which I think are telling. If this study contributes to understanding, it does so more because of those criticisms than because of the positive doctrine it affi rms.

325 citations

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Engaging development and religion: Methodological groundings

[...]

Séverine Deneulin1, Séverine Deneulin2, Augusto Zampini-Davies3•
University of Bath1, University of Notre Dame2, Durham University3
01 Nov 2017-World Development
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the encyclical contains a potentially fruitful methodological proposal for engaging development and religion at the normative level, and they analyze how such a methodology has been applied in an exercise by the UK Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) to facilitate a global dialogue on development and faith in different geographical contexts.

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What can urban policies and planning really learn from John Rawls? A multi-strata view of institutional action and a canvas conception of the just city

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Stefano Moroni
13 Mar 2023-Planning Theory
TL;DR: In this article , a meta-theory of the just city is proposed, an approach specifying precautions and conditions for any coherent and convincing just city theory, based on the theory of justice of John Rawls.
Abstract: One of the most influential theories of justice in planning theory and practice has been, without doubt, that of John Rawls. The very idea of the just city is indebted to Rawls’s view. However, the way in which Rawlsian theory of justice has been imported into planning often seems debatable. This article aims to discuss this aspect critically. The objective is not merely to discuss certain planning approaches inspired by Rawls; it is also to investigate, in more general terms, what meaning and role (any theory of) justice could and should have for planning and urban policies. In revisiting John Rawls’s view, the article is structured around two points: first, a critical discussion on how Rawls’s theory of justice has been generally applied to urban policies and planning; second, an exploration of an alternative way to interpret and apply certain Rawlsian insights (often undervalued) in this field. The article is not intended to defend and recommend Rawls’s normative theory as a whole (i.e. in its entirety), but to evidence certain Rawlsian contributions of a general nature that are particularly important. Nor is it the aim of this article to contribute directly to the development of a specific substantive idea of the just city; instead, it is to highlight fundamental methodological and analytical caveats that are crucial in this regard. Rather than a “theory of the just city”, this article develops a “meta-theory of the just city”: that is, an approach specifying precautions and conditions for any coherent and convincing just city theory.
References
More filters
Book Chapter•DOI•
Capability and Well-Being

[...]

Amartya Sen
01 Jan 1991
TL;DR: Amartya Sen as discussed by the authors proposes that alternatives be appraised by looking to the capabilities they provide for individuals rather than only by individual utilities, incomes, or resources (as in commonly used theories).
Abstract: Amartya Sen (1933–) was born and educated in India before completing his doctorate in economics at Cambridge University. He has taught in India, England, and the United States and is currently the Lamont University Professor at Harvard University. He is one of the most widely read and influential living economists. His books have been translated into more than thirty languages. In 1998, he was awarded the Nobel Price in Economics for his work on welfare economics, poverty and famines, and human development. He has also made major contributions to contemporary political philosophy. In this essay, he proposes that alternatives be appraised by looking to the capabilities they provide for individuals rather than only by individual utilities, incomes, or resources (as in commonly used theories). Introduction Capability is not an awfully attractive word. It has a technocratic sound, and to some it might even suggest the image of nuclear war strategists rubbing their hands in pleasure over some contingent plan of heroic barbarity. The term is not much redeemed by the historical Capability Brown praising particular pieces of land – not human beings – on the solid real-estate ground that they ‘had capabilities’. Perhaps a nicer word could have been chosen when some years ago I tried to explore a particular approach to well-being and advantage in terms of a person's ability to do valuable acts or reach valuable states of being.

3,188 citations

Book•
Justice as Fairness : A Restatement

[...]

John Rawls
01 May 2001

3,146 citations

"In defense of transcendental instit..." refers background in this paper

  • ...The process of reflective equilibrium exhibits our concern with what it would mean to live up to ideals, like that of citizens as free and equal, that our societies profess to hold, and more adequately realize those ideals in the structure of society.(40) Indeed, the language of constitutionalism is suffused with such ideal theory, the establishment of justice being part of forming an ever more perfect union....

    [...]

Book Chapter•DOI•
The Idea of Justice

[...]

Otto A. Bird
05 Jul 2017

2,721 citations

Book•
Critique of the Power of Judgment

[...]

Immanuel Kant, Paul Guyer1, Eric Matthews2•
Brown University1, University of Aberdeen2
11 Sep 2000
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose a methodology of the teleological power of judgment, which is a dialectic of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment (APJ) and the Teleological Power of judgment (TOPJ).
Abstract: Editor's introduction Part I. The First Draft of the Introduction: 1. The first draft of the introduction Part II. Critique of the Power of Judgment: 2. Preface 3. Introduction Part III. First Part: Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment: 4. First section, first book: analytic of the beautiful 5. First section, second book: analytic of the sublime 6. Deduction of pure aesthetic judgments 7. Second section: the dialectic of the aesthetic power of judgment 8. Appendix: on the methodology of taste Part IV. Second Part: Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment: 9. First division: analytic of the teleological power of judgment 10. Second division: dialectic of the teleological power of judgment 11. Appendix: methodology of the teleological power of judgment.

1,415 citations

"In defense of transcendental instit..." refers background in this paper

  • ...Kant argues in his Critique of the Power of Judgment that if a person ‘pronounces that something is beautiful, then he expects the same satisfaction of others: He judges not merely for himself, but for everyone, and speaks of beauty as if it were a property of things’.(34) Each particular act of judgment implies a view about the ideal of beauty, which we treat as if it were an objective property of things like paintings....

    [...]

Journal Article•DOI•
Poverty and Famines. An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation.

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Mick Moore, Amartya Sen
23 Jan 1982-Pacific Affairs

1,306 citations

"In defense of transcendental instit..." refers background in this paper

  • ...Indeed, the important conclusion of his work on the causes of famine is that it is crucial to focus on persons’ institutional entitlements in order to ensure a just distribution of goods.(70) While Rawls’ political conception of justice for the basic structure can be redescribed in the language of capabilities, though, it is not clear that Sen’s consequentialist approach can provide a justification for Rawls’ principle of equal basic liberties....

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Frequently Asked Questions (1)
Q1. What have the authors contributed in "In defense of transcendental institutionalism" ?

Sen argues that what the authors should not want is to follow the social contract approach revived by John Rawls, or transcendental institutionalism, in its preoccupation with perfectly just institutions. Situating Rawls ’ s approach within the tradition of the liberalism of freedom provides a basis for interpreting his Kantian constructivism as a form of transcendental institutionalism, and for revealing the affinities between Rawls ’ s idea of reflective equilibrium and Jürgen Habermas ’ s method of rational reconstruction.