Uehiro Lectures 2011. Making Good: The Challenge of Robustly Demanding Values
Lecture 2. Robust Demands and the Need for Law
Philip Pettit
2 June 2011
Lecture 1 and beyond
I seek your care as a friend, not just in the actual world, but under variations in your convenience or my charm.
Equally we seek your satisfaction of our claims, your truth-telling, etc, over similar variations.
In each case we want the actualist benefit of care or satisfaction or truth independently of how your incentives lead you,
because we take you, as an agent, to have a(n incentive-) free will; you can take any of the options in a choice.
And so we seek a good that requires things to be thus and so in various possible, perhaps improbable scenarios.
The existence of the virtue of loyalty or fidelity, justice or honesty, delivers this incentive-independent goodwill;
thus virtue is needed other than as a prompt for good action or as a primer on what good action requires.
BUT
There are other actualist benefits for which we do not want to depend even on your goodwill (or your goodwill only);
we require that they be entrenched across possible changes in your will and incentives, however improbable.
They will be entrenched externally by fences on your will: actual or expected obstacles, hurdles, costs, etc;
the option of your denying us the benefit will be removed or replaced, actually or epistemically.
(Note: this is quite different from when the option of giving us the benefit is supported by a reward and incentive).
Here I concentrate on such constraint-dependent (especially law-dependent), as distinct from virtue-dependent, goods.
Power, anti-power and freedom as robustly demanding, externally entrenched goods
Power requires actualist influence but you do not give me power by humoring me out of goodwill or indulgence.
I have power over you —> I influence/shape your relevant choices over possible changes in my will and yours.
The influence cannot be entrenched just by your dispositions or virtues; you must be subjected to me, willy nilly.
Which changes? Others things being relevantly the same, any changes of my will or yours, however unlikely.
But there may be no non-circular way of determining relevant similarity, as with virtue-dependent goods.
‘Anti-power’, which guards someone against another’s power, displays the same demanding, entrenched character.
You have anti-power over me—> you influence/shape your relevant choices over changes in my will and yours.
You and I may each have anti-power in relation to one another but not power, which is asymmetrically positional.
Anti-power is richer than non-interference, à la Berlin, although non-interference is robustly demanding too.
You enjoy my non-interference —> you influence/shape your choices over changes in your will (perhaps not mine).
Both anti-power and non-interference deliver actualist non-frustration but differ in their degree of robustness.
Freedom as non-domination requires anti-power against all others, in the same set of (not over-restricted) choices.
And so it is a robustly and very demanding good, which requires entrenchment on the basis of external constraints.
Freedom as non-interference, but not as non-frustration, is also robustly demanding but may be entrenched internally.
There are good, parallel reasons for preferring freedom as n-i to freedom as n-f, and freedom as n-d to freedom as n-i.
Against freedom as non-frustration: I can make myself free by adaptation. Berlin’s argument. The adapted prisoner.
Against freedom as non-interference: I can make myself free by ingratiation. Mary Wollstonecraft’s woman.
Note. Better domination without interference, interference without frustration. And so with limited resources…
The desirability of freedom
To desire freedom is to desire that things be thus and so under various possible, perhaps improbable, scenarios:
i.e., where your will is to do something else or the will of others is, not to let you do what you wish.
But I desire that things be thus and so under those scenarios because I desire freedom, not the other way around.
Freedom consists in a robustly demanding status that requires non-frustration in those scenarios:
it consists in the will of others being fenced against frustrating me, no matter what I will or they will.
Why care about a possibility you are unlikely to trigger, or about a possibility another is unlikely to impose?
To think of yourself or the other as an agent, under idealization, is to give these importance independent of probability.
And such idealization is implicated deeply in thinking about agents from within a reactive or conversational stance.
Even if it was highly probable that you take a hostile option, I resent you for taking it: you could have done otherwise.
The delivery of freedom
We cannot deliver freedom to anyone on the basis of a benevolent despotism or a philanthropic plutocracy.
It requires a protective apparatus that is not dependent on the will of any individual or agency. An empire of law?
The laws might be formulated and enforced on a basis of universal, effective contestability, collective and individual.
Let everyone expect and be constrained by relevant attitudes of approval/disapproval, and laws will count as norms. Q.
Thus they can serve the good, not just by prompting us to do good, and not just by priming us to see what is good:
not just by inducing compliance with the law and not just by signaling the value of compliance.
They can deliver a distinctive, robustly demanding value just by being in place. Comparison with virtue.
Enjoyed in common awareness freedom yields dignity; & enjoyed on an internal basis too, dignity amounts to respect.
And so the laws can produce freedom, dignity & respect in their own right. These goods are essentially public.
Even Kant’s kingdom of ends would not deliver these goods, if people were externally unconstrained.
Summarizing
Domain
Entrencher
Actualist benefit
Demanding value
match
over changes in
as a result of
robustly providing
and so —
Your choices
my will
my & your will
external constraints
Influence
Power
My choices
my will
my & your will
external constraints
Non-frustration
Anti-power
My choices
my will
my will (only)
any factor
Non-frustration
Freedom as n-i
My basic choices
my will
anyone’s will
laws and norms
Non-frustration
Freedom as n-d
My basic choices
my will
anyone’s will
laws and norms
Manifest non-frustration
Dignity
My basic choices
my will
anyone’s will
+ internal constraints
Non-frustration
Respect