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ETICA & POLITICA ETHICS & POLITICS XXIII, 2021, 3 www.units.it/etica ISSN 1825-5167 2 3 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3 Monographica FIFTY YEARS OF A THEORY OF JUSTICE: DISCUSSING JOHN RAWLS’ PHILOSOPHICAL LEGACY 9 Daniel Loewe & David Martínez Fifty Years of A Theory of Justice: Influences and Legacy. Guest Editors’ Preface John Rawls’ Philosophie der Gerechtigkeit 15 Otfried Höffe 29 47 “Il più ragionevole per noi”: l’eredità rawlsiana nel XXI secolo Sebastiano Maffettone Dopo Rawls? 73 Eduardo Mendieta 85 James Gledhill 115 David Martínez The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus and the Kantian Interpretation of Political Liberalism 133 Frank I. Michelman 149 Daniel Loewe Constitutional Rights and “Private” Legal Relations: A Note on a Rawlsian View Posición original, equilibrio reflexivo y razón pública: las metodologías rawlsianas de justificación 171 Paula Casal Gender, Social Justice, and Publicity 187 Gustavo Pereira Limitacionismo rawlsiano 205 Pierpaolo Marrone Shades of Communitarianism Alessandro Ferrara Constitucionalismo e igualdad democrática: Una teoria de la justicia de John Rawls después de medio siglo A Theory of Justice as Rorschach Test 4 Symposium I Joel Colón-Ríos, Constituent Power and the Law, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2020 217 Roberto Gargarella On Constituent Power and the Law by Joel Colón-Ríos 233 Zoran Oklopcic Theory as/or Historiography? Constituent Power (of the Jurist) and the Law (of the State) 247 Ianiv Roznai The Sovereign Is He Who Holds Constituent Power? 261 Miguel Vatter Republican and Schmittian Conceptions of Constituent Power. Comments on Colón-Ríos’s Constituent Power and the Law 275 Mariana Velasco-Rivera The Scope and the Limits of the Juridical People 283 Camila Vergara On the Limits of Elitist Theories of Constituent Power 293 Joel Colón-Ríos Constituent Power and the Law. Reply to Critics Symposium II Adriano Fabris, Etica e ambiguità. Una filosofia della coerenza, Morcelliana, Brescia 2020 317 Carlo Chiurco L’esistere preso sul serio. Riflessioni su Etica e ambiguità di Adriano Fabris 345 Fabio Ciaramelli L’ambiguità come resistenza alla totalizzazione 349 Roberto Diodato Per avviare un dialogo 355 Flavia Monceri L’equivoco della “filosofia” e le ambiguità della “coerenza” 373 Giacomo Samek Lodovici La creazione di fronte al nichilismo 5 387 Adriano Fabris Risposte ai miei critici Varia 403 Christian Frigerio Fuori Scala. La Flat Ecology di Bruno Latour 425 Jakub Jinek Pleasure and Pain and the Penal Theory in Plato’s Laws 443 Iris Vidmar Jovanović Applied Ethical Criticism of Narrative Art 461 Javier Romero Deliberación, pluralismo y consenso. Mecanismos para un análisis de la democracia deliberativa desde el giro empírico-práctico 481 Information on the Journal/Informazioni sulla rivista 6 7 Monographica FIFTY YEARS OF A THEORY OF JUSTICE: DISCUSSING JOHN RAWLS’ PHILOSOPHICAL LEGACY 8 9 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 9-13 ISSN: 1825-5167 FIFTY YEARS OF A THEORY OF JUSTICE: INFLUENCES AND LEGACY GUEST EDITORS’ PREFACE DANIEL LOEWE Facultad de Artes Liberales Ibáñez University, Santiago (Chile) daniel.loewe@uai.cl DAVID MARTINEZ Instituto de Ciencias de la Educación Universidad de O’Higgins, Rancagua (Chile) david.martinez@uoh..cl ABSTRACT In this preface, we briefly explain A Theory of Justice’s importance for political philosophy, which is the reason that justifies this collection. Adjunctively, we sketch in very broad brushstrokes some of the components of this theory: the Kantian turn, the rehabilitation of contract theory and the defense of egalitarian liberalism. Finally, we describe the articles of this collection. We distinguish three axes: Rawls’s legacy, philosophical influences on Rawls, and specific problems regarding Rawls’s philosophy. K EYWORDS Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Political Liberalism, Kantian turn, contract theory, egalitarian liberalism. A Theory of Justice (TJ) was published in 19711. This 600-page book is already a classic that has radically influenced the ways in which political philosophy has been understood over the last 50 years, and has since been discussed not only among scholars: it has also been significant even beyond the boundaries of academia. As is well known, as early as 1974 Robert Nozick claimed that political philosophers "must now work within Rawls's theory, or explain why not"2. Nozick himself wrote an entire book 1 2 Rawls, John (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Nozick, Robert (1974). Anarchy, State and Utopia. New York, Basic Books. 10 DANIEL LOEWE & DAVID MARTINEZ to explain why he disagrees with him. If this was already true in 1974, it is even more so today. Since the publication of TJ, many of the debates in political philosophy have revolved around Rawls's theses, whether to refute them, to defend them, to modify them, or to address questions that go beyond the Rawlsian theoretical approach. The subject of TJ is social justice, that is, the justice of the most important institutions of society, from the political constitution, to legal procedures, to the institution of property. This is what Rawls calls "the basic structure of society". Rawls understands society as a cooperative endeavour, and the task of justice is to distribute the rights and freedoms as well as the burdens and benefits of social cooperation. In TJ Rawls revitalizes contract theory to define the principles of justice that should organize the basic structure. The principles of justice are those that would be chosen in an initial situation of choice, which he calls the original position, which models a situation of impartiality. Moral persons, who according to Rawls can be subjects of justice, are defined in relation to a Kantian conception: "Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice which not even the welfare of society as a whole can override" (1971, 3). In fact, he himself presents his theory as an alternative to utilitarianism, which at the time was the dominant philosophical position in the Anglo-Saxon philosophical context. This Kantian turn has been productive: today Kantian-inspired theories are legion in political philosophy. Two decades later, Rawls partially rejected some of TJ's ideas, and addressed what in his view were some misunderstandings. He introduced other ideas and focused on other aspects of justice. Thus, in "Political Liberalism" (PL -1993)3 he introduced the factum of the reasonable pluralism of liberal constitutional democracies, wondering how such a characterized society can remain stable over time. And in "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited"4 he developed the idea of public reason, which was already in PL, as a deliberative mechanism through which discussions about constitutional essentials and basic justice should take place, so that all participants can uphold the results even if they disagree with them. In The Law of Peoples5, Rawls extended the focus of domestic justice to the international realm, integrating as full members other societies beyond liberal ones: decent hierarchical societies. After this brief sketch of Rawls’s oeuvre, let us return to TJ: the reason behind this collection. As stated above, Rawls's ideas have been highly influential in the developments of political philosophy. Along with the Kantian turn, and the rehabilitation of 3 Rawls, John (1993). Political liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Rawls, John (1997). The Idea of Public Reason Revisited. The university of Chicago law review, (64), 765-807. 5 Rawls, John (1999). The Law of Peoples: With “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited”. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard university press. 4 11 Fifty Years of A Theory of Justice: Influences and Legacy. Guest Editors’ Preface contract theory, his defense of what is known as egalitarian liberalism deserves a special place. According to Rawls, in the original position we would accept principles of unequal distribution only if they are to the benefit of all, especially the most disadvantaged. Thus, we would choose two principles of justice. The first distributes fundamental rights and freedoms on a strictly egalitarian basis. The second, which consists of two parts, accepts inequality but only under certain conditions. On the one hand, access to positions must be open to fair equality of opportunity. On the other hand, to be fair, any inequality must improve the position of the most disadvantaged (the difference principle). This is a liberal position, because the first principle takes precedence over the second. And it is egalitarian, because it bases justice on the recognition that many of our advantages are no more than the result of chance, i.e. that the natural and social lottery, for which we cannot claim merit, sometimes decisively affects what we can achieve in life. These lotteries, Rawls reminds us, are neither fair nor unfair. What is fair or unfair is how society deals with these circumstances. The principles of justice are there to counteract the negative consequences of these lotteries on social interaction. Innumerable debates and discussions have developed around egalitarian liberalism that, since Rawls, go far beyond its theses. Many of the debates in political philosophy of the last 50 years are related to this opus magnum and, predictably, will continue to be related to it in the future. Whether to criticize it, defend it or expand on its claims, the reference to Rawls and TJ is today unavoidable. It is a necessary classic. At Ethics and Politics we would like to honour TJ's 50th anniversary with this special issue. The articles collected here discuss some of the central aspects of TJ and Rawls' work in general. This collection consists of eleven articles, written by leading current philosophers, who have worked on Rawls. It is possible to outline three central axes of discussion in these articles. Certainly, these axes do not completely reduce what is presented in these articles, but they can help to orient the reader of this collection: A first axis, consisting of three articles, assesses Rawls' legacy. First, Otfried Höffe argues that TJ constitutes a paradigm shift, which makes it a classic of political philosophy. In addition, he examines central aspects of this work and its relation to PL. Finally, Höffe analyzes Rawls as a public intellectual. Secondly, Alessandro Ferrara analyzes Rawls's legacy, focusing on Rawls's situated normativity after 1980 and his view of liberal-democratic legitimacy. He also discusses the normative models of TJ and PL. Thirdly, Sebastiano Maffettone examines Rawls' legacy around the following issues: on the one hand, the moralism-realism distinction in political theory. On the other hand, he discusses the contemporary philosophical climate characterized by postmodern philosophy and what Maffettone calls the "new metaphysics". The author argues that both 12 DANIEL LOEWE & DAVID MARTINEZ moralist and realist positions require a conception of normativity, which cannot be done in a traditional way. A second axis, also composed of three articles, discusses some specific philosophical influences on Rawls and some philosophical issues that arise from these interpretations. First, Eduardo Mendieta develops aspects of Rawls' biography, concluding that his sense of justice does not constitute an abstract interest, but was guided by an embodied and felt sense of justice. Furthermore, Mendieta studies the relationship between Kant and Rawls, and the relationship between TJ and constitutional democracy. Secondly, James Gledhill begins his article by following Brian Barry's suggestion that someone could write an article on "A theory of justice as a Rorschach test". From this idea, Gledhill shows that those who shaped the reception of Rawls understood him within the paradigm of analytic philosophy. However, it is possible to develop a different reading in which aspects related to his relationship with authors of German idealism, such as Kant and Hegel, are highlighted. Thirdly, David Martínez analyses the Kantian interpretation of Political Liberalism developed by Rainer Forst. Martínez concludes that Rawls cannot be understood as a Kantian philosopher in the sense proposed by Forst, and suggests understanding Rawls as a post-Kantian. A third axis, consisting of five articles, develops specific problems related to Rawls' philosophy. First, Frank I. Michelman asks whether it is possible to extend basic rights to relations between individuals and groups outside government. According to Michelman, Rawls has been criticized for opposing such an extension. But this article argues that it is possible to understand Rawls by extending fundamental rights to these relationships. Second, Daniel Loewe analyses three forms of justification developed by Rawls in his different writings: the original position, reflective equilibrium and public reason. Loewe concludes that both the original position and public reason presuppose reflexive equilibrium. Third, Paula Casal asks whether an egalitarian ethos should be ruled out because of Rawls's restriction that principles of justice apply only to the basic structure of society. Casal shows that Rawls can allow for this ethos through a specific set of public rules. Fourth, Gustavo Pereira, argues for a Rawlsian justification of limitarianism. Since extreme wealth in society distorts essential aspects of democracy, it would be necessary to limit extreme wealth. The extreme wealth of some undermines the condition that citizens are free and equal, and especially the fair value of political freedom. Finally, Pierpaolo Marrone analyzes Rawls's notion of desert and legitimate expectations to show how some communitarian criticisms of his individualism can be answered from a quasi-communitarian perspective found in A Theory of Justice. We hope that this collection – celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of Rawls's masterwork– will be of interest both to the specialist audience, who may find inspiration for their own research in these articles, and to the general public, who, from 13 Fifty Years of A Theory of Justice: Influences and Legacy. Guest Editors’ Preface reading these works, might develop an interest in the work of this contemporary philosopher. After all, the understanding and evolution of today's political philosophy is intrinsically and perhaps constitutively related to Rawls' work. 15 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 15-28 ISSN: 1825-5167 JOHN RAWLS’ PHILOSOPHIE DER GERECHTIGKEIT* OTFRIED HÖFFE Professor of Philosophy (emeritus) Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen (Germany) sekretariat.hoeffe@uni-tuebingen.de ABSTRACT The paper critically addresses A Theory of Justice. It is first illustrated that Theory implies a paradigm shift at the time of its publication. This is followed by a critical analysis of central aspects of Theory, especially the reflexive equilibrium and the difference principle. The paper then reconstructs Rawlsian work. First by showing the continuities and discontinuities between Theory and Political Liberalism and by critically examining “overlapping consensus” and “public reason”. Subsequently, by examining A Law of Peoples and its idea of tolerance and the rejection of global distributive justice. Finally, the paper addresses Rawls's role as a public intellectual. K EYWORDS Justice as Fairness, reflexive equilibrium, Difference Principle, overlapping consensus, public reason, Rawls. Niemand wird dieser Einschätzung widersprechen, daß der vor einem Jahrhundert in Baltimore geborene Philosoph John Rawls mit seinem ersten großen Werk und dem trotz zahlreicher weiterer Veröffentlichungen, auch Monographien, bedeutendsten Schrift aus seiner Feder, der Theory of Justice, einen philosophischen Klassiker geschrieben hat. Meine Gründe für diese Einschätzung stelle ich im folgenden vor. Zuvor seien mir aber einige persönliche Bemerkungen erlaubt. Und den Schluß bilden Argumente für meine Behauptung, daß Rawls wie kaum ein anderer Moral- und Politikphilosoph der zweiten Hälfte des letzten Jahrhunderts heute noch und in Zukunft in hohem Maß lesenswert ist. Nähere Überlegungen vom Autor in: Gerechtigkeit denken. John Rawls‘ epochales Werk der politischen Philosophie, Verlag Karl Alber: Freiburg/ Breisgau 1. und 2. Auflage 2021. * 16 OTFRIED HÖFFE 1. PERSÖNLICHE VORBEMERKUNGEN Ich hatte das Glück, Rawls’ Denken schon im Herbst 1970, vor der Veröffentlichung seiner Theory, kennenzulernen. Ich war damals, im akademischen Jahr 1970/71, Visiting Scholar an der einzigen der Ivy-League Universitäten einer Millionenstadt, die trotz der einschlägigen Schwierigkeiten diese Sonderstellung nicht aufgegeben hat, an der Columbia University in the City of New York. Rawls’ Theory war zwar noch nicht erschienen. Trotzdem sprach man von dem Harvard Philosophen mit erwartungsvoller Hochachtung. Der in Deutschland und auch andernorts auf dem Kontinent noch so gut wie unbekannte Rawls hatte nämlich etliche so eindrucksvolle, weil die damaligen Debatten geradezu revolutionär verändernde Aufsätze veröffentlicht wie „Justice as Fairness“ (1958) und „The Sense of Justice“ (1963), wie „Distributive Justice: Some Addenda“ (1967) und „The Justification of Civil Disobedience“ (1969). Damals sammelte ich Anregungen für eine Habilitationsschrift, die von ihrem Thema her deutlich von meiner Dissertation verschieden sein sollte. Da diese einem antiken Autor, Aristoteles, zudem einer methodischen Frage, dessen Modell einer genuin praktischen Philosophie, gewidmet war, sollte es jetzt auf ein zeitgenössisches und systematisches Problem ankommen, einen Beitrag zu einer Ethik öffentlicher Entscheidungsprozesse, die später unter dem Titel Strategien der Humanität erschien. In Erwartung von Anregungen seitens Rawls besorgte ich mir rasch die Aufsätze, las sie mit wachsendem Interesse und widmete einer Auseinandersetzung mit Rawls’ zwei methodischen Grundgedanken ein eigenes Kapitel: „6. Gerechtigkeit und Nutzenkalkulation (Rawls)“. Dort erörtere ich nach einem Blick auf Rawls’ systematischen Grundgedanken, die Gerechtigkeit als Fairneß, nacheinander „die rationale Wahl von Gerechtigkeitsprinzipien“ und das „methodische Korrektiv: „reflective equilibrium“. Für meinen eigenen Versuch einer „Theorie der politischen Gerechtigkeit“ wartete ich noch eine Reihe von Jahren, in denen ich mich erst mit dem größeren Umfeld, dem philosophischen Blick auf Recht und Staat, vertraut machen wollte. Vom Hauptwerk selber fasziniert – mittlerweile war es erschienen – , sowohl den Grundgedanken als auch den zahlreichen Teil- und Zusatzthemen, ferner dem systematisch zupackenden Argumentationsstil und den weitläufigen philosophiegeschichtlichen Hintergrundkenntnissen, ließ ich mich auf eine ausführliche Besprechung des englischen Originals ein – die deutsche Übersetzung war erst unterwegs –, die dann, vermutlich als die erste, zumindest als die erste längere Rezension in der Philosophischen Rundschau erschien. Die Lektüre des Hauptwerkes zeigte, wie sehr Rawls trotz der vielen Ergänzungen, Verfeinerungen, auch Änderungen in den genannten Abhandlungen sich schon mehr und mehr an seine Theory heranarbeitete. Damit bietet er ein nachahmenswertes Vorbild für den langen Atem, den man für das Verfassen eines 17 John Rawls’ Philosophie der Gerechtigkeit nicht nur umfangreichen, voluminösen, sondern auch in der Sache großes Werks benötigt. Um einen Einblick in dieses geduldige Heranreifen-Lassen zu bieten, habe ich die genannten vier Aufsätze im Jahr 1977 zusammen mit einem Vorwort von John Rawls, meiner Einführung in „Rawls’ Theorie der politisch-sozialen Gerechtigkeit“ und Literaturhinweisen zur Gerechtigkeit und sowohl von als auch zu Rawls herausgegeben. Gewissermaßen als Gegenstück dazu bat mich einer der für die renommierte Reihe „Theorie-Diskussion“ Verantwortlichen, Jürgen Habermas, einen Sammelband von Interpretationen und Kritiken Rawls’ herauszugeben. In den drei Teilen „I. Fragen der Methode“, „II. Die Prinzipien der Gerechtigkeit“ und „III. Wirtschafts- und sozialwissenschaftliche Aspekte“ kommen nach meiner „Kritischen Einführung in Rawls’ Theorie der Gerechtigkeit“ sowohl englischsprachige Autoren zur Sprache wie Brian Barry, P.H. Nowell-Smith, H.L.A. Hart, Richard W. Miller, Kenneth J. Arrow, Benjamin R. Barber und Amartya K. Sen als auch mit Originalbeiträgen die deutschen Autoren Norbert Hoerster, Karl G. Ballestrem und Michael Gagern. Diese persönlichen Vorbemerkungen erklären, das versteht sich, weder Rawls’ überragende Bedeutung noch mein Interesse, sich mich mit ihm immer wieder neu zu beschäftigen. Sie bieten aber Anlaß, dem Gewicht eines Werkes nachzuforschen, mit dem ich mich mittlerweile fünf Jahrzehnte lang immer wieder neu auseinandergesetzt habe, zum Beispiel bei der ersten französischen Vorstellung der Theory: Individu et justice sociale. Autour de John Rawls (1988), bei Symposien, die ich zur Theorie der Gerechtigkeit und dem zweiten systematischen Hauptwerk Politischer Liberalismus und dann in der Reihe „Klassiker auslegen“ herausgegeben habe. Ich hatte das Glück, von John Rawls als Visiting Scholar seiner Universität eingeladen, mit ihm persönlich diskutieren zu können und ihn dabei als außergewöhnlich bescheiden-liebenswürdig Person kennenzulernen. Mittlerweile Kant-Freund geworden, konnte ich eine seiner letzten Vorlesungen, diese zu Kant, hören, dabei seine Fähigkeit bewundern, aus einer umfassenden Kenntnis heraus ohne weitläufige Hinführungen und Nebenwege rasch zu den in sachlicher Hinsicht entscheidenden Fragen und den dafür einschlägigen Begriffen und Argumenten zu kommen. Zum Doppeljubiläum, 50 Jahre nach Erscheinen der Theory und 100 Jahre nach der Geburt ihres Autors, habe ich meine Rawls-Auseinandersetzungen in einem Büchlein zusammengefaßt: Gerechtigkeit denken. John Rawls’ epochales Werk der politischen Philosophie. Daß es nach wenigen Wochen eine zweite Auflage erhielt, zusammen mit einem Nachwort zur aktuellen Coronapolitik und Kritik an Karl Lauterbachs dazugehörigen Interpretation, zeigt, daß das Interesse an Rawls’ Gerechtigkeitsdenken nicht verebbt ist. 18 OTFRIED HÖFFE 2. EINE ERSTE WERTSCHÄTZUNG: PARADIGMENWECHSEL DER FÜNFFACHE Binnen weniger Jahre erfährt Rawls’ Theory eine Debatte, die nach ihrer Quantität industrielle Ausmaße erreicht. Das Werk, das ohne Zweifel keine leichtflüssig zu lesende Schrift, vielmehr ein „gelehrter Wälzer“ ist, hat allein in Deutschland bislang 26 Auflagen erhalten und ist, was man sonst nur von Romanen kennt, in mehr als zwei Dutzend Sprachen übersetzt, zudem nur im englischen Original in beinahe 400.000 Exemplaren gedruckt worden. Dieser für ein philosophisches Fachbuch singuläre Erfolg verdankt sich weder einem Zufall noch einer breit angelegten Werbekampagne. Der Grund liegt vielmehr in einer Reihe so tiefgreifender Veränderungen der damaligen philosophischen Debatten, dass sie den Rang von Paradigmenwechseln, insgesamt sogar fünf Paradigmenwechseln erreichen. Rawls’ radikale Neuerungen beginnen mit der Entmachtung der damals vorherrschenden Metaethik. Während diese die normative Ethik beiseiteschiebt und sich lieber auf die Bedeutungsanalyse von ethischen Grundbegriffen wie „gut“ oder „Gewissen“ und auf die einer philosophischen Ethik angemessene Methode konzentriert, drängt Rawls diese Aufgaben in den Hintergrund. Statt dessen läßt er sich wieder auf die normative Ethik ein. Dort, wo im englischen Sprachraum doch normative, moralische Fragen behandelt wurden, vertrat man weithin einen Utilitarismus. Rawls hingegen, zweiter Paradigmawechsel, lehnt ihn vehement ab und setzt sich, hier vor allem von Kant inspiriert, für die Gerechtigkeit ein, die er als Fairneß bestimmt. Dabei nimmt er für sein Thema, während in Deutschland die in den 50er und 60er Jahren einsetzende Rehabilitierung sehr stark philosophiegeschichtlich orientiert ist, eine weit stärker systematische Erörterung vor. Bei ihr, nächster Paradigmawechsel, pflegt Rawls ein hohes Maß an Interdisziplinarität, bei dem er sich namentlich auf die Sprache der Wirtschaftsund Sozialwissenschaften, der Theorie rationaler Entscheidung, einschließlich de Wohlfahrtsökonomie und der Spieltheorie, einläßt. Nicht zuletzt macht er sich mit dem Gedanken sozialer Grundgüter („social primary goods“) für empirische Theorien anschlußfähig. 3. EINE ÜBERZEUGENDE GRUNDINTUITION: GERECHTIGKEIT ALS FAIRNEß Für schlechthin neu hält Rawls seine Gerechtigkeitstheorie nicht, schon deshalb nicht, weil die einschlägigen Überlegungen der abendländischen Philosophie bis zu deren Anfängen, den beiden Kirchenvätern Platon und Aristoteles zurückreichen und Rawls keineswegs ein davon grundverschiedenen Gerechtigkeitsbegriff 19 John Rawls’ Philosophie der Gerechtigkeit vertreten will. Ähnlich wie Kant mit dem kategorischen Imperativ keine neuartige Moral, sondern lediglich eine „neue Formel“ für die weithin bekannte Moral aufstellen will, so erkennt auch Rawls für sein Thema ein allseits bekanntes und anerkanntes Verständnis an. Dieses setzt sich aus zwei Gesichtspunkten zusammen. Nach seinem Rang gilt die Gerechtigkeit nicht als die einzige, aber als die schlechthin erste soziale Tugend. Da sie nicht weniger wichtig als die Wahrheit für Gedankensysteme ist, darf sie nicht etwa wegen anderer sozialer Gesichtspunkte wie Effizient und Stabilität eingeschränkt werden. Denn, so Rawls’ inhaltlicher Gesichtspunkt, besitzt jeder Mensch, und zwar jeder einzelne für sich und nicht für ihn als Mitglied eines Kollektivs, wie der Utilitarismus voraussetzt, eine „Unverletzlichkeit, die auch im Namen des Wohles der ganzen Gesellschaft nicht aufgehoben werden kann“ (Theory, § 1). In deren Rahmen hat Rawls’ pointierte Kritik am Utilitarismus sich als so überzeugend erwiesen, daß der Utilitarismus seine vormalige Dominanz selbst in der Anglophonie verloren hat. Umso erstaunlicher ist die Reputation, die Peter Singer mit seinem in der angewandten Ethik vertretenen Utilitarismus vielerorts genießt. Es versteht sich, daß man von Rawls’ Utilitarismuskritik nicht überzeugt sein muß. Man dürfte aber erwarten, daß Singer beispielsweise in der Praktischen Ethik (1984, orig. 1979) sich intensiver mit Rawls’ Utilitarismuskritik auseinandergesetzt hätte. Rawls gelingt es bekanntlich, die Grundintuition, die Gerechtigkeit als Fairneß, in zwei Gerechtigkeitsgrundsätzen zu präzisieren. Unter Voraussetzung sowohl der Unverletzlichkeit als auch der damit verbundenen Utilitarismuskritik folgt der erste Gerechtigkeitsgrundsatz wie von allein: daß es auf Elementare ankommt und in bezug auf sie jedermann das gleiche Recht auf das umfangreichste Gesamtsystem gleicher Grundfreiheiten zusteht. Für diesen Grundsatz sprechen zwei Nebenargumente. Nach dem ersten Nebenargument vertritt schon Rawls’ philosophisches Vorbild, Kant, diesen Grundsatz nämlich in der Rechtslehre, dort im § B als Antwort auf die Frage: „Was ist Recht?“. Kant versteht diese Frage nicht in einem positivrechtlichen, sondern im rechtsmoralischen Sinn und antwortet dann in geringer Variante zu Rawls: „Das Recht ist also der Inbegriff der Bedingungen, unter denen die Willkür des einen mit der Willkür des andern nach einem allgemeinen Gesetz der Freiheit zusammen vereinigt werden kann.“ Nach dem anderen Nebenargument stimmt Rawls’ erster Gerechtigkeitsgrundsatz weitgehend mit einem Gedanken überein, der nach einer längeren Vorgeschichte spätestens seit der Allgemeinen Erklärung der Menschenrechte von 1948 seitens der Vereinten Nationen zu einem globalen, alle Staat überschreitenden Bestandteil des Rechtsbewußtseins der Menschheit geworden ist. Es ist der Gedanke unveräußerlicher und unverletzlicher Menschenrechte, die in systematischer Hinsicht bei den Freiheitsrechten beginnen. 20 OTFRIED HÖFFE Allerdings endet bei ihnen die Liste von Menschenrechten nicht. Deshalb überzeugt Rawls auch damit, daß er auf seinen ersten Grundsatz einen zweiten folgen läßt. Während es dem ersten um persönliche und politische Rechte geht, betrifft der zweite materielle und immaterielle Interessen. Nicht ganz unumstritten, aber doch weithin anerkannt ist, daß der Grundsatz soziale und wirtschaftliche Ungleichheiten zuläßt. Erneut unstrittig ist, daß dafür eine faire Chancengleichheit hinsichtlich Ämtern und Positionen bestehen muß, die Rawls übrigens sehr anspruchsvoll ausbuchstabiert: „Menschen mit gleichen Fähigkeiten und gleicher Bereitschaft, sie einzusetzen“, müssen „gleiche Erfolgsaussichten“ und auch „einigermaßen ähnliche kulturelle Möglichkeiten“ haben. Weiterhin überzeugt der von Rawls eingebrachte Gesichtspunkt der Generationengerechtigkeit. Diese wird freilich mit dem „gerechten Spargrundsatz“ auf das Thema der erlaubten Staatsverschuldung verkürzt, die ökologische Perspektive hingegen fehlt. Dazu eine Bemerkung nur in Klammern: Beim anderen Philosophen der intergenerationellen Gerechtigkeit, Hans Jonas, ist zwar der ökologische Aspekt wichtig, aber so gut wie exklusiv wichtig, während Rawls’ Gesichtspunkt fehlt – eine erstaunliche Teilblindheit zweier hochreflektierter Denker. Rawls’ beide Gerechtigkeitsgrundsätze zusammen belaufen sich auf jene Rechtsund Staatsordnung, die mindestens im Westen als politisches Leitbild angesehen wir: ein freiheitliche und sozialer Rechtsstaat, eine konstitutionelle Demokratie, in die qua Marktwirtschaft eine Wettbewerbswirtschaft eingebunden ist und die auch hinsichtlich der künftigen Generationen Gerechtigkeit zu übern hat. Zusätzlich zum Defizit am ökologischen Aspekt werfen Rawls’ Grundsätze ein weiteres Problem auf, im zweiten Grundsatz das sogenannte Unterschiedsprinzip erhalten: daß die erlaubten sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Ungleichheiten den am wenigsten Begünstigten den größtmöglichen Vorteil bringen sollen. Daß die „least advantaged“, wie es im Original heißt, nicht unbeachtet bleiben dürfen, versteht sich für jede Gerechtigkeitstheorie. Nicht ganz so selbstsverständlich, aber doch plausibel ist, sich am Vorteil dieser Gruppe zu orientieren. Problematisch ist jedoch, daß sie den größtmöglichen Vorteil erhalten sollen. Daß ihnen das sogenannte Existenzminimum zu garantieren ist und dieses nicht zu kleinlich ausfallen darf, daß der Sozialstaat sich um ein für alle Gruppen und Schichten offenes Bildungswesen kümmern muß, daß er Verantwortung für Arbeitsmöglichkeiten und bezahlbaren Wohnraum, nicht zuletzt für ein allen Bürgern zugängliches Gesundheitswesen trägt, erscheint schon aus freiheitstheoretischen und demokratietheoretischen Gründen als geboten. Gegen die Forderung, sich vornehmlich an den Schlechtestgestellten zu orientieren und diese möglichst gut zu stellen, sind aber Bedenken erlaubt. Zumindest sollte in dieser Hinsicht der übliche politische Streit zulässig sein, statt ihn mit dem Argument „Verstoß gegen einen Gerechtigkeitsgrundsatz“ von vornherein abzublocken. Das Rawls’ Unterschiedsprinzip zugrundeliegende Maß an 21 John Rawls’ Philosophie der Gerechtigkeit Egalitarismus mag politisch willkommen sein, gegen den Rang, ein unveräußerlicher Bestandteil des Gerechtigkeitsdenkens zu sein, darf man aber Rückfragen stellen. 4. ÜBERLEGUNGSGLEICHGEWICHT ODER THEORIE DER USVERFASSUNG? Rawls’ Gerechtigkeitstheorie, in ihrem Grundgedanken von Kants Idee der Autonomie inspiriert, besteht in einer mit den Mitteln der Entscheidungs- und Spieltheorie modernisierten Vertragstheorie. Da dies bekannt und auch viel diskutiert worden ist, lasse ich diese Seite von Rawls’ Gerechtigkeitstheorie beiseite. (Für meine Einschätzung s. Im erwähnten Rawlsbüchlein S. 38 ff.). Statt dessen gehe auf den damit zwar verbundenen, aber doch relativ eigenständigen methodischen Gedanken der Theory ein, auf das „reflective equilibirum“, das Überlegungsgleichgewicht. Danach sollen wohlüberlegte Gerechtigkeitsvorstellungen in einen widerspruchsfreien, kohärenten Zusammenhang gebracht werden. Nach dem Vertragsgedanken scheint Rawls die schlechthin richtigen Gerechtigkeitsprinzipien begründen zu wollen. Gemäß der zweiten Methode ist sein Anspruch aber weit bescheidener. Es genügt ihm wie gesagt, in schon vorfindlichen Gerechtigkeitsüberzeugungen etwaige Inkonsistenzen zu überwinden. Eine Reihe von Fragen drängen sich hier auf. Zum ersten: Woher nimmt Rawls die Überzeugungen? Braucht er nicht schon ein Vorverständnis, das ihm erlaubt, gewisse Überzeugungen als Gerechtigkeitsüberzeugungen zu identifizieren? Und: Woher stammt dieses Vorverständnis? Daran anschließend: Liegt nicht hier eine, vielleicht sogar die erste Aufgabe einer Gerechtigkeitstheorie, dieses Vorverständnis aufzusuchen und irgendwie zu rechtfertigen (wobei durchaus mit dem sogenannten hermeneutischen Zirkel zu rechnen ist)? Als dritte Rückfrage: Wenn sich Inkonsistenzen zeigen, wie will man sie methodisch ausmerzen? Gibt es verschiedene, untereinander nicht kompatible Gerechtigkeitsauffassungen, welche von ihnen hat dann einen Vorrang, der erlaubt, von ihnen aus die Konsistenz aufzusuchen? Auf diese Fragen finden sich bei Rawls keine zufriedenstellende Antworten. Rawls führt nicht einmal eine Reihe von ihn überzeugenden Gerechtigkeitsauffassungen an. Mehr im Vorübergehen erfährt man, daß für ihn zwei Auffassungen ein überragendes Gewicht haben, die religiöse Toleranz mit der Glaubens- und Gewissensfreiheit und die kompromißlose Ablehnung von Sklaverei. Von diesen beiden zweifellos überzeugenden Gerechtigkeitsauffassungen kann man durchaus Rawls’ Grundgedanken die 22 OTFRIED HÖFFE wechselseitige Anerkennung der Menschen als freier und gleicher Personen rechtfertigen. Die Methode wäre aber weniger die des Überlegungsgleichgewichts als die einer Art von Abstraktion von einem hochplausiblen Vorverständnis, so daß dieses Vorverständnis sich als der methodisch entscheidende erste Argumentationsschritt erweist. Wer über eine auch nur minimale Kenntnis der Geschichte der Vereinigten Staaten verfügt, der weiß, daß die beiden genannten Gerechtigkeitsauffassungen hier eine überragende Rolle spielen. Zu Beginn ist es die religiöse Toleranz bzw. Glaubens- und Gewissensfreiheit, denn der Vorläufer der USA, die NeuenglandStaaten werden von Religionsflüchtlingen gegründet, nämlich von christlichen Gruppierungen, die in ihrem Heimatland, Großbritannien, verfolgt wurden. Im Verlauf der Geschichte ist es die Sklaverei, auf deren Abschaffung die Nordstaaten großen wert legten, während die Südstaaten sie beibehalten wollten, deshalb ihre Trennung von der US-Union erklärten, was zum Sezessionskrieg führte. In seinem zweiten Hauptwerk, dem Politischen Liberalismus (= PL) geht Rawls mit der Orientierung an seinem Heimatland noch einen Schritt weiter. Nachdem er zuvor sich an der Idee der konstitutionellen Demokratie orientiert hat, nimmt er jetzt das allerhöchste Gericht der USA, den Supreme Court, zum Vorbild. Beim neu eingeführten Begriff der öffentlichen Vernunft – dazu noch später – nennt Rawls als Vorbild nicht, woran man am ehesten denkt, an die Vertretung der Staatsbürger, das Parlament. Vielmehr erklärt er, die öffentliche Vernunft sei die des Verfassungsgerichts, sofern sich dieses „mit einer verfassungsrechtlichen Überprüfung von Gesetzen“ befaßt (PL, 6. Vorlesung, § 6). 5. „POLITISCHER PLURALISMUS“: ZWEI EINWÄNDE Gut zwei Jahrzehnte nach der Theorie und einer Reihe von bald klärenden, bald weiterführenden Aufsätzen erscheint Rawls’ zweites systematisches Hauptwerk, der Political Liberalism. Nach Rawls’ eigenem Urteil unterscheidet es sich von der Theory wesentlich, nach meiner Einschätzung erheblich, aber, vor allem wenn man auf andere neuere Gerechtigkeitstheorien oder Werke zur Moral- und Politikphilosophie schaut, nicht tiefgreifend. Der Autor bleibt nämlich seinen zwei Gerechtigkeitsgrundsätzen treu, die er nur wenig umformuliert. Er übernimmt ein damit zusammenhängendes Element, den Gedanken von gesellschaftlichen Grundgütern, für die er dieselbe Liste vertritt. Nicht zuletzt behält er die beiden methodischen Elemente der Theory, die modernisierte Vertragstheorie und das Überlegungsgleichgewicht. Neu hingegen sind die Ablösung des in der Theory angenommenen Gedankens einer wohlgeordneten Gesellschaft durch den eines vernünftigen Pluralismus, die Abschwächung des eigenen Anspruchs auf „politisch, nicht metaphysisch“ und die Einführung von zwei damit zusammenhängenden Begriffen, des übergreifenden 23 John Rawls’ Philosophie der Gerechtigkeit Konsenses und der öffentlichen Vernunft. Diese Neuerungen haben eine neue Grundfrage zur Folge. Eine gegenüber der Theory wirklichkeitsnähere Philosophie erkennt an, daß es in den heutigen Gesellschaften eine Vielfalt umfassender teils religiöser, teils philosophischer und moralischer Lehren gibt, die „das natürliche Ergebnis des Gebrauchs der menschlichen Vernunft“ sind, die sich freilich nicht miteinander vertragen und eine neue Grundfrage der politischen Philosophie herausfordern: „Wie kann eine stabile und gerechte Gesellschaft (man beachte die Reihenfolge: erst Stabilität, dann Gerechtigkeit!) freier und gleicher Bürger, die durch vernünftige und gleichwohl einander ausschließende religiöse, philosophische und moralische Lehren einschneiden voneinander getrennt sind, dauerhaft bestehen?“ (PL, Vorwort) Weil Rawls hier erstaunlicherweise selbst philosophische Lehren, wenn sie umfassenden Charakter haben, als „metaphysisch“ und die zitierte Herausforderung als „politisch“ qualifiziert, vertritt er jetzt das genannte bescheidenere Ziel „politisch, nicht metaphysisch“. Um das immer noch anspruchsvolle Ziel zu erreichen, führt er die zwei neuen Begriff ein, die beide jedoch kritische Rückfrage provozieren. Gegen das neue Hauptwerk erheben sich zwei Einwände. Übergreifender Konsens. Diesem Begriff zufolge soll es selbst zwischen den „zutiefst entgegengesetzten Lehren“ doch eine so weit reichende Übereinstimmung geben, daß sie für eine gemeinsame Politik ausreicht. Diese Übereinstimmung, übergreifender Konsens genannt, findet man durch einen gezielten Filterprozeß: Man abstrahiert von allen Konkurrenzanteilen, so daß am Ende nur noch Ansichten übrigbleiben, die miteinander verträglich sind. Diese Restmenge, die Summe der für „alle Bürger in grundlegenden politischen Fragen“ anerkennungswürdigen Ansichten, bezeichnet Rawls als übergreifenden Konsens. In diesen Begriff versteckt sich ein Optimismus, den man nicht teilen muß. Rawls unterstellt, daß sich in seinem Muster einer politischen Ordnung, der konstitutionellen Demokratie, immer ein hinreichend großer gemeinsamer Nenner finden läßt, der auch hochkontroverse Debatten friedlich und schiedlich zu überwinden hilft. Wie aber sieht es bei manchen ökologischen Diskursen aus, etwa beim Streit um Anthropozentrik oder Biozentrik? Zur Behauptung, daß Tiere nicht willkürlich behandelt werden dürfen, daß ein Großteil der industriellen Tierhaltung, daß viele Tiertransporte und nicht wenige Tierversuche „unmenschlich“, daher zu verbieten sind, läßt sich vielleicht, aber nicht sicher ein übergreifender Konsens finden. Anhänger einer Biozentrik verlangen mehr, nicht selten beispielsweise das Verbot aller Tierversuche. 24 OTFRIED HÖFFE Noch stärker in unsere Lebenswelt greifend zahlreiche medizinethische Fragen ein. Bei den Debatten um das Recht auf Abtreibung, bei denen um den ontologischen Rang von Embryonen, beim Fragekomplex der künstlichen Befruchtung, beim Thema der Leihmutterschaft, beim dem der ärztlich assistierten Suizidbeihilfe, bei all diesen Fragen stehen Grundüberzeugungen zum Begriff der menschlichen Person und daran anschließend zum Verständnis von Leben und Tod zur Debatte. Selbst dort, wo unsere konstitutionellen Demokratien die Fragen zu beantworten suchen, haben die Antworten einen mehr oder weniger pragmatischen Charakter. Von einem überlappenden Konsens zu sprechen, ist aber zu viel. Man verleiht dem politischen Kompromiß, wenn er denn überhaupt zustande kommt, einen zu hohen rechtsmoralischen Rang. Hier drängt sich vielmehr ein Thema auf, dem Rawls in der Theory eine vorbildlich gründliche Erörterung widmet, die aber im Politischen Liberalismus keine Rolle mehr spielt: der zivile bzw. staatsbürgerliche Ungehorsam, mit dem wir uns später noch befassen. Öffentliche Vernunft. Bei diesem zweiten im Politischen Liberalismus neu eingeführten Begriff geht es Rawls nicht etwa um gerechte, insofern vernünftige politische Institutionen, sondern um die Art und Weise, wie man in den öffentlichen Debatten die eigenen Ansichten und Überzeugungen in bezug auf politische Institutionen und Programme vorbringen soll. Rawls bezeichnet als öffentliche Vernunft „die öffentlich vorgetragenen Argumente der Bürger über wesentliche Verfassungsinhalte und grundlegende Fragen der Gerechtigkeit“ (1. Vorlesung, § 2). Genau für diesen Zweck muß man von den eigenen umfassenden, dabei nur partikular gültigen Ansichten abstrahieren und im skizzierten Filterprozeß die mit den anderen partikularen Lehren gemeinsame Schnittmenge herausarbeiten. Hier stellt sich die zweite kritische Rückfrage, die sich schließlich auf einen Einwand beläuft. Rawls’ staatstheoretisches Muster, die konstitutionelle Demokratie, besteht aus zwei getrennten Faktoren, zum einen dem Rechts- und Verfassungsstaat mit Elementen wie den Grund- und Menschenrechten und der Gewaltenteilung, zum anderen dem Demokratieprinzip, nach dem alle Gewalt vom Volk ausgeht und dessen nach der jeweiligen Mehrheitsregel getroffen Entscheidungen gültig sind. Da es jedoch nicht ausgeschlossen ist, daß zumindest gelegentlich die beiden Faktoren einander widerstreiten, stellt sich die Frage, wem dann der Vorrang gebührt, dem Konstitutionalismus minus Demokratie oder der Demokratie. Rawls aber erkennt hier keine Alternative an: entweder Demokratie oder der Konstitutionalismus ohne den Demokratiefaktor qua Mehrheitsregel. Vielmehr vertritt er die interessante und zweifellos erwägenswerte „Idee einer dualistischen konstitutionellen Demokratie“. Ihr zufolge darf das höchste USGericht, der Supreme Court, selbst die mit demokratischen Mehrheiten 25 John Rawls’ Philosophie der Gerechtigkeit beschlossenen Gesetze auf ihre Verfassungsmäßigkeit hin überprüfen. Rawls versteht diese Recht aber nicht, wie man auf den ersten Blick vermutet, als einen Vorrang der Judikative vor der Legislative. Dies würde auch einem Grundprinzip des Konstitutionalismus, der Gewaltenteilung, widersprechen. Vielmehr führt er im Anschluß an John Locke für die Macht des Volkes zwei Arten ein. Die grundlegendere Macht besteht in der Macht, sich eine Verfassung zu geben („the people’s constituent power“) von der „gewöhnlichen Macht der Inhaber staatlicher Ämter und der Wählerschaft in ihrer Tagespolitik“. Dort nun, wo der Supreme Court die genannte Aufgabe übernimmt, die Verfassungsmäßigkeit eines Gesetzes zu prüfen, dort übernehme er nicht die gewöhnliche judikative Rolle, sondern trete in die Aufgabe der demokratischen Legislative ein, allerdings nicht in der tagespolitischen, sondern der verfassungsgebenden Aufgabe. Die Idee der zwei Arten von Volksmacht ist fraglos hilfreich, die Anwendung der Idee auf den Supreme Court aber problematisch. Denn was und wer stellen sicher, daß diese Aufgabe in der für ein Gericht unabänderlichen Unparteilichkeit erfüllt wird. Schon der Umstand, daß in den USA viele der politisch hochkontroversen Urteile von Richtern gefällt werden, die gewiß juristisch hochkompetent sind, die aber in politisch nicht unbedenklichen Entscheidungsprozessen gewählt werden und dann auf Lebenszeit im Amt bleiben. Kann man sich unter diesen Bedingungen sicher sein, daß die Richter auch nur der Idee nach unparteiisch sind? In den USA sprechen kritische Beobachter man nicht zu Unrecht von „ideologischen Blöcken“. Hinzukommt, daß die Urteile mit einfacher Mehrheit gefällt werden dürfen, nicht wie andernorts bei hochbrisanten Themen mit einer Zweidrittelmehrheit. Nicht zuletzt fehlt, was in den meisten demokratischen Parlamenten der Fall ist, ein Zweikammersystem, womit einmal mehr eine wechselseitige Kontrolle und der Zwang zu einem hoffentlich vernünftigen Ausgleich bestehen. 6. DAS PHILOSOPHISCHE VÖLKERRECHT ERNEUERN Meist wenig beachtet befaßt sich Rawls schon in der Theory mit dem Völkerrecht. Die mangelnde Aufmerksamkeit dafür könnte in dem damals vielerorts geringen Interesse von Philosophen an diesem Themenfeld liegen. Es war nämlich in die Domäne der Juristen abgewandert und wird dort meist unter dem Titel behandelt, der auf den Aufgabenbereich der Juristen hinweist, im Rahmen ihres Öffentlichen Rechts als Internationales Öffentliches Recht. In den ersten Jahrhunderten der Neuzeit verhielt es sich anders. Das moderne Völkerrecht wird zunächst von philosophisch hochkompetenten Moraltheologen der spanischen Spätscholastik entwickelt, von Autoren wie Bartolomé de Las Casas, Francisco de Vitoria und Francisco Suaréz, die sich mit der – ihrer Ansicht nach – fehlenden Rechtsgrundlage für die spanische und portugiesische Eroberung von 26 OTFRIED HÖFFE Mittel- und Südamerika befaßten und den sich anbahnenden Kolonialismus zum Teil scharf kritisierten. Mit dem Niederländer Hugo Grotius gelangt das Völkerrecht zwar auch in den Aufgabenbereich von Juristen. Wegen naturrechtlicher Elemente bleibt es aber auch im Kompetenzbereich von Philosophen wie einem Leibnizschüler, Christian Wolff, und Immanuel Kant. In dieser Tradition steht eine Vorlesungsreihe, die Rawls in Oxford als AmnestyLecture hält und später als The Law of Peoples veröffentlicht. Rawls versteht seine Überlegungen als eine „realistische Utopie“, da sie drei Gerechtigkeitsgrundsätze vertrete, die im wesentlichen aus der Theory und dem Politcal Liberalism bekannt sind: Grundrechte und Freiheiten, im Gegensatz zum Utilitarismus deren Vorrang vor dem Gemeinwohl und die Garantie der für den Freiheitsgebrauch notwendigen gesellschaftlichen Grundgüter. Drei Punkte verdienen eine besondere Beachtung: Während vor allem damals mancherorts von allen Ländern die Einrichtung der im liberalen Westen vorherrschenden Staatsform, die konstitutionelle Demokratie, gefordert wurde vertritt Rawls das Prinzip einer völkerrechtlichen Toleranz. Ihm zufolge sei auf globaler Ebene nicht nur mit jenen anderen als liberal qualifizierten Völkern zu kooperieren, die „unsere“ Staatsform, die konstitutionelle Demokratie praktizieren. Zusamenzuarbeiten sei auch mit zwar nichtliberalen, aber insofern achtbaren Völkern, sofern sie den von Rawls formulierten Bedingungen des politisch Rechten und Gerechten genügen. Als zweites fällt Rawls’ Verständnis von globaler Verteilungsgerechtigkeit ins Auge. In deutlichem Gegensatz zu Vertretern einer weitergehenden Egalisierungsfordeung, im Widerspruch zu Charles Beitz und (dem Rawls-Schüler) Thomas Pogge vertritt Rawls keinen globalen Egalitarismus. Schon in der eigenen Gesellschaft seien „Ungleichheiten nicht grundsätzlich ungerecht“. Dieses Prinzip überträgt Rawls nun auf die Grundstruktur der Gesellschaft der Völker, also auf die globale Perspektive. Daraus folgt für ihn, der „Abstand zwischen dem durchschnittlichen Wohlstand der Völker“ muß nicht über dasjenige maß hinaus verringert werden, das den Völkern eine arbeitsfähige liberale oder achtbare Regierung einzurichten ermöglicht. Ein durchaus überzeugendes Argument: Die Völker haben das Recht, aber nicht die Pflicht, für eine wirtschaftlich bessere Zukunft in der Gegenwart Verzichte zu üben. Wenn später, die zum Verzicht bereiten Völker, wie von ihnen erwartet, wirtschaftlich besser dastehen, besteht keine Pflicht seitens der wohlhabender gewordenen Völker denjenigen Völkern, die lieber ihre Gegenwart genießen wollten, den deshalb fehlenden Wohlstandsgewinn auszugleichen. Nicht zuletzt befaßt sich Rawls mit der Frage, unter welchen Bedingungen ein Krieg gerecht sein könne und erklärt, keinesfalls, wenn er um des ökonomischen Wohlstands, um natürlicher Ressourcen und um geostrategischer Macht willen geführt werde. Ein Staat, der es trotzdem tue, würde, selbst wenn er bislang eine 27 John Rawls’ Philosophie der Gerechtigkeit konstitutionelle Demokratie gewesen sei, sich zu einem Schurkenstaat herabwürdigen. In diesem Zusammenhang verlangt Rawls auch, während eines Krieges auch beim Gegner, sowohl bei dessen Soldaten als auch bei der Zivilbevölkerung, die Menschenrechte zu achten. Dies sei nämlich nicht nur vom Recht der Völker geboten, sondern auch, um den Gehalt und das Gewicht der Menschenrechte wirkungsvoll zu vermitteln. 7. NUR EIN AKADEMISCHER INTELLEKTUELLER, ABER MIT ZWEI AUSNAHMEN Nicht wenige wortmächtige Wissenschaftler und Philosophen melden sich in aktuellen politischen Debatten öffentlich zu Wort. Personen, die es des öfteren tun und dann in erheblichem Maß Gehör finden, nennt man politische Intellektuelle. Diese Rolle zu übernehmen, ist ohne Frage legitim. Denn die Betreffenden sind nicht bloß Kenner ihres Fachgebietes, sondern auch Bürger einer Demokratie, also einer Staatsform, in der freie öffentliche Debatten unaufgebbar, weil wesentlich sind. Zu diesem Personenkreis öffentlicher Intellektueller gehört Rawls bewußt nicht. Er vertritt nämlich ein alternatives Muster, für das er sich auf sein großes philosophisches Vorbild, Immanuel Kant, berufen könnte. Nach der Schrift Zum ewigen Frieden, in deren Tradition Rawls’ Philosophie des Völkerrechts steht, dem Zweiten Zusatz, der ironischerweise den Titel „Geheimer Artikel“ trägt, soll es eine strenge Arbeitsteilung zwischen Juristen und Philosophen geben. Während nur die Regierungsberater, die Juristen bei der konkreten Entscheidungsfindung mitwirken sollen, müssen sich Philosophen mit dem Nachdenken über die einschlägigen Grundsätze begnügen, nach der Friedensschrift „über die Bedingungen der Möglichkeit des öffentlichen Friedens“. Über diese Bedingungen sollen sie aber „frei und öffentlich“ debattieren dürfen. In diesem Sinn praktiziert Rawls sowohl in der Theory als auch im Political Liberalism ein streng an seine Fachkompetenz gebundenes, rein akademisches Philosophieren. Liegt freilich eine Ausnahmesituation, also diesem Begriff nach eine seltene Sondersituation vor, dann hält sich der Philosoph für verpflichtet, man darf sagen: aus demokratischen und rechtsmoralischen Gründen verbunden, den geschützten Raum der Universität zu verlassen und an die Öffentlichkeit zu treten. Meines Erachtens war dies zwei Mal, aber auch nur zwei Mal der Fall. Die erste Ausnahmesituation lag nach Rawls in den Bürgerrechtsbewegungen der 1960erJahre, beim Protest gegen den Vietnamkrieg vor. Hier sah sich Rawls genötigt, das einschlägige Thema, das des staatsbürgerlichen Ungehorsams (civil disobedience) abzuhandeln, für ihn selbstverständlich modo philosophico, also streng begrifflich und rein argumentativ. Rawls erörtert das Thema nicht irgendwie und generell, sondern für die Sondersituation in einer konstitutionellen 28 OTFRIED HÖFFE Demokratie. Hier sieht er acht Momente als charakteristisch an (Theory,§§ 53-59). Der Ungehorsam besteht seinem begriff nach in „einer öffentlichen, gewaltlosen, gewissensbestimmten, aber politischen gesetzwidrigen Handlung, die gewöhnlich eine Änderung der Gesetze oder der Regierungspolitik herbeiführen soll. Mit der entsprechenden Handlung wendet man sich an den Gerechtigkeitsinn der Mehrheit und erklärt, nach eigener wohlüberlegter Ansicht seien die Grundsätze der gesellschaftlichen Zusammenarbeit zwischen freien und gleichen Menschen nicht beachtet worden.“ An dieser Stelle ist es nicht erforderlich, die einzelnen Punkte näher zu erläutern. Nur dieser Punkt sei betont: Da es, sieht Rawls zu Recht, nicht leicht ist, „jemand anderen von der Gewissenhaftigkeit seiner Handlungen zu überzeugen“, sei die „völlige Offenheit und Gewaltlosigkeit … ein Unterpfand der Aufrichtigkeit“. Und vor allem muß man bereit sein, um andere von der eigenen Gewissenhaftigkeit zu überzeugen, Nachteile, gegebenenfalls sogar eine rechtliche Bestrafung auf sich zu nehmen. Die zweite Ausnahmesituation sah Rawls beim Gedenken an den Abwurf der Atombomben auf Hiroshima und Nagasaki. Er der sich selber im zweiten Weltkrieg freiwillig zum Militärdienst meldete, auch später nie einen puren Pazifismus vertrat, veröffentlich im Jahr 1995 im Dissent die Abhandlung „50 Years after Hiroshima“, die die Atombomben auf die beiden japanischen Städte scharf verurteilt. Denn sie waren vornehmlich nicht gegen Militärziele, sondern gegen die Zivilbevölkerung gerichtet. Aus diesem Grund waren sie gravierendes Unrecht (very grave wrongs). Dasselbe erklärt Rawls übrigens gegen die britische und amerikanische Bombardierung deutscher Städte, sobald auf seiten Deutschlands wegen der Niederlage in Stalingrad keine militärische Überlegenheit bestand. Mit diesen Überlegungen kann der ohne Zweifel nur kursorische Blick auf Rawls’ Lebenswerk schließen. Daß es sich auch heute noch zu lesen lohnt, braucht nicht mehr eigens begründet zu werden: Es spricht für sich selbst. 29 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 29-45 ISSN: 1825-5167 “IL PIÙ RAGIONEVOLE PER NOI”: L’EREDITÀ RAWLSIANA NEL XXI SECOLO ALESSANDRO FERRARA Dipartimento di storia, patrimonio culturale, formazione e società University of Rome Tor Vergata Alessandro.Ferrara@uniroma2.it ABSTRACT In this paper, two most valuable aspects of Rawls's legacy in the 21st century are argued to consist of a) his post-1980 situated normative standard captured by the phrase “the most reasonable for us” and b) his view of liberal-democratic legitimacy as centered around consent on the constitutional essentials (“legitimation by constitution”). The normative models and assumptions undergirding A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism are contrasted, the rationale for rethinking liberal legitimacy is reconstructed, and the originality of Rawls's new normative standard is highlighted with reference both to classical political philosophy and the post-Wittgensteinian philosophical horizon. K EYWORDS Justice as Fairness, Reasonability, Legitimacy, Political Liberalism, Exemplarity, Rawls. È un onore per me poter partecipare a questo numero speciale di Etica & Politica/Ethics & Politics dedicato alla figura di John Rawls – forse il più grande filosofo politico del ventesimo secolo, di sicuro il più creativo fra quelli di ispirazione normativa – e poter porre in luce l'attualità e la valenza rivoluzionaria della sua eredità filosofica nel ventunesimo secolo. Inizialmente, il compito di tracciare i contorni del contributo di Rawls alla filosofia politica in maniera accessibile a chi non abbia una familiarità previa con la sua opera ma, al tempo stesso, sufficientemente informativa per coloro che l'abbiano, mi è sembrato talmente arduo da indurmi a disperare di esserne all'altezza. Riflettendo più attentamente, tuttavia, ho tratto incoraggiamento dalla considerazione che forse la portata stessa del suo contributo alla conversazione filosofica intorno a cosa significhi vivere in una società giusta – una conversazione che ha il suo avvio con La repubblica di Platone ed è ancora in corso – poteva in qualche modo facilitarmi il compito. 30 ALESSANDRO FERRARA NORMATIVISMO DEONTOLOGICO E CONTRATTUALISMO: UNA DOPPIA RINASCITA Nato a Baltimore, negli Stati Uniti, esattamente un secolo fa, istruito a Princeton e ad Oxford, John Rawls è autore di innumerevoli pubblicazioni ma essenzialmente di due grandi libri: A Theory of Justice (1971) e Political Liberalism (1993). Questi due libri differiscono notevolmente, come vedremo, nel loro modo di affrontare una sfida comune. A partire dalla modernità, ci troviamo a vivere in società in cui non è né facile né probabile che i conflitti fra interessi o valori contrapposti possano essere risolti appellandosi a una concezione condivisa del bene. Abbiamo pertanto bisogno di un metodo o di una procedura per risolvere questi conflitti in una maniera accettabile a contendenti che adottano prospettive valutative diverse e spesso in contrasto. Inoltre, in entrambe le opere Rawls auspica che tale metodo o procedura risulti accettabile ai contendenti per ragioni di principio, ovvero per il suo riflettere la giustizia, non per ragioni prudenziali o perché appare conveniente, come accade invece in un contratto hobbesiano. “Giustizia come equità” è il nome proprio con cui Rawls designa la concezione della giustizia che a suo avviso meglio può assolvere questa funzione. Spesso acclamata per aver resuscitato la filosofia politica normativa dal letargo in cui era caduta a partire dalle Considerations on Representative Government (1861) di John Stuart Mill, e per eguagliare Leviathan di Hobbes (1651) e i Two Treatises of Government (1689) di Locke come vette esemplari e classiche della riflessione sulla politica nella lingua inglese, A Theory of Justice conobbe un impatto senza precedenti. Durante i decenni immediatamente precedenti la filosofia politica normativa, ritenuta da molti sorpassata dalla scienza della politica e dalla storia del pensiero politico, era stata definita “materiale da sepoltura” (“a matter for burial”) da Leo Strauss nel 1954.1 Ma Una teoria della giustizia rappresentò invece il punto di inizio di un formidabile contropiede normativo. La domanda “Che cosa è una società giusta?” venne istantaneamente rimessa all'ordine del giorno, re-inclusa fra le grandi domande degne di considerazione. Cosa ancora più importante, la domanda ricevette una risposta talmente originale, da sospingere sulla difensiva l'influente e forse egemonica tradizione del “realismo politico”. Chi intendeva la politica come perseguimento razionale dei propri scopi adesso era sollecitato a previamente chiarire quali fra i tanti possibili scopi può valere la pena perseguire. E inoltre, nel fornire una nuova risposta alla domanda “Che cosa è una società giusta?”, Una teoria della giustizia scosse l'egemonia di una consolidata tradizione utilitarista, ampiamente dominante nel mondo anglofono, e riportò al centro dell'attenzione una risposta non conseguenzialista, ma invece deontologica e kantiana: L.Strauss, “What is Political Philosophy?”, Journal of Political Philosophy, 1957, 19, 3, 346 [343368]. 1 31 “Il più ragionevole per noi”: l’eredità rawlsiana nel XXI secolo una società giusta è una società la cui struttura di base opera sulla base di principi giusti. E quali principi sono giusti? Riprendendo e rinnovando a fondo la tradizione del contratto sociale, Rawls considera giusti quei principi che sarebbero scelti da attori razionali i quali nel corso di un esperimento mentale – denominato “la posizione originaria” e mirato a sostituire lo “stato di natura” della teoria contrattualistica primo-moderna – deliberino, dietro un velo di ignoranza, allo scopo di delineare la struttura fondamentale della società, ossia “il modo in cui le maggiori istituzioni sociali distribuiscono i doveri e i diritti fondamentali e determinano la suddivisione dei benefici della cooperazione sociale”.2 Da un punto di vista metodologico, la deliberazione nella posizione originaria comporta, secondo Rawls, il costante raffrontare i principi e costrutti filosofico-morali via via enunciati con i nostri giudizi morali concreti finché non venga raggiunto un equilibrio riflessivo, in cui tutti i principi di giustizia provvisoriamente adottati si accordano con tutti i nostri giudizi ponderati aventi ad oggetto le conseguenze ed applicazioni di tali principi.3 È inoltre importante notare che le parti contraenti, nella posizione originaria, intrattengono fra loro una certa relazione, descritta nella sezione dedicata a “Le circostanze di giustizia”,4 fra le quali è incluso l'assunto di una moderata scarsità. Riguardo alla relazione che intercorre fra gli attori impegnati nella deliberazione, il punto cruciale è che questi attori, dotati per ipotesi di bisogni e necessità ampiamente simili ma di piani di vita e concezioni del bene radicalmente diverse, “non si interessano vicendevolmente agli affari degli altri”.5 Ciò non implica che i loro fini siano egoistici – possono esserlo come non esserlo – ma che gli attori non nutrono alcuna propensione verso il favorire o ostacolare gli uni i piani degli altri. Semplicemente ignorano ovvero tollerano gli interessi altrui ma non sono disposti a sacrificare i propri interessi a beneficio altrui. Fra le circostanze di giustizia, un altro importante fattore è il “fatto del pluralismo” ovvero l'esistenza di una pluralità di concezioni del bene inconciliabili. Una società moderna non dispone di una concezione del bene a cui siano riconducibili tutte quelle più parziali: al suo interno, come abbiamo anticipato in apertura, le questioni di giustizia devono ricevere risposte accettabili per individui che sottoscrivono concezioni del bene differenti. Inoltre, al fine di generare una “scelta unanime di una particolare concezione della giustizia”6 la deliberazione ha luogo dietro un velo di ignoranza, cioè senza informazioni riguardo al proprio posto nella società, al proprio piano di vita, alle J.Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971). Revised edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), tr. it. U.Santini, a c. S.Maffettone, Una teoria della giustizia (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2004, 9a ed.), 24. D'ora in avanti questo testo verrà citato come TG. 3 TG, 56-58. 4 TG, 117-120. 5 TG, 119. 6 TG, 128. 2 32 ALESSANDRO FERRARA circostanze della vita economica e politica della propria società, o della generazione di cui si fa parte.7 Tuttavia, si suppone che le parti siano a conoscenza dei “fatti generali che riguardano la società umana”, dei “problemi politici e i principi della teoria economica” e delle “basi dell'organizzazione sociale e le leggi della psicologia umana”.8 In questa fase del pensiero di Rawls, la deliberazione veniva concepita entro il quadro di riferimento della rational choice. Infine, nella posizione originaria le diverse concezioni della giustizia sono comparate a coppie.9 La giustizia come equità, propugnata da Rawls, con i suoi due principi, è soppesata in un confronto con forme diverse di utilitarismo, con il perfezionismo ed anche con altre cosiddette teorie miste. Non è qui possibile approfondire ulteriormente questi aspetti della teoria di Rawls. Piuttosto, richiamerò il contenuto di quanto prodotto dalla deliberazione nella posizione originaria. Secondo Rawls, le parti converrebbero sulla preferibilità del concepire la struttura di base di una società giusta come ispirata dai due principi della giustizia come equità. Il primo principio afferma che Ogni persona ha un eguale diritto al più ampio sistema totale di eguali libertà fondamentali compatibilmente con un simile sistema di libertà per tutti.10 Il secondo principio afferma che Le ineguaglianze economiche e sociali devono essere: a) per il più grande beneficio dei meno avvantaggiati, compatibilmente con il principio di giusto risparmio, e b) collegate a cariche posizioni aperte a tutti in condizioni di equa eguaglianza di opportunità.11 Esiste infine una priorità lessicale del primo principio rispetto al secondo: in una società giusta la libertà non può mai essere bilanciata con altro che non sia la libertà stessa.12 DA UNA TEORIA DELLA GIUSTIZIA A LIBERALISMO POLITICO Per quanto innegabilmente e sorprendentemente innovativa in ragione del suo resuscitare l'interrogativo normativo della filosofia politica classica intorno alla giustizia e del riconcettualizzare questo interrogativo lungo linee deontologiche e non TG, 125-126. TG, 126. 9 TG, 115. 10 TG, 255. 11 TG, 255. 12 TG, 255. 7 8 33 “Il più ragionevole per noi”: l’eredità rawlsiana nel XXI secolo più utilitariste, nonché a motivo del suo riformulare dalle fondamenta il contrattualismo moderno, Una teoria della giustizia spingeva al limite estremo – grazie al suo incorporare ciò che allora Rawls chiamava il “fatto del pluralismo” –uno schema di pensiero che però, nonostante tutto, rimaneva ancora interno alla filosofia normativa fondazionale. Prendendomi la libertà di usare il linguaggio delle recensioni cinematografiche, quella che ci viene offerta è una trama abbastanza scontata e tradizionale: filosofo elabora standard normativo per giudicare il mondo, lo giustifica come superiore rispetto ad altri standard concorrenti, e si attende che tutti noi conveniamo con lui. Nelle pagine che seguono, fedele alla implicita promessa di chiarire la nozione de “il più ragionevole” evocata nel titolo, avanzo la tesi che il nucleo centrale del rivoluzionario contributo di Rawls alla filosofia politica normativa del tardo ventesimo secolo consiste nel suo spingersi oltre questo modello, sopra ricostruito, in una misura che non trova eguali fra nessuno dei suoi sodali nell'impresa filosoficopolitica liberale e normativa, ivi inclusi Habermas e Dworkin. Se Una teoria della giustizia è innovativa all'interno di un paradigma classico, Liberalismo politico rivoluziona il paradigma stesso. Il secondo Rawls affronta con pieno successo la sfida del ripensare la normatività entro un orizzonte filosofico nuovo, aperto nella prima metà del ventesimo secolo da Wittgenstein – un orizzonte entro il quale appare futile il cercare di “superare” la pluralità di universi di significato localmente condivisi tramite l'appello a un qualche fondamento trans-locale.13 Visto in retrospettiva, tuttavia, il nuovo orizzonte aperto da Wittgenstein ha prodotto più che altro uno stallo filosofico. Ha prodotto un contesto popolato o da fondazionalisti di vario genere (realisti, fenomenologi, teorici della scelta razionale, filosofi della mente, ecc.) che negano l'esistenza del problema o da contestualisti radicali che rinunciano a qualsiasi forma di validità trans-contestuale e si limitano a ricostruire la normatività di codici localmente prevalenti. Liberalismo politico ci libera da questo stallo offrendo un modello di normatività che, come una fiaccola filosofica, proietta la sua luce ben oltre la filosofia politica. Rawls cita raramente Wittgenstein e, in riferimento alle Ricerche filosofiche, si limita a richiamare l'argomento contro ogni postulazione di “certe esperienze speciali allo scopo di spiegare il modo in cui distinguiamo la memoria dalle immagini, le credenze dalle supposizioni” (TG, 454), un argomento che riecheggia nel suo escludere che “criteri normativi antecedenti” possano validare una teoria della giustizia. Ma sicuramente ha costantemente avuto presente la teorizzazione wittgensteiniana sia attraverso un confronto diretto, sia attraverso la sua lunga frequentazione del mentore Norman Malcolm e del collega ed amico Burton Dreben. Sulla presenza di presupposti wittgensteiniani nel secondo Rawls, rimando a A.Ferrara, “What the controversy over ‘the reasonable’ reveals: On Habermas's Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie”, Philosophy & Social Criticism, 2021, online first, 12-13. Più in generale, a proposito dell'influenza di Wittgenstein su Rawls, si veda la voce “Ludwig Wittgenstein”, a firma M.O'Neill, in J.Mandle e D.A.Reidy, a cura di, The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 878-891. 13 34 ALESSANDRO FERRARA Per chiarire in che senso ciò sia vero, occorre in primo luogo rispondere alla domanda: cosa c'era di sbagliato in Una teoria della giustizia? Alla fine di un lungo periodo di transizione, che si è esteso durante il decennio degli anni Ottanta, e che non posso qui ripercorrere,14 due aspetti dell'argomentazione presentata nella sua prima grande opera appaiono a Rawls irrealistici e inadeguati. Di questi due aspetti irrealistici e inadeguati siamo informati dall'autore stesso. Il primo elemento problematico è menzionato nella “Introduzione” originaria a Liberalismo politico. Dopo aver distinto il fatto del pluralismo dal neo-coniato “fatto del pluralismo ragionevole”, Rawls osserva che “il fatto della pluralità delle dottrine comprensive ragionevoli ma incompatibili dimostra che l'idea di società bene ordinata associata alla giustizia come equità, così come usata in Teoria, è irrealistica”.15 Un mutamento profondo è intervenuto. Per rilevarlo, utilizziamo come cartina di tornasole il caso dell'utilitarismo. In Una teoria della giustizia ci si attendeva che le parti, nella posizione originaria, unanimemente scartassero i principi di giustizia utilitaristi a favore invece dei due principi della giustizia come equità. La nuova idea, invece, è che nella misura in cui una dottrina comprensiva utilitarista soddisfa lo standard di essere “almeno ragionevole”, ossia di essere adottabile da leali cooperatori rispettosi degli oneri del giudizio, non può essere affatto scartata, ma deve essere tenuta in conto, come una delle varie dottrine comprensive con cui una “concezione politica della giustizia”, in grado di coagulare un consenso per intersezione, deve risultare compatibile. Il secondo elemento problematico è menzionato nella nota 7 della Lezione 2 di Liberalismo politico, dove Rawls descrive l'idea che “la teoria della giustizia è parte di quella della decisione razionale” come “un puro e semplice errore”.16 La nozione normativa del “razionale” certamente conserva un ruolo autonomo e importante all'interno di una concezione politica della giustizia, ma la giustizia come equità (adesso riconcepita come una concezione politica della giustizia) “cerca di esporre principi di giustizia ragionevoli”. A differenza di quanto altri filosofi politici, da Hobbes fino a David Gauthier, hanno tentato di fare, la giustizia come equità “non pensa minimamente di derivare tali principi [di giustizia] dal concetto di razionalità come unico concetto normativo”.17 Su alcune tappe di questa fase di transizione, rimando ad A.Ferrara, Justice and Judgment. The Rise and Prospect of the Judgment Model in Contemporary Political Philosophy (London: Sage, 1999), 17-19. Per trattazioni più estese, cfr. S.Freeman, Rawls (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 285-323 e S.Maffettone, Rawls. An Introduction (Cambridge: Polity, 2010), 189-209. 15 J.Rawls, Political Liberalism (1993). Expanded Edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), tr.it. a c. S.Veca, Liberalismo politico. Nuova edizione ampliata, (Torino: Einaudi, 2012), xl. 14 D'ora in avanti questo testo verrà citato come LP. 16 LP, 50. 17 PL, 50. 35 “Il più ragionevole per noi”: l’eredità rawlsiana nel XXI secolo Sarebbe tuttavia riduttivo identificare la portata innovativa di Liberalismo politico con la pur importante rettifica e correzione di questi due punti problematici tipici della prima versione del paradigma rawlsiano. La valenza rivoluzionaria dell'eredità rawlsiana nel ventunesimo secolo va ben oltre l'affermazione che la giustizia come equità risponde non soltanto alla normatività del razionale ma anche a quella del ragionevole. Non utilizzo l'aggettivo “rivoluzionaria” a cuor leggero, ma sostengo che il suo uso è pienamente giustificato dalla presenza di due ulteriori innovazioni. La prima può essere riassunta nell'espressione “legittimazione tramite costituzione”, coniata da Frank Michelman. La seconda consiste nell'introdurre lo standard normativo de “il più ragionevole”, non a caso ripreso nel titolo. LEGITTIMAZIONE TRAMITE COSTITUZIONE Iniziamo con la trasformazione posta in essere dalla “legittimazione tramite costituzione”. Il liberalismo politico è una risposta complessa a una domanda leggermente diversa dalla domanda “che cos'è una società giusta?”. Questa nuova domanda, sollevata all'inizio del testo, recita: “come è possibile che permanga continuativamente nel tempo una società giusta e stabile di cittadini liberi e uguali che restano profondamente divisi da dottrine religiose, filosofiche e morali ragionevoli?”.18 La risposta, in estrema sintesi, è che la stabilità può essere combinata con istituzioni giuste se, in primo luogo, in una società bene ordinata “ognuno accetta, e sa che tutti gli altri accettano, esattamente gli stessi principi di giustizia”, ovvero ognuno accetta una concezione politica della giustizia, non comprensiva e pubblicamente riconosciuta; in secondo luogo, se la struttura fondamentale di tale società (“le maggiori istituzioni politiche e sociali”, combinate in un sistema di cooperazione) è pubblicamente e giustificatamente ritenuta soddisfare quei principi; e se, in terzo luogo, i suoi cittadini “obbediscono in genere alle istituzioni di base della società, che considerano giuste”.19 Queste tre condizioni possono essere soddisfatte se si coagula, e dura nel tempo, un consenso per intersezione intorno ai principi di fondo di una concezione politica della giustizia sottoscritta dai cittadini per ragioni di principio legate alle loro diverse concezioni comprensive del bene. Infine, il consenso per intersezione non va confuso, si affretta a chiarire Rawls, con l'“idea di consenso in uso nella politica di tutti i giorni”.20 Diversamente dalla comune pratica della mediazione politica, ossia del cercare un compromesso politico individuando un comune denominatore in grado di bilanciare fini e interessi politici contrapposti e di farli incontrare a metà strada, la giustizia come equità cerca LP, 5. LP, 34. 20 LP. 37. 18 19 36 ALESSANDRO FERRARA una “validazione” in maniera in primo luogo “autonoma” (in a freestanding way), attraverso un'argomentazione filosofica. La posizione originaria, in questo contesto, acquista il nuovo ruolo di “artificio espositivo” (device of representation)21 che ci permette di delineare una concezione politica della giustizia. Se assolviamo bene questo compito “costruttivista”, possiamo nutrire la speranza – e non più che la speranza – che un consenso per intersezione venga in seguito a materializzarsi intorno a tale concezione politica della giustizia e permetta in tal modo ad istituzioni giuste di raggiungere non già una qualsivoglia stabilità, ma una “stabilità per le giuste ragioni”.22 Persino all'interno di una società bene ordinata, tuttavia, persiste la necessità di valutare l'operato delle istituzioni e delle autorità: l'esercizio legittimo del potere coercitivo deve poter essere distinto da forme arbitrarie di tale esercizio. Il liberalismo politico aggiorna e arricchisce la tradizione che, a partire da John Locke, identifica il tratto distintivo del governo legittimo con il consenso dei governati. Di fatto, in qualsiasi società, per quanto bene-ordinata, “il potere politico è sempre un potere coercitivo sostenuto dall'uso di sanzioni da parte del governo, perché solo il governo ha l'autorità di usare la forza per far rispettare le sue leggi”. Ciò che distingue questo uso della forza dalla oppressione arbitraria è la percezione, condivisa dai cittadini di un regime democratico costituzionale, che “il potere politico, in ultima istanza, è potere del pubblico, cioè dei cittadini liberi e uguali in quanto corpo collettivo”. Questa distinzione riflette certamente il lodevole proposito, da parte di una filosofia politica normativa, di tenere distinti il piano fattuale del potere arbitrario e quello dell'autorità legittima, ma certamente non implica, né può garantire, che individualmente un cittadino non possa trovarsi nella posizione di patire la coercizione di un potere politico che opera in direzione opposta alla propria volontà. Da un lato, ciascuno di noi è eguale a tutti gli altri cittadini nel condividere il ruolo di co-partecipante alla formazione della volontà politica, attraverso le elezioni e la deliberazione democratica ma, dall'altro lato, ciascuno di noi è anche un cosiddetto “privato cittadino”, in quanto tale esposto agli effetti di un potere politico che opera in modi a proprio avviso ingiusti. Come singoli cittadini potremmo trovare dubbie o ingiuste “molte delle leggi promulgate dai legislatori cui siamo soggetti”, o alcuni dei decreti emanati da un governo, o le sentenze pronunciate da una corte. Questa 23 24 25 LP, 26. J.Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited” (1999), in Political Liberalism (1993). Expanded Edition, cit. n. 13, tr.it. P.Palminiello, a c. di S.Veca, “Un riesame dell'idea di ragione pubblica”, in LP, 425 (406-437). 23 LP, 125. 24 LP, 125. 25 LP, 126. 21 22 37 “Il più ragionevole per noi”: l’eredità rawlsiana nel XXI secolo possibile congiuntura pone il problema di definire la legittimità: in altre parole, impone di specificare il criterio secondo il quale specifici esercizi del potere coercitivo da parte delle autorità pubbliche possono essere considerati legittimi e non arbitrari. A questo scopo Rawls formula il “principio liberale di legittimità”, il quale occorre in una varietà di versioni leggermente diverse. Secondo una delle versioni più ampiamente citate, L'esercizio del potere politico è corretto, e quindi giustificabile, solo quando si accorda con una costituzione tale che ci si possa ragionevolmente attendere che tutti i cittadini accolgano i suoi elementi essenziali alla luce di principi e ideali accettabili per loro in quanto persone ragionevoli e razionali.26 Questo modo di concepire l'autorità legittima sollecita alcune considerazioni. La formulazione utilizzata da Rawls parla attraverso ciò che non dice. La frase “in armonia con una costituzione” si contrappone ad altre formulazioni alternative, utilizzate in passato e ancora ampiamente diffuse. Per esempio, si contrappone all'idea, tipica delle concezioni maggioritarie e populiste nonché del “costituzionalismo politico”,27 secondo cui l'autorità agisce legittimamente quando agisce “in armonia con la volontà della maggioranza, quale si è espressa nelle ultime elezioni”. Si contrappone anche ad altre concezioni del significato della legittimità, variamente influenti: ad esempio, l'idea che l'autorità agisce legittimamente quando agisce “in armonia con il sentire della gente, rilevato attraverso sondaggi affidabili”, o “in armonia con la nostra tradizione politica”, oppure ancora “in armonia con i nostri testi sacri”. Inoltre, la formula rawlsiana richiede che la costituzione sia oggetto di consenso, almeno nei suoi elementi essenziali, da parte di tutti i cittadini in quanto liberi ed eguali e sulla base di principi ed ideali accettabili a loro “as reasonable and rational”. Il consenso dei cittadini deve essere basato su considerazioni di giustizia, non su considerazioni prudenziali. Una costituzione accettata sulla base della preoccupazione per le conseguenze politiche di un eventuale conflitto può al massimo legittimare un modus vivendi, una società stabile di tipo hobbesiano, ma non può legittimare la struttura di autorità di una società “giusta e stabile”. Inoltre, il principio liberale di legittimità rawlsiano risponde non soltanto a teorie della legittimità rivali, ma anche a condizioni inospitali per la democrazia, tipiche del ventesimo e del ventunesimo secolo: l'immensa estensione degli elettorati, la quale incoraggia l'“ignoranza razionale”; la complessità istituzionale delle società LP, 197. Cfr. R.Bellamy, Political Constitutionalism. A Republican Defence of the Constitutionality of Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); J.Waldron, Law and Disagreement, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) and The Dignity of Legislation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); M.Tushnet, Taking the Constitution Away from the Courts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). 26 27 38 ALESSANDRO FERRARA contemporanee, che influenza negativamente l'accountability delle autorità; il crescente pluralismo dei pubblici contemporanei; la qualità anonima dei processi comunicativi attraverso i quali si forma l'opinione pubblica.28 Nuove condizioni ancora meno propizie per il funzionamento di un ordinamento democratico sono andate aggiungendosi a queste, a partire dalla fine del secolo scorso: la reazione “nativista” e populista all'intensificarsi delle migrazioni, la finanziarizzazione dell'economia, l'accelerazione del tempo sociale, la nuova mutazione della sfera pubblica ad opera dei social media, l'affermarsi di forme di governance sovranazionale non sempre collegate ad un'accountability democratica, e l'impatto del costante uso di sondaggi sulla percezione di legittimità delle autorità democratiche.29 Se considerate nel loro complesso, queste condizioni avverse all'esercizio della autorialità democratica impongono una riconsiderazione della classica nozione di legittimità democratica, centrata sul “consenso dei governati”. Non possiamo attenderci, come nel liberalismo classico, che i cittadini approvino tutti i dettagli dell'attività legislativa, amministrativo-esecutiva, e giudiziaria delle istituzioni democratiche. Dobbiamo accontentarci oggi di un criterio meno esigente, il quale esoneri singoli esiti di tali attività dalla giustificazione diretta: esisteranno sempre gruppi o categorie di cittadini per i quali qualche provvedimento legislativo, sentenza o decreto è ingiusto e coercitivo. E tuttavia il consenso dei governati può continuare a fungere da metro per valutare l'esercizio legittimo dell'autorità democratica, se e qualora venga appropriatamente riformulato come un giudizio riguardante gli “elementi costituzionali essenziali” con i quali tutti gli atti legislativi, esecutivi e giudiziari devono semplicemente essere coerenti. L'espressione michelmaniana “legittimazione tramite costituzione” coglie in modo conciso il cuore dell'innovazione teorica apportata da Rawls alla tradizione liberale: date le proibitive condizioni, fra le molte citate, di iperpluralismo,30 complessità istituzionale, anonimità dei processi comunicativi nella sfera pubblica, ha senso cercare di deflettere “domande divisive in merito ad alternative legislative, politiche e valoriali (questa legge o linea politica merita rispetto o piuttosto disprezzo da parte di una persona assennata?), verso una domanda differente (questa legge o politica è costituzionale?), la risposta alla quale deve essere pubblicamente ovvia, o in ogni caso acquisibile attraverso modalità che Cfr. F.Michelman, “How Can the People Ever Make the Laws? A Critique of Deliberative Democracy”, in J.Bohman e W.Rehg, a cura di, Deliberative Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 154. 29 Rimando qui ad A.Ferrara, The Democratic Horizon. Hyperpluralism and the Renewal of Political Liberalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 8-12. 30 Ibid, 89-92. 28 39 “Il più ragionevole per noi”: l’eredità rawlsiana nel XXI secolo sono .... meno aperte a dispute divisive di quanto lo siano i disaccordi di merito così evitati (deflected)”.31 LA RIVOLUZIONE DE “IL PIÙ RAGIONEVOLE” La seconda innovazione presente in Liberalismo politico è di una portata tale da meritare di essere menzionata nel titolo di questo lavoro: riguarda lo standard normativo de “il più ragionevole”.32 “Il più ragionevole” può acquisire pertinenza in qualunque momento, quando valutiamo una proposta legislativa, il pronunciamento di una corte costituzionale, uno schema di struttura fondamentale, un “bill of rights”, e ovviamente quando, in cerca di una giustificazione accettabile per la struttura fondamentale della società, ci confrontiamo in merito a concezioni politiche della giustizia alternative. Il modo migliore per chiarire il significato de “il più ragionevole” è ritornare alla domanda intorno a cosa renda la “giustizia come equità” la migliore base normativa per una società giusta e stabile, ricostruendo l'evoluzione interna del pensiero di Rawls su questo punto. In Una teoria della giustizia, come abbiamo visto, ciò che rende la “giustizia come equità” preferibile all'utilitarismo e alle altre concezioni concorrenti è il fatto che, nella posizione originaria, attori razionali che deliberano dietro un velo di ignoranza unanimemente troverebbero più razionale fondare la struttura fondamentale della futura società sui suoi principi. In un certo senso, la loro scelta è dettata da schemi oggettivi della decisione razionale, i quali si fanno strada, per così dire, attraverso (e forse nonostante) le preferenze soggettive degli attori. Già nel 1980, in “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory”, un articolo importante e molto più prossimo temporalmente a Una teoria della giustizia che non a Liberalismo politico, Rawls si libera di questo tradizionale modello normativo e ripensa radicalmente le credenziali normative della giustizia come equità, quando afferma che What justifies a conception of justice is not its being true to an order antecedent to and given to us, but its congruence with our deeper understanding of ourselves and F.Michelman, “Political-Liberal Legitimacy and the Question of Judicial Restraint”, Jus Cogens, 2019, 1, 65, tr. it. AF. Cfr. inoltre A.Ferrara e F.Michelman, Legitimation by Constitution. A Dialogue on Political Liberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). 32 Questa formulazione, a prima vista farraginosa, risponde alla necessità di rendere in italiano il grado di superlativo relativo attribuito da Rawls all'aggettivo “ragionevole” nell'espressione “the most reasonable”. Una più fluida e leggibile traduzione italiana come “lo standard del ‘più ragionevole’” scalerebbe al ribasso quel grado, facendo diventare il “più ragionevole” un mero comparativo. 31 40 ALESSANDRO FERRARA our aspirations, and our realization that, given our history and the traditions embedded in our public life, it is the most reasonable doctrine for us.33 Successivamente, nel 1993 in Liberalismo politico, ancora una volta la giustizia come equità viene difesa non come una concezione che attori razionali selezionerebbero entro un paniere di visioni concorrenti, bensì sulla base del suo essere, fra tutte le concezioni politiche della giustizia “almeno ragionevoli”, “la più ragionevole per noi”.34 Infine, nella nuova “Introduzione”, scritta per la edizione ampliata di Liberalismo politico e pubblicata nel 1996, Rawls muove un passo ulteriore verso il riconciliare normatività e pluralismo ragionevole, immaginando che una società liberaldemocratica può divenire la sede di una “serie (family) di ragionevoli concezioni politiche liberali della giustizia”, alcune delle quali possono risultare “del tutto incompatibili” l'una con l'altra.35 Tuttavia, anche nel contesto di una pluralità non più soltanto di concezioni comprensive del bene ragionevoli, ma ora anche di concezioni politiche della giustizia, tutte per definizione ragionevoli, la giustizia come equità è ancora considerata da Rawls “la più ragionevole”, a motivo del suo soddisfare al meglio, in rapporto ai suoi competitori (per esempio, versioni “politiche” dell'utilitarismo, la democrazia deliberativa discorsiva, il repubblicanesimo, ecc.), tre condizioni: a) la specificazione di certi diritti, libertà, e opportunità; b) il suo implicare una speciale priorità di queste libertà; e c) il suo includere misure che assicurano a tutti i cittadini, indipendentemente dalla loro posizione sociale, adeguate risorse per utilizzare efficacemente le loro libertà e opportunità.36 Perché questo standard normativo, “il più ragionevole”, è così importante? Perchè rompe un incantesimo filosofico di cui la filosofia politica occidentale è rimasta prigioniera per oltre 24 secoli, dal tempo in cui Platone formulò il suo mito della caverna ne La repubblica, ed inaugura una nuova prospettiva che ancora attende una piena elaborazione. Il testo platonico narra di una caverna sotterranea in cui prigionieri legati alle loro panche hanno di fronte una parete su cui delle ombre vengono proiettate da oggetti illuminati da un fuoco posizionato dietro di essi. Le ombre sono tutto ciò che ai prigionieri è dato vedere e sono scambiate per la totalità del reale, una forma di credenza che simboleggia l'opinione, mutevole e inconcludente. Uno dei prigionieri si libera, riesce ad ascendere verso il mondo esterno, e a fatica e dolorosamente acquisisce una conoscenza vera degli oggetti e del sole, la fonte di ogni luce. Decide di ritornare nella caverna ad informare i suoi compagni, ma è trattato con derisione e disprezzo per il suo essere temporaneamente incapace J.Rawls, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory”, The Journal of Philosophy, 1980, 88, 519 (512-572). 34 PL, 28 35 LP, xix-xx. 36 LP, xix. 33 41 “Il più ragionevole per noi”: l’eredità rawlsiana nel XXI secolo di discernere le ombre, a causa del rapido passaggio dalla piena luce del mondo esterno alla penombra della caverna. Rischia persino di essere ucciso, quando tenta di slegare i suoi compagni al fine di rendere loro possibile percorrere la stessa ascesa fuori dalla caverna.37 Molti significati metafisici, morali e di antropologia filosofica sono stati attribuiti al mito platonico della caverna, ma il suo messaggio filosofico-politico è che ha pienamente titolo a governare soltanto colui il quale, preso come rappresentante di una intera classe, ha avuto il coraggio di abbandonare la doxa, che prevale dentro la caverna, e ha sopportato la sofferenza che accompagna la ricerca delle vere idee e il liberarsi dagli eidola, e successivamente ha sopportato la sofferenza dell'essere violentemente rifiutato da coloro che, riscendendo nella caverna, ha cercato di convincere ad abbandonare le false certezze e ad abbracciare la verità delle cose. La legittimità dell'esercitare una funzione di autorità e governo poggia sulla supremazia della episteme, posseduta da chi governa, rispetto alla mera doxa. Come Hannah Arendt ha per prima notato,38 fondare il governo legittimo sul possesso della conoscenza vera – l'insegnamento profondo del mito della caverna – comporta una pericolosa ambiguità. Per un verso il mito attiva una spinta profondamente critica, anti-tradizionalista e anti-convenzionale e dunque contiene anche un potenziale trasformativo, persino messianico, senza eguali. Per l'altro verso, invece, contiene un seme di autoritarismo, incistato nel primato della visione in solitario rispetto all'agire di concerto o all'auto-definirsi insieme come collettività, nonché nella subordinazione della politica all'etica (all'idea del Bene) o, nelle versioni moderne e secolari del mito (per esempio, il marxismo e il darwinismo sociale inaugurato da Spencer), un momento di autoritarismo ancorato alla subordinazione della politica a una verità scientifica di cui qualcuno si fa interprete. Gli oltre 24 secoli trascorsi dal tempo di Platone hanno innestato molte variazioni sul corpo di questa narrazione, ma il suo messaggio profondo non è stato minimamente intaccato. L'idea del Bene, simboleggiata dal sole, è stata nel tempo sostituita da quella della volontà rivelata di un Dio nelle religioni monoteiste, da un'antropologia della natura desiderante propria dell'essere umano, dalle leggi dell'evoluzione, dalla ragione nella storia, dalla dinamica della lotta di classe e dalla emancipazione rivoluzionaria. Sottesa a tutte queste variazioni è l'idea che la conoscenza vera, la quale precede ed è indipendente da ogni deliberazione intersoggettiva, costituisce lo standard per distinguere buona e cattiva deliberazione nella sfera pratica, nonché il fondamento dell'uso legittimo del potere coercitivo, dell'obbligo politico e di tutti gli altri concetti normativi della filosofia politica. Platone, Repubblica, 514a-517a, tr.it a cura di G.Reale e R.Radice (Milano: Bompiani, 2009), 737-743. 38 Cfr. H.Arendt, “What is Authority?”, in Between Past and Future (New York: Viking Press, 1961), tr.it. T.Gargiulo, con una introduzione di A.Dal Lago, Tra passato e futuro (Milano: Garzanti, 1999), 158-159. 37 42 ALESSANDRO FERRARA L'ultima reincarnazione di questo approccio epistemico alla filosofia politica normativa è costituita dal programma filosofico della “giustizia come equità” quale ci viene proposto da Rawls in Una teoria della giustizia. Si tratta della versione più debole che si possa immaginare del mito della caverna, situata al margine estremo – per usare una metafora topologica – del modello filosofico platonico, un margine oltre il quale il modello subisce una trasformazione radicale. Infatti, in Una teoria della giustizia il fatto del pluralismo è già incorporato nelle cosiddette “circostanze della giustizia”: lo scopo della “giustizia come equità” è di permetterci, con i suoi due principi ordinati gerarchicamente, di costruire un ordinamento giusto pur a fronte del coesistere di idee diverse del bene dentro la caverna. E in ultima analisi la validità normativa della “giustizia come equità” deriva dal consenso di noi popolo della caverna, che unanimemente ne riconosciamo la superiorità rispetto ad altre proposte concorrenti – una premessa che ovviamente Platone mai avrebbe accettato. Però Una teoria della giustizia rimane ancora dentro il perimetro del mito della caverna, perché incorpora l'aspettativa, denunciata da Rawls stesso come “irrealistica” in Liberalismo politico,39 che ciascuno, nella caverna, perverrà alla fine a riconoscere la superiorità della “giustizia come equità” rispetto a tutti gli altri resoconti concorrenti di ciò che esiste al di fuori della caverna – come se gli “oneri del giudizio” potessero essere miracolosamente neutralizzati da un qualche argomento filosofico.40 Questa concezione epistemica della validità normativa e della legittimità – le cose giuste sono tali perché in ultima analisi riflettono la verità – ci permette, come un mezzo di contrasto, di misurare la portata rivoluzionaria dell'innovazione introdotta da Rawls quando considera la giustizia come equità cogente per noi non in quanto “riflette un ordine di cose antecedente e a noi dato (it is true to an order of things antecedent to and given to us)” – come il mondo degli oggetti all'esterno della caverna platonica – ma in quanto è congruente “con la nostra più profonda interpretazione di noi stessi e delle nostre aspirazioni (with our deeper understanding of ourselves and our aspirations)” e in quanto, alla luce della nostra storia e delle nostre tradizioni, è “la più ragionevole per noi”. Rimane da chiarire il senso in cui questa concezione della normatività della giustizia può essere considerata non come la negazione del mito della caverna – una negazione articolata dalla prospettiva scettica di Machiavelli e Hobbes – ma come un suo possibile arricchimento. Ai fini di questa chiarificazione, dobbiamo soltanto immaginare che non già uno soltanto bensì un gruppo di filosofi – coloro a cui è destinato il governo della caverna – stiano ridirigendosi verso la caverna per motivazioni non dissimili da quelle 39 40 Si veda nota 15, supra. Cfr. LP, 51-55. 43 “Il più ragionevole per noi”: l’eredità rawlsiana nel XXI secolo rinvenibili nella versione canonica.41 Anche in questo caso, desiderano comunicare a tutti che cosa hanno visto e poi riformare la vita nella caverna. Non è verosimile che sulla via del ritorno che desiderino fermarsi per un attimo, davanti all'entrata della caverna, per consultarsi fra loro, scambiare qualche impressione e provare a vedere se sia loro possibile condividere un resoconto comune che poi qualcuno come portavoce esporrà a tutti? E se durante questa conversazione, che si svolge né pienamente dentro né del tutto fuori della caverna, si girasse in tondo senza addivenire a una conclusione, e cominciassero a convincersi che il loro dialogo non ha molte possibilità di produrre un unico resoconto, non si accorderebbero i filosofi per limitare il resoconto comune solo a quelle osservazioni e prescrizioni che sono oggetto di completa condivisione e per rendere queste osservazioni e prescrizioni condivise l'unica base su cui può esercitare autorità legittima nella caverna? Quanto alle osservazioni e prescrizioni che invece risultassero controverse, non sarebbero d'accordo sul bandire ogni imposizione forzosa di esse, da parte di chiunque di loro si trovasse a governare un segmento istituzionale della caverna, e sul riservare ogni discussione in merito ad esse ad ambiti particolari, non dotati di forza coercitiva, al fine di esplorare se l'area di condivisione non possa per caso essere espansa ulteriormente nel futuro? Muoviamo un passo indietro e riflettiamo su ciò che i filosofi stanno compiendo. Dovremmo descrivere il loro convergere sulla proibizione di imporre con la forza della legge parti controverse dei loro resoconti, affinché nessuno di tali resoconti possa trionfare o soccombere a causa della contingente distribuzione del potere, come una fra le tante “opinioni” che venivano scambiate a proposito delle ombre? Certo che no, dovremmo ammettere. Dovremmo allora descrivere la proibizione di imporre parti controverse dei resoconti con la forza della legge come un principio che i filosofi hanno scoperto nel mondo esterno come hanno scoperto la luce del sole? Ancora una volta, non potremmo che rispondere negativamente. Dovremmo invece riconoscere che i filosofi, durante la loro conversazione di traverso all'entrata della caverna, non associano la propria posizione pro-pluralismo né con la doxa né con l'episteme, ma semplicemente con la più ragionevole delle opzioni per loro, ovvero con ciò che Rawls chiamerebbe il più ragionevole principio in base a cui governare la caverna, individuato dai filosofi attraverso la loro ragione Questa interpretazione estensiva trova ancoramento in alcuni passaggi (519d–520a del Libro VII), in cui Platone fa discutere Socrate e Glaucone riguardo alle implicazioni del mito nel caso che una molteplicità di prigionieri, più o meno coincidente con la futura classe dirigente di filosofi, lasciasse la caverna e poi vi rientrasse. Per una versione più elaborata della lettura qui proposta, e ulteriori riflessioni sull'utilità del mito della caverna per mettere a fuoco l'operazione rawlsiana in Liberalismo politico, rimando a A.Ferrara, “Sideways at the entrance of the cave: A pluralist footnote to Plato”, in V.Kaul e I.Salvatore, a cura di, What is Pluralism? (Londra e New York: Routledge, 2020), 81-98. 41 44 ALESSANDRO FERRARA pubblica. Nel corso della loro consultazione i filosofi avrebbero dato origine alla ragione pubblica e ai suoi due standard: il ragionevole e il più ragionevole. Se questa descrizione è sensata, la normatività di ciò che è “più ragionevole per noi” – si tratti di una concezione politica della giustizia, una proposta legislativa, un programma politico – poggia non su una base epistemica, come se questo qualcosa fosse stato scoperto all'esterno della caverna, ma sul giudizio che se ne formano i soggetti deliberanti in base alla riflessione. La collocazione spaziale, di traverso all'entrata della caverna, simboleggia che “il più ragionevole” in qualche modo appartiene a due mondi – alla natura imperfetta del soggetto della giustizia e alla qualità ideale della giustizia – e li combina in un mix ottimale “per un caso singolo”. Un'anticipazione di questa forma di normatività esemplare, in grado di affermare l'unicità piuttosto che sussumerla sotto qualcosa di altro, è rinvenibile nella figura rousseauiana del legislatore, ne Il contratto sociale. Secondo quanto affermato nel Capitolo 8 del Libro II de Il contratto sociale, quando consiglia i cittadini nella loro deliberazione, un buon legislatore non dovrebbe mirare a far loro adottare “leggi buone in se stesse”,42 ma piuttosto leggi adatte al popolo che alla fine dovrà ad esse obbedire. Il messaggio di Rousseau all'indirizzo del potere costituente dei cittadini è inequivoco: Non promulgate leggi (costituzionali) che non siete adatti a rispettare. Questo messaggio non implica che la selezione della “struttura fondamentale” non risponda a principi, sia di natura prudenziale oppure un mero riflesso delle preferenze immediate dei costituenti. Piuttosto, significa che i cittadini dovrebbero bilanciare l'ottimalità principiale – un'ottimalità coincidente per Rousseau con la finalità del contratto sociale, proteggere la persona e la proprietà di ogni associato lasciandolo “non meno libero di prima”;43 per Rawls coincidente con i due principi della giustizia come equità – con le loro esperienze storiche e cultura politica in quanto consociandi in via di darsi una costituzione. Rawls aggiunge a questo schema l'“equilibrio riflessivo” come risorsa metodologica per rendersi conto di quando un bilanciamento soddisfacente è stato raggiunto. La normatività della giustizia come equità deriva allora non dal suo costituire l'esito di un esperimento mentale decontestualizzato, ma dal suo essere la concezione politica della giustizia più ragionevole per noi, dove essere “la più ragionevole” significa che, fra tutte le concezioni della giustizia “almeno ragionevoli”, è quella che realizza la miglior congruenza – testata attraverso l'equilibrio riflessivo – tra i suoi due principi, autonomamente individuati come validi (i quali vengono introdotti all'inizio e hanno semplicemente cambiato status, non sostanza, rispetto a Una teoria della giustizia) e quegli aspetti storici, politici, culturali rilevanti per le persone che intendono costituire un ordinamento politico. J.J.Rousseau, Il contratto sociale (1762), tr.it. di J.Bertolazzi, note di A.Marchili e introd. di A.Burgio (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2003), Libro II, Cap. 8, 117. 43 Ibid., Libro I, Cap. 6, 79. 42 45 “Il più ragionevole per noi”: l’eredità rawlsiana nel XXI secolo In sintesi: al cuore dell'eredità di Rawls per il ventunesimo secolo troviamo un approccio del tutto nuovo alla giustizia e alla legittimità, che si situa all'altezza dell'intuizione, propria della svolta linguistica inaugurata fra gli altri da Wittgenstein, intorno alla fallacia di aspirare a punti archimedici che sovrastino la normatività situata di forme di vita e giochi linguistici sempre presenti al plurale, ovvero, nel lessico di Rawls, che si situa all'altezza del “fatto del pluralismo ragionevole” e tuttavia rimane altrettanto normativo quanto gli standard e approcci del nostro passato filosofico. 47 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 47-71 ISSN: 1825-5167 DOPO RAWLS? SEBASTIANO MAFFETTONE Professore Straordinario di Filosofia Politica Università Luiss, Roma maffettone@gmail.com ABSTRACT I address in the following pages the decisive question of "after Rawls", of the legacy of his work and (brutally said) of what will happen to the Rawlsian paradigm. I devote Section 2 to the moralism-realism opposition in political theory. I then discuss - in Section 3- a complex trend in contemporary philosophy constituted by the postmodern climate and by what I call the new metaphysics. This trend tends, together with the political crisis of liberal-democracy, to make the traditional conception of normativity impossible. This is followed, in Section 4, by an argument that both philosophical-political approaches discussed here, the moralistic and the realist, ultimately need some conception of normativity. But, it is said in Section 5, in light of contemporary criticism, such a conception has to be different from the top-down conception of the past. The last Section 6 is finally devoted to some inconclusive conclusions about the future of political theory and the possibility of reformulating within it a conception of the normative bottom up. K EYWORDS Rawls, Realism-Moralism, Crisis of Normativity, A new Normativity?, The future. 1. RAWLS E DOPO Non è facile scrivere un paper su Rawls in occasione del centenario della sua nascita. I ricordi e le personal impressions si mescolano con l’impatto teorico che il lavoro di Rawls ha avuto sulla comunità scientifica e su molti di noi. E su di me in particolar modo, per la verità. Inoltre, non si può e non si deve trascurare il discorso sulla legacy dell’opera rawlsiana a più di cinquanta anni dall’uscita di A Theory of Justice. Mi sembrerebbe infatti assurdo rinunciare a presentare un’ipotesi -ovviamente in via di tentativo- su quello che succederà al paradigma rawlsiano alla luce degli sviluppi recenti della filosofia e della politica. Come sappiamo, Rawls in filosofia politica (e non solo) ha provocato una vera e propria rivoluzione epistemologica. Al cuore di questo radicale cambiamento c’è la centralità del punto di vista normativo in political theory, una centralità per cui la politica ha come suo punto di riferimento primo e essenziale l’etica. In seguito alla rivoluzione di cui si è detto, una disciplina, per l’appunto la filosofia politica, che sembrava oramai esangue, è diventata -proprio attraverso l’opera di Rawls- centrale nell’ambito accademico e 48 SEBASTIANO MAFFETTONE nel discorso pubblico. Dopo la pubblicazione di A Theory of Justice (1971), si è aperta quella che è stata giustamente battezzata “The Rawls’ Era”. E, in questo periodo, nessuno che si occupasse di filosofia politica -come ha scritto un critico di Rawls del calibro di Robert Nozick- ha potuto procedere in maniera seria e riconosciuta senza prendere le mosse dal paradigma della teoria della giustizia rawlsiana. Gli anni passati in questo orizzonte sono stati anni di fertile discussione. Non è sorprendente che la critica nel suo complesso avesse di mira la base normativa dell’approccio rawlsiano. In particolare, sembrava a molti che la Terza Parte della Theory -in special modo quella che presentava il modello di una congruenza tra il giusto e il buono- fosse da un lato utopica in senso cattivo (non trovasse cioè riscontro nella realtà) e pericolosamente contraria a quel pluralismo che pure il liberal Rawls non poteva non considerare fondamentale. In effetti, perlomeno nei primi anni della Rawls’Era, i dubbi sul pluralismo hanno avuto la precedenza sulla questione dell’utopismo. Da questo punto di vista, la tesi secondo cui “Una” (lo si noti, non “La”) teoria della giustizia potesse avere l’effetto di fare coincidere le visioni del mondo di ognuno di noi con i principi di giustizia della teoria in questione sembrava quantomeno azzardata. Come sappiamo, Rawls si impegnò molto per rispondere a critiche imperniate sulla questione del pluralismo. L’uscita di Political Liberalism (1993-96) ci fece comprendere che c’era almeno una possibilità di leggere la Theory in maniera compatibile con il pluralismo liberale. Che questa opzione fosse poi quella prediletta da Rawls stesso ebbe naturalmente una certa importanza. Come la ebbero le condizioni e gli assiomi che bisognava fare propri per accettare la tesi -centrale in Political Liberalism- basata sullo overlapping consensus. L’incastro tra le visioni del mondo di ognuno di noi (il “buono”) e alcuni punti fermi condivisi su questioni essenziali di giustizia (il “giusto”) poteva avvenire se e solo se si fosse accettata l’idea di una relativa neutralità della giustizia. In altre parole, per consentire al modello proposto in Political Liberalism si doveva supporre che i conflitti sul buono fossero insuperabili mentre quelli sul giusto componibili nell’ambito di un regime liberal-democratico. Quest’ultimo era preso come default e come fondamento ultimo della legittimazione di sistema. Per parecchi di noi, magari con qualche esitazione e qualche distinguo, una soluzione del genere era congeniale. Cosa che ci consentì di continuare a pensare in un orizzonte lato sensu rawlsiano. In tutto questo percorso, il secondo dilemma posto nel periodo after Rawls era in un primo momento parzialmente rimosso. Mi riferisco qui al problema dell’utopismo o, come sarebbe meglio dire, della supposta mancanza di realismo implicita nel paradigma rawlsiano. Questa critica, all’inizio abbastanza latente, si è però diffusa e irrobustita (se così si può dire) negli ultimi anni. Le ragioni per ciò sono varie, sia di origine storico-fattuale sia di natura teoretica. Da un lato, il sistema liberaldemocratico -che costituiva per Rawls il default e l’assioma centrale del consenso sul giusto- era evidentemente in crisi. Brexit. Trump, jilets jaunes, populismi, diversi 49 Dopo Rawls? regimi che dall’Europa Orientale alla Cina e alla Turchia mettevano in seria discussione il primato della liberal-democrazia, obbligavano anche ad avere dubbi sull’asse portante del consenso rawlsiano. Dall’altro lato, quello della teoria, sulla scia di uno scritto di Bernard Williams, si è cominciato a parlare di un eccessivo “moralismo” nell’impostazione rawlsiana. La critica in questione era poi mossa in termini di contrapposizione con un alquanto generico “realismo”. La discussione sul deficit di realismo nell’approccio rawlsiano è diventata così standard nel periodo recente, come vedremo nel prosieguo, ed è stata di solito imperniata su una critica della normatività. A mio avviso, però, più che la discussione stessa conta lo spirito che la sottende. Almeno così sosterrò io nel seguito. Uno spirito nuovo, nell’ambito di quella che si può chiamare “temperie postmoderna”, si presenta come fortemente scettico di quel rapporto tra impegno individuale e risultati collettivi che è così intrinseco nell’idea di normatività nonché nell’opera e nell’uomo Rawls. Ancora di più, lo spirito che impregna la temperie postmoderna e l’ancor vaga nebulosa metafisica che le succede si rivela ostile alla mediazione razionale tra realtà e conoscenza. Quest’ultimo punto è rilevante non solo per la generale critica all’Illuminismo e al razionalismo che viene presupposta, ma anche per la mentalità e l’etica personale di chi proponga una sua versione di teoria politica. Chiunque abbia conosciuto Rawls ha presente la sua convinzione che esista una specifica missione del dotto. Missione che poi consisterebbe all’incirca nell’impegno personale per una teoria che contribuisca a migliorare la vita delle persone a cominciare dai worst off. La “ragione cinica” (il termine è di Timothy Morton) che pervade tanto la temperie postmoderna quanto la nuova metafisica insiste sulla impossibilità pratica di una fede civile così concepita. E’ anche di notevole interesse il fatto che uno scetticismo teorico del genere trovi un riscontro forte nella realtà politica. Pochi oramai confidano nella possibilità che l’impegno progressista, individuale o collettivo che sia, possa generare risultati significativi nell’ambito di un regime liberal-democratico. Il tipo di consapevolezza rawlsiano, e l’impegno morale che vi corrisponde, diventa allora per molti un esercizio solo utopico e fondamentalmente sterile. In altre parole, la speranza, forse utopica, che la filosofia politica come progetto normativo sulla struttura delle istituzioni maggiori della società sia in grado di preparare il terreno per assetti istituzionali a loro volta capaci di migliorare la qualità collettiva della vita, appare tramontata. Ciò permette, a mio avviso, di coniugare l’esprit philosophique del momento -che include la temperie postmoderna- con l’accusa di mancanza di realismo al paradigma rawlsiano. In termini generali, l’analisi così concepita ha un flavour genealogico. Il paradigma rawlsiano deve la sua nascita e il suo formidabile impatto alla congiunzione tra un clima politico-culturale e un’impostazione filosofica generale. Il clima politico-culturale è quello degli Stati Uniti dopo il Vietnam e le marce sui diritti civili. Un clima in cui una protesta diffusa in nome della giustizia sociale aveva bisogno di 50 SEBASTIANO MAFFETTONE una riconciliazione con la struttura di base di una società liberal-democratica. Che è poi quella fornita da A Theory of Justice. Dietro questo libro, però, c’è anche lo sviluppo che la filosofia americana aveva fatto, tutto sommato operando una connessione tra il pragmatismo liberal-democratico alla Dewey e l’impostazione analitica alla maniera di Carnap. Questa connessione trova forse il suo momento più alto nella scuola di Harvard, con l’opera di Quine, Goodman e Putnam. Rawls viene anche di qui. Ora, a sessant’anni dall’uscita dal capolavoro di Rawls, la situazione storica è profondamente mutata. Non c’è più l’eco di una protesta in nome della giustizia e non c’è più quella speranza che la liberal-democrazia fosse “la” via per affrontare al meglio i principali problemi politici e sociali. E, se vogliamo, non c’è neppure l’opzione di prendere il modello degli Stati Uniti come esempio virtuoso da seguire. Questa sfiducia diffusa ha trovato un contro-altare filosofico -secondo la mia interpretazione- nella temperie post-moderna e nel diffondersi di una nuova metafisica nel cui ambito un’escatologia nascosta tende a sostituire la razionalità della tradizione. L’esito che più ci riguarda della congiunzione tra sfiducia diffusa nella cultura politica contemporanea e una filosofia come questa consiste nella possibile perdita della dimensione normativa. Con questo, genericamente io intendo la crisi del progetto moderno ispirato all’idealismo, progetto che -da Kant a Rawls- confida di potere trovare un interesse morale e sostanziale condivido da cui fare derivare una visione di società ben-ordinata. Se questo tipo di analisi non è fallace, allora il futuro della political theory dopo Rawls è quanto meno problematico. E dovrebbe passare attraverso una riformulazione della dimensione normativa. Su questa base, affronto nelle pagine seguenti la questione decisiva del “dopo Rawls”, della legacy della sua opera e (detto brutalmente) di che fine farà il paradigma rawlsiano. Nel prosieguo, dedico il paragrafo 2 alla contrapposizione moralismo-realismo, tema su cui esiste oggi come oggi una letteratura sterminata e che qui copre soltanto un aspetto parziale della tesi principale. Discuto poi il paragrafo 3 -nel corso di un lungo detour -quantomeno anomalo nella letteratura filosoficopolitica- alle vicende di un trend complesso della filosofia contemporanea costituito dalla temperie postmoderna e da quella che io chiamo nuova metafisica. Questo trend tende, insieme alla crisi politica della liberal-democrazia, a rendere impossibile la concezione tradizionale della normatività. Segue, nel paragrafo 4, una tesi in cui si sostiene che entrambi gli approcci filosofico-politico qui discussi, quello moralistico e quello realistico, hanno al fine bisogno di qualche concezione della normatività. Ma, si dice nel paragrafo 5, alla luce delle critiche contemporanee, tale concezione ha da essere diversa da quella top down del passato. L’ultimo paragrafo, il 6, è infine dedicato ad alcune inconcludenti conclusioni sul futuro della teoria politica e sulla possibilità di riformulare al suo interno una concezione del normativo bottom up. Ultimo punto, ma solo in ordine di lista, riguarda il punto interrogativo nel titolo di questo paper: è stato inserito per sottolineare la natura speculativa e ipotetica dell’ipotesi interpretativa presentata. 51 Dopo Rawls? 2. REALISMO/MORALISMO La critica realista alla received view Rawlsiana viene di solito proposta sulla scia di una assai nota distinzione di Bernard Williams. Questa distinzione vede da una parte il moralismo (politico) della received view e dall’altra come controparte il realismo (politico). Termini come moralismo e realismo sono giocoforza vaghi e inoltre sono molto generali, per cui all’interno di essi si possono distinguere diverse versioni sia di moralismo che di realismo, anche se -come vedremo- mentre il moralismo corrisponde a un’identità piuttosto precisa il realismo è più una congerie di obiezioni diverse al moralismo che un paradigma indipendente. Non è impossibile tracciare una distinzione di base tra questi termini. L’approccio -che Williams definisce moralistico- è quello di Rawls e del paradigma delle teorie della giustizia. Vi si possono includere, oltre Rawls, illustri studiosi contemporanei quali Dworkin, Nagel, Scanlon, Joshua Cohen e così via. In linea di massima, gli autori moralisti sono anche liberali, come Rawls. Ma l’impostazione moralistica è più ampia e al suo interno si possono considerare anche libertari come Nozick e marxisti come G.A. Cohen. Si può dire che il moralismo così inteso tragga le sue origini da una tradizione ininterrotta che risale ad Aristotele. L’impostazione dei moralisti è schiettamente normativa, se non altro nel senso che insiste sugli aspetti prescrittivi di una teoria, trascurando in parte gli aspetti descrittivi. In altre parole, insiste più su ciò che si dovrebbe fare che sulla situazione storica e di fatto in cui ci si trova. Presuppone così una certa armonia naturale tra ragione e realtà, tra soggetto e storia. L’etica fornisce di solito la base su cui fondano i giudizi normativi. E la politica è come un fiume che scorre nell’alveo dell’etica (la metafora è di Nozick). Anche se ci sono vari modi in cui la derivazione della normatività del politico dall’etica può avvenire, non c’è dubbio che la filosofia politica delle received view moralistica parta dai concetti di good e right più o meno alla maniera in cui Rawls li ha formulati e distinti. Negli ultimi anni proprio la critica della normatività è diventata la base comune degli approcci realisti. Contrapponendosi, alla normatività etica dei moralisti, i realisti insistono sul fatto che la politica ha una sua imprescindibile autonomia. Nell’orizzonte realista la politica non può e non deve derivare da supposte verità dell’etica -i realisti rifiutano quella che Geuss 2008 ha chiamato “ethics first view”quanto piuttosto da alcune vicende che permanentemente caratterizzano la realtà della politica. Non si può pensare -secondo questa critica- che la teoria politica sia semplicemente uno strumento per fornire prescrizioni politiche derivate da ideali pre-politici di natura morale (il cosiddetto “enactment model”). Oppure, che gli ideali morali costituiscono vincoli a priori su quello che la politica può fare (Rossi e Sleat). Qualcosa del genere è, per i realisti, impossibile se non altro perché di regola il conflitto prevale sul consenso e pure su concetti come buono e giusto il disaccordo regna sovrano. Anche in questo caso, la tradizione alle spalle dei realisti è 52 SEBASTIANO MAFFETTONE robusta e antica, da Machiavelli e Hobbes -per non parlare di Tucidide- ai contemporanei realisti politici nell’area delle Relazioni Internazionali. In buona sostanza, i realisti criticano quella vera e propria “escape from politics” (il termine escape è adoperato da W. Galston) che costituirebbe ai loro occhi la caratteristica più evidente del moralismo. I moralisti, in questa ottica, confonderebbero sistematicamente la politica con l’etica applicata. Tra l’altro, in questo modo finendo con il tradire proprio quel liberalismo che sta tanto cuore a Rawls e a molti dei suoi seguaci moralisti. Infatti, applicare l’etica con gli strumenti della politica implica coercizione su questioni al fondo controverse come lo sono di norma quelle morali. E ogni buon liberale dovrebbe sapere che dove c’è disaccordo – e in etica spesso c’è- imporre una moralità in maniera coercitiva cozza con quella autonomia dei singoli che costituisce un fondamento indiscusso del liberalismo stesso. Come si è detto, i realisti sono all’incirca d’accordo nella critica al moralismo, più o meno sulla scia di Williams, Geuss, Galston e altri. Non costituiscono però un paradigma unitario, in quanto -pur essendo d’accordo sull’autonomia della politica dall’etica e spesso sulla centralità del conflitto nell’area del politico- partono da punti di vista teorici differenti tra loro. Ci sono così diversi percorsi che muovono in direzione del realismo. C’è quello -su cui torneremo- basato sulla centralità della legittimità, caro a Bernard Williams, quello nietzscheano fortemente distante da Rawls dell’agonismo alla maniera di B. Honig e C. Mouffe, quello vagamente storicista alla J. Dunn e Q. Skinner, quello dell’attivismo critico alla maniera di C. Mills, quello liberale istituzionalista alla Walrdon e la versione istituzionalista repubblicana di R. Bellamy. A costoro si aggiungono -soprattutto negli ultimi anni- diversi scienziati politici di diverso orientamento, talvolta in US di matrice madisoniana. Tutti sono accomunati dall’insoddisfazione per la ideal guidance à la Rawls, secondo cui la ideal theory decide gli standard in base ai quali ogni attendibile tentativo di riforma andrebbe praticato. Ciò snaturerebbe la political theory, gli farebbe perdere di vista il suo oggetto principale che è legato all’autonomia della politica. Come ha sostenuto John Gray, il vero target dei moralisti à la Rawls non sarebbe la politica, tutt’al più il diritto costituzionale (citato in S.L. Elkin, Reconstructing the Commercial Republic: Constitutional Design after Madison, pp 358-9, n.2, Univ Chicago Press). In sostanza, tutti costoro sono uniti dalla critica secondo cui il peccato dei moralisti sarebbe quello di escludere lo specifico della politica dal cuore della political theory. Gli autori realisti criticano il moralismo soprattutto in nome del primato della ideal theory come formulato da Rawls. Rawls notoriamente ha distinto -in A Theory of Justice (pp 8-9)- tra una ideal theory e una non ideal theory. Con le parole di Rawls, “the ideal part assumes strict compliance and works out the principles that characterize a well-ordered society under favorable circumstances.” (idem 245). La sua tesi implica il primato della ideal theory sulla teoria non ideale. Si può sostenere che ci sia un rapporto abbastanza stretto tra la critica del primato della teoria ideale 53 Dopo Rawls? e una posizione ispirata al realismo in politica. I realisti rigettano la “ideal guidance” della teoria ideale, e in generale del livello normativo, in nome di maggiore attenzione ai fatti storici. La ideal theory assume inoltre “strict compliance”, sarebbe a dire non solo l’elaborazione di principi di giustizia in circostanze particolarmente favorevoli ma anche l’adesione piena dei cittadini a questi principi una volta che ne siano consapevoli e (auspicabilmente) convinti. Solo alla luce di una teoria ideale così concepita, “Existing institutions are to be judged in the light of this conception" (TJ, p. 246). Alla teoria ideale, corrisponde poi -sempre per Rawls- una teoria non-ideale che svolge un compito complementare, in maniera che "Nonideal theory asks how this longterm goal might be achieved, or worked toward, usually in gradual steps. It looks for courses of action that are morally permissible and politically possible as well as likely to be effective."(LoP 89). Non è difficile ritenere che la teoria ideale, con l’assunzione di strict compliance che la caratterizza, sia poco realistica (v. Simmons). La teoria non-ideale ha in effetti un compito più generale, divisa come è in due parti delle quali “One consists of the principles for governing adjustments to natural limitations and historical contingencies, and the other of principles for meeting injustice" (TJ, p. 246). Nella teoria non-ideale esistono vari casi di non-compliance, casi che vanno dalla non-compliance all’interno dello stato che vanno da quella volontaria nella disobbedienza civile a quella non volontaria dovuta a cause come la povertà e la cultura, e a quei casi in cui sono gli individui a violare la compliance per esempio commettendo crimini. In maniera simile, a livello internazionale ci sono casi in cui le nazioni violano deliberatamente la compliance, come fanno gli outlaw states e altri in cui ciò avviene non di proposito come quando ci imbattiamo nelle burdened societies. Esiste comunque anche una “partial compliance theory” che dovrebbe aiutarci nei casi in cui è presente manifesta ingiustizia e dobbiamo reperire principi in grado di dirigere il nostro comportamento Talvolta si sostiene che la teoria non ideale di Rawls non tenga conto a sufficienza di ingiustizie specifiche ma sistematiche come lo sono quelle che riguardano la razza e il genere. Questo è in qualche misura vero. Ma bisogna comprendere che la teoria non ideale alla Rawls ha uno scopo limitato e ha senso solo nell’ottica normativa proposta dalla teoria ideale. Serve, in altre parole, a colmare i vuoti tra la realtà di fatto e quella basic structure giusta che verrebbe fuori dall’applicazione dei principi di giustizia della teoria ideale in regime di strict compliance. A ciò si deve aggiungere che -nell’ambito dell’approccio rawlsiano- la stessa idea di una teoria non-ideale avrebbe poco senso se non ci fosse una teoria ideale a precederla. In altre parole, se la teoria non ideale serve a governare situazioni di relativa ingiustizia in nome dei principi di giustizia, allora sarebbe concettualmente impossibile determinare la portata e la natura di queste ingiustizie se non ci fosse un punto di riferimento normativo ideale cui ispirarsi. 54 SEBASTIANO MAFFETTONE La posizione moralista è perciò caratterizzata senza dubbio da un primato filosofico del normativo: i filosofi devono occuparsi degli aspetti normativi della politica, lasciando l’attuazione dei progetti agli esperti dei vari settori. Il concetto di giustizia è un concetto normativo. Noi colleghiamo un'affermazione normativa al riconoscimento di un obbligo o all'assunzione di un impegno pubblicamente comprensibile. Come si direbbe in inglese, le affermazioni normative sono di solito collegate a un ought piuttosto che a un is. Le ragioni per cui esiste un obbligo o un impegno - ragioni che dipendono da una visione o un'altra della giustizia - sono di solito derivate nella filosofia politica da una giustificazione, sarebbe a dire dalla "forza dell'argomento migliore" (Habermas). Dove, naturalmente, il problema sta proprio nel capire che tipo di ragioni sono queste ragioni, e perché sono normativamente importanti. Si può dire, in termini molto generali, che diamo peso normativo alle ragioni che richiamano valori etico-politici particolarmente significativi. In altre parole, la tesi è che le ragioni che incorporano valori sono quelle da cui dipende l'assunzione dell'obbligo o dell'impegno di cui si è detto. Questa è la sostanza del moralismo politico che in tal modo rende la moralità come perno della normatività prioritaria rispetto alla politica. Al contrario, il realismo intende dare maggiore autonomia al pensiero puramente politico. Come sostiene Williams, la filosofia politica non può essere una sorta di filosofia morale applicata. Questo tipo di obiezione trova un riscontro nella critica del consensualismo implicito nel moralismo politico. Per Rawls, il conflitto è superabile in liberal-democrazia se si sposta il focus dal good al right, come è esplicitamente affermato nella dottrina dello overlapping consensus in Political Liberalism. Ma questa soluzione non suffraga, come sostiene Galston (391ff) seguendo Waldron. Ci sono sicuramente disaccordi radicali che riguardano le concezioni del bene delle persone, ma non è affatto detto che si possa trovare unanimità nell’ambito del right. Il consenso unanime sul right, auspicato dai moralisti, dipende -secondo queste critiche- dal fatto che, per i moralisti, la politica non ha una sua autonomia e specificità, e le stesse istituzioni sono concepite come strumenti al servizio della realizzazione di un precedente ideale etico che si suppone condivisibile. Ma è proprio questo il punto su cui i realisti non sono d’accordo. Oltre al fatto che, nella visione dei moralisti così concepita si dà scarso rilievo alle procedure e agli iter istituzionali. L’opposizione è in ultima analisi sul primato filosofico del normativo, che viene da molti giudicato troppo astratto e utopico. I principi di giustizia, nell’ottica realista, non possono essere concepiti come standard a priori senza preoccuparsi della possibilità di realizzarli. Ci sono tra l’altro casi in cui lo scenario complessivo non consente di credere nella possibilità di realizzare i principi. Il conflitto in politica può essere irredimibile tanto che non si applica soltanto ai valori ma si estende anche all’analisi della situazione. Inoltre, sempre per i realisti, il disaccordo politico non è solo intellettuale e si configura come pervasivo e ineliminabile in certi casi anche la democrazia non può talvolta risolvere i problemi. Lo stesso vale per il requisito 55 Dopo Rawls? della full compliance (Galston 395), da molti vista come un mero ideale sostanzialmente irraggiungibile in ogni società umana. Tuttavia, come si è anticipato nel paragrafo precedente, il nucleo di questo scritto non verte tanto sul rapporto tra moralismo e realismo in quanto tali. Piuttosto, il tentativo è quello di comprendere perché l’ipotesi realista, la critica della ideal theory, la stessa volontà di ridimensionare lo spazio del normativo nell’ambito della filosofia politica siano diventati -dopo un lungo periodo di silenzio in propositocosì popolari oggi. Come si vedrà nel prossimo paragrafo, a mio avviso c’è una connessione tra il trend attuale realista non solo con la storia politica che vede un indubbio declino dell’ideale democratico ma anche con la crisi della normatività dato l’andamento generale della filosofia contemporanea. Tutto sommato, sono convinto che -come sosteneva Leo Strauss, parlando della modernità- l’attacco ala moralismo in nome del realismo dipende da una progressiva crisi dei valori nella società di oggi, crisi che trova riscontro nella filosofia generale. Questo è il tema del prossimo paragrafo. 3. LA CRISI DELLA NORMATIVITÀ DELLA FILOSOFIA CONTEMPORANEA La difficoltà in cui si trova ogni pensiero normativo tradizionalmente inteso compreso quello di Rawls dipende da una crisi di senso della filosofia contemporanea. Quest'ultima -nella mia interpretazione- ha come premessa la fine del paradigma idealista, che ha costituito a lungo lo sfondo delle diverse opzioni normative. Questa rinnovata situazione ha trovato una risposta solo parziale nella diffusione di un pensiero ispirato al post-modernismo e in varie formulazioni ontologiche che, nel complesso, chiamerò "nuova metafisica". Quasi tutti sarebbero d'accordo sul fatto che la crisi dell'idealismo rappresenta una grande coupùre nella storia del pensiero occidentale. Questo periodo può essere distinto in due parti (ricordando che i limiti temporali non sono quelli più importanti qui): la prima, che riguarda l'inizio effettivo della filosofia contemporanea, va da dopo la morte di Hegel (1831) e l'ascesa delle scuole hegeliane a Nietzsche, lo storicismo e l'ermeneutica; la seconda, che entra nel merito della filosofia contemporanea, vede l'origine delle grandi scuole filosofiche del XX secolo, come il positivismo logico, la fenomenologia e l'esistenzialismo. Naturalmente, c'è una sovrapposizione tra le due parti. Ora, pochi dubiterebbero che in questo lungo periodo ci sia stata una rottura dell'episteme occidentale, cioè del modo in cui la teoria della conoscenza e la metafisica si strutturano a vicenda. Così come è difficile dubitare che tale rottura dell'episteme abbia effetti paralleli nell'ambito che spesso chiamiamo filosofia della pratica, cioè nell'ambito del pensiero etico, politico e giuridico e di conseguenza anche nel paradigma rawlsiano. 56 SEBASTIANO MAFFETTONE La crisi dell'idealismo è stata resa evidente da quello che si può chiamare il "clima postmoderno". Parlo di "clima" postmoderno perché, a mio avviso, il postmoderno è più un clima culturale che un vero e proprio orientamento filosofico. Questo clima culturale si è rivelato nelle arti visive, nella letteratura e nella musica fin dalla prima parte del XX secolo, e ha effetti in tutti i campi rilevanti, dall'architettura alla sociologia. Non è facile e forse anche improprio mettere insieme ad esempio Joyce, Duchamp e Schoenberg, ma è dalla loro capacità di disfare e ricostruire in modo alternativo i linguaggi delle pratiche artistiche in cui operano che è nato qualcosa come il postmoderno. Il quale, ovviamente, ha anche una sua ispirazione filosofica ed esiti filosofici significativi. Probabilmente, il cuore della filosofia postmoderna che ha un'influenza planetaria nel postcolonialismo e nei cultural studies- è francese. Nasce dalla critica congiunta delle grandi narrazioni a partire da Hegel-marxismo, psicoanalisi e strutturalismo in politica, etnografia e linguistica. I rappresentanti più noti di quella che si può chiamare filosofia postmoderna sono infatti francesi, come Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Bataille, Lyotard, anche se dietro di loro spiccano le figure di grandi tedeschi (Nietzsche per Foucault e Deleuze, Heidegger per Derrida, e così via). Insomma, siamo nel bel mezzo di una sorta di revisione interna della filosofia continentale, ma una revisione così sostanziale da far pensare a un cambiamento radicale. È difficile dire in poche righe quali siano le idee principali di questo modo di pensare e i suoi esiti più rilevanti. A mio parere, si può ipotizzare che le idee e gli esiti in questione convergano nel determinare una revisione critica e profonda dell'idea di normatività. Per normatività, intendo la logica categorica che tiene insieme un discorso e una pratica, se vogliamo i fondamenti ultimi del vero e del giusto. Questa normatività fondante viene decostruita dai post-moderni in nome dell'impossibilità di qualsiasi punto di partenza -concettuale e pratico- che sia ragionevolmente condivisibile. In sostanza, ciò che emerge è un'estrema frammentarietà di ogni discorso per cui diventa impossibile qualsiasi teoria generale. Con Foucault, si può dire che viviamo in un universo di micro-pratiche tutte coerenti, tutte capaci di promuoversi e danneggiarsi insieme, tutte capaci di verità e allo stesso tempo foriere di menzogne. Con Deleuze, possiamo pensare di essere immersi in una realtà fatta di piani orizzontali in cui ogni pretesa di giudicare, capire, valutare dall'esterno è vana se non fatua. In poche parole, è impossibile - se entriamo nella mentalità postmoderna - condividere qualsiasi punto esterno, cioè un perno razionalmente difendibile da cui derivare una normatività condivisa. Il clima postmoderno evidenzia l'impossibilità del pensiero normativo e, per implicazione, dell'approccio di Rawls. Non esistono modelli epistemici né etico-politici capaci di fornire raccomandazioni con pretese universalistiche. Ma questa situazione ci lascia senza riferimenti. Siamo come sospesi in un vasto orizzonte senza guida. Non è difficile, quindi, ipotizzare che è proprio da questa impossibilità di conservare un'idea condivisibile di normatività che dipende sia il forte ritorno del sacro a cui abbiamo assistito negli ultimi decenni sia la necessità di fare appello a 57 Dopo Rawls? una nuova metafisica. All'interno di questa nuova metafisica, l'essere emerge spesso in modo rizomatico, per dirla con Deleuze, come emanazione di essenze, e solo la violenza, il magico e il sacro possono imporre decisioni in un mondo a-normativo. A questo punto, è conveniente riformulare la nostra ipotesi di partenza a partire dalla crisi dell'idealismo. Se, per fare un esempio, facessimo coincidere l'idealismo con i nomi di Fichte, Schelling e Hegel, e dei loro seguaci, allora la nostra ipotesi di ricerca non potrebbe più funzionare. Non si potrebbe, infatti, ricavare molto della filosofia analitica da una tale ipotesi, né la filosofia continentale sarebbe ricostruibile allo stesso modo. Se, invece, nella crisi dell'idealismo inseriamo Kant e in parte anche l'empirismo inglese magari tramite Berkeley, ribaltando in parte un dogma scolastico, le cose funzionano meglio. La filosofia analitica, infatti, trae profonda ispirazione da Kant e dall'empirismo inglese (soprattutto Hume). Inoltre, Kant aveva un profondo legame sia con il razionalismo che con l'empirismo del suo tempo. Così, con questa estensione del sintagma "crisi dell'idealismo", includiamo una parte considerevole della nascita della filosofia analitica nel contesto della crisi dell'idealismo. Dopo tutto, la nascita della filosofia analitica corrisponde allo sviluppo del positivismo logico, e quest'ultimo può notoriamente essere letto come una critica della sintesi a priori di Kant. Al di là dei suoi confini e dell'inclusione di Kant, la crisi dell'idealismo e la diffusione dello scetticismo postmoderno rompe un equilibrio che si era dimostrato stabile e fecondo. Si tratta di un equilibrio tra soggetto e oggetto, tra metafisica e pratica. Per il momento, basti dire che -sotto l'etichetta "idealismo"- si può concepire una visione epistemologica e metafisica in cui il soggetto costituisce un aspetto fondamentale per la conoscenza del mondo esterno. Con l'idealismo, da Kant in poi, la conoscenza non è più la rappresentazione di un mondo esterno dato indipendentemente dal soggetto stesso. La mediazione soggettiva diventa, in questo modo, costitutiva della realtà. Questo rinnovato equilibrio tra soggetto e oggetto inizia con Cartesio e attraverso Leibniz raggiunge Kant e poi Hegel, ma in qualche misura nella prospettiva della percezione- riguarda anche l'empirismo. L'altro lato di questo stesso equilibrio epistemico e metafisico riguarda -e come potrebbe essere altrimenti- anche la filosofia della pratica. L'etica e la politica, con sfumature naturalmente diverse da teoria a teoria, riflettono la priorità del soggetto epistemico e metafisico nella centralità dell'autonomia dell'uomo e del cittadino in senso kantiano. Questa nozione di autonomia esce certamente ridimensionata dalla critica di Hegel a Kant, ma rimane comunque viva nel senso che la storia del soggetto, anche se inglobata nel contesto storico concreto, rimane comunque la storia della libertà e della vicenda umana. Come è reso evidente dall'approccio di Rawls. In questo modo, l'idealismo garantiva una simmetria tra il protagonismo del soggetto in epistemologia e metafisica e l'autonomia morale e civile della persona. Il che significa che la metafisica e l'epistemologia di base fornivano anche il supporto 58 SEBASTIANO MAFFETTONE per un regime politico liberal-democratico e per una morale individuale indipendente dall'etica di gruppo. È questo complesso e fondamentale equilibrio che si rompe con la scomparsa dell'idealismo. Sono due modi diversi di esprimere quella frattura della normatività a cui abbiamo accennato prima. La possibilità stessa di una concezione universalista della conoscenza e della pratica viene qui dichiarata impraticabile in nome dell'impossibilità di un soggetto collettivo - un "noi" costruttore del mondo teorico e pratico capace di una tale impresa. Al posto di questo "noi", subentra un soggetto umano preoccupato del suo destino e del suo specifico essere nel mondo come individuo. 3BIS. NUOVA METAFISICA Parallelamente all'impossibilità della normatività, legata al clima postmoderno, si può ipotizzare l'avvento di una "nuova metafisica". Questa nuova metafisica è ispirata al realismo. In questo caso, si tratta non direttamentre del realismo politico -di cui abbiamo parlato nella sezione 2- quanto di un realismo ontologico. Come recita il titolo di uno dei libri più esplicitamente dedicati a questa nuova metafisica, quello di Graham Harman sulla “Objects Oriented Ontology”. Tuttavia, sembra esserci una coincidenza non solo terminologica tra queste due forme di realismo. Se non altro perché il realismo ontologico in questione ha una cifra schiettamente antiidealista e anti-kantiana. In questo modo, entra a pieno titolo in quella ricostruzione della crisi dell’idealismo e della critica della normatività che abbiamo presentato ab initio come il problema filosofico che si pone oggi a chiunque voglia prendere sul serio -come fa Rawls- un’impostazione normativa. La nuova metafisica si presenta anche come una reazione allo smarrimento che segue la perdita di realtà che sembra derivare dalla smaterializzazione e dalla deterritorializzazione. Non per niente, la nuova metafisica è spesso e volentieri in qualche modo pre-kantiana nel presentare un'ontologia in cui gli oggetti emergono come tali senza la mediazione del soggetto. Allo stesso tempo, tale approccio appare essenzialmente non antropocentrico, da questo punto di vista coerente con i dettami del transumano. Quest'ultimo e la rivoluzione digitale, in conclusione, influenzano la natura ontologica della nuova metafisica. Che, da questo punto di vista, può apparire anche come la base metafisica di nuove escatologie spesso misteriose e ispirate al magico e al mistico. Fin qui, siamo alle soglie di quella che chiamo la nuova metafisica. Nel complesso, si tratta di una filosofia non accademica e diffusa, e anche in questo caso si può parlare di un clima culturale. Può fungere da esempio di questo clima uno degli autori rappresentativi di questa filosofia di tendenza è Nick Land. Land ha iniziato il suo percorso con una serie di conferenze (poi pubblicate in un libro intitolato "Meltdown", testo con musica) dedicate al rapporto tra filosofia e cibernetica. Que- 59 Dopo Rawls? ste suggestioni avrebbero poi fatto da sfondo alla fondazione della Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU). Nel caso di Land è evidente e robusto il rapporto con il mondo cyber punk dopo Gibson, ma anche con l'architettura (scrisse un testo su "Anarchitecture"), con artisti visuali come Jack Chapman e suo fratello Dinos che si ispirarono al suo tecno-nihilismo, con musicisti come Steve Goodman che lo lessero e lo seguirono, oltre ad avere un'eco significativa nella narrativa teorica e nel femminismo disumanista e persino con la magia woodoo. Insieme a Mark Fisher (autore di Capitalist Realism) e Timothy Morton, Land è stato incluso in un gruppo di filosofi che si ispirano al "realismo speculativo", un'etichetta quest'ultima che forse si adatta anche al filosofo e artista iraniano Negarastani. In particolare, la ricerca realista di Morton ha influenzato il pensiero contemporaneo in due aree, la metafisica e l'ecologia. In metafisica, Morton ha proposto una complessa teoria degli "iper-oggetti" (su cui si veda il suo "Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the end of the world"), all'interno di quella che viene solitamente chiamata OOO, cioè "Object Oriented Ontology" (su cui si veda il citato libro di Graham Harman, intitolato "Object Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything"). In termini generali, si può dire che la proposta ontologica di Harman e Morton è anti-idealista, nel senso che le relazioni tra gli oggetti contano più del nostro rapporto con la realtà, e ispirata a una sorta di realismo magico. Harman afferma esplicitamente: "Per la OOO, il vero pericolo per il pensiero non è il relativismo ma l'idealismo". In questo quadro, gli iper-oggetti sono oggetti che sfuggono a una collocazione spazio-temporale, come il riscaldamento globale e il plutonio radioattivo. La riflessione sulla natura e il nostro rapporto con la natura -quella che costituisce il cuore di "Dark Ecology"- è stata quindi letta all'interno del quadro metafisico costituito dall'ontologia orientata agli oggetti. Morton sostiene che l'ecologismo tradizionale ha ormai raggiunto un vicolo cieco. Questo perché concepisce la Natura come un'entità astratta e separata da rispettare e proteggere. Ma, concepita in questo modo, la natura si presenta come un Altro assoluto, un feticcio, più o meno come le donne nelle culture tradizionali. Questo atteggiamento deriverebbe dall'agrilogistica neolitica. Morton, invece, contrappone una relazione paritaria alla quale corrisponde un'immersione totalizzante nella Natura. Nella filosofia delle scienze sociali, su basi simili è nato il cosiddetto "accelerazionismo", al centro del quale c'è la tesi secondo la quale il superamento del capitalismo si può ottenere accelerando, e non contrastando, i processi del capitalismo stesso. La teoria accelerazionista può essere di sinistra o di destra. L'accelerazionismo di sinistra mira a spingere l'evoluzione tecnologica oltre la logica del capitalismo. L'accelerazionismo di destra è invece a favore di un'intensificazione del capitalismo in quanto tale, anche al fine di provocare un'eventuale singolarità tecnologica. Srnicek e Williams sono gli autori del Manifesto Accelerazionista, poi appro- 60 SEBASTIANO MAFFETTONE fondito nel saggio Inventare il futuro. Gli acceleristi di sinistra si pongono l'impegnativo compito di riconciliare la sinistra con le nuove tecnologie e con il futuro (a loro avviso consegnato nelle mani della destra). Gli accelerazionisti e i realisti speculativi cercano anche di trarre conclusioni filosofiche originali alla luce delle nuove tecnologie. Su una lunghezza d'onda simile, a cui aggiunge il richiamo all'Oriente, si muove Byung-Chul Han, autore di numerosi scritti tra cui "Filosofia del Buddhismo Zen". Gli scritti di Byung-Chui Han come "In the Swarm" e "Psychopolitics" -entrambi del 2016- sono letti e discussi animatamente. La ragione di tale popolarità può risiedere nella natura globale del personaggio. BCH (per semplificare) è una buona sintesi di Est-Ovest, nato com'è a Seul e perfezionato in filosofia in Germania. L'interesse filosofico-politico della sua opera consiste -per quanto mi riguarda- nella necessità di rifondare il soggetto e di preparare nuove terapie del sé all'interno di un pensiero che a volte sembra troppo freddamente istituzionalista. In questo ambito, in senso lato, può rientrare anche la rilettura critica della tecnica di autori come Gilbert Simondon (vedi "Du Mode d'Existence des Objects Techniques"), Federico Campagna (vedi "Magia e Tecnica") e Yuk Huy (vedi "Recursivity and Contingency"). Secondo Campagna, l'indagine metafisica rivela che la Tecnica governa in modo assoluto la realtà del nostro tempo. Ma il dominio della Tecnica equivale al trionfo del nichilismo. Lo strumento critico e costruttivo scelto per liberarci da questa gabbia è costituito invece dalla Magia, cui Campagna intende dare uno statuto più razionale e meno esoterico. Per quanto riguarda Negarestani, si può dire che si ispira all'eredità di Deleuze e Guattari, alla frequentazione intellettuale di Land, all'esplosione vitalistica dell'ontologia di Morton. La sua "Ciclonopedia: Complicity with Anonynmous" è a cavallo tra il realismo speculativo, l'accelerazionismo e la pulp fiction. Ma forse le due opere che meglio rappresentano il realismo della nuova metafisica sono le già citate Après la Finitude di Quentin Meillassoux (in inglese After Finitude) e Objects Oriented Ontology di Graham Harman. Leggendo queste due opere, infatti, si coglie bene il senso della natura anti-idealistica del realismo di cui stiamo parlando in questa sezione. La tesi principale di Meillassoux si esprime a favore di una radicale contingenza delle leggi di natura. Al tempo stesso, però, Meillassoux non intende presentare una visione scettica. C’è a suo avviso una radicale contingenza, come si è detto, ma al tempo stesso esiste una pregnante necessità logica. E noi possiamo pensare in maniera appropriata on what there is. Ma questo pensare non dipende in nessun modo dalla centralità di un soggetto costituente. Per Meillassoux, le qualità fondamentali degli oggetti, a cominciare dalle proprietà matematiche, sono infatti esenti dai vincoli imposti da una relazione fondante col soggetto. Questa tesi è, per la maggior parte di noi, difficile da accettare perché è precritica nel senso kantiano del termine. E, come tale, può apparire parallela a una sorta di regressione alla metafisica dogmatica, cosa che -dopo Kant, ma anche dopo 61 Dopo Rawls? Berkeley- appare complicato accettare. Per la maggior parte dei filosfi educati, che condividono i principi della rivoluzione trascendentale, può così sembrare impossibile il solo immaginare che noi possiamo pensare qualcosa astraendo dal fatto che siamo “noi” che stiamo pensando quel qualcosa. E’ questo il modo classico in cui l’intersoggettività, sarebbe poi a dire il consenso di una data comunità, sostituisce la adequatio tra la rappresentazione di un soggetto isolato e la cosa in quanto tale. Questo sentire condiviso è alla base di una inestricabile correlazione tra essere e pensare che Meillassoux intende criticare sotto il nome di “correlazionismo”. Al fondo, correlazionismo significa che è impossibile separare i domini della oggettività e della soggettività. Nella filosofia contemporeanea post-kantiana, ispirata all’idealismo, sussiste un primato della relazione sui termini posti in relazione. In questo consiste, quella co-giveness co-originaria da cui discende il co-rrelazionismo. Questo modo di pensare, condiviso dalla maggior parte dei filosfi contemporanei, è criticato da Meillassoux inannazittutto in nome dell’esistenza dello “ancestrale”. Per “ancestrale” in senso lato si intende l’insieme delle entità di cui siamo certi dell’esistenza da prima dell’emergenza della specie umana (o forse anche di ogni forma di vita). La tesi di Meillassaux è che le filosofie correlazioniste non sono in grado di dare senso all’ancestrale così concepito. La discussione sul merito della tesi in questione è complessa, e sarebbe arduo riportarla in questa sede. Anche perché quello che ci interessa è più superficiale, e concerne innanzitutto il rapporto tra questa opzione realista e la critica della normatività da cui siamo partiti. La mia interpretazione è che ci sia nel realismo così inteso una critica alla normatività molto simile a quella che fanno i postmoderni. Il realismo alla Meillassaux non critica l’idealismo -e con esso il normativo- solo dal punto di vista di ciò che esiste ma anche da quello di ciò che si dovrebbe fare. Questo in grosse linee perché questo tipo di realismo è scettico sulla possibilità che una comunità di interpreti costituisca il fondamento tanto di una conoscenza oggettiva quanto di un insieme di raccomandazioni normative universalisticamente sensate. Ciò avviene perché -se si accettano le premesse di questo realismo- salta l’idea di trascendentale in quanto tale. Per Meillassaux e quanti la pensano come lui, quello che veramente manca nel quadro trascendentale è il posto di una sorta di ragione, più o meno ineffabile, che dovrebbe sottostare agli eventi umani e non-umani. Alla fine della fiera, non esiste altro che una brutale fatticità con cui dobbiamo fare i conti. E questo implica che la contingena prevale sulla prevedibilità e la stabilità sia in ontologia che nel dominio della pratica. Un’ipotesi simile è fatta proprio dall’americano Harman. Anche Harman sposa un’opzione realista in ontologia che si può espandere fino a includere l’idea di normatività in generale. La sua visione sicuramente discende da sviluppi recenti della filosofia continentale, ma copre in parte anche aspetti della filosofia analitica. Il contributo più evidente di Harman -come del resto indica il titolo del asuo libro ispirato alla OOO (Objects Oriented Ontology)- consiste nella cosiddetta “flat ontology”. 62 SEBASTIANO MAFFETTONE Seguendo suggestioni di Ortega, e in parte Nietzsche, Harman propone una visione centrata sulla prima persona delle cose. Il che vuol dire che non solo gli umani debbono godere del privilegio che sta nell’adoperare la prima persona singolare. Da questo punto di vista, la prima persona è conseguenza della terza, nel senso che se supponiamo che esista una qualcosa che possiamo indicare e menzionare, allora questo qualcosa ha diritto a una sua prospettiva. Nel novero di questi oggetti, fondanti una nuova ontologia, Harman include non solo piante e animali non-umani ma anche cose in quanto tali (le rocce) e persino entità fittizie (come Amleto). Legati alla flat ontology sono poi i concetti di anti-mining e withdrawal. L’oggetto, per Hraman è qualsiasi cosa che non possa essere ridotto alle sue parti componenti (undermining) e alle sua relazioni con altro (overmining). Il wthdrawal, invece, è il ritiratsi degli oggetti, il loro essere sostanzialmente ineffabili e irragiungibili. L’oggetto in sé è inconoscibile. La Ontologia orientata agli oggetti di Harman attacca esplicitamente l’idealismo. Ci dice ab initio che il vero pericolo per la filosofia non è il relativismo ma piuttosto l’idealismo. Per cui, l’enfasi filosofica non deve essere sulla dicotomia conoscenzaverità quanto piuttosto sul primato della realtà. Se, come si è detto, gli oggetti tendono a ritirarsi, la riposta sta nel recupero di forme cognitive miste e ambigue come la metafora e quelle della retorica. In questa ottica, agli oggetti va data la stessa attenzione, che siano umani o non-umani. Al tempo stesso, nell’ambito di questo prepotente realismo gli oggetti non si esauriscono nell’insieme delle loro proprietà. Gli oggetti reali, poi, si aprono a noi attraverso la mediazione di oggetti sensuali, che sono quelli che si rivelano a noi senza però avere un’esistenza indipendente da quella degli oggetti reali. La tesi di fondo è che la realtà esista a prescindere dalla consapevolezza umana. In questa ottica, lo spazio normativo del pensiero umano viene messo in discussione. La politica non è infatti una forma di conoscenza affrontabile da un punto di vista razionale o scientifico. Con Latour, bisogna riconoscere spazio agli oggetti nonumani e in maniera indipendente dagli umani e il loro modo di pensare. Come in Foucault, quello che possiamo fare non dipende da scelte guidate da una visione etico-politca ma da un insieme di condizionamenti esterni entro cui siamo gettati e ci troviamo a operare. In questo senso, si può ritrovare in Harman anche uno sfondo di teoria dell’evoluzione, dato che le nostre azioni sono concepite come sfide all’ambiente che ci vincola. La maturità di un oggetto-evento politicamente rilevante -che sia la Guerra Civile Americana analizzata in OOO oppure la Compagnia delle Indie analizzata in Immaterialism- allora consiste nella sua capacità di raggiungere uno stato di massima realizzazione delle sue potenzialità. Questo si raggiunge attraverso una serie di simbiosi tra gli oggetti. L’esito di tutto ciò consiste nella predilezione per una politica orientata agli oggetti -condivisa con Bruno Latour- al cui interno non esiste una attendibile conoscenza della politca e tantomeno 63 Dopo Rawls? una visione normativa che lo stesso Latour ha bollato come “moralismo”. In conclusione, il moderno idealismo che ha creato lo spazio del normativo è, per Harman, al tramonto. 4. UN REJOINDER SU NORMATIVITÀ PER REALISTI E MORALISTI Finora, abbiamo lavorato a partire da un’ipotesi ermeneutica complessa che sembra non ammettere vie di uscita. Abbiamo detto che la Rawls’ Era dipendeva oltre che dalla straordinaria qualità dell’opera rawlsiana- da un clima politico e da una cultura filosofica. Poi dopo abbiamo decostruito sia il clima che la cultura in questione. Agli occhi di molti, la liberal-democrazia come basic structure non sembra più costituire il default a muovere dal quale la protesta in nome della giustizia sociale possa trovare una soluzione. Al tempo stesso, la cultura filosofica contemporanea -criticando l’idealismo- mette in discussione la possibilità di un soggetto collettivo in grado di fornire uno sguardo e un’opzione universalisticamente significativi. Ciò rende implausibile fondare la propria ipotesi teorica su una normatività a priori, come è avvenuto in un trend plurisecolare che va (perlomeno) da Kant a Rawls. Su questa base impossibilista, la critica realista al supposto moralismo della received view rawlsiana prende piede e si rinforza. Ma, in questi termini, sembriamo trovarci in un dead end: non ci sono soluzioni al dilemma che deriva dalla crisi della normatività. La received view non può continuare il suo percorso senza profondi cambiamenti, alcuni dei quali legati al contenuto della critica realista. Ma al tempo stesso il realismo rimane una visione puramente critica, in grado di muovere obiezioni serie alla visione rawlsiana ma a sua volta bisognosa di uno spazio normativo nel cui ambito affermare la sua concezione anti-moralistica del politico. In buona sostanza, sia realisti sia moralisti debbono trovare un modello di normatività, modello che deve essere diverso da quelli precedenti. Per i moralisti, accettando per sommi gradi l’analisi qui proposta, qualcosa del genere appare ovvio. Dopotutto, in questo ambito è solo nell’ottica della ideal theory che si può comprendere dove regna l’ingiustizia. E l’ideal theory ha ovviamente presupposti di natura normativa. Comunque, la critica dei realisti lascia dei segni. E in parte più o meno significativa, l’enfasi sull’eccesso di utopismo che emerge dalla critica realista viene fatta propria da diversi pensatori sulla scia del Rawls di Political Liberalism. Un pensatore liberale e nel complesso aderente al paradigma della giustizia sociale come David Miller ha insistito sul fatto che avremmo bisogno di una politica per terrestri (David Miller, “Political Philosophy for Earthlings,” in Political Theory: Methods and Approaches, ed. DavidLeopold and Marc Stears (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 44.). E lapidariamente Jeremy Waldron, anche lui senza dubbio liberale e non troppo distante dai rawlsiani, ha spiegato che la received view della political theory ha fallito perché non ha considerato in maniera adeguata gli aspetti descrittivi dell’impresa. In sostanza, data la posizione in materia anche di 64 SEBASTIANO MAFFETTONE pensatori vicini all’indirizzo rawlsiano come Andrea Sangiovanni, si può dire che la ricerca di un rapporto più equo tra normativo e descrittivo sia all’ordine del giorno nell’agenda della political theory contemporanea come vista dai moralisti. La cosa appare più difficile nella prospettiva dei realisti. Tuttavia, se -come si è detto in precedenza-i moralisti hanno bisogno di un approccio più terreno, i realisti non possono rinunciare a una piattaforma normativa (ovviamente diversa da quella tradizionale dei moralisti). Abbiamo insistito in precedenza sul fatto che i realisti auspicano una teoria politica in grado di trattare non un sogno normativo ma i problemi specifici della dimensione politica. Problemi come la questione del potere, il fatto del disaccordo, la necessità dell‘ordine dato il conflitto, la natura stessa dell’autorità politica. In sostanza, i realisti suggeriscono che la politica ha come scopo essenziale e precipuo quello di assicurare un ordine sociale basato sull’autorità. Ma, se questo è il punto, non si può evitare di chiedersi -come fa tra gli altri Larmoreche cosa renda un ordine siffatto dotato di autorità. La risposta non può che essere di carattere normativo: l’ordine deve apparire ai cittadini adeguatamente giustificato e in questo modo dotato di legitimacy. Bernard Williams, da cui gran parte della critica realista ha preso le mosse non ha dubbi in proposito. Se, infatti, sostiene che il primo problema politico si pone “in Hobbesian terms ... the securing of order, protection, safety, trust, and the conditions of cooperation," con pari convinzione asserisce che ogni Stato, ha il compito di “satisfying the "basic legitimation demand" (BLD), cosa che a sua volta richiede di "offer a justification of its power”. La giustificazione in questione non deve necessariamente essere quella liberale ed egualitaria dei moralisti rawlsiani, che a sua volta risponde a esigenze della modernità occidentale. Può invece essere invece coerente con il periodo storico e la cultura di riferimento. La differenza principale rispetto ai moralisti consisterebbe -se seguiamo Williams- nel fatto che si tratterebbe non di fare appello a una normatività morale prioritaria alla politica ma piuttosto di una moralità interna alla politica. Ipotesi quest’ultima non troppo diversa da quella di Rawls in Political Liberalism e dai ricordati teorici della giustizia come Miller, Waldron e Sangiovanni inclini a prendere sul serio il realismo istituzionale. Ovviamente, i realisti non sono soddisfatti dalla visione liberale, che giustifica la legitimacy in termini di consenso ideale. Epperò, non possono neppure accettare la riduzione della politica al potere e l’adesione alla massima “might is right”. La BLD alla Williams presuppone invece che ci siano condizioni normative che giustifichino la legitimacy in modo da potere distinguere potere politico in senso proprio da dominio puro e semplice. Ciò richiede una base normativa, anche se si tratta di una normatività meno generale di quella dei realisti e più legata alla storia e al contesto. Come sostiene Larmore, ‘The moral ideals to which the latter view [moralism] appeals are bound to prove controversial, forming part of the problems 65 Dopo Rawls? of political life, rather than providing the basis of their solution’.1 In sostanza, la legitimacy realista deve distinguere il paradigma dalla mera effettività nel comando, ma al tempo stesso non deve collassare nel moralismo politico. Non può così derivare da condizioni morali esterne alla politica. Da questo punto di vista, Williams discutendo la natura morale della BLD, dice: ‘If it is, it does not represent a morality that is prior to politics. It is a claim that is inherent in there being such a thing as politics’.2 In questo modo, anche l’impostazione realista accetta lo spazio del normativo, al cui interno ci sono anche valori morali. La condizione perché ciò avvenga è che la legitimacy di un potere politico dipenda dalle convinzioni di chi vi è soggetto. Per cui non sono coerenti giudizi normativi sulla legitimacy che da oggi giudicano il passato oppure che siano interculturali e fatti dall’esterno.3 La tesi che si può derivare da queste osservazioni è che – proprio alla luce delle ragioni e dei limiti delle due visioni principali (moralismo e realismo)– oggi è necessario pensare a una visione della normatività che superi questi stessi limiti. Questa visione dovrebbe tenere presenti due esigenze teoriche indispensabili per ogni buona teoria politica. Chiamo queste esigenze rispettivamente plausibilità descrittiva e adeguatezza normativa. Una buona teoria politica deve essere plausibile da un punto di vista descrittivo, nel senso di essere non solo capace di fornire una descrizione adeguata dei fatti ma anche di mostrare come questi stessi fatti siano meglio spiegati se si fa affidamento alla teoria in questione. Una buona teoria politica deve però anche essere adeguata dal punto di vista normativo, cioè capace di indicare una direzione di sviluppo che sia ispirata a ideali di giustizia e stabilità compatibili con la teoria stessa. Sia realismo che moralismo nella loro formulazione originaria non sono in grado di mantenere gli standard menzionati di adeguatezza normativa. Il realismo Journal of Moral Philosophy 10:3 (2013), 276306, p. 289 2 Williams, In the Beginning was the Deed, p. 5 3 Mark Philp è su questa linea quando scrive ‘has force where those involved are engaged in the set of practices that we recognise as politics and which claim, in some way or another, a right to rule others. This makes their action intelligible, both to themselves and to others, and offers the prospect of internal criteria, simply in virtue of their attempt to order the relations of others and to claim some remit or right to do so. Those who are merely violent can make no such claim; whereas those who use politics implicitly claim, in a very general way, a degree of legitimacy’ (Mark Philp, ‘What is to be done? Political theory and political realism’, European Journal of Political Theory, 9:4 (2010), 466– 84, p. 471. Emphasis added). See also Mark Philp, Political Conduct, (London: Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 56: ‘authority becomes expressly political in character when it invokes a more or less explicit claim that the right to rule rests on some specific or principled ground’. Sulla distnzione tra autorità politica edominio v. anche, Richard Flathman, 'In and Out of the Ethical: The Realist Liberalism of Bernard Williams', Contemporary Political Theory, 9 (2010), 77-98, p. 86; Horton, ‘Political Legitimacy, Justice and Consent’, p. 131; Enzo Rossi, 'Reality and Imagination in Political Theory and Practice: On Raymond Geuss' Realism', European Journal of Political Theory, 9:4 (2010), 504512, p.508-510. 1 Charles Larmore, ‘What is Political Philosophy?’, 66 SEBASTIANO MAFFETTONE in effetti manca di una esplicita dimensione normativa che spesso rimane implicita nelle pieghe del resoconto esplicativo e descrittivo della teoria. Al tempo stesso, il moralismo pur fornendo una versione normativa, finisce -come abbiamo vistospesso per confondere la giustizia sociale con l’etica applicata o la religione mondana. Dall’analisi di questi deficit teorici di realismo e moralismo deriva la necessità di una svolta teorica in materia di giustizia sociale e di political tehory in generale. 5. VERSO UN NUOVO SENSO DELLA NORMATIVITÀ Esiste -come abbiamo visto nella sezione precedente- una funzione necessaria della normatività sia nel moralismo che nel realismo. Questa conclusione non implica che la nostra visione della normatività debba essere quella tradizionale. Forse, possiamo adottare una nuova versione della normatività più coerente con i requisiti di adeguatezza normativa e plausibilità descrittiva menzionati prima. Consapevole che un'esigenza del genere è quantomai vaga, in questa sezione intendo difendere la normatività in generale, e anche contribuire a salvare la political theory dalla crisi generata dal postmodernismo e dalla nuova metafisica senza evitare di prendere in debita considerazione il loro contributo filosofico. Vorrei farlo mettendo da parte l'idea di una normatività top down e proponendo un'opzione normativa bottom up. Quest'ultima poggia -come abbiamo visto- su una forma di razionalità evolutiva che deve molto a Kant e ad alcuni critici del concetto classico di razionalità in economia. Si è detto finora che il clima postmoderno e la nuova metafisica derivano entrambi da una critica della scissione tra fenomeni e oggetti tipica della filosofia di Kant. Kant è il fondatore di quel diffuso modo di pensare che Timothy Morton seguendo Meillassoux- chiama "correlazionismo", cioè l'idea che la conoscenza degli oggetti passi attraverso i soggetti. Questo assunto è alla base della critica dei postmoderni e dei nuovi metafisici. Per i postmoderni, la critica in questione si basa sulla natura convenzionale e culturale dell'accordo intersoggettivo che fonda l'oggettività kantiana. E per alcuni tra i nuovi metafisici -nella visione per esempio del realismo magico e del realismo speculativo- di qui nasce una critica basata sulla natura derivativa e non trascendentale dell'intersoggettività kantiana. Per dirla alla Morton, il trascendentale presuppone gli iper-oggetti e non viceversa. In ogni caso, ciò implica l'impossibilità di una normatività imperniata sulla centralità del soggetto, come tradizionalmente intesa sulla scia di Kant. Questa è considerata impraticabile perché dovrebbe agire in modo top down su un soggetto considerato autonomo sia dal punto di vista epistemico che etico-politico. A questa visione scettica abbiamo ab initio opposto un'opzione normativa ma dal basso e basata su una concezione evolutiva della razionalità. È interessante considerare che anche la visione alternativa - la "normatività dal basso" - può trovare le sue origini in Kant. Questa visione evolutiva, utile anche per superare la perversa scissione tra etica da un lato ed economia e scienza dall'altro, 67 Dopo Rawls? risale a Kant, e più precisamente a quanto da lui sostenuto nella seconda parte della Critica del Giudizio dedicata al giudizio teleologico. In questa parte dell'opera è chiara - a mio avviso - la connessione tra etica e scienza in termini di normatività (come cercherò di mostrare in seguito). Kant in realtà parte dalla consapevolezza che una critica del giudizio teleologico deve partire da due presupposti: (i) I fenomeni biologici non possono essere compresi in modo puramente meccanicistico, contrariamente a quanto sembrava suggerire il modello galileiano-cartesiano della scienza moderna. Le forze gravitazionali e il materialismo assoluto non spiegano l'emergere dell'universo organico. (ii) Dato quanto detto in (i) non si deve pensare che l'unica alternativa a questo sia un appello al soprannaturale. La congiunzione di (i) e (ii) permette di pensare il senso e il significato degli esseri viventi in un terzo modo, che è poi quello presentato in nuce nella critica del giudizio teleologico. Nel quadro di questo modo, ispirato a una teleologia naturalistica, gli esseri viventi sono concepiti come prodotti di uno sviluppo naturale e non come artefatti. Nell'Analitica del giudizio teleologico, prima, e nella Dialettica, poi, Kant difende il concetto di fine naturale (cfr. soprattutto i paragrafi 64,65 della Critica del Giudizio) e la sua natura non contraddittoria. Un oggetto, in questa visione, esiste come fine naturale quando è causa ed effetto di sé stesso. La condizione perché ciò avvenga è che ciascuna delle sue parti esista per le altre e per il tutto. Le piante e gli animali si qualificano proprio per questo come fini naturali. Ora, qui sono necessarie due osservazioni. Essere in coerenza con il tutto è tipico di qualsiasi artefatto, per esempio di qualsiasi prodotto industriale ben fatto (prendiamo le varie parti di un'automobile per esempio). Ed è implicito nel caso della creazione divina diretta. In entrambi i casi, dietro c'è infatti un disegno, un progetto intelligente e intenzionale. Per gli esseri viventi non sarebbe così -ci dice Kant- perché la forza propulsiva è interna e non esterna, se così si può dire. L'unico modo per argomentare questa tesi consiste nel sostenere che il nostro modo di intendere (umano) presuppone qualcosa del genere. Ritroveremmo nell’essere vivente un fine interno perché siamo predisposti a farlo. Per essere un po' meno vaghi, ci sarebbe una normatività di fondo nello sviluppo degli esseri viventi che corrisponde segretamente al nostro modo di intendere in generale. La connessione dell'ipotesi kantiana con i fondamenti della biologia è ben nota e studiata. Più complicato è cercare la relazione con una visione evolutiva. Dopo tutto, Darwin viene dopo Kant, e quindi non c'è possibilità storica di connessione. Ma l'idea di Kant dei fini naturali può aiutare a pensare in generale il concetto di cognizione evolutiva nel modo di Gerd Gigenrenzer. Il concetto di cognizione evolutiva così inteso implica un'inversione dell'idea di normatività come solitamente presentata. Tipicamente, pensiamo alla normatività come un processo dall'alto verso il basso. Invece, Gigenrenzer - e coloro che la vedono come lui - concepisce la normatività come un processo dal basso verso l'alto. Come risultato di ripetuti 68 SEBASTIANO MAFFETTONE tentativi ed errori (Taleb, in Antifragile sembra fare sua tale opzione). Il paradigma classico dell'economia basato sulla razionalità massimizzante esemplifica bene la natura delle critiche basate sulla nozione di cognizione evolutiva alla maniera di Gigenrenzer. Nella visione tradizionale, un soggetto onnisciente e onnipotente agirebbe massimizzando le conseguenze attese entro l'orizzonte di un vettore predefinito, ad esempio, l'utilità. Anche in critiche assai note a questo paradigma standard, da Khaneman a Simon, rimane l'idea che esiste una logica a priori secondo la quale dovremmo dirigere il nostro comportamento, e la differenza dal paradigma standard è che non siamo in grado di raggiungere il suddetto livello logico. In sostanza, la normatività a priori rimarrebbe inalterata pur essendo utopica nel cattivo senso della parola. La cognizione evolutiva rifiuta l'idea stessa di logica a priori e fa nascere la normatività dal basso. La razionalità di Gigenrenzer è razionalità "per i mortali", cioè per gente come noi, ed è nata all'interno del progetto sulla "razionalità limitata" pur essendo da questa distinta. È in sostanza una forma di razionalità evolutiva. Da questo punto di vista, rifiuta l'"onniscienza", che non sarebbe altro che la capacità mentale di dedurre il futuro da una forma di conoscenza perfetta. Intuitivamente, la razionalità "senza limiti" corrisponde all'idea tradizionale di normatività. Come la normatività tradizionale, la razionalità onnisciente non prevede errori ma previsioni certe (deterministiche). Al contrario, la razionalità evolutiva prevede errori e la possibilità di rivederli continuamente in una logica di sopravvivenza evolutiva. La tesi di chi -come Gigenrenzer- sostiene la razionalità evolutiva è in grado di unire una prospettiva normativa con un ragionevole background descrittivo, che invece mancherebbe del tutto nelle teorie e strategie legate alla razionalità onnisciente e alla normatività tradizionale. La razionalità evolutiva, così intesa, fa parte della più ampia famiglia della bounded rationality, di cui fanno parte anche le opzioni teoriche di Simon e Khaneman. In tutte queste opzioni, la ricerca di informazioni agisce come un complemento al modello a priori. La differenza principale è che le opzioni teoriche basate sull'ottimizzazione sotto vincoli -come quelle di Simon e Khaneman- assumono che gli esseri umani siano per così dire razionali indipendentemente dalla loro relazione con il mondo esterno. Ci sono leggi che porterebbero alla conoscenza ottimale, a condizione che siamo in grado di superare i pregiudizi e le illusioni cognitive. La razionalità evolutiva è invece o più empirica delle altre opzioni di razionalità limitata e nel suo ambito possiamo dire che il modello normativo a priori non esiste senza l'informazione a posteriori. Come dire che le stesse leggi della logica e della probabilità non hanno cittadinanza al di fuori del contatto con la realtà. È solo l'ambiente naturale e sociale che può determinare -all'interno di un processo fatto di prove ed errori- la migliore euristica per risolvere un certo tipo di problema. 69 Dopo Rawls? 6. PER CONCLUDERE Abbiamo detto ab initio che lo scopo principale di questo articolo è quello di rendere più chiara l'epoca del dopo Rawls, cercando di vedere criticamente se e come le sue basi culturali, filosofiche e politiche possano permanere dopo la Rawls’ Era. Qualcosa del genere presuppone la volontà di analizzare alcune conseguenze filosofiche del clima culturale e politico contemporaneo. Tutto sommato, da questo punto di vista, ci è stato sufficiente dire che la visione classica della normatività non tiene più in seguito alle scosse del postmoderno e della nuova metafisica da un lato e della crisi della liberal-democrazia dall’altro. Al tempo stesso, abbiamo sostenuto che una concezione del normativo serva comunque sia ai liberali rawlsiani sia ai loro critici realisti. Nell’ultima sezione, abbiamo poi timidamente avanzato la tesi che forse una normatività non top down ma bottom up potrebbe essere ciò di cui andiamo alla ricerca. Quest’ultima sezione è dedicata invece a due aspetti se vogliamo collaterali della questione. In primo luogo, siamo -ci chiediamo- poi così sicuri che sia corretto criticare Rawls come l’alfiere di un normativismo tradizionale? E’ giusto, in altre parole, schiacciarlo su una interpretazione platonica della normatività, o piuttosto Rawls non è in grado di offrirci un posizione più sfumata? E, diciamolo subito, non troppo diversa da quella normatività dal basso di cui andiamo alla ricerca. In effetti, credo si possa sostenere -con l’appoggio dei testi- che Rawls non sia solo un filosofo morale che si avventura nella politica, ma anche -come abbiamo accennato all’inizio- un critico sociale a pieno titolo. Le sue pagine contro la diseguaglianza e contro la meritocrazia per affermare un diffuso rispetto di sé parlano chiaro da questo punto di vista. E lo stesso può dirsi per le sezioni della Theory dedicate alle circostanze di giustizia e alla disobbedienza civile. In tutte queste parti della Theory, Rawls non propone soltanto una serie astratta di riflessioni ma ancora la sua visione in un contesto sociale e politico preciso cui corrisponde un impegno militante per i worst off. In questi termini, quella di Rawls è una vera e propria ideologia politica, in grado di rispettare quella autonomia della politica la cui mancanza costituisce -come abbiamo visto- uno dei punti principali di critica dei realisti ai moralisti (Rawls incluso, secondo loro). Se quanto ho appena detto fosse vero o anche soltanto plausibile (come io ritengo), allora si potrebbe dire che le critiche realiste al moralismo sono -perlomeno nel caso di Rawls- un fraintendimento del messaggio rawlsiano. Soprattutto, finirebbe col risultare fuorviante quell’idea dei realisti secondo la quale i moralisti (Rawsl incluso) avrebbero una visione della motivazione e dell’azione umana del tutto lontana dalla realtà. Inoltre, come si legge nelle Parti della Theory che abbiamo menzionato in questa sezione, la tesi, tipica dei realisti, secondo cui i moralisti liberali non terrebbero in alcuna considerazione la natura e gli effetti del potere sarebbe falsa. Naturalmente, non ho la pretesa di dire, con queste parole, che le critiche dei realisti ai moralisti liberali sono del tutto sbagliate, ma solo quella assai più modesta secondo cui spesso le loro critiche sono 70 SEBASTIANO MAFFETTONE rivolte a una versione della teoria liberale che non esiste o è solo parzialmente tale. Il liberalismo alla Rawls poggia non solo su considerazioni di natura morale ma sulla convinzione profonda che un cambiamento sociale profondo sia indispensabile se vogliamo vivere in una società decentemente giusta. In secondo luogo e al di là di interpretazioni discutibili di Rawls, il pericolo che si corre con una critritca troppo radicale del suo paradigma consiste nel rischio di perdere i vantaggi etico politici della liberaldemocrazia congiunto con il timore di sposare l’ineffabile, il magico, il mistico se non addirittura la violenza. Il paradigma rawlsiano costituisce un’ideologia politica, ho detto. L’attacco a questa ideologia sempre più è portato in nome della inutilità se non dannosità delle ideologie in quanto tali. A mio avviso, invece, dovremmo tornare a un clima in cui l'ideologia, opportunamente giustificata, costituisce ancora l'orizzonte normativo entro il quale fiorisce il politico. Il pragmatismo, il populismo e l'autoritarismo, cioè le risposte politiche più comuni alla crisi delle ideologie, non sono infatti la soluzione anti-ideologica di un problema. Piuttosto, sono opzioni piene di ideologia, cioè sistemi potenzialmente coerenti di pensiero politico che possono servire da sfondo a partiti e movimenti. Sono opzioni ideologiche nascoste e come tali povere. Questo perché troppo spesso, come non è difficile notare, la mancanza di ideologia diventa una mancanza di idee tout court, e quindi di Politica con la P maiuscola. Infatti, la mancanza di ideologia confina con il dominio dei "fatti alternativi", con la comunicazione fatta di fake news, con la tendenza a voltare pagina, con la permanente e diffusa aspirazione al compromesso nel senso cattivo del termine, se non nella fuga nel magico e nell'iper-reale (che può portare all'autoritarismo). Fin qui, è facile, e somiglia troppo a un appello alla nostalgia. Per uscire dalla nostalgia, bisognerebbe fare qualcosa di molto difficile, cioè spiegare perché l'ideologia è nascosta o mancante, e quale tipo di ideologia potrebbe affermarsi nelle mutate condizioni storiche che caratterizzano il presente. Mi limiterò a citare due spiegazioni in questione. La prima: sul perché l'ideologia è debole, nascosta, carente nel contemporaneo. La spiegazione può essere fatta dipendere dalla difficoltà strutturale di conciliare realtà e ragione - cosa che richiederebbe una normatività di base - nel cosiddetto clima post-moderno che abitiamo. Ciò trova un supporto filosofico decisivo nel rifiuto della sintesi a priori (positivismo), nella divaricazione tra essenza ed esistenza (esistenzialismo), nelle derive nietzschiane, bergsoniane e magico-realiste (ispirate alla nuova metafisica) che pervadono l'eredità del post-strutturalismo francese, per non parlare degli scossoni cyborg e post-human. Una conseguenza di tutto ciò si sperimenta intellettualmente nella difficoltà di applicare modelli ai dispositivi con cui ci troviamo a confronto. Si tratta di una questione prima facie epistemologica, senza dubbio, ma il suo significato politico-ideologico non dovrebbe essere sottovalutato: le ideologie svaniscono come parte di una più generale perdita di significato (che caratterizza il pensiero 71 Dopo Rawls? filosofico contemporaneo). E svaniscono perché i modelli teorici non riescono a fare i conti con la realtà dei fatti. Il secondo tentativo di spiegazione cerca di capire come si può rimediare a questo. Ci sono due opzioni: o la consolazione nichilista, magica e autoritaria come tutto sommato avviene nella nuova metafisica, o il tentativo di dare nuovo spazio logico e pratico ai modelli normativi. Io opto per la seconda opzione. Ma cosa significa ipotizzare una sorta di modello alternativo rispetto alla tradizione? Significa trasformare la visione di ciò che è normativo. La sfera del normativo riguarda il dover essere sia dal punto di vista logico che da quello etico-politico. La normatiità della tradizione scende così dall'alto sulla realtà, come il principio del terzo escluso o l'imperativo categorico. La trasformazione dei modelli che ho in mente implica nuove opzioni in cui i modelli, invece di scendere dall'alto, salgono dal basso. È una visione evolutiva dei modelli normativi, di rendere la mentalità compatibile con la realtà dei fatti. 73 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 73-84 ISSN: 1825-5167 CONSTITUCIONALISMO E IGUALDAD DEMOCRÁTICA UNA TEORIA DE LA JUSTICIA DE JOHN RAWLS DESPUÉS DE MEDIO SIGLO EDUARDO MENDIETA Department of Philosophy The Pennsylvania State University (USA) ezm5325@psu.edu ABSTRACT This essay begins by offering a brief, but perhaps needed, biographical sketch of John Rawls, so as to foreground very unique personal dimensions of his approach to the question of justice as fairness in terms of the “sense of justice.” It is argued that Rawls philosophical motivation was guided by an embodied and felt sense of justice. Then, the author discusses four striking aspects of A Theory of Justice in light of the most recent scholarship on Rawls’s development and historical background. The author then discusses the Kantian sources of Rawls project, but also how the both differ. The essay concludes with a consideration of Rawls’ claim that A Theory of Justice should be understood as “a philosophical conception for a constitutional democracy.” Should we read A Theory of Justice as a theory of justice tout court, or merely as a philosophical explication of the principles that guide constitutional democracies? K EYWORDS justice as fairness, sense of justice, constitutionalism, democracy, Kant, Wittgenstein. A pesar de que A Theory of Justice de John Rawls es sin duda uno de los libros de filosofía más importantes del siglo pasado, fue un clásico que no estudié ni en la universidad ni durante el posgrado. Lo llegué a estudiar, pero por iniciativa propia, y posterior a mis estudios sobre la filosofía política de Jürgen Habermas. Sin embargo, una mirada retrospectiva se nos presenta como un desafío: ¿qué podemos pensar sobre este libro tan importante que revitalizó la filosofía política y moral, y que se convirtió en una de las defensas más soberanas de la democracia constitucional y de la primacía incondicionada de los derechos e igualdad del ciudadano? En este breve ensayo, procederé en cinco pasos. Primero, quiero presentar un perfil biográfico de Rawls, pues tal vez muchos no conozcan a Jack Rawls (la persona). Segundo, basado en esta breve biografía me gustaría recalcar unos motivos biográficos que han guiado la producción filosófica de Rawls. Tercero, con la privilegiada visión 74 EDUARDO MENDIETA retrospectiva de 50 años, me enfocaré en cuatro aspectos de TJ (como es común referirse a Una teoría de La Justicia) que, para mí, y creo que también para los lectores, serán reveladores. En un cuarto paso discutiré brevemente la relación entre Rawls y Kant, y en un quinto y último paso, delinearé elementos revolucionarios e inacabados del constitucionalismo Rawlsiano. I John (Jack) Rawls nació el 21 de Febrero de 1921 en Baltimore, Maryland –una ciudad con gran significancia histórica en la historia de los EU–, y que además ha sido lugar de muchas protestas debido a incidentes racistas.1 Rawls fue el segundo de cuatro varones. Cuando Rawls era niño contrajo difteria y neumonía, contagiando a dos de sus hermanos más pequeños, quienes murieron de aquellas enfermedades. Después de la muerte de su segundo hermano, Rawls desarrolló una tartamudez que le afectó toda su vida. Él siguió a su hermano mayor a Princeton, donde realizó sus estudios. Posteriormente, se gradúo bastante temprano –en 1943– para poder hacer el servicio militar durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Sirvió en el teatro de guerra del Pacífico, donde participó en combates mano-a-mano. Recibió la Medalla del Corazón Morado y la Estrella de Bronce por su heroísmo militar. Después de la guerra regresó a Princeton para continuar sus estudios de posgrado. Recibió su doctorado en 1950, defendiendo su tesis: “A Study in the Grounds of Ethical Knowledge: Considered with Reference on the Moral Worth of Character”. Durante el año académico de 1947-8, fue estudiante visitante en Cornell, donde estudió con Norman Malcolm y Max Black, quienes introducían entonces la filosofía de Wittgenstein. Durante sus estudios de posgrado, conoció a Margaret (Mardy) Warfield Fox, su esposa de toda su vida. Durante 1952-3, fue Fulbright Fellow en Christ Church College, en Oxford. Allí conoció y trabajó con H.L.A. Hart, Stuart Hampshire, Gilbert Ryle, Isaiah Berlin. Durante este periodo participó en un seminario con Hart, el cual dio origen a su famoso libro: El Concepto de Derecho, y también en un seminario co-dirigido por Berlin y Hampshire en el cual Hart era un participante activo. Después de su regreso de Inglaterra, asumió la posición de profesor asistente en Cornell. Ya en los años cincuenta Rawls empezaba a articular su visión y proyecto filosófico. Por ejemplo, en 1955 publicó su artículo “Dos conceptos de la regla” y en 1958 “Justicia como En lo que sigue me baso en los detalles biográficos que se pueden encontrar en el libro de Thomas Pogge, John Rawls: His Life and Theory of Justice, translated by Michelle Kosch, Oxford New York, Oxford 2007; y en la introducción a The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon, edited by Jon Mandle and David A. Reidy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2014. 1 75 Constitucionalismo e igualdad democrática: Una teorida de la justicia de John Rawls … imparcialidad.” A fines de la década de los cincuenta Rawls conoció a Burton Dreben, quien se convertirá en uno de sus amigos más íntimos y un gran interlocutor filosófico. Por mediación de Dreben, Rawls recibió una invitación como profesor visitante en Harvard en 1959-60. En 1960 fue contratado en MIT como director del departamento de filosofía. Ahí contrató a Hilary Putnam, quien se convirtió en otro de sus amigos filosóficos. En el otoño de 1962 fue contratado en Harvard, donde tendrá como colegas a Thomas Nagel, Marshall Cohen, Ronald Dworkin, Frank Michaelman, Owen Fiss, Charles Fried, Michael Walzer, y Robert Nozick. El año sabático de 196970 lo pasó en el Centro de Estudios Avanzados en la universidad de Stanford, donde trabajaba en la tercera y última versión de TJ. Esta última versión casi fue destruida por el fuego, pero afortunadamente el manuscrito sobrevivió gracias al agua: aunque quedó completamente mojado, al menos seguía legible. El libro fue publicado en el otoño de 1971 por Harvard University Press, llegando a ser rápidamente en un clásico de la filosofía moral y política. Ha vendido más de 400 mil copias, convirtiéndose en un best seller, y ha sido traducido a más de 28 lenguas.2 En el prefacio a la primera edición de TJ, Rawls menciona tres periodos correspondiendo a tres versiones del manuscrito: 1966, 1967-8, y 1969-70. Sin embargo, y discutiblemente, Rawls ya estaba trabajando en el manuscrito desde 1951, pues en el mismo prefacio menciona la publicación de la revisión de su tesis doctoral como punto de partida, a decir el artículo: “Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics.”3 En 1993 publica Political Liberalism, el cual expandirá y revisará en 19964. En 1993, Rawls presentó la lección de Oxford Amnesty Lectures: “The Laws of People.”5 En 1995, después de una conferencia organizada en el Colegio de Marrymount para celebrar 25 años de la publicación de TJ, sufre el primero de una serie de derramos cerebrales. Sin embargo, en 1997 publica “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited.”6 En 1999 con la ayuda de uno de sus estudiantes, Rawls coordinó Estas cifras se citan en el libro de Thomas Pogge, página 3. Le agradezco a Emily Marie Silk, de Havard University Press, que ha confirmado que hasta hoy se han vendido más 400,000 copias de ese libro. Como se debe saber hay dos ediciones: la de 1971 y la revisada de 1999, y hay una tercera que republica la edición original. 3 Republicado en John Rawls, Collected Papers, edited by Samuel Freeman, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England 1999, pp. 1-19. 4 John Rawls, Political Liberalism, Expanded Edition, New York, Columbia University Press 1996. 5 Stephen Shute and Susan Hurley, eds., On Human Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 1993, Basic Books, New York 1993, pp. 41-82; posteriormente Rawls editó las lecciones, expandiéndolas y publicándolas como un libro The Law of Peoples, with “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England 1999. 6 Ver, Rawls, Collected Papers, pp. 573-615. 2 76 EDUARDO MENDIETA la publicación de sus “Ensayos Recogidos.”7 Ese mismo año Rawls recibió el Rolf Schock, Premio otorgado por la Academia Real Sueca y la Medalla de Excelencia de Humanidades Nacional. En el 2000 sus Lecciones sobre la Historia de filosofía Moral y en 2007 sus Lecciones sobre la Historia de la filosofía Política, fueron publicadas8. En 2009, editado por Thomas Nagel, se publicó la tesis de pregrado de Rawls, que se había descubierto en 2007 con el título: A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith (Una Indagación breve sobre el sentido del pecado y la Fe), con un manuscrito inédito adicional titulado “Acerca de mi Religión.”9 Rawls murió en Noviembre 24 de 2002, en su casa junto a su esposa, en Lexington, Massachusetts. II De lo anterior quiero recalcar unos motivos biográficos que marcaron indeleblemente el trabajo de Rawls. Como ya mencioné, dos de sus hermanos menores murieron porque fueron infectados por enfermedades que contrajeron de Jack. Esta experiencia de la injusticia de que él fue salvado, pero no sus hermanos, lo marcó físicamente con su tartamudear que lo acompañó toda su vida. En su texto “Acerca de Mi Religión”, Rawls escribe sobre tres incidentes que él atribuyó a su distanciamiento y eventual abandono de su fe religiosa. El primero tuvo lugar cuando un pastor visitó su regimiento antes de un enfrentamiento militar. El pastor proclamó en su sermón de bendición que las balas de las tropas americanas eran dirigidas por dios a los japoneses, y que él los protegía de las balas de los enemigos. Esto lo enojó profundamente, y él reprendió al pastor reclamándole que la fe cristiana no debe ser utilizada en esta forma tan absurda. El segundo incidente tuvo lugar cuando su compañero de carpa militar, Deacon, fue asesinado por bombas japonesas, después de que Rawls y él habían acordado cuál de ellos iba a donar sangre y cuál iba al frente de batalla. Rawls tenía el tipo de sangre que necesitaban para ayudar a un soldado herido, y por eso Deacon fue con el Coronel al frente a ver la posición de las tropas enemigas. Tan pronto como se aproximaron, los japoneses los bombardearon, asesinando a Deacon y al Coronel. El tercer incidente, el cual Rawls identifica más que como un incidente singular como un estado de cuestionamiento que duró toda su vida, Rawls, Collected Papers John Rawls, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, edited by Barbara Herman, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England 2000, y John Rawls, Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy, edited by Samuel Freeman, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England 2007. 9 John Rawls, A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin & Faith, with “On My Religion” edited by Thomas Nagel, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England 2009. 7 8 77 Constitucionalismo e igualdad democrática: Una teorida de la justicia de John Rawls … empezó en abril de 1945, cuando llegaron las primeras noticias y películas sobre los campos de concentración y el Holocausto. Rawls escribió: “Cuando Lincoln interpreta la guerra civil como el castigo divino por el pecado de la esclavitud, merecido tanto por el Norte como por el Sur, dios es visto actuando justamente. Pero el Holocausto no se puede interpretar en esta forma, y todos los esfuerzos que han tratado de hacer esto que he leído son horribles y malvados. Interpretar la historia como expresión de la voluntad de dios, esta voluntad divina tiene que acordar con las ideas básicas de justicia tal como las conocemos. Pues, ¿qué más puede ser la justicia básica? Por eso, pronto llegue a rechazar la idea de la supremacía de la voluntad divina y a considerarla también como horrible y malvada.”10 La otra nota biográfica llamativa y reveladora es la siguiente. En 1995, en conmemoración de los 50 años de Hiroshima, Rawls publicó “Cincuenta años después de Hiroshima.”11 Este es un artículo breve pero profundo. En el Rawls argumenta que el uso de la bomba atómica en particular y el bombardeo indiscriminado de las ciudades japonesas fue injusto y una violación de los principios decentes de las sociedades democráticas. Rawls argumenta que, en la conducta de una guerra justa, una sociedad democrática debe distinguir entre: los líderes y oficiales, sus soldados y la población civil. Estas distinciones remiten a los principios de responsabilidad. Adicionalmente, Rawls escribió: “Una sociedad democrática decente tiene que respetar los derechos humanos de los miembros del otro lado, ambos civiles y soldados, por dos razones. Una porque ellos simplemente poseen estos derechos por la ley de los pueblos [law of peoples]. La otra razón es para enseñar a los soldados y civiles del enemigo el contenido de estos derechos por el ejemplo de cómo son válidos en su propio caso….En el caso de derechos humanos en la guerra el aspecto del status aplicado a los civiles tiene una interpretación estricta.”12 John Rawls, como todos los que lo conocieron atestiguan, fue una persona generosa, tímida, reticente, pero a la vez, un gran profesor y mentor, para quien el sentido de justicia fue tanto algo racional como algo vivido y encarnado. III Ahora me referiré más directamente a TJ. Por razones de espacio, me gustaría solo subrayar cuatro aspectos llamativos de este texto. 10 11 12 Rawls, A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin & Faith, pp. 263. Rawls, Collected Papers, pp. 565-572. Rawls, Collected Papers, pp. 566. 78 EDUARDO MENDIETA El primero. TJ puede considerarse como la versión del siglo XX de la Republica de Platón, La Política de Aristóteles, La Ciudad Divina de San Agustín, El Leviatán de Hobbes, La Metafísica de La Moral de Kant y los Ensayos Federalistas de los Patriarcas de la República Norteamericana. En contraste, sin embargo, a estos otros clásicos, TJ fue producto de dos, o al menos de una década de intensa reflexión e investigación filosófica que fue conducida en colaboración con una comunidad filosófica. Lo sorprendente, también, de este libro, como ya mencioné, es que su versión final fue casi destruida. Aquí hay que notar que Rawls escribió su libro antes que las computadoras y las copias digitales estuvieran disponibles. El segundo. Para cualquier lector, creo, que no sea un experto en Rawls, será un poco sorprendente saber que Rawls había digerido los avances filosóficos más importantes de la primera parte del siglo XX: la filosofía del lenguaje ordinario, la filosofía lingüística de Wittgenstein, la teoría de la acción, teoría de la elección económica, y claro también la relación entre teoría moral y justificación del orden político. Como contra fondo, está también la crítica y asimilación de elementos del positivismo lógico, en particular la asimilación de la idea de la teoría moral y política como prácticas científicas, y a la vez, un rechazo rotundo a la reducción de la política y la moral al emotivismo y subjetivismo que el positivismo lógico conllevaba. En 2019, Andrius Gališanka publicó su libro John Rawls: The Path to A Theory of Justice (HUP), que es hasta el momento el más detallado y revelador estudio de los manuscritos, cartas, notas, anotaciones y manuscritos de sus lecciones, y otros documentos en los archivos de Rawls, los cuales ya están disponibles en la biblioteca de Harvard, donde fueron depositados13. Lo que Andrius Gališanka nos ofrece es una detallada génesis de TJ. Entonces, hay que leer TJ como el producto de un laboratorio filosófico. El tercero. Yo, personalmente, no había apreciado como TJ emerge de una gran crisis en la filosofía política y la vida política de las democracias occidentales en las secuelas de la segunda guerra mundial. En 2019, Katrina Forrester publicó In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy14. El título de este libro confunde un poco, pues se trata de una investigación de los orígenes de la problemática que Rawls trató de desarrollar en su TJ. El punto clave de la argumentación de Forrester es que en el periodo de la posguerra tanto en Inglaterra como en los EU el reto central fue el conflicto entre estatismo, reflejado en el estado Andrius Gališanka, John Rawls: The Path to A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England 2019. 14 Katrina Forrester, In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy, Princeton University Press, Princeton & Oxford 2019. 13 79 Constitucionalismo e igualdad democrática: Una teorida de la justicia de John Rawls … de bienestar que había surgido durante las primeras décadas del siglo XX, y la nueva valorización de los derechos del individuo. Este conflicto se resolverá con la emergencia del neoliberalismo, que sacrificará el liberalismo político al liberalismo económico del neoliberalismo. En los sesenta, la crítica era que el estado de bienestar era una forma de estatismo que era muy similar, o parecida, al estatismo del totalitarismo de los Fascistas y Nazis contra quienes se habían defendido. En palabras de Reagan, “government is not the solution, but the problem. [“El Gobierno no es la solución, sino el problema”], o como Foucault nos recordará en sus lecciones sobre la gubernamentalidad: “the best government is the one that rules the least” (el mejor gobierno es que gobierna lo mínimo), una cita que se ha atribuido a Thoureau, Locke y Jefferson. La respuesta a este dilema político es lo que Rawls desarrolla con sus dos principios de justicia: máximas libertades para todos en acuerdo con la libertad de cada uno, y solo tolerar desigualdades si son para el beneficio de los menos afortunados. Los dos principios de la justicia como imparcialidad crean un balance entre los derechos del individuo y la necesidad de aliviar y superar desigualdades sociales y económicas. El cuarto, y final aspecto de TJ que quiero recalcar, tiene que ver con el papel que la psicología moral juega en el trabajo de Rawls. Una crítica tan repetida como injusta es que Rawls supuestamente concibe el sujeto de la moral y la justicia como un sujeto aislado, egoísta, maquiavélico y calculador, y solo motivado por su propio interés pecuniario y económico. Esta crítica es tanto infundada como infantil. De hecho, en la tercera parte de TJ, en el capítulo VIII, “El Sentido de la Justicia,” Rawls desarrolla su psicología moral que empieza con lo que él llamó sentimientos morales, los cuales remiten a actitudes naturales que dan origen a emociones y sentimientos naturales. Este capítulo, más que otros, hace evidente como Rawls no es un Cartesiano/Kantiano, pues se distancia de una concepción de un sujeto solipsista y desencarnado. Este capítulo se remonta a su artículo de 1963, también titulado “The Sense of Justice,” donde se puede leer lo siguiente: “Uno puede decir, entonces, que una persona que carece del sentido de la justicia y que nunca actuaría como la justicia requiere excepto como el interés propio y la conveniencia requiere, no solo no tiene ligazones de amistad, afección y confianza mutua, sino que tampoco es capaz de sentir el resentimiento y la indignación.”15 Lo sorprendente es que para Rawls “el sentido, o sentimiento, de la justicia” se basa en que como seres humanos estamos expuestos a una cantidad de sentimientos naturales que dan origen a sentimientos morales: como gratitud, amor, rencor, 15 Rawls, Collected Papers, pp. 111. 80 EDUARDO MENDIETA resentimiento, amistad, lealtad, y otros sentimientos que esencialmente demuestran que, como seres de pasión y emoción, somos seres de sociabilidad, relacionalidad, y de cuerpos sintientes. IV A partir de los puntos ya desarrollados, he creado un puente al cuarto paso de mi presentación, en la que examinaré brevemente la relación entre el kantianismo y el rawlsianismo. Como ya sabemos, Rawls entendió su proyecto of “justice as fairness” como una forma de entender el kantianismo. En muchas ocasiones Rawls se refirió a “la posición original” detrás del “velo de la ignorancia” como la condición del sujeto kantiano tratando de decidir cómo aplicar el imperativo categórico. Rawls también escribió y habló de las personas en la posición original como sujetos noumenales. Y de la perspectiva en la posición original, como una visión sub specie aeternitatis. Además, ahora que tenemos disponibles sus lecciones sobre la historia de la filosofía moral, también podemos percatarnos de la forma substantiva en que Rawls se entendió a sí mismo como un kantiano. Sin embargo, hay dos puntos importantes que notar con respecto al kantianismo de Rawls. Primero, que Rawls entendió su kantianismo como uno que se enfocó en la versión del imperativo categórico que ilumina la libertad moral de cada sujeto, esto es la versión de la autonomía del sujeto moral. Segundo, que Rawls se centró casi exclusivamente en la Fundamentación de la Metafísica de las Costumbres y no en la Metafísica de las Costumbres, el trabajo kantiano posterior a la Fundamentación. Como se sabe la Metafísica de las Costumbres está dividida en dos partes: la doctrina de la ley, y la doctrina de la virtud. La primera se restringe o delimita exclusivamente qué es legal o jurídico con respecto a la imposición de la fuerza de coerción sobre individuos que estén de acuerdo con la libertad de cada individuo. La segunda se delimita a la doctrina de la virtud que parte de la presuposición de que los seres humanos no son morales, pero pueden llegar a serlo. Debemos cultivar virtudes para poder ser morales, una tarea que requiere que atendamos tanto a nuestra propia virtud, como a nuestro sentido de auto-respeto y dignidad, y a las obligaciones que tenemos con respecto a otros, como la gratitud y generosidad. Tanto en el Fundamentación como en la Metafísica, hay una bifurcación severa entre la motivación subjetiva tanto para la moral como para la justicia que indica que para Kant la única motivación es la que provee una voluntad absolutamente buena, a decir una voluntad dirigida por el deber, el respeto a la ley como ley. Pero, como indiqué anteriormente, para Rawls hay un cordón umbilical entre la motivación moral, lo que él llama el sentido de justicia, y la sociedad tanto justa como decente. Para Rawls, en contraste con Kant, nuestras virtudes morales y políticas que se basen en sentimiento morales, son 81 Constitucionalismo e igualdad democrática: Una teorida de la justicia de John Rawls … precisamente aquellas que nos orientan a la justicia, a la justicia como imparcialidad. El sujeto moral y político de Rawls es un sujeto social en su génesis y en su orientación. Podría concluir esta sección con una cita de Thomas Pogge, que en mi opinión acierta al entender esta relación tan única y generativa entre Kant y Rawls. En las últimas páginas de su libro sobre Rawls, Pogge escribe: “Rawls buscaba ofrecer una interpretación kantiana, no una interpretación de Kant. Tal interpretación kantiana es exitosa si se puede mostrar que la concepción de Rawls corresponde a la de Kant en formas importantes y, donde diverge, que lo hace por buenas razones.”16 Yo añadiría que la teoría de la justicia de Rawls es una interpretación kantiana, al menos por tres razones: aquellos decidiendo en la posición original la estructura básica de una sociedad justa lo hacen como sujetos que poseen libertad racional (es decir que puede determinar sus metas, deseos y fines), y que además legislan con respecto a los principios que guían sus decisiones con respecto a las leyes que determinan sus interacciones (son legisladores racionales), y también tratan de establecer un orden donde la libertad e igualdad de cada uno esté de acuerdo con la dignidad de todos, y donde las desigualdades naturales, sociales e históricas se tratan de eliminar o amortiguar. Sin embargo, hay dos grandes divergencias: estos sujetos se orientan con respecto a cada otro con una actitud de pluralismo y falibilismo (los sujetos en la posición original no pueden suspender todo juicio y otros juicios no se pueden anticipar o eliminar), y en este sentido la posición original de Rawls no es aquella donde legislamos una ley eterna o que se pudiera convertir en una ley natural. Debemos ver la posición original no solo como una posición en un espacio ideal sino también como un lugar temporal. Finalmente, como ya noté, el sujeto moral, político, racional de Rawls es uno que avanza hacia su sentido de la justicia desde su corporalidad humana. V Una forma de entender la trayectoria filosófica de Rawls entre Una Teoría de la Justicia y El Liberalismo Político y La Ley de Los Pueblos es decir que Rawls se hace más histórico (o historicista), más pragmático, y mucho más cosmopolita—que es la lectura que Richard Rorty nos propone17. El trabajo posterior a TJ es mucho menos Thomas Pogge, John Rawls, pp. 194. Richard Rorty, “The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy” in Richard Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism and Truth, Philosophical Papers, Volume 1, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1991, pp. 175-196. 16 17 82 EDUARDO MENDIETA un intento por abstraer de nuestra situación histórica y concreta y más un reto a ver la correlación entre nuestras instituciones vigentes y nuestras intuiciones morales y principios de la justicia. Es decir, progresivamente el método de Rawls se enfoca más y más en lo que Jürgen Habermas llama “reconstrucción” normativa de los principios que guían nuestras instituciones. Otra forma de entender esta trayectoria sería la de postular que Rawls progresivamente ve su proyecto de “una” teoría de la justicia como una justificación normativa del constitucionalismo democrático. En el prefacio a la edición revisada de 1999 de TJ, Rawls escribió: “Las ideas y objetivos centrales de esta concepción [“justicia como imparcialidad”] las veo como pertenecientes a una concepción filosófica de una democracia constitucional. Mi esperanza es que la justicia como imparcialidad aparecerá razonable y útil, incluso si no es completamente convincente, a una variedad de opiniones políticas consideradas y que por ello expresan una parte esencial del centro común de la tradición democrática”18 Sin embargo, ya en 1963, en su artículo “Constitutional Liberty and the Concept of Justice” Rawls había escrito: “Aristóteles pensó que es una peculiaridad del ser humano el que tiene un sentido de lo justo y lo injusto y que la participación en un entendimiento común de la justicia es lo que hace una polis. Análogamente, uno podría mostrar que participar en el entendimiento de la justicia como imparcialidad hace [makes] una democracia constitucional”19 Progresivamente, Rawls verá su tarea filosófica como la de proveer una concepción “filosófica” de la democracia constitucional y ver cómo de hecho tener un sentido común de la justicia es lo que hace estas democracias constitucionales. Y aquí es donde nos queda a nosotros una cantidad de preguntas con respecto a lo que continúa teniendo relevancia del pensamiento y proyecto de Rawls en nuestra época: ¿en qué forma debemos entender la tarea de desarrollar una “concepción” filosófica? ¿Es esta concepción una “justificación,” “una reconstrucción,” “una idealización”? Y más agudamente, ¿cómo debemos entender la relación entre un entendimiento común de la justicia y su hacer, constituir, demandar, una democracia constitucional? Otra pregunta que debemos hacernos sería: ¿cuál es el orden temporal entre el sentido de justicia y el desarrollar un orden constitucional? Por el momento termino con la siguiente pregunta: ¿cuál es la relación entre una visión ideal de la sociedad justa, la que Platón llamó Kallipolis, y que Rawls llamó la sociedad decente y justa, y la historia retorcida y torturada de los constitucionalismos? Tal vez debemos, desde y con Rawls, 18 19 Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. Xi. Rawls, Collected Papers, pp. 95. 83 Constitucionalismo e igualdad democrática: Una teorida de la justicia de John Rawls … preguntarnos cómo nos hemos socializado a través de historias torturadas para ascender al “sentido de la justicia” desde nuestros logros históricos, de los cuales sin duda la democracia constitucional es uno de los más grandes. BIBLIOGRAFÍA Forrester, Katrina (2019). In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Freeman, Samuel (1999). John Rawls, Collected Papers. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Gališanka, Andrius (2019). John Rawls: The Path to A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Mandle, Jon & Reidy, David (2014). The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pogge, Thomas (2007). John Rawls: His Life and Theory of Justice. New York: Oxford University Press. Rawls, John (1996). Political Liberalism, Expanded Edition. New York: Columbia University Press. Rawls, John (1999). The Law of Peoples, with “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Rawls, John (2000). Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Rawls, John (2007). Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Rawls, John (2009). A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin & Faith, with “On My Religion”. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 84 EDUARDO MENDIETA Rorty, Richard (1991). “The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy”. En Richard Rorty (ed.), Objectivity, Relativism and Truth, Philosophical Papers, Volume 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shute, Stephen & Hurley, Susan (1993). On Human Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures. New York: Basic Books. 85 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 85-114 ISSN: 1825-5167 A THEORY OF JUSTICE AS RORSCHACH TEST JAMES GLEDHILL Philosophy Department George Mason University (USA) james.gledhill@gmail.com ABSTRACT This article takes up Brian Barry’s suggestion that ‘Somebody could write an article on “A Theory of Justice as Rorschach Test”’. Turning Barry’s suggestion back onto his own work, and that of other influential interpreters who shaped the reception of Rawls in analytic political philosophy, it argues that these readers approached Theory with preconceived notions of the methods of analytic philosophy and the nature of a liberal theory. Whether as largely sympathetic or critical readers, they found in Theory the articulation of a liberal individualist political ideology resting on Kantian moral foundations that provided philosophical support for the capitalist welfare state. But alongside this dominant line of interpretation, one can also unearth a counter-narrative. If one allows one’s preconceived notions of what a liberal theory in the analytic tradition should look like to be challenged, an alternative picture of Rawls can emerge. On this alternative view, Rawls has a holistic approach to justification with roots in post-analytic philosophy and the tradition of German idealism and his theory takes forward an idealist tradition of thought that stretched from Rousseau, Kant and Hegel up to Bernard Bosanquet. K EYWORDS John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, justice, liberalism, political philosophy, Brian Barry. In a 1978 review of Robert Paul Wolff’s Understanding Rawls: A Reconstruction and Critique of A Theory of Justice (Wolff 1977), Brian Barry quipped that ‘Somebody could write an article on “A Theory of Justice as Rorschach Test”’ (Barry 1978: 780). This article takes up Barry’s semi-serious suggestion. Barry’s comment was prompted by a perception that Wolff’s interpretation of Rawls’s 1971 book was at least as revealing about Wolff’s Marxist preconceptions as it was about Rawls’s theory. That may well be the case, but it is also true that Barry’s own interpretation of Rawls – initially set forth in his The Liberal Theory of Justice: A Critical Examination of the Principal Doctrines in A Theory of Justice by John Rawls (Barry 1973), the first book-length response to Rawls – is similarly revealing about Barry’s liberal preconceptions. Notwithstanding their ideological differences, these early books by Barry and Wolff helped 86 JAMES GLEDHILL shape the way that Theory was received within the world of analytic political philosophy, with a focus on reconstructing and critiquing the logic of Rawls’s original position argument. Within this dominant interpretive framework, the significance of Rawls’s work quickly came to be understood as consisting largely in its presentation of a liberal egalitarian theory of distributive justice resting on Kantian moral foundations. Barry suggested that ‘there could be more systematic efforts to stand back from A Theory of Justice and look at it as a social document or the expression of a certain kind of liberal outlook’; considering the book as a Rorschach test would involve stepping back further to ‘look at the people doing the looking’ (Barry 1978: 780).1 While I will not engage in assessing the personalities of critics of Rawls, I will examine, and call into question, the way in which the text has been interpreted as the expression of a certain kind of liberal outlook. In what follows, I will take a series of related propositions about Theory and its relationship to Rawls’s later work that are – or at least were – so widely accepted as to appear banal and show that there are grounds for questioning each one. In doing so, I will draw upon not only Rawls’s oeuvre, but also secondary literature that constitutes a ‘dissident strain’ (Laden 2003: 372) in the voluminous literature on Rawls. The present exercise is located somewhere between a reception analysis (Laborde 2002) and the delineation of alternative frameworks, or ‘blueprints’, for reading Rawls’s work (Laden 2003). In surveying diametrically opposing ways in which Rawls’s work has been received, two different pictures of Theory will emerge. What this exercise lacks in analytical depth may be compensated for by a breadth of evidence that cumulatively suggests the need to rethink much of what is still received wisdom about Rawls’s text. Such an analysis will of course manifest its own contestable preconceptions. While there is widespread agreement concerning the historical significance of Theory, there is no consensus, overlapping or otherwise, on how the book should be read. Jonathan Wolff summed up the situation nicely in a review of three important introductions to Rawls – by Samuel Freeman (2007), Thomas Pogge (2007), and Catherine Audard (2007) – that followed in the wake of Rawls’ death in 2002. Wolff concludes: As for Rawls’s legacy in political philosophy, there is simply nothing on the horizon that has any chance of displacing A Theory of Justice as the book all students of the subject must study in detail. As for their teachers, each has their own view of how the book is to be understood, and on reading these three books will no doubt conclude: you read Rawls your way; I read Rawls Rawls’s way (Wolff 2008). Thomas Firey has also observed that ‘A Theory of Justice seems a sort of moral Rorschach test; in its pages, almost any reader can see whatever political system he or she prefers’ (Firey 2006). 1 87 A Theory of Justice as Rorschach Test Are there any general guidelines that can be offered for differentiating better interpretations from worse, or are we fated to remain in the situation of ‘you read Rawls your way; I read Rawls Rawls’s way’? I will proceed on the following not uncontroversial premises. First, the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer (2003 [1960]) teaches us that there is no interpretation of a text that is uninfluenced by preconceptions; indeed, such preconceptions, or ‘prejudices’, are not obstacles to understanding but form the productive basis upon which a reading of a text is possible. What is important is an openness to dialogue with a text that puts those preconceptions in play and is open to them being challenged. Second, if in reading Rawls’s work one follows the same kind of principle of interpretive charity that Rawls applied to his own reading of the history of political philosophy, then one will, initially at least, interpret a doctrine as a whole and in its best light, rather than seeking to refute particular claims (see Rawls 2000: xvi-xviii; 2007: xii-xv). Third, and relatedly, such an interpretation should take account of the full breadth of Rawls’s oeuvre, including, importantly, his lectures on the histories of moral and political philosophy, which provide an essential resource for understanding how Rawls developed his theory through ‘conversing with the tradition’ of ethics and how he saw his theory as continuing this tradition (Nussbaum 1999; Lloyd 2014; Bejan 2021). Before turning to the first proposition I will discuss, let me indulge in a personal recollection that puts my own interpretive cards on the table. I first read Theory for an introductory political theory course that in standard fashion included reading selected sections of part one of Theory that served as the target for apparently devastating criticisms. I returned to the text in graduate school after developing an interest in the work of Jürgen Habermas. Thinking that I would relate Habermas’s work to something with which I was already familiar, I turned to the 1995 debate between Rawls and Habermas, expecting Habermas’s critical social theory to wipe the floor with the crude AngloSaxon atomistic liberalism that I took Rawls’s theory to represent, crude in the sense of purporting to derive timeless, universal principles from a rational choice standpoint that abstracted away entirely from a background social theory or historical reflection. However, the more I was drawn into Rawls’s work, the less it seemed to fit with the standard preconceptions that I brought to the text. It was only when, with the aid of a dissident strain of secondary literature and Rawls’s lectures on moral and political philosophy, I began to look at not just Habermas but also Rawls as the inheritor of a broad tradition stretching through Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx and beyond that his work gradually began to make sense as an integrated whole. I concluded that in terms of its frame of reference, substantive concerns, and methodology, Rawls’s work was in many respects closer to the post-Kantian tradition of German philosophy than to the mainstream tradition of analytic political philosophy (Gledhill 2011). 88 JAMES GLEDHILL Given recent and ongoing efforts to historicize Rawls’s work, these claims may no longer appear as incredible as they once might. After 50 years, the canonization of Theory is well-advanced and it might well be that the history of political philosophy will remember the book more in the way that Rawls himself came to present it, as the continuation of the tradition of the liberalism of freedom, to which Rousseau is a precursor and in which Rawls includes Kant, Hegel, and ‘less obviously’ J.S. Mill (Rawls 1999: 15n7, 127; 2000: 330), and less in the manner that Barry’s book helped to popularise as the foremost exponent of the liberal theory of justice. 1. RAWLS REVIVED ANALYTIC POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY The idea that Rawls revived political philosophy is a commonplace. When it comes to this proposition, my intention is not so much to take issue with the conventional narrative according to which Rawls revived the moribund discipline after Peter Laslett’s famous 1956 declaration that ‘for the moment anyway political philosophy is dead’ (Laslett 1956: vii), although this narrative can certainly be questioned (see e.g. Matravers 2008). My concern is rather with the nature of the discipline that Rawls is taken to have resurrected, particularly the idea that Rawls revived analytic political philosophy (see e.g. Gališanka 2021). What is presumably meant by this is principally that Rawls revived Anglophone political philosophy, given that it was the high analytic philosophy of logical positivism that was the perceived culprit for the death of political philosophy. Rather than reviving analytic political philosophy, Rawls was showing that it was still possible to do political philosophy after the advent of analytic philosophy. With respect to Rawls’s relationship with analytic philosophy, there are two extremes to be avoided, both the idea that Rawls was uninfluenced by the current of ideas represented by logical positivism and the idea that he simply swam with this current. Marc Bevir and Andrius Gališanka argue convincingly against two ‘folk narratives’: Where one folk narrative sees Rawls as rescuing political philosophy from positivism, we argue that his early project drew on the modernism and positivism of the Vienna Circle. Yet, where the other folk narrative sees Rawls as entrenching a positivist and analytic approach to philosophy, we argue that he later followed W.V.O. Quine and Ludwig Wittgenstein in their naturalistic and holistic rejections of positivism that came to characterize post-analytic philosophy (Bevir and Gališanka 2012: 702; c.f. Bok 2017). Any adequate engagement with Rawls’s methodology must therefore take account of Rawls’s early view of ethics as a science, but also the development of this view in a post-analytic, holistic direction (see also Reidy 2014; Gališanka 2019). C.F. Delaney offered an early critique of the failure of critics to engage with Rawls’s conception of philosophical method. ‘It is my conviction’, he argued, ‘that much of the criticism of 89 A Theory of Justice as Rorschach Test John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice misses its mark precisely because of a failure to appreciate the distinctive methodological structure of this work’ (Delaney 1977: 153). Delaney emphasised the need to assess the theory as a whole and to assess it comparatively rather than absolutely, considering its attraction in relation to its leading competitors, such as utilitarianism. Finally, he argued against ‘the critic whose ultimate weapon is the counterexample’, arguing not that counterexamples were worthless, but rather that in the absence of an alternative theory, counterexamples alone would not refute Rawls’s theory (Delaney 1977:153). Speculating on the reason why analytic critics such as R.M. Hare (1975) had been so dismissive of the methodological approach of Theory, Delaney suggested that it is the ‘methodological break with much of the recent analytic tradition rather than his substantive conclusions that is the real source of discontent on the part of many of Rawls’s critics’ (Delaney 1977: 157n5; see also Krishnan 2021). Rawls’s book was seized upon not only because it helped overcome logical positivism’s attacks on normative theory, but also because it offered the prospect of reviving the kind of model of the application of philosophy to public affairs characteristic of classical utilitarianism. This general view of the ‘use of political theory’ – this being treated as synonymous with political philosophy – was clearly expressed by John Plamenatz and adopted and elaborated upon by Philip Pettit. As Plamenatz put it, ‘By political theory I do not mean explanations of how governments function; I mean systematic thinking about the purposes of government’ (Plamenatz 1960: 37). As Pettit elaborates: Political theory is a normative discipline, designed to let us evaluate rather than explain; in this it resembles moral or ethical theory. What distinguishes it among normative disciplines is that it is designed to facilitate in particular the evaluation of government or, if that is something more general, the state (Pettit 1991: 1). This is the conception of political philosophy, crucially influenced by utilitarianism, that Bernard Williams (2005) refers to, pejoratively, as political moralism, in which political philosophy is seen as applied moral philosophy focused on the goals of government. But this underestimates the depth of Rawls’s critique of utilitarianism, not simply as a theory of justice but as an approach to normative justification, an idea to which I will return. Moreover, this narrative, with Rawls picking up the baton from classical utilitarianism, glosses over the dominance of idealism in the early twentieth century (Wolff 2013). It is worth recalling that Laslett discussed political philosophy far more broadly as concerned, not simply with the purposes of government, but with ‘political and social relationships at the widest possible level of generality’ and the tradition that he argued had lapsed was one that he takes to have extended from Hobbes in the 90 JAMES GLEDHILL seventeenth century to Bernard Bosanquet in the early twentieth century (Laslett 1956: vii). The reference to Bosanquet is likely to strike a discordant note for many contemporary readers. The traditions of British and American idealism are largely the preserve of specialists and few would see Rawls as having any important affinities with this tradition.2 But Laslett was not alone in taking this view of the canon of political philosophy. In his 1975 review of Rawls’s magnum opus, John W. Chapman pronounced that ‘A Theory of Justice is an achievement of the first order. In this century only Bernard Bosanquet’s Philosophical Theory of the State begins to compare with it’ (Chapman 1975: 591).3 Indeed, Chapman went further, arguing not only that Rawls’s book ranked alongside Bosanquet’s in terms of significance, but that the two were engaged in essentially the same philosophical project. Bosanquet himself had observed that ‘few lines of affiliation are better established in the history of philosophy that that between Rousseau’s declaration that liberty is the quality of man and the philosophy of Right as it developed from Kant to Hegel’ (Bosanquet 2013 [1899]: 235-36). For Chapman: In the perspective of western moral and political philosophy, I think that Rawls’s theory of justice is best seen as the culmination of the effort, begun by Kant and Hegel, and carried forward by T.H. Green, Bernard Bosanquet, and the other British and American idealists, to adapt Rousseau’s theory of the general will to the modern state (Chapman 1975: 590).4 It is fair to say that this line of interpretation has not been influential. It was taken up, however, by one of Chapman’s students, Gerald Gaus, who in his first book – the now anachronistically titled The Modern Liberal Theory of Man (Gaus 1983) – argued Jonathan Wolff comments: ‘Idealism, as understood in Hegelian terms, has for a long time remained largely of historical interest in contemporary thought. Although there has been a revival of interest in idealist political thought, it still remains only on the fringes of Anglo-American political philosophy, except as an object of intellectual history. It seems that we are yet to see any serious attempt to revive any strong form of neo-Hegelianism in political philosophy, although some of Hegel’s ideas about moral community have influenced current criticisms of liberal thought’ (Wolff 2013: 798). 3 Albeit Philosophical Theory of the State was published in 1899. 4 The questions of how and when this tradition influenced Rawls’s own thinking may be illuminated by further archival research, but the Harvard University Archives collection HUM 48.1 ‘Books from the personal library of John Rawls, 1915-2002’ (available at: https://id.lib.harvard.edu/ead/hua36010/catalog; accessed 15 October 2021), a selection of volumes ‘chosen because they provide an important resource for research into the origins and development of Rawls’s concept of a just liberal society’, is suggestive. While unsurprisingly wide-ranging, the collection includes not only works by and on Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel, but Green’s Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, Bosanquet’s Philosophical Theory of the State and F.H. Bradley’s Ethical Studies. (Rawls’s familiarity with Bradley is attested to by Theory and is something I touch upon below). 2 91 A Theory of Justice as Rorschach Test that there was a tradition of liberal thought running from J.S. Mill through T.H. Green, Bernard Bosanquet, L.T. Hobhouse and John Dewey to Rawls. This offers a tantalizing glimpse of a road not taken. Instead of succumbing to the seductive allure of the dichotomy between individualism and communitarianism, which prevailed in the liberal-communitarian debate of the 1980s, political philosophy might have focused on the liberal tradition, not as an individualist ideology, but rather as a philosophical tradition concerned with reconciling individuality and sociability. There was available from the start, then, a fundamentally different framework for making sense of the historical significance of Rawls’s work than the analytic framework that came to predominate. When Barry looked for historical precedents to Rawls’s book, he reached back to Henry Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics (Sidgwick 1981 [1907]), arguing that both are comprehensive and systematic statements of a thoroughgoing liberal position; and both, it might be added, appear at a time when liberalism is becoming unfashionable, dismissed in smart circles as shallow compared with the deep (not to say unfathomable) truths of Hegel or a Hegelianized Marx (Barry 1973: 4).5 There is no question of Rawls’s admiration for Sidgwick as the high point of the classical utilitarian tradition, and of their shared penchant for meticulous and exhaustive analysis. But in recruiting Rawls for the defence of an embattled liberalism, Barry’s line of interpretation obscured the affinities between Rawls’s project and (some of) the truths of Hegel. Both Barry and Wolff recognised that Theory set Rawls’s original position argument – adumbrated in Rawls’s 1958 paper ‘Justice as Fairness’ (Rawls 1999 [1958]) – in a new light but were unsure what to make of the new theory as a whole. After analytically reconstructing and critiquing Rawls’s theory, Wolff concludes: The logical status of Rawls’s theory is unclear, I suggest, because, in addition to his conception of rational choice and his settled moral convictions about particular matters of social justice, Rawls also has an extremely powerful commitment to an Idealist conception of the harmonious and organic society. Particularly in the latter portions of A Theory of Justice, this conception is brought heavily into play and assumes more and more of the weight of the argument (Wolff 1977: 190). These early engagements with Theory at least sought to come to some assessment of the work as a whole. For subsequent readers, the agenda would be set by analyses of the original position (esp. Nagel 1975; Dworkin 1975), with the separation of Rawls’s ‘contract’ and ‘coherence’ arguments (Lyons 1975) facilitating discussion of the original position in isolation from reflective equilibrium and the stability argument of part three 5 John Horton notes the ‘embattled’ position of liberalism in 1970s Britain; see Horton (2002: 154). 92 JAMES GLEDHILL of Theory, this despite Rawls cautioning that ‘without consideration of the argument of the last part, the theory of justice will be misunderstood’ (Rawls 1971/1999: ix/xviii). Rawls’s overall relationship to varied traditions of theoretical and practical philosophy is well summed up by Samuel Freeman: Though raised within the Anglo-American analytic tradition in philosophy, Rawls is mainly responding to problems set forth by the major moral and political philosophers since Hobbes. For this reason, Rawls’s lectures on the history of moral and political philosophy provide valuable insights into Rawls’s own work … Rawls is as systematic as any of the great European philosophers of former centuries, and thus it is difficult to understand and appreciate his arguments without seeing their place within the larger context of his entire theory and its relationship to his historical predecessors. Both methodologically and stylistically he departs from the analytic tradition. (His friend Burton Dreben once compared Rawls’s methodological holism with Hegel’s, and said of A Theory of Justice, ‘It reads like it was translated from the original German.’) On the other hand Rawls is as meticulous as any other analytic moral philosopher in setting forth the premises and assumptions supporting his main conclusions (Freeman 2007: 28). This view has recently been criticised for its ‘memorializing of Rawls’ and neglect of his contemporary influences (Smith 2021: 19). But while there is some truth to this, the influence of contemporary currents of thought remains in the background of Theory, or confined to footnotes, because of Rawls’s principal focus on responding to problems bequeathed by the traditions of moral and political philosophy. It is in this context that philosophical interpretations of Rawls’s work should situate the overall ambitions of Theory. Under the influence of initial readers like Barry and Wolff, Theory was somewhat ironically established as the founding text in the canon of contemporary analytic political philosophy on the basis of arguments that few if any analytic philosophers found to be cogent or clearly formulated. The Rawls industry prospered precisely because of the perceived need to reconstruct, reformulate, and extend Rawls’s arguments. But there was from the start an alternative framework with the potential to make better sense of Rawls’s aspirations. Barry held a view that continues to be expressed by analytic political philosophers that ‘there is a line of intellectual tradition that runs from John Stuart Mill and another from Hegel’ (Wolff 2013: 813). Barry’s own work is very much in the tradition of Mill’s On Liberty, and it is to this tradition that he assigns Rawls.6 Other interpreters like Chapman, however, were alive to the possibility of reading Theory within what Rawls himself would later call the tradition of the liberalism of Paul Kelly describes Barry’s work as ‘located in a “British” tradition of political philosophy that runs back via H.L.A. Hart, through Henry Sidgwick to utilitarians such as Mill’ (Kelly 2002: 119). 6 93 A Theory of Justice as Rorschach Test freedom and as seeking to reconcile the truths of the two intellectual traditions represented by Mill and Hegel. 7 Rawls certainly employed the tool of (post-) analytic philosophy, but the substance of his theory in many ways marked the resumption of the idealist tradition extending up to Bosanquet. 2. RAWLS PROPOSES A LIBERAL EGALITARIAN THEORY OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE THAT IS HIGHLY KANTIAN IN NATURE In Barry’s hands, the tentative and exploratory indefinite article in Rawls’s title is replaced by the ideological self-confidence conveyed by the definite article: rather than a theory of justice, Rawls became for Barry the leading contemporary exponent – and proponent – of the liberal theory of justice. Whether as largely sympathetic or critical readers, Barry and Wolff contributed to the perception, now so widely shared as to appear banal, that the significance of Theory lies principally in its proposing a liberal egalitarian theory of distributive justice that is highly Kantian in nature. However, building upon the alternative way of understanding Rawls’s relationship to the philosophical tradition that I began to explore in the previous section, I will suggest that each element of this proposition should be treated more carefully than is commonly assumed. a) Rawls proposes a liberal egalitarian theory of distributive justice that is highly Kantian in nature If there is one thing about Theory that can unequivocally be agreed upon then surely it is the fact that it proposes a liberal theory of justice. Barry described the book’s significance thus: As I see it, then, the significance of A Theory of Justice is as a statement of liberalism which isolates its crucial features by making private property in the means of production, distribution and exchange a contingent matter rather than an essential part of the doctrine and introduces a principle of distribution which could, suitably interpreted and with certain factual assumptions, have egalitarian implications (Barry 1973: 166).8 7 One could say that for Rawls, Mill makes it into this tradition because of his discovery of a Coleridgean counterweight to his youthful Benthamism (see Rawls 2007: 251-313). 8 Barry would later write: ‘Why was this extremely long, poorly organized and stylistically undistinguished book such a smash hit? It was immensely ambitious in its claims to deduce principles of justice from the construction of an “original position” and at the same time could be regarded as constituting a massive synthesis of contemporary liberal political thinking’ (Barry 1980: 284-85). 94 JAMES GLEDHILL It would be perverse to deny that Rawls’s conception of justice is a liberal conception in fundamentally important senses – after all, it gives lexical priority to a principle of equal basic liberties – or to deny the fact that, as I have already discussed, it is part of the liberal tradition broadly conceived. But there should be greater pause before reading Theory as a statement of liberalism. It is noteworthy that the term ‘liberalism’ does not appear in Rawls’s index for Theory (Laden 2006: 341)9 And while it appears three times in the text, none of these involve Rawls describing his own theory. Moreover, the situation is little different with the term ‘liberal’. It is also absent from the index and while it appears 18 times in the text, on none of these occasions is it used by Rawls to describe his own theory (Holbo 2008). The only entry in the index to liberalism or its cognates is to ‘liberal equality’, but then this is an interpretation of the idea of inequalities being to ‘everyone’s advantage’ that Rawls describes as based on the principle of efficiency and which he rejects in favour of the idea of democratic equality expressed by the difference principle (Rawls 1971/1999: 65/57). The most pertinent question to ask is not so much ‘When did Rawls become a “liberal”?’ (Holbo 2008); this happened almost immediately, with the books of Barry and Wolff playing an important role in this reception.10 Rather, the question is, What sort of a liberal did Rawls become and why? A first issue concerns the sense in which Theory proposes a liberal outlook or, one could say, ideological worldview. Both Barry and Wolff, from their competing perspective, co-opted Theory as part of an ideological dispute between liberalism and Marxism. Rawls, though, was loathe to describe his theory as an ideological intervention. In the preface to the French translation of Theory, Rawls writes: As with any political conception, readers are likely to see it as having a location on the political spectrum. But the terms used to describe these locations are different in different countries. In the United States this conception has been referred to as liberal, sometimes as left-liberal; in England it has been seen as social democratic, and in some ways as labor … [T]hese descriptions are for others to make. What is important for me are the central aims and ideas of justice as fairness as a philosophical conception for a constitutional democracy. My hope is that it will seem reasonable and useful, even if not fully convincing, to a wide range of thoughtful political opinion, and thereby express as essential part of the common core of the democratic tradition (Rawls 1999 [1987]: 415-16). Rawls regarded Theory as first and foremost a contribution to the tradition of democratic constitutional thought rather than to the ideological tradition of liberalism. To An interesting discussion of the significance of this fact appeared on the blog Crooked Timber beginning with a post by John Holbo (2008). 10 In a comment on Holbo’s (2008) post, Jacob T. Levy points to Barry’s book as evidence of how Rawls immediately became a representative of liberalism. 9 95 A Theory of Justice as Rorschach Test be sure, there is an overlap here – in his domestic theory Rawls begins from a tradition of liberal democratic constitutionalism – and of course Rawls’s reluctance to admit the ideological valence of his theory could be decoded as itself an ideological manoeuvre. But it is the burden of Rawls’s later work to argue that the political principles of liberal democratic constitutionalism can be reasonably endorsed on bases other than a comprehensive liberal doctrine, and an interpretation of Rawls should begin by at least taking this aspiration seriously. Barry’s conviction that a liberal outlook is not only a sufficient but a necessary condition for endorsing liberal institutions explains his scepticism towards Rawls’s later work (Barry 1990). What of the broader question of Rawls’s relationship to the liberal tradition? As Anthony Laden has written: Much of the reception of Rawls’s work, both in North America and in Europe, has been deeply influenced by his readers’ prior understanding of what constitutes liberalism, and their assumption that Rawls’s theory fits squarely within that framework … What if Rawls’s work is not best understood through the lens of a prior understanding of what liberalism is? … If we do not begin reading Rawls with the assumption that he is developing a version of liberalism, then we do not have to assume that his view shares many of the supposedly essential features of liberalism: a suspicion of the state, a purely instrumentalist conception of politics, a strident individualism, a commitment to capitalist economic structures or a commitment to cordon off the domestic sphere from political influence and regulation (Laden 2003: 341-42). When Rawls is assigned a place in the liberal tradition, this tends to be a foreshortened view of a tradition containing Locke, Mill and perhaps Kant. We might further ask, with Andrés de Francisco: What sort of liberal is Rawls? What sort of liberal is a philosopher who makes the citizen (and not the individual) the subject of his political liberalism; who starts from a normativepolitical definition of the citizen as moral person with moral powers; who makes overlapping consensus (and not the balance of interests) his theory’s central regulative ideal; who makes reasonableness (rather than strategic rationality) the principle that is to guide discussion among free and equal citizens; and who has such a patently constitutive-civic conception of primary goods? Add to this that Rawls declares his theory of the good society compatible with the tradition of classical republicanism and thinks it capable of answering Marx’s four main criticism of liberalism. Truly, Rawls is not an easy thinker to situate as a philosopher of liberty: it is difficult to decide whether his theory is best interpreted in terms of the republican tradition or in the terms of the liberal tradition (de Francisco 2006: 270). While this refers to republican themes that emerge, or become more pronounced, in Rawls’s later work, when one considers the basis of Rawls’s two principles of justice in Theory, and what is involved in realizing these principles within social institutions, 96 JAMES GLEDHILL there are strong grounds for seeing Rawls as already committed to a republican idea of freedom as non-domination rather than a liberal conception of negative liberty (Costa 2009). Why was Rawls assimilated to the latter tradition despite his professed desire to sidestep the controversy surrounding Isaiah Berlin’s dichotomy between negative and positive liberty (Rawls 1971/1999: 201/176)? Again, the answer may lie in the failure of the alternative framework discussed in the previous section to take hold. The idea of freedom as non-domination continues to be understood largely with reference to the neo-Roman tradition and it is only relatively recently that there has been an acknowledgement, even among republicans, that there is, in Philip Pettit’s terms, not only an Italian-Atlantic tradition of republicanism, but also a Franco-German tradition comprising Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel (Pettit 2013; see further Gledhill 2015a). b) Rawls proposes a liberal egalitarian theory of distributive justice that is highly Kantian in nature As already adverted to in Barry’s overall assessment of the significance of Theory, he was sceptical that the logic of Rawls’s arguments for his two principles of justice led robustly to an egalitarian idea of economic distribution. I will return to this issue when discussing the sense in which Rawls proposes principles of distributive justice. What I am interested in here is the broader nature of the egalitarian vision that Rawls’s theory expresses and in questioning a reading of Rawls as a liberal egalitarian that derives from the work of Ronald Dworkin and was popularised by Will Kymlicka. As was perhaps common with a whole generation of readers of Theory, my own initial reception of Rawls’s ideas was mediated by Kymlicka’s Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction, first published in 1990 (Kymlicka 1990). Combining a remarkably compendious survey of the contemporary literature with a strong narrative thread, Kymlicka placed Rawls’s theory into a logical story regarding the development of egalitarian thinking. Following Dworkin, Kymlicka’s book is premised on the idea that all modern political theories are based on the foundational value of equality; all provide an interpretation of what it means for governments to treat their citizens with equal concern and respect. On an initial reading, the logic of Kymlicka’s argument appeared to move ineluctably from utilitarianism to Rawls’s and then finally Dworkin’s theories of liberal equality. As Samuel Scheffler has argued, however, this risks perpetuating an ‘egalicentric narrative’ of the history of political philosophy (Scheffler 2003a: 16n27). Once more, there is evidence of a failure to appreciate the depth of the differences between Rawls and utilitarianism, the fact that for Rawls political philosophy is not fundamentally concerned with the way in which governments should treat their citizens, but rather with an ideal of how persons should relate to one another as free and equal citizens, and 97 A Theory of Justice as Rorschach Test consequently how Rawls’s criticisms of utilitarianism are not limited to its conception of justice but its approach to philosophical justification. Dworkin’s way of understanding equality as a sovereign virtue treats it as the ‘virtue of sovereigns’ (Scheffler 2003b). As in Pettit’s definition of political theory, the idea of a higher law that constitutes and guides the exercise of the sovereignty of the state (which for Rawls is ultimately the exercise of sovereign power by a democratic people) is conflated with principles to guide the actions of government.11 On this egalicentric way of reading the history of contemporary political philosophy, the most pressing question became specifying the correct ‘currency of egalitarian justice’ (Cohen 1989). Rawls became an early proponent of – or at least a precursor to – luck egalitarianism. The luck egalitarian reading of Rawls’s egalitarianism has been widely challenged (see e.g. Mandle 2009) and is perhaps less popular than it once was. But the depth of the contrast between a distributive paradigm of justice that stems from a broadly utilitarian tradition and the political way of thinking about justice deriving from Rousseau and Kant is less widely appreciated. Rainer Forst has gone so far as to describe a ‘paradigmatic incompatibility’ between these two approaches, highlighting how the goods- and recipient-oriented paradigm of luck egalitarianism obscures the more fundamental egalitarian demands of Rawlsian justice: [T]he political question of who determines the structures of production and distribution and in what ways is disregarded, as though a great distribution machine – a neutral ‘distributor’ – could exist that only needs to be programmed correctly using the right ‘metric’ of justice (Forst 2020: 155-56).12 The recipient-oriented paradigm reduces political justice to distributive justice. On the alternative agent-oriented way of looking at justice which Rawls follows, economic justice is a corollary of – and could only come about through – political justice. Political justice requires a framework of justification, and a resulting framework of institutions, that incorporates the egalitarian demand of respecting persons as free and equal citizens. For the idea that Rawls’s theory is concerned with articulating the ‘higher law’ of constitutional democracy, see Reidy (2020). 12 The term ‘distributor’ comes from Cohen (2011: 61). In critiquing the distributive paradigm, Forst joins Iris Young (1990) who by contrast, however, treated Rawls as an exponent rather than a critic of this paradigm. 11 98 JAMES GLEDHILL c) Rawls proposes a liberal egalitarian theory of distributive justice that is highly Kantian in nature Before considering further the implications of Rawls’s egalitarianism for the sense in which he proposes a theory of distributive justice, it is worth pausing to consider the sense in which Rawls proposes a theory. For Barry, Rawls’s theory had the character of expounding certain doctrines, and he focused his critical attentions on refuting the logical derivation or deduction of primary goods and Rawls’s principles of justice. Wolff did likewise. However, when one turns to Rawls’s most extensive reflections on the role of political philosophy, one finds him arguing that ‘a liberal political philosophy’ – by which he means by this time a form of political liberalism as opposed to a comprehensive liberal doctrine – ‘which, of course, accepts and defends the idea of constitutional democracy, is not to be seen as a theory, so to speak’ (Rawls 2007: 1). This is somewhat perplexing coming from the author of A Theory of Justice, but Rawls clarifies what he means to some degree by emphasising that political philosophers are not to be seen as experts with privileged access to fundamental truths. Instead, the merit of political philosophy, followed by the characteristic Rawlsian qualification ‘to the extent that it has any’, is taken to lie in the fact that ‘by study and reflection it may elaborate deeper and more instructive conceptions of basic political ideas that help us to clarify our judgments about the institutions and policies of a democratic regime’ (Rawls 2007: 1). What sort of theory is proposed in Theory, then? As David Reidy writes, ‘For Rawls, a “theory” of justice is a framework of thought within which alternative conceptions of justice are systematically compared’ (Reidy 2013: 5). In Rawls’s work, a procedure of justification and substantive principles of justice are closely intertwined. But while the label ‘theory’ would most commonly be applied to the substantive principles of justice as fairness, this might be better referred to as a conception of justice, with the term ‘theory’ reserved for the procedure of justification within which Rawls proposes that this conception of justice would emerge as the most reasonable, namely the procedure of what Rawls would come to call wide and general reflective equilibrium working through the original position. It is here that my discussion overlaps most significantly with that of Anthony Laden in his reflections after 30 years of readings Theory (Laden 2003; see also Matan 2004). Laden contrasts a ‘standard blueprint’ for reading Rawls with an ‘alternative blueprint’. According to the standard blueprint, Rawls proposes a theory of the sort familiar in analytic philosophy, namely a deductive argument that seeks to show the rationality of justice through the centrepiece original position argument. On the other hand, according to the alternative blueprint, Rawls is ‘looking for a publicly justifiable basis for social unity in a democratic society, rather than trying to show the rationality of justice’, and 99 A Theory of Justice as Rorschach Test this justification is developed most fully in the picture of public reason and political deliberation in political liberalism (Laden 2003: 380n30). While Laden notes that the alternative blueprint is not simply applicable to Rawls’s later work, his description of it tends to present the project of political liberalism as supplanting rather than revising and extending that of Theory. It is worth considering, then, how Theory, and its original position argument, might be reinterpreted in light of such an alternative blueprint. One of the most interesting readings along these lines is offered by Catherine Audard. As she observes, Rawls’s principles of justice were far from new, and Rawls disclaimed any originality. Rather, ‘the justification method is the most innovative part of the book’ (Audard 2007: 7). As Audard puts it: [M]y interpretation of the unity of Rawls’ project is that it aims to generate the justification of justice, not to impose it from the start. This is the central point. No moral doctrine can play such a foundational role as this would contradict the very autonomy of the persons concerned and impose on them values that are possibly not fully theirs. Political morality is not straightforward applied moral philosophy. The genius of Rawls is to switch the onus on the justification process itself so that the moral doctrine of equal respect for persons can be adopted as a result for political purposes, not as a starting point (Audard 2007: 7, emphasis in original). To this day, critics of Rawls, assuming a foundationalist model of justification, take him to task for failing to explain what justifies the original position (Chambers 2021). But as Audard argues contra interpreters like Dworkin (1975) and Charles Larmore (1999), the original position does not have, and does not require, a moral foundation. Rather, the values of freedom and equality are embodied in a procedure that aims to be self-justifying. That is, the theory aims to construct a conception of justice, and a consequent well-ordered society, from the point of view of which its starting point could retrospectively be recognised as justified through its capacity to bring about the free and reasonable collective endorsement of citizens. In discussing what Rawls means by a theory of justice, I have emphasised that a theory provides a framework of thought and that its aim is fundamentally practical. Before leaving this issue, let me briefly indicate the implications of this view for an aspect of Rawls’s theory that has recently faced sustained criticism, namely what Rawls means by the idea that a theory of justice should begin with ideal or strict compliance theory. The nature of Rawls’s approach is well-summarised by Alexander Kaufman in a response to Amartya Sen’s (2006) critique of Rawls’s ideal theory approach: While Rawls’s explicit adoption of an ideal theoretical approach has invited misconstruction, Rawls’s approach is ideal only in the sense that the discussion abstracts away from issues of partial compliance. There is no effort to sketch a unique set of perfectly just institutions. Far from aiming for completeness in moral judgment, Rawls’s theory sets out an open-ended framework that identifies the considerations fundamentally relevant 100 JAMES GLEDHILL to judgment, but which assigns considerable autonomy to persons individually and collectively in determining the specific requirements of justice (Kaufman 2018: 230-31). Again, one might consider how Sidgwick sets Rawls’s agenda but also how far his own approach moves away from the utilitarian tradition in a Kantian direction. Sidgwick had argued that individuals’ duties could not consist in ‘the effort to attain an ideal state of social relations’ and therefore that ‘[t]he inquiry into the morality of an ideal society can … be at best but a preliminary investigation, after which the step from the ideal to the actual, in accordance with reason, remains to be taken’ (Sidgwick 1981 [1907]: 19-20). But, following Kant’s view of the relationship between theory and practice, Rawls argues that a framework of ideal principles can and should directly guide practical judgement (Gledhill 2012, 2014a; see also Thiebaut 2008;). d) Rawls proposes a liberal egalitarian theory of distributive justice that is highly Kantian in nature I argued above that Rawls’s egalitarianism should not be reduced to distributive egalitarianism: the difference principle comes in as one aspect of what it means to realize a conception of political justice. Barry expressed scepticism about reducing judgements about distributive justice to one master principle. It would be Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Nozick 1974), published the year after Barry’s book, that cemented a connection between Rawls’s theory of justice and a particular understanding of distributive justice, specifically the idea that a theory of distributive justice involves principles that seek to maintain a distributive pattern.13 Barry was (in)famously dismissive of Nozick’s libertarian challenge (Barry 1975). The terms of the debate came to be consolidated in large part through the influence of G.A. Cohen. Rather than questioning the idea that the difference principle sought to maintain a distributive pattern, Cohen, in a 1977 paper that later became the first chapter of his Self-ownership, Freedom, and Equality, sought to show ‘how patterns preserve liberty’ (Cohen 1995: 19-37). As Kaufman argues, however, the very idea that the difference principle is a patterned principle is a myth. Observing that ‘Nozick’s discomfort with systematic theorizing … limits his appreciation of the structure of Rawls’s argument’ (Kaufman 2004: 561), Kaufman argues that what really divides Rawls and Nozick is their method of justification. Whereas Rawls argues that a conception of justice must establish criteria for assessing historically generated claims of entitlement, Nozick makes the foundationalist assumption that historical entitlements must be taken as given. For Nozick, a Katrina Forrester argues that ‘[i]t was in response to Nozick that Rawls’s followers became “Rawlsian” and established the contours of the new philosophy’ (Forrester 2019: 129). 13 101 A Theory of Justice as Rorschach Test theory of justice can assess whether historical entitlements are being respected but cannot provide criteria for an ongoing assessment of the justification of these entitlements. In Theory, Rawls refers to his topic as being not simply distributive justice but social justice (Rawls 1971/1999: 7/6). In clarifying in Justice as Fairness: A Restatement how he understands the problem of distributive justice, Rawls distinguishes his conception of distributive justice from the idea of allocative justice (Rawls 2001: 50-52). The problem of allocative justice, as endorsed by classical utilitarianism and rejected by Nozick, concerns establishing a distributive principle for guiding the allocation of goods among individuals who are not engaged in social cooperation. Social justice, on the other hand, is concerned with rules for the basic structure of society that constitute a system of cooperative economic production, and not simply with the distribution of commodities to separate individuals. This contrast is essential for understanding what the institutional realization of Rawls’s theory requires. Supporters and critics alike read Rawls as an ideological defender of the capitalist welfare state. Wolff described Theory as ‘a philosophical apologia for an egalitarian brand of liberal welfare-state capitalism’ (Wolff 1977: 195). Barry in fact develops a swingeing critique of Rawls’s second principle of justice, arguing that Rawls does not deliver on the potentially radical implications of focusing on the position of the least well-off and ends up proposing little that would disturb the status quo. Concluding that Rawls is largely an ‘unreconstructed Gladstonian liberal’ – i.e. a defender of a laissez-faire classical liberalism – Barry argues for a more interventionist role for the (welfare) state to remedy the sources of poverty in ‘having children, being sick or unemployed for a long periods, being old or being disabled’ (Barry 1973: 50). One of the first articles to question the consensus that Rawls’s theory sought to provide a philosophical justification for the capitalist welfare state was Arthur DiQuattro’s ‘Rawls and Left Criticism’ (DiQuattro 1983). DiQuattro argued that Rawls’s theory ruled out a class-divided society and interpreted the difference principle as ‘ruling out capitalism as just while admitting the possibility of a just socialism’ (DiQuattro 1983: 53). This line of interpretation was extended by Richard Krouse and Michael McPherson (1988), who likewise sought to rebut the readings of Barry and Wolff and systematically developed the idea that from the standpoint of Rawlsian justice, property-owning democracy is superior to welfare state capitalism. With the benefit of hindsight, in the revised edition of Theory, Rawls acknowledged that if he were to write the book again he would ‘distinguish more sharply the idea of a property-owning democracy … from the idea of a welfare state’ (Rawls 1971/1999: -/xiv). Today, the incompatibility of Rawls’s theory with welfare state capitalism, and its possible realization through a regime of either property-owning democracy or liberal (democratic) socialism, is widely acknowledged and discussed (see e.g. O’Neill and Williamson 2012). 102 JAMES GLEDHILL e) Rawls proposes a liberal egalitarian theory of distributive justice that is highly Kantian in nature In the preface to the original edition of Theory, Rawls describes his revival of the social contract tradition as leading to a theory that is ‘highly Kantian in nature’ (Rawls 1971/1999: viii/xviii). The exact nature of Rawls’s Kantianism is complicated, however. Barry describes Rawls as ‘being to Kant as Sidgwick was to Hume and Bentham’, placing Kant’s ideas into a ‘rigorous and fully developed form’ (Barry 1973: 3). Like much of the ensuing discussion, Wolf focused on Rawls’s Kantian interpretation of his theory in general and of the original position in particular. Early critics of ‘Rawls’s Kantianism’ like Andrew Levine (1974) argued that Rawls’s non-metaphysical rendering of Kant left him unable to fulfil his expressed intention of moving beyond the confines of the utilitarian, empiricist tradition. As I have suggested already, however, an alternative way of interpreting Rawls’s Kantianism is available that sees him not simply as introducing Kantian idea into a framework established by the utilitarian tradition but as continuing a line of thinking that begins with Rousseau and continues with Hegel. The fact that Rawls’s theory is not simply Kantian but inherits a tradition extending through Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel has received increasing attention (see esp. Laden 2001; Bercuson 2014). Nevertheless, in her entry on Hegel for the Cambridge Rawls Lexicon, Sibyl Schwarzenbach could still justifiably write that ‘Many still today consider John Rawls a straightforward Kantian and thus the degree to which his theory has been influenced by the thought of G.W.F. Hegel … goes largely unnoticed’ (Schwarzenbach 2014: 339). Schwarzenbach’s 1991 article ‘Rawls, Hegel and Communitarianism’ remains one of the most incisive discussions of the Hegelian aspects of Rawls’s theory.14 Questioning dominant readings of Rawls that placed him firmly in the analytic tradition of atomistic individualism, Schwarzenbach’s thesis, in outline, is that Theory ‘stands squarely in the tradition of the German Rechtslehre’ and, more specifically, ‘retains much of the fundamental structure of Hegel’s political theory while detaching this structure from its background metaphysics of absolute idealism’ (Schwarzenbach 1991: 550, 541). As Chapman had observed, Rawls’s story of moral transformation proceeds through ‘three Hegelian phases’ (Chapman 1975: 589). As with Rousseau’s Social Contract and Emile, Rawls’s theory has two stages – first identifying the conception of justice that best comports with our natures as free and equal persons and then showing that such a conception is consistent with our moral psychology and would be stable – but the account of social institutions in part two of Theory is the fulcrum upon which the 14 For further discussion and references, see Gledhill (2020); Gledhill and Stein (2020). 103 A Theory of Justice as Rorschach Test theory pivots. If Rousseau’s theory of the general will can be realized within the basic structure of the modern democratic state, then persons growing up within these institutions might be educated to a conception of themselves as free and equal citizens. As Schwarzenbach acutely observes: Whether one is reading Hegel’s Philosophy of Right or Rawls’s A Theory of Justice, the movement is from ‘abstract to concrete’, from the minimal moral requirements of political personality (set forth in abstract right and the original position) to an account of those background economic and political institutions supporting such a conception until both works end, finally, with a reading of man’s ‘social nature’ (Schwarzenbach 1991: 555). Joining these insights into the way Rawls’s theory takes forward the tradition of Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel with Audard’s insights into how the theory seeks to generate the justification of justice offers a key for unlocking a systematic reading of the text as a whole. Schwarzenbach thereby joined other interpreters who saw the communitarian critique of Theory, most influentially in the work of Michael Sandel (1982), as fundamentally misdirected.15 For Wayne Proudfoot, Rawls was ‘distinguished from much of the tradition of liberalism by his vision of an ethical community, and by the celebration of communal and social values which pervades his work’ (Proudfoot 1978: 267). Observing that misconstruals of Rawls as narrowly individualist grew out of a ‘false concretization of his “people in the original position”’, Delaney concluded that ‘With regard to the charge of atomism, not only does Rawls take cognizance of the social and historical nature of man but he finds the communitarian claims made in reference to these features of human existence totally uncontroversial’ (Delaney 1983: 114, 116). Roberto Alejandro went so far as to refer to ‘Rawls’s communitarianism’, observing that ‘Most discussions of Rawls’s philosophy tend to neglect the strong communitarian strand of his theory’ (Alejandro 1993: 75). Freed from the strictures of the analytic tradition, and the foreshortened perspective of Rawls’s theory as an atomistic liberal individualism, one can return to Theory with fresh eyes. After introducing the Kantian interpretation of justice as fairness and turning to the concept of justice in political economy, Rawls writes: Also relevant here is the light that Rawls’s senior thesis (Rawls 2009) sheds on Theory and his evolving interest in the idea of ethical community. Intellectual historians might complain that extant discussions are speculative rather than based on archival evidence (Bok 2017: 155; Smith 2021: 2n5), but I think a degree of speculation is both inevitable and warranted. I offer my own speculative reflections in Gledhill (2015b). 15 104 JAMES GLEDHILL Since the original position can be given a Kantian interpretation, this conception of justice does indeed have affinities with idealism. Kant sought to give a philosophical foundation to Rousseau’s idea of the general will. The theory of justice in turn tries to present a natural procedural rendering of Kant’s conception of the kingdom of ends, and of the notions of autonomy and the categorical imperative … In this way the underlying structure of Kant’s doctrine is detached from its metaphysical surroundings so that is can be seen more clearly and presented relatively free from objection. There is another resemblance to idealism: justice as fairness has a central place for the value of community, and how this comes about depends upon the Kantian interpretation. I discuss this topic in Part Three. The essential idea is that we want to account for the social values, for the intrinsic good of institutional, community, and associative activities, by a conception of justice that in its theoretical basis is individualistic (Rawls 1971/1999: 264/233). The theory may be highly Kantian in nature, but it interprets Kant as providing a deeper basis for Rousseau’s idea of the general will and, in the spirit of Hegelian idealism, seeks to realize this general will within social institutions so as to realize an ideal of community. Rawls would go on to interpret Hegel as a ‘moderately progressive reformminded liberal’ and an exemplar, alongside Mill and Kant, of the liberalism of freedom. Rawls adds parenthetically, ‘A Theory of Justice is also a liberalism of freedom and learns much from them’ (Rawls 2000: 330). Another notable passage in Theory appears in the context of Rawls’s discussion of principles for individuals but has implications for understanding the architectonic of the theory as a whole. Rawls remarks: That principles for individuals are chosen first shows the social nature of the virtue of justice, its intimate connection with social practices so often noted by idealists. When Bradley says that the individual is a bare abstraction, he can be interpreted to say, without too much distortion, that a person’s obligations and duties presuppose a moral conception of institutions and therefore that the content of just institutions must be defined before the requirements for individuals can be set out … Therefore to establish a complete conception of right, the parties in the original position are to choose in a definite order not only a conceptions of justice but also principles to go with each major concept falling under the concept of right (Rawls 1971/1999: 110/95).16 This discussion appears alongside a systematic diagram indicating how a complete conception of right begins with the concept of right for social systems and institutions Jonathan Wolff counters, ‘While it is also often noted that Rawls, in A Theory of Justice, quotes Bradley approvingly … it has to be recognized that Rawls reads this phrase largely in institutional terms – i.e. what duties you have depends on institutional facts – rather than in the metaphysical and moral terms implied by holistic forms of idealism’ (Wolff 2013: 799). But this leaves open the possibility that an idealist conception of the person might be developed independently of a metaphysical theory of the state. 16 105 A Theory of Justice as Rorschach Test and then works inwards to principles for individuals and outwards to the law of nations.17 The fact that the idea of Theory as part of a complete conception of right has received little if any discussion shows both the neglect – and the potential value – of reading Theory, as though translated from the original German, in the tradition of the German Rechtslehre or, one could even say, as a contribution to the philosophical science of right. 3. RAWLS’S LATER WORK COMPROMISES THE AMBITIONS OF A THE- ORY OF JUSTICE The final proposition I will discuss concerns the relationship between Theory and Rawls’s later work. My discussion will be brief and simply indicate first how Barry’s reception of Rawls’s later work was representative of the widely shared view that it represented an unwarranted renunciation of the ambitions of Theory and, second, gesture at how the alternative way of reading Rawls that I have adumbrated would challenge this contention. Barry offered little discussion of part three of Theory, concerned with the problem of stability, beyond admitting to ‘having had some fun’ discussing the implausibility of Rawls’s Aristotelian principle (Barry 1973: 159). Notoriously, he concluded his review of Rawls’s Political Liberalism (Rawls 1993) in the following terms: I believe that, as time goes by, A Theory of Justice will stand out with increasing clarity as by far the most significant contribution to political philosophy produced this century. Only one thing threatens to obscure that achievement: the publication of Political Liberalism (Barry 1995: 915). There is widespread acceptance of the idea that Political Liberalism gives up much of the ambition of Theory. If it is not seen as an abandonment of the substantive position of Theory, it is at least seen as concerned with the weaker demands of legitimacy rather than justice (Estlund 1996). However, as Patrick Neal has observed, offering an alternative reading that counters ‘misunderstandings’ of Rawls’s political turn: The ‘practical turn’, which most commentators have taken to be a retreat from the ambition embodied originally in A Theory of Justice, appears instead as the mark of an even bolder enterprise than the original – an attempt not merely to theorize about justice, but to realize it (Neal 1994: 111). I will not take up here the question this raises about how Rawls’s conception of justice applies to individuals, although see Gledhill (2014b). 17 106 JAMES GLEDHILL Neal opines that Rawls ‘has fallen into a kind of megalomania with regard to the powers of theory’ (Neal 1994: 111), but the alternative interpretive framework I have been exploring at least suggests answers to why Rawls would think it so important to address the problem of stability. Julius Sensat offers an insightful suggestion in this direction, acknowledging that one might wonder why the discipline of political philosophy, in working out a conception of justice, for instance, should proceed in light of any envisaged social role for itself. Why isn’t the soundness of its arguments all that matters? Why can’t it work out what justice amounts to without worrying about whether the doctrine that answers this question is capable of filling some pre-assigned social role? The fact that Rawls’s project proceeds in this self-reflective way, envisaging a role for itself in the maintenance and reproduction of a just society, is a deep fact about it, one that is to a large degree rooted in the modern idealist tradition in political philosophy, running from Rousseau, say, through Kant, Fichte and Hegel (Sensat 2007: 1; see also Sensat 2016: 160). One might end up agreeing with Neal that Rawls has enormously over-exaggerated expectations for the role of political philosophy, but before Rawls’s hopes for the role of political philosophy can be assessed they first need to at least be understood. Barry’s assessment of Rawls’s early working out of what would become The Law of Peoples (Rawls 1999) was of a piece with his verdict on Political Liberalism (Barry 1995: 913). Indeed, Barry was one of the first to apply Rawls’s theory to international relations and to argue that a global original position should take account of the relative position of the least well-off individuals across the globe and not be limited to representing the choice of principles of cooperation between peoples (Barry 1973: 128-33). The dominant view has been that Rawls has two theories of justice, domestic and international, that fail to fit together (Pogge 2006). In considering instead the unity of Rawls’s work, and the way in which the domestic and international theories are two moments in one overall procedure of theory construction (Wenar 2004, 2006; Reidy 2020), one might productively return to Rawls’s aspiration to construct a complete conception of right in which the realization of the concept of right in social systems and institutions is followed by the realization of the concept of right in the law of nations (see further Gledhill 2013). 4. CONCLUSION Reflecting on how his teachings had been taken up in France, Marx is reported by Engels to have written: ‘One thing is certain, it is that I am not a Marxist’. If the line of interpretation I have been pursuing is convincing, then Rawls could equally have written that he was not a Rawlsian. There is of course an inevitable historical asymmetry 107 A Theory of Justice as Rorschach Test between the founder of a school of thought and its followers which meant in Rawls’s case that he had to establish a framework of justification that would entitle him to make normative claims rather than simply working within a received framework. But more than this, there is a deeper sense in which the ways that Theory was read, and the approaches to political philosophy it was taken to license, were often fundamentally at variance with Rawls’s understanding of the nature and role of political philosophy. Turning Barry’s suggestion that somebody could write an article on A Theory of Justice as Rorschach Test back onto his own work, and that of other influential interpreters who shaped the reception of Rawls in analytic political philosophy, such as Wolff, Dworkin, Kymlicka, Nozick and Cohen, I have suggested that these readers approached Theory with preconceived notions of the methods of analytic philosophy and the nature of a liberal theory. Whether as largely sympathetic or critical readers, they found in Theory the articulation of a liberal individualist political ideology, resting on Kantian moral foundations, that provided philosophical support for the capitalist welfare state. But alongside this dominant line of interpretation, one can also unearth a counter-narrative. If one allows one’s preconceived notions of what a liberal theory in the analytic tradition should look like to be challenged, an alternative picture of Rawls emerges. On this alternative view, Rawls has a holistic approach to justification with roots in post-analytic philosophy and the tradition of German idealism. His theory takes its place in the tradition of a liberalism of freedom that does not stand in opposition to republicanism but rather takes forward the Franco-German republican tradition of Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel. Far from being simply a theory of distributive justice to be applied by governments to bring about a distributive pattern within a taken for granted structure of capitalist institutions, Rawls’s theory provides a framework for guiding collective practical judgement in the direction of transforming the basic institutions of society so that they more fully realize an ideal of social cooperation between free and equal citizens. Even – or perhaps, especially – after 50 years, then, there is work to be done to move beyond a focus on fragmentary concepts and arguments in Rawls’s work and to understand it as a philosophical system in relation to other philosophical systems. Such a focus is of more than merely antiquarian interest. Rawls’s work has been taken to have established a ‘methodological blueprint’ (Floyd 2017) for doing political philosophy, but I have argued that serious questions can be raised about dominant understandings of this blueprint. If Theory is the foundational text of contemporary political philosophy, then a historically informed philosophical excavation of these foundations might well show that they provide far less support for what is now practiced in the name of political philosophy than would commonly be supposed. 108 JAMES GLEDHILL Much fascinating work is being done historicizing Rawls’s work with the aid of material from his archives, including, for example, uncovering its ‘consistent vision of philosophy and democracy’ (Reidy 2017: 265). However, so far this has not focused on understanding Theory in the way that it aspired to be understood, namely as part of the canon of moral and political philosophy. To take the most significant example, Katrina Forrester’s masterful In the Shadow of Justice (Forrester 2019) is less about Rawls than it is about Rawlsianism, liberal egalitarianism, the philosophy of public affairs and their ideological adherents such as Barry; her historization of Rawls does not focus on reinterpreting Theory but on its ‘political effects’ (Forrester 2020: 22). An alternative approach that sought to place Rawls within the history of political philosophy might apply to Rawls’s work his own lessons about reading texts. Sharon Lloyd reports that Rawls regretted the tendency of much philosophical training to encourage students to attempt refutations of fragmentary arguments rather than to seek to understand the overall design of the philosophers’ work, and to mine it for elements of truth useful in building our own theories (Lloyd 2014: 529). In taking this lesson to heart, I have suggested that we could do worse than return to Chapman’s early view of Theory as the ‘culmination of the effort, begun by Kant and Hegel, and carried forward by T. H. Green, Bernard Bosanquet, and the other British and American idealists, to adapt Rousseau’s theory of the general will to the modern state’. Invocation of Hegel’s aphorism that the ‘The Owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk’ has been a common trope in discussions of Theory from its first publication (Oberdiek 1972; Schwarzenbach 1991; Smith 2021; Eich 2021); Barry invoked it himself (Barry 2001: 7-8). But if what I have been arguing about the nature of Rawls’s theory is accepted, then the challenge is even more fundamental than Barry supposed. Rather than assuming, as Barry did in his last book (Barry 2005), that we have good theories of social justice in hand and what matters is largely redoubling our efforts to achieve social justice in practice, it might rather be necessary to go back and re-examine the bases of these theories. We might have to ‘learn to do our own thinking for ourselves’ (Skinner 1969: 52), not, pace Quentin Skinner, cut off from a living tradition of political philosophy but rather using Rawls’s work as an exemplar in the same way that Rawls himself treated canonical texts in the history of moral and political philosophy and thinking about how to keep alive the spirit of Rawls’s approach under changed historical conditions. 109 A Theory of Justice as Rorschach Test REFERENCES Alejandro, Roberto. (1993). Rawls’s Communitarianism. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 23 (1):75-100. Audard, Catherine (2007). John Rawls. Stocksfield: Acumen. Barry, Brian (1973). 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Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 115 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 115-132 ISSN: 1825-5167 THE IDEA OF AN OVERLAPPING CONSENSUS AND THE KANTIAN INTERPRETATION OF POLITICAL LIBERALISM DAVID MARTÍNEZ Instituto de Ciencias de la Educación Universidad Bernardo O’Higgins, Santiago (Chile) david.martinez@uoh.cl ABSTRACT According to the familiar interpretation, A Theory of Justice (TJ) develops a strong Kantianism. Rawls himself understand his own theory in Kantian terms, and basic components of TJ, such as the original position and reflective equilibrium, have been understood as relying on Kantian practical reason. Meanwhile, the consensus concerning Political Liberalism (PL) is that this book is less Kantian. Even, for some, the later book is not Kantian at all. Rainer Forst argues against the later claim, developing a Kantian reading of PL. In this interpretation, the key concept in the development of Rawls’s view is a Kantian notion of practical reason. This component is essential in Rawls, and not only concepts such as the original position and reflective equilibrium have to be understood from this foundation, but also others such as the overlapping consensus of comprehensive doctrines. This article maintains that PL is less Kantian than Forst argues, and that is better to understand this theory as postkantian. I examine in positive terms this feature of PL, arguing that Rawls is a sui generis thinker. This shows among other things his substantive contribution to the development of political philosophy. K EYWORDS A Theory of Justice, Political Liberalism, Kant, Constructivism, original position, overlapping consensus. 1. INTRODUCTION It is commonplace to understand John Rawls’s philosophical project as belonging to the Kantian family. (Habermas 2011a; Vallespín 1998; Seleme 2003, 2004; Peña 2011, 2017; Forst 2011, 2017; Guyer 2018; O’Neill 2018; Flikschuh 2018) Rawls himself 116 DAVID MARTÍNEZ offers a Kantian interpretation of his theory, arguing that his version of the social contract –developed in his theory of justice – is specifically Kantian. (Rawls 1980) In addition, Rawls proposes the elaboration of a normative theory that assumes meta-ethical premises based on Kantian constructivism. (Rawls 1980; O’Neill 2003) It is important to notice that this does not mean that Rawls is recommending Kant’s moral philosophy as the best way to organise modern democracies. Indeed, he wants to distinguish the Kantian interpretation of his theory from a Kantian comprehensive doctrine,1 namely, Kant’s moral philosophy. Particularly in Political Liberalism he makes this point very clear, since a plural society cannot rely for its stability only in one philosophical comprehensive doctrine.2 After we made this clarification, also in the literature it is possible to find an interpretation in which perhaps not TJ, but PL supposes a departure from Kantianism. This is why Burton Dreben points out in relation to this book that “Kant’s talk about practical reason is useless for understanding Rawls”. (Dreben 2003, 340) He makes this claim when he is discussing the meaning of reasonable, and he says that practical reason does not help at all to understand this concept. Rather, according to Dreben, Rawls correctly defines the reasonable as “the willingness to propose and honor fair terms of cooperation” and as “the willingness to recognize the burdens of judgment and to accept their consequences.” (PL, 49) Moreover, Onora O’Neill claims that there is an important difference Rawls and Kant: the latter does not presuppose social and political structures in his moral philosophy, nor the concrete links between the citizens of a democratic society, as Rawls does. (O'Neill 2003, 362) This article focuses on the Kantian interpretation of PL developed by Rainer Forst and to a particular criticism which he addresses with his Kantian defence of Rawls. The objection has a formulation on the Habermas-Rawls debate, and it relates to the concept of the overlapping consensus of comprehensive doctrines. According to Rawls, the political conception that is at the base of a democratic order must be neutral with respect to comprehensive doctrines (Rawls 2011, 34). If the political conception is not neutral and favours a particular doctrine, then citizens who believe in other doctrines have no reason to accept that political conception. For Habermas, the strategy to make the overlapping consensus neutral in the face of comprehensive doctrines results in Rawls avoiding giving an epistemic-normative justification to this concept (Habermas At the beginning of Section 3 I explain in more detail what does comprehensive doctrine mean. In the following, when I refer to the “Kantian interpretation”, I mean an interpretation of Rawls’s theory which claims that this theory is fundamentally Kantian, but not that is a Kantian comprehensive doctrine. Rainer Forst’s Kantian interpretation of Rawls shares this point with Rawls’s interpretation of his own theory. 1 2 117 The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus and the Kantian Interpretation of Political Liberalism 2011b, 92). Moreover, the political conception is valid not because it is rational in normative terms, but because it synthesizes political values shared by citizens. This objection has been defined as the descriptive criticism insofar as Rawls's theory would be limited to describing existing political principles, which would have normative validity only because they are widely shared (Raz 1990, Cohen 2008, Seleme 2003, Hedrick 2010). Therefore, if for example in a particular society most people believe that some are naturally superior than others, then insofar as this is a widely shared view then it seems that this idea could be part of the political conception. One can think in many other situations: for example, in a particular society, most people believe that immigrants have less rights than nationals. Does this mean that these beliefs should be part of the political conception, just because they are generally accepted? According to the descriptive criticism Rawls leaves room to answer this question with a yes. Rainer Forst rejects the descriptive criticism: the overlapping consensus is not a construction that synthesizes the values that citizens simply and for whatever reason share. On the contrary, the political conception has normative validity, which is prior to being the focus of the consensus. Consistent with this interpretation, Forst claims that PL should be read as a noncomprehensive Kantian theory (Forst, 2017a). To the extent that it is not comprehensive, it is neutral towards comprehensive doctrines and therefore can be the focus of the overlapping consensus. And being Kantian allows it to have a normative weight. I agree with Forst that Rawls incorporates a normative component on the political conception based on practical reason. That said, a fully Kantian reading of PL is incoherent with some essential components of this theory. Forst himself sees that his Kantian reading seems to conflict with important tenets of PL, namely, that the political conception relies on “fundamental ideas seen as implicit in the public political culture of a democratic society” (PL, 13). Therefore, I propose a socialized and historicized view of the political conception, which does not reject practical reason, but still sees the political conception as a social and historical achievement. To properly understand this interpretation, we can look towards the postkantian tradition. According to Terry Pinkard (1994, 1999) and Robert Pippin (1989, 1991), among Fichte and Schelling, one of the most important postkantian philosophers was Hegel. Pinkard and Pippin offer an interesting reading of the intention and outcomes of Hegel’s critique of Kant. The relationship between morality [Moralität] and ethical life [Sittlichkeit] is the point of view from which Hegel elaborates his understanding of normativity. In the Philosophy of Right, he claims that ethical life is freedom converted into an existing world and the nature of consciousness (Hegel 1991). This thesis contains the core of Hegel’s intention in his critique of Kant, namely, that freedom (or autonomy) can only be actualized in concrete social institutions and practices. This 118 DAVID MARTÍNEZ relationship is the basis of the postkantian interpretation. According to this reading, Hegel is not only a philosopher who writes after Kant, but he is a Kantian philosopher. The fundamental point is that Hegel does not reject his predecessor's concept of moral autonomy in favor of another concept. Hegel agrees with Kant that the moral will is autonomous (Patten 1995; Freyenhagen 2011). For example, in § 133 of the Elements of the Philosophy of Right Hegel notes that Kant should be praised because he proposed a notion of autonomy which is the basis of moral reasoning. That said, in the same book, Hegel claims that it is necessary to move beyond pure autonomy, towards ethical life, otherwise morality becomes an empty formalism. The object of this criticism is Kant, because in his philosophy the moral point of view does not recognize the dimension of ethical life. For this reason, Kantian morality is constituted as a purely formal theory, divorced from real life, its values, practices and institutions. The dialectic between morality and ethical life is Hegel’s main contribution to overcome the empty formalism of Kant’s practical reason. In this approach, the point is that reason cannot define the autonomy of the will independently of historical time and social space. In this sense, Hegel help us to understand that autonomy only takes shape in the middle of the institutions and practices of modern ethical life. In this way, Hegel must be considered as extending Kant’s rationalistic morality, criticizing and complementing it, but not rejecting it. In this article, I am not trying to argue that Rawls is Hegelian (See Gledhill 2011). Rather, the article shows that some components of PL, have some affinities with the postkantian tradition, in the sense that Pinkard and Pippin give to this approach. 2. THE BACKGROUND: THE HABERMAS-RAWLS DEBATE The historical background which explains the relationship between Rawls and the tradition of critical theory, is his debate with Habermas. This debate took place in 1995 in the Journal of Philosophy, and it consists of three articles: Reconciliation through the Public Use of Reason: Remarks on John Rawls’s Political Liberalism (Habermas 2011a); Reply to Habermas (Rawls 2011); and “Reasonable” versus “True,” or the Morality of Worldviews (Habermas 2011b). According to the literature, this was a dispute within the Kantian family (Habermas 2011a, 25; Müller 2002; Forst 2011; Laden 2011; Finlayson 2019). This is because among other things both Habermas and Rawls propose a conception of justice based on Kantian notions of practical reason (Forst 2011, 153). Moreover, the debate is a privileged place to examine the link between political legitimacy and morality in the theories of these authors (Finlayson 2016, 2019; Martínez 2019a). 119 The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus and the Kantian Interpretation of Political Liberalism It is important to examine the meaning and scope of the debate. A first issue is that for several interpreters the high expectations associated with this encounter have a disappointing result. Jonathan Wolff refers to the debate as a failure of two of the greatest contemporary thinkers to meet (Wolff 2008). One of the reasons for that assessment is that these authors seemingly have very different orientations (Skinner et al. 2002, 8). According to O'Neill, the works of these authors contain too many premises that go in many different directions (Skinner et al. 2002, 9). Similarly, O'Neill explains the failure because Habermas and Rawls are responding with their theories to different political contexts: the first, to the historical legacy of Germany and the construction of a democratic order; the second, to the reality of the movements for civil rights and other social struggles. However, these claims could be weakened if we follow Finlayson’s interpretation of the debate in which he proposes a distinction between an early debate and the debate itself. The early debate begins a decade before the debate itself took place. (Finlayson 2011, 2; 2019) The early debate was marked by certain misunderstandings. The main one was to understand Rawl’s TJ and Habermas’s discourse ethics as similar theories, referring to the same objects. To avoid this misconception, it is important to notice that Rawls’s theory aims to construct principles of justice for the fundamental institutions of society. Therefore, Rawls focuses on social justice, so to speak. While Habermas’s task is the reconstruction of the point of view of morality to assess actions in a broad sense. Thus, according to Finlayson, Rawls develops a theory of justice for the main institutions of society, and Habermas a moral theory to assess the moral value of a wide scope of human actions (Finlayson 2011, 3-4). The early debate is based on some criticisms that Habermas develops, which are scattered in texts such as Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (1990) and Between Facts and Norms (1996). These criticisms were continued by some followers of Habermas and critics of Rawls (White 1988; Baynes 1992; Benhabib 1992). One of the main criticisms is that in TJ, Rawls follows the Kantian model based on the philosophy of consciousness, in which moral reasoning takes place in the isolated reflection of the moral agent. On the contrary, for Habermas moral reasoning is an intersubjective practice, which takes place in the communicative praxis of social actors (Habermas 1990, 66). A second criticism is that with his idea of the original position as a mechanism of representation, Rawls supposes a fictional situation that must be replaced by the idea of rational dialogue between concrete actors (Habermas 1990, 198). This criticism continues to be addressed in the debate in 1995, then, in what follows, I examine the dispute itself. With the publication of Between Facts and Norms and Political Liberalism the situation changes. First, in PL Rawls can no longer be subject to the criticism of the early 120 DAVID MARTÍNEZ debate, insofar as his concepts of autonomy and justice are notions that are understood in the middle of intersubjectivity (Habermas 2011, 25; Forst 2011). And in that sense, notions such as deliberation, consensus and public justification as concrete practices are central. Second, in these two books a common ground emerges in which it was possible to develop the debate. According to Finlayson, both works give plausibility to the debate, because the thinkers discussed a common theme, namely, the question of the legitimacy and justice of political institutions (Finlayson 2016, 2019). Let us remember that that was not the case on the early debate, where Habermas was developing a moral theory and Rawls a political theory. Habermas opens the debate with three criticisms. First, he criticizes the way in which Rawl’s device of representation, namely, the original position, is constructed. Second, he criticizes the features of Rawls’s overlapping consensus. Finally, he challenges the relationship proposed by Rawls between popular sovereignty and basic human rights. In the following, I focus on a discussion which pertains to the second criticism. 3. POLITICAL LIBERALISM AND THE QUESTION OF STABILITY In PL, Rawls addresses the question of the stability of a democratic society. However, this does not mean that this concern only begins with PL. For example, three years before that TJ was published, Rawls claims that “a conception of justice is stable if the institutions which satisfy it tend to generate their own support” (1968, 171). And in TJ, he says that “stability means that however institutions are changed, they still remain just or approximately so, as adjustments are made in view of new social circumstances.” (TJ, 481). It is important to notice that stability does not only mean that a system will remain in time. Rather, in Rawls stability has a normative weight and a democratic system must be stable for the right reasons (1999, 45). In PL, Rawls address this issue in the context of pluralism, a scenario that makes unlikely a consensus on a particular comprehensive doctrine, for example, the Kantianism of TJ. This new focus explains the move from TJ to PL (Seleme 2001, 2004; Weithman 2011). Although many might think that they understand what Rawls means with the concept “comprehensive doctrine”, it is better to provide a brief note to clarify this concept. According to Rawls comprehensive doctrines cover religious, moral and philosophical aspects of human life (2005 59). A comprehensive doctrine can be a) a religion (for example, Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Judaism), b) a moral theory (for example, Kantianism, utilitarianism), or c) a philosophical doctrine (for example, existentialism, Stoicism) (Finlayson 2019, 112). Thus, the diversity of comprehensive doctrines explains that there cannot be only one comprehensive doctrine that is 121 The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus and the Kantian Interpretation of Political Liberalism accepted by all citizens, and any of them can be rejected by reasonable people (Rawls 2005, xvi). Rawls claims that the diversity of comprehensive doctrines is the result of the evolution of practical reason in history. However, diversity poses a challenge to social stability. The religious wars in Europe are the paradigmatic case that shows how the struggle between different comprehensive doctrines could challenge social stability and reach a point in which conflicts end in violence. The problem is that, if the citizens are divided by dissimilar comprehensive doctrines, it seems difficult to expect an agreement on the basic principles of justice that guide democratic institutions. PL develops this problem and the proposed solution rests on the overlapping consensus of reasonable comprehensive doctrines. The political conception with the fundamental principles for a democratic social order can become the focus of the overlapping consensus of comprehensive doctrines. Thus, a basic core of principles for the regulation of society will be shared by citizens, although they may find themselves divided by various comprehensive doctrines. The relationship between the political conception of justice and comprehensive doctrines has been the focus of intense discussion. By means of the analysis of the Habermas-Rawls debate, I will develop one criticism that challenges the way in which this relationship works. 4. HABERMAS’S CRITIQUE OF RAWLS’S OVERLAPPING CONSENSUS Here, we do not need to go into historical and philosophical details of the Habermas-Rawls debate, because others have done that well already (Hedrick 2010; Finlayson 2016, 2019). Instead, in the following I focus on what is relevant in the debate for the discussion developed in this article. Habermas discusses the political meaning of the overlapping consensus, which would be motivated by the diversity of comprehensive doctrines. (Habermas 2011a).3 According to Rawls, the political conception must be neutral with respect to comprehensive doctrines (Rawls 2011, 34) and this means that it must not go beyond the political sphere. That is, it should not be introduced into the controversial areas of philosophy, morality, metaphysics and religion. Otherwise, it would not be possible to expect citizens to adhere to the political conception. Habermas describes this as an “avoidance strategy”, which means the avoidance of getting into controversial issues, indicates a certain lack of clarity regarding the justification of Rawls’s theory (Habermas 2011b, 92). This strategy makes the political conception valid not because is rational in normative terms, but because synthesizes the political Here we just focus on this criticism developed in the Habermas-Rawls debate. For a detailed account of the other criticisms see Habermas 2011a; Finlayson 2011, 2019. Also, Hedrick 2010. 3 122 DAVID MARTÍNEZ values that for whatever reason citizens share. Thus, it might be the case that the political conception rests on values that are wrong from a normative point of view, but still it might be valid because it based on widely accepted values. If Habermas’s interpretation is correct, then PL would simple describe the existing political values in a democratic society, that only have normative validity because they are the values that we have, so to speak. This objection has been defined in the literature as the descriptive criticism (Raz 1990, Cohen 2008), since PL is limited to describe the existing political values, which do not necessarily have normative validity (Raz 1990, Cohen 2008, Hedrick 2010). According to the descriptivist criticism, the overlapping consensus is valid because it describes what is generally accepted. Rawls himself addresses this objection in PL and he denies that the overlapping consensus can have a modus vivendi interpretation. By this Rawls means that the overlapping consensus cannot be the result of a compromise between citizens that do not necessarily share a view about justice and its principles.4 Moreover, the overlapping consensus is not a set of principles in which citizens agree to avoid conflict. Instead, it has a moral value, in the sense that it rests on normative principles which are agreed because most citizens have good reasons to accept them. Or in Thomas Nagel’s formulation, no one can reasonably reject these principles (Nagel 1998, 105-106). Nevertheless, this neither convinced Rawls’s critics nor Habermas.5 The latter questions whether the overlapping consensus plays a cognitive or simply instrumental role in stabilizing democracy (Habermas 2011a, 34). With the distinction between cognitive and instrumental Habermas means that in the first case the overlapping consensus has a normative value. In the second case, the overlapping consensus is like a political mean, which is useful to stabilize society, but that not necessarily has normative value. According to Habermas, Rawls seems to be more concerned with the stability than with the normative justification of his own theory, and this is contradictory with his claim that stability should be based on good reasons. Therefore, the issue is that Rawls’s strategy of avoidance goes against his own theory. Likewise, the problem is simply obscured by introducing the concept of ‘reasonable' instead of 'true', but this difference is ambiguous for Habermas (Habermas 2011a, 37). This is because, on the one hand, ‘reasonable’ could mean morally true, or on the other, as a kind of attitude or “’thoughtfulness’ in dealing with debatable views whose truth is for the presented undecided” (Habermas A good example of a modus vivendi arrangement is the type of relationship between adversaries that find more convenient to avoid open conflict. As a matter of fact, Habermas’s critique was written after Rawls’s wrote PL so, one alternative is that the latter did not understand the former, or that he was not totally convinced by his arguments. Another alternative is that Habermas was trying to exaggerate an interpretation of PL to encourage Rawls to clarify his position. Indeed, this seems to be a good alternative, because Habermas himself describes his intention as of a reviewer. 4 5 123 The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus and the Kantian Interpretation of Political Liberalism 2011a, 37). In short, what worries Habermas is that Rawls seems to be weakening the normative justification of the political conception, and this results in collapsing the difference between normative validity and mere acceptance (Habermas 2011a, 36). In his reply, Rawls indicates that the answer to this criticism rests in the way in which political liberalism specifies three levels of justification of the political conception: pro tanto, full justification, and political justification (Rawls 2011, 56). In the first level, “the political values specified by it can be suitably ordered, or balanced, so that those values alone give a reasonable answer by public reason to all, or nearly all, questions concerning constitutional essentials and basic justice” (Rawls 2011, 56). In this regard, “the pro tanto justification of the political conception is basically the coherentist method of reflective equilibrium” (Finlayson 2011 & Freyenhagen, 17). And according to Rawls, “The overall criterion of the reasonable is general and wide reflective equilibrium” (Rawls 2011, 55). In the pro tanto level, the task is to check the coherence and completeness of the political conception, and its coherence with practical reason. Thus, the pro tanto level provides the normative underpinnings and this overcome Habermas’s criticism. In addition to addressing the objection, Rawls develops a critique of Habermas and argues that the latter is hostage to the incorporation of certain philosophical elements, which pertain to a comprehensive doctrine (Rawls 2011, 47). In his response, Habermas does not deny that his theory is comprehensive and philosophical (Habermas 2011b, 93). Rather, his argument is that a political theory must be founded on normative requirements that frame the comprehensive doctrines of citizens. According to Habermas, supporting this position and affirming the neutrality of the political conception implies incorporating premises that go beyond the limited space of the political, as Rawls constructs it (Habermas 2011b, 94; Rawls 2011, 47), and introducing contents that are properly normative and philosophical (Habermas 2011b, 93). In this way, Habermas even claims that constitutional democracy cannot be possible without a normative core founded on what he calls Kantian Republicanism (Habermas 2011b, 112-113; 2008, 102). In that sense, his interpretation implies understanding PL as a comprehensive theory of democratic legitimacy. Despite Rawls’s intention to present his theory as freestanding – or independent of comprehensive doctrines and non-comprehensive. 5. RAINER FORST’S KANTIAN INTERPRETATION OF POLITICAL LIBER- ALISM As I have shown above, one objection against PL states that the overlapping consensus could be the result of the coincidence between the different comprehensive doc- 124 DAVID MARTÍNEZ trines. Therefore, it only synthetizes the shared political values of the actual comprehensive doctrines. It could be otherwise. For example, it could be possible to imagine another political conception, depending on other existing comprehensive doctrines. Thus, in one society the overlapping consensus of comprehensive doctrines could justify equality between men and women. In other society, the overlapping consensus could be that men and women are essentially different and that justify differences in status, dignity, rights, and so on. Of course, this relativism seems to be incoherent. And this is what the literature calls the descriptivist or conventionalist interpretations of PL. In his reading of PL, Rainer Forst proposes to understand it developing a political conception founded on Kantian, but non comprehensive, premises. According to this interpretation, Rawls would be able to answer the objection of the normative deficit, because the political conception has a normative core based on a Kantian notion of practical reason. Therefore, according to Forst, conventionalist, historicist and descriptivist readings and criticisms does not apply to Rawls.6 Forst shows that from the beginning to its end PL is based on Kantian practical reason and looking at this concept is the best way to deal with those criticism that appeal to the normative deficit. Forst’s main thesis is that “the liberal conception of justice is compatible with a plurality of comprehensive doctrines as long as they share the independently defined and grounded essentials of that conception of justice – that is, as long as they are “reasonable,” to use the term that does most of the Kantian work” (Forst 2017a, 123). Therefore, the liberal conception could be neutral and compatible with different comprehensive doctrines, insofar as it is based on practical reason. In what follows, I summarize in broad brushstrokes Forst’s Kantian interpretation of PL: A) The political conception is grounded on Kantian practical reason and neither on comprehensive doctrines nor on their consensus. B) The relationship between the political conception and comprehensive doctrines is one in which the former has normative priority over the latter. Thus, in public life any dispute between the political conception and comprehensive doctrines must be decided in favour of the former. C) The political conception has priority over both any de facto consensus and historical arrangements. This explains its critical power, insofar as it can provide normative standards to criticize existing social conditions. One example that supports this thesis is that at some point of history moral claims like the wrongness of slavery were not shared understanding. D) Due to their normative and epistemic powers, citizens are motivated Although he refers to “conventionalist,” “historicist”, “hermeneutic” and “practice depending” interpretations and criticisms of Rawls, and he does not mention the descriptivist criticism, he is certainly referring to the same set of issues. 6 125 The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus and the Kantian Interpretation of Political Liberalism to act according to the political conception – because they are motivated to act according to practical reason – before any other commitment, namely, their comprehensive allegiances. Despite its parsimony I argue that Forst’s reading makes unnecessary efforts to develop a Kantian interpretation, which does not seem to be coherent with some elements of PL. Forst himself points out that it seems problematic to harmonize his Kantian interpretation with Rawls’s claim that the political conception relies on “fundamental ideas seen as implicit in the public political culture of a democratic society” (PL, 13). According to Forst, this claim is usually cited by the conventionalist or historicist interpretations. Nevertheless, he argues that this does not mean that a conventionalist program is “lurking” in PL (Forst 2017a, 131): For Rawls never says that these fundamental ideas are in fact guiding current practice or are widely shared in contemporary democratic societies, nor does he say that the theory of justice uses them because they are generally shared or factually present (Forst 2017a, 131). Rather, according to Forst, these ideas are implicit in a democratic society if this society can claim to be democratic at all, and these ideas are presented as ideas of practical reason. Thus, when Rawls ask that we collect historical and present beliefs which underpin the political conception, these are provisional standards “that any reasonable conception must account for” (PL, 8). Forst sees here that the order of justification is not from historical facts or beliefs to the justification of the theory. Instead, “the theory has to provide independent normative reasons for such progressive and emancipatory ideas and fit them into a general account of justice.” (Forst 2017a, 131). In the following, I provide a less demanding defence of PL against the descriptivist criticism. First, against the descriptivist criticism, PL does not have a normative deficit. In this point I agree with Forst in the sense that practical reason is essential to frame a political conception for a democratic society. Indeed, practical reason provides normative standards to evaluate rules, values and principles. Second, practical reason arises only within historical and social contexts, and never beyond them. Therefore, against Forst, the activity of doing political philosophy implies a hermeneutic effort of reconstructing the values and principles that arise in the middle of social life. Perhaps this seems to be a minor change, but as I show below, it provides a better explanation of PL. And it shows with less effort than Forst how some of the essential components of PL fit. In short, my view is that the principles of justice, as practical reason, are situated in social space and historical time. However, that does not mean that whatever principles, practices, rules, etc., that exist have normative value, or are coherent with practical reason. Of course, this seems to be Forst’s main worry against the conventionalist reading. 126 DAVID MARTÍNEZ In this regard, I argue that some principles and practices can be even widely accepted by a particular society, and at the same time they can be wrong from the normative point of view. Then, we can distinguish here between justified principles and non-justified principles. Nevertheless, that does not mean that they come from different realms: political values are a “subdomain of the realm of all values” (PL, 139). In this realm one can distinguish political values, ethical values, moral values, and so on. Even values that justify practices that could be seen as irrational or abhorrent. Values for example that distinguish between different “categories” of human beings, or that perpetuate inequalities. But in any case, they are part of the same universe of objects, so to speak, where also we can find values which are normatively justified. And this universe only arises in social life, and in the middle of its institutions and practices. Thus, against Forst we can understand political philosophy as a hermeneutic effort, insofar as its task is to find normative criteria and values immanent to social life. Simple because it would be impossible to reach another realm of values and principles which go beyond our given social and historical conditions. But again, this does not mean that whatever principles and values we find in social life are justified from the normative point of view. Only political values have a public justification, which means that every reasonable citizen must recognize them and respect them. In this regard, Rawls claims that as reasonable they accept that political values “normally outweigh whatever values may conflict with them”, because they are “very great values and hence not easily overridden” (PL, 139). When Forst claims that “the theory has to provide independent normative reasons”, he also says that their justification neither depends on historical facts nor in comprehensive doctrines and beliefs, but only in practical reason. However, where if not in history, in social life, can we find practical reason? Nowhere else. Indeed, the basic experience which confront us with an order of values is the historical fact of our social existence. That thesis was already present in Aristotle when he described human beings as zoon politikon and zoon logon Echon. The most salient feature of these definition of the human is its social status. Even though logon could mean reason, its more important meaning is speech and speaking, which always refer to a relationship between people. From this fact arises an order of values which in one way or another refer to others. Think for example in some of the basic normative principles which Rawls – and the tradition of political philosophy – identifies, namely, equality, public reason, reciprocity, the duty of civility, autonomy, fairness, and so on. All of them refer to social relationships. And they do not only refer to social life, but at the same time, they arise from social life. Moreover, commonly values arise in the middle of conflicts. This shows their historical and social pedigree. Social conflicts demand normative principles to regulate 127 The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus and the Kantian Interpretation of Political Liberalism them and to avoid means such as violence. Religious wars are a good example which shows how normative values, such as the principle of tolerance, arise historically. According to Rawls “the historical origin of political liberalism (and of liberalism more generally) is the Reformation and its aftermath” (PL, xxiv). It is true that here Rawls probably is referring to political liberalism as a political view, and not as a political theory, but still the political theory and PL only exist because political liberalism as a political view historically exists. Therefore, the thesis defended here is that not all values and principles have normative weight in the sense that they are justified and can be agreed by all. That said, all values and principles are historical. In this normative universe – as I have called it above – by means of the never-ending practice of providing and exchanging reasons, we can progressively distinguish between justified and non-justified values and principles.7 Indeed, on his reply to Habermas, Rawls seems to adopt this perspective. Discussing the main features of reflective equilibrium, which is the first step to build the political conception, he claims that, It is a point at infinity we can never reach, though we may get closer to it in the sense that through discussion our ideals, principles, and judgments seem more reasonable to us and we regard them as better founded than they were before (Rawls 2011, 55). With this as a background, I can summarize my position in relationship with Forst. I agree with him that practical reason justifies principles and values for a democratic society. Then I also agree with him that PL does not have a normative deficit, as someone like Habermas seems to claim in his critique. But I disagree with Forst when he argues that these principles and values cannot be find through the historical or hermeneutic effort and are only the result of a procedure of reasoning, or ideas of practical reason. Values, principles, and the normative standards that allow us to assess whether they could be justified or not are social and historical products. This interpretation provides a better explanation of the relationship between the political conception and comprehensive doctrines. Let us recall that Rawls himself avoids a Kantian interpretation of PL because this moral doctrine has a comprehensive character. In this respect, Paul Weithman claims that “the Kantian conception of the person is not a neutral starting point for political theorizing, but is a conception with which many reasonable people in a pluralistic society would disagree” (2011, 19). However, Kaufmann suggests that PL does not rely on a Kantian conception of the person (2012, 253). The extent to which the features of the political conception of the person In this respect, this position seems to be more related with the Habermasian alternativity, in the sense that normativity is a process of mutual learning (Habermas 1996). Insofar as this article focus on Rawls, we cannot go into detail here on Habermas’s position. For important discussions on this see Rosenfeld and Arato (1998). 7 128 DAVID MARTÍNEZ are Kantian depends on the degree to which the conception of the person in the public political culture of a democratic society is Kantian. If the latter is Kantian, then the parties represented in the original position will share features with the Kantian conception of the person. On this issue, Forst argues that PL is Kantian but non-comprehensive. In this reading, what is at the centre is a Kantian conception of the citizen, not of the person. Nevertheless, this leaves room for an issue that should be addressed, namely, despite the fact that this Kantianism claims not to be comprehensive, what reasons do we have to expect that the citizens will endorse a Kantian conception? And why can we expect that they will give priority to the Kantian conception than to their comprehensive doctrines? Yes, after all it might be true that constitutional democracy would work better if we were all Kantian citizens. But precisely departing from this assumption was the starting point of Political Liberalism (PL, xvi). Indeed, Rawls talks about a “serious problem”, that “concerns the unrealistic idea of a well-ordered society as it appears in Theory” (PL, xvi), in which all its citizens endorse justice as fairness, which is a Kantian doctrine. Therefore, when Forst tries to solve an issue in Rawls he revives another. A problem that PL since the beginning was aimed to overcome. As a matter of fact, according to Weithman, that was the point of writing PL. I claim above that my interpretation provides a better explanation of the way in which the relationship between the political conception and comprehensive doctrines works. In this regard, for Rawls in an overlapping consensus: Each citizen affirms both a comprehensive doctrine and the focal political conception, somehow related. In some cases, the political conception is simply the consequence of, or continuos with, a citizen’s comprehensive doctrine; in others it may be related as an acceptable approximation given the circumstances of the social world (PL, xix). This passage shows that for Rawls the relationship between comprehensive doctrines and the political conception does not work like Forst argues. Instead, Rawls clearly says that the political conception could be the consequence or continuos with the comprehensive doctrines, or at least could be an acceptable approximation. Therefore, even though the political conception is independent of the comprehensive doctrines – because its normative justification does not depend on any of them, not even of their overlap – it seems that its substance comes from these comprehensive doctrines. Perhaps we do not need to make this strong claim and go too far. It would be enough to say that the political conception is part of a democratic culture, in which diverse comprehensive doctrines interact and sometimes conflict, and not only the result of a process of reasoning, such as the original position or reflective equilibrium. As a matter of fact, those normative standards that allow us to evaluate the validity of different principles and rules – which according to the Kantian tradition are underpinned 129 The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus and the Kantian Interpretation of Political Liberalism by practical reason – are immanent to a democratic culture and they arise historically from the interactions and struggles between citizens. Therefore, not only our comprehensive doctrines, beliefs and practices are situated in historical time and social space, but even our standards to assess their validity. 6. CONCLUSION To conclude this article, I would like to examine the following question, if Rawls is not as Kantian as many think he is, then what is the family to which he belongs? Perhaps, a simple and good answer would be to say that Rawls is Rawlsian. This means that he developed a rich tradition of political thought. Also, that his theory is original and unique. Thus, not been fully Kantian is a positive feature of his work and shows its singularity. Another possibility would be to understand Rawls closer to other big names of philosophy. Since probably the biggest contemporary challenger of Kant was Hegel, then one can think of him as the true philosophical father of Rawls. In this article, I cannot develop this issue in depth, but it would be interesting to assess whether Rawls is an heir of Hegel (See Gledhill 2011). The historical and socialized features of his theory, at least in PL, seem to give plausibility to this reading. Does this mean that this would be a return of conventionalism? (as Forst worries). I think it does not. The postkantian interpretation of Hegel understands him as reconciliating Kantian practical reason [morality] with historical time and social space [ethical life] (Pippin 1989, 1991, Pinkard 1994, 1999). Perhaps, that is exactly what happens on Rawls’s work. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by Fondecyt No 1191317. REFERENCES References to Rawls’s writings use the following abbreviations: TJ=A Theory of Justice (Rawls 1971); PL=Political Liberalism (Rawls 1993). Baynes, K. 1992. The Normative Grounds of Social Criticism: Kant, Rawls and Habermas. Albany: SUNY Press. 130 DAVID MARTÍNEZ Benhabib, Seyla. 1992. Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics. London: Routledge. Cohen, G. A. 2008, Rescuing Justice and Equality, Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press. Dreben, Burton. 2003. ‘On Rawls and Political Liberalism.’ in Samuel Freeman (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Rawls. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 316-346. Finlayson, James Gordon. 2011. ‘Introduction: The Habermas Rawls Dispute — Analysis and Reevaluation´, in J. G. Finlayson and F. 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Gledhill, James. 2011. ‘Procedure in Substance and Substance in Procedure Reframing the Rawls–Habermas Debate’. In Habermas and Rawls: Disputing the Political, edited by J. G. Finlayson and F. Freyenhagen. New York: Routledge. Guyer, Paul. 2018. ‘Principles of Justice, Primary Goods and Categories of Right: Rawls and Kant’. Kantian Review. 23 (4):581-613 Habermas, Jürgen. 1990. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 1996. Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. William Rehg. Cambridge: Polity Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 2011a. ´Reconciliation through the Public Use of Reason: Remarks on Rawls‘s Political Liberalism´, in J. G. Finlayson and F. Freyenhagen (eds,) Habermas and Rawls. Disputing the Political. New York: Routledge. Habermas, Jürgen. 2011b. ‘´Reasonable’ versus ‘True’, or the Morality of Worldviews’, in J. G. Finlayson and F. Freyenhagen (eds,) Habermas and Rawls. Disputing the Political. New York: Routledge. Hedrick, Todd. 2010. Rawls and Habermas. Reason, Pluralism, and the Claims of Political Philosophy. Standford, California: Standford University Press. Hegel, H. 1991. Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans. H. B. Nisbet. Cambridge, United Kingdom. Cambridge University Press. 131 The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus and the Kantian Interpretation of Political Liberalism Kaufman, Alexander 2012. ‘Rawls and Kantian Constructivism’, Kantian Review, 17, 2, 227-256. Krasnoff, Larry 1999. ‘How Kantian is Constructivism?’. Kant-Studien, 90, 385-409. Laden, Anthony. 2011. ´The Justice of Justification’, in J. G. Finlayson and F. Freyenhagen (eds,) Habermas and Rawls. Disputing the Political. New York: Routledge. Martínez, David. 2019. ´The Normative Underpinnings of Democracy and the Balance between Morality and Legitimacy´. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 28:1, 117, DOI: 10.1080/09672559.2019.1616801 Müller, Jan-Werner. 2002. Rawls in Germany. European Journal of Political Theory, 1(2), 163–179. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474885102001002004 O’Neill, Onora. 2008. ‘Constructivism in Rawls and Kant’, in Samuel Freeman (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Rawls. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 347-367. O’Neill, Onora. 2018. ‘Liberal Justice: Kant, Rawls and Human Rights’. Kantian Review, Volume 23, Special Issue 4: Special Issue on Kant & Rawls, December: pp. 641 – 659. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415418000432 Patten, A. 1995. Hegel’s idea of Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nagel, T 1998. What we owe to each other. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Peña, Carlos. 2011. ‘¿Cuán kantiano es Rawls?’. In Estudios sobre Rawls. C. Peña, H. Seleme & F. Vallespín. Madrid: Fundación Coloquio Jurídico Europeo. Peña, Carlos. 2017. ‘Rawls, entre Kant y Hegel’. Revista de Filosofía. Vol 73, Santiago Oct. 219-229. Pinkard, T. 1994. Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pinkard, T. 1999. “Virtues, Morality, and Sittlichkeit: From Maxims to Practices.” European Journal of Philosophy 7: 217–239. https://doi:10.1111/ejop.1999.7.issue-2 Pippin, R. 1989. Hegel’s Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pippin, R. 1991. Modernism as a Philosophical Problem: On the Dissatisfactions of European High Culture. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Rawls, John 1968, ‘Distributive Justice: Some Addenda’. The American Journal of Jurisprudence, Volume 13, Issue 1: 51–71, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajj/13.1.51 Rawls, John 1971, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Rawls, John 1980, ‘Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory’, The Journal of Philosophy, 77, 9: 515-72. Rawls, John 1993, Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Rawls, John. 2005. Political Liberalism. Expanded edition. New York: Columbia University Press. 132 DAVID MARTÍNEZ Rawls, John. 2011. ‘Political Liberalism: Reply to Habermas’. In Habermas and Rawls: Disputing the Political, edited by J. G. Finlayson and F. Freyenhagen, 46–91. New York: Routledge. Raz, Joseph. 1990. ‘Facing Diversity: The Case for Epistemic Abstinence’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 19, n°. 1: 3-31. Rosenfeld, Michael and Arato, Andrew eds. (1998). Habermas on Law and Democracy. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Seleme, Hugo. 2001. ‘El problema de la estabilidad’. Doxa. 24: 297-318. Seleme, Hugo. 2003. ‘Equilibrio reflexivo y consenso superpuesto’. Isonomía, N° 18/Abril: 189-200. Seleme, Hugo. 2004. Neutralidad y Justicia: En torno al Liberalismo Político de John Rawls. Marcial Pons, Ediciones Jurídicas y Sociales, S. A. Madrid. Skinner, Quentin, Partha Dasgupta, Raymond Geuss, Melissa Lane, Peter Laslett, Onora O’Neill, W. G. Runciman, and Andrew Kuper. 2002. “Political Philosophy: The View from Cambridge.” Journal of Political Philosophy 10 (1): 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/14679760.00140 Vallespín, Fernando. 1998. ‘Introducción: Una disputa de familia: el debate RawlsHabermas’. En Debate sobre el liberalismo político. J. Habermas & J. Rawls, 9-40, Barcelona: Ediciones Paidós. Wenar, Leif. 1995. ‘Political Liberalism: An Internal Critique,’ Ethics 106 (1995): 32– 62. White, Stephen. 1998. The Recent Work of Jürgen Habermas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weithman, Paul. 2011. Why Political Liberalism? On John Rawls’s Political Turn. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Wolff, Jonathan. 2008. ´In Front of the Curtain,´ Times Literary Supplement, March 7. 133 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 133-147 ISSN: 1825-5167 CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS AND “PRIVATE” LEGAL RELATIONS: A NOTE ON A RAWLSIAN VIEW FRANK I. MICHELMAN Robert Walmsley University Professor, Emeritus Harvard University fmichel@law.harvard.edu ABSTRACT Whether or how a constitution’s guarantees respecting basic right and liberties are to take effect in “horizontal” cases, those involving relations among persons and groups outside of government, has been and remains a matter of debate in liberal-democratic societies. The liberal political philosophy of John Rawls has sometimes been charged with a normative tilt against full extension of the guarantees to these “private” relations. I find the opposite to be true. Given Rawls’s conception of the constitution as a society’s higher-legal framework for assurance of fairness in its basic structure, along with the justificatory function that Rawls assigns to the guarantees in a constitution thus conceived and the idea of these guarantees comprising a unified “scheme of liberties” guaranteed equally to all, it follows that norms of private law allowing constriction of basic of liberties of some by acts of others in civil society should be subject to review for proportional justification. But not every liberty-hostile exercise of a protected basic liberty will come under the scope of such review. For those that do not, liberalism must find some other response. KEYWORDS Basic liberties, basic structure, bill of rights, horizontal application, John Rawls, liberal principle of legitimacy, paradox of tolerance, private sphere. THE “HORIZONTAL APPLICATION” QUESTION, ADDRESSED TO RAWLS Reading along in some country’s written constitution, you come to a ledger of clauses on basic rights or liberties—a “bill” or “charter” of rights. You know right off that these guarantees are meant at least for application to so-called “vertical” cases, where plain civilians on the social floor “down here” (you and I in our daily 134 FRANK I. MICHELMAN lives, and various groups of us) stand exposed to exertions of force from the government “up there” through its agents, officials, and co-partners.1 The hope, then, in constitutional democracies, will always be for the guarantees to take hold through motivational vectors occurrent outside of courtrooms: promptings of constitutional fidelity, as we may wishfully expect, girded by official oath-swearing, social pressures and movements, and electoral politics. We will assume here, though—as is more typically the case—that the guarantees are also to infuse the country’s positive law, to be carried out in part by the country’s courts through apt allowances of claims and defenses in civil and criminal proceedings. Whether the guarantees are comparably to affect any of the “horizontal” legal relations among persons and groups on the level of plain society, and if so in what manner or form, has been and remains a topic of debate within and among the world’s constitutional democracies. Controversies take shape in legal-doctrinal discourses over “state action,” “color of law,” “third-party” or “radiating” effects, “protective functions,” “direct” versus “indirect” application, and so on, as those crop up in various countries in line with variations in constitutional verbiage, drafting history, and broader legal traditions. We do not enter that space here.2 My interest is in the overall push or pull of one particular body of normative political theorizing—the liberal political philosophy of John Rawls—toward or against effectuation of the guarantees in “private” relations, among actors not plausibly labeled as “state,” under whatever doctrinal handles may be in play.3 I begin with what I take to be the deep arguments (here roughly stated) pro and con extension of the guarantees into the private field. The case in favor starts from a claim about a normal fact of life in liberal societies: to wit, the inevitable appearance in such societies, here and there and from time to time, of social powers For explanation of how that account applies as well to constitutional guarantees cast in “positive” terms, as rights (for example) to education or health care, see Frank I. Michelman, “Legitimacy, The Social Turn, and Constitutional Review: What Political Liberalism Suggests” [2015] Critical Q for Legislation & Law 183, 188-192. 2 The literature is large and fine surveys can be found. See, e.g., Stephen Gardbaum, “The ‘Horizontal’ Effect of Constitutional Rights” (2003) 102 Mich L Rev 387; Stephen Gardbaum, “Where the (State) Action Is” (2006) 4 Int=l J Const L 4 760 (responding to a book-length collection of essays, András Sajó & Renáta Uitz (eds), The Constitution in Private Relations: Expanding Constitutionalism (Eleven International Publishing, 2005). 3 I write “‘private’” this first time in scare-quotes having mind the declaration of Rawls that “the principles defining the equal basic liberties and opportunities of citizens always hold in and through all so-called domains. . . . If the so-called private sphere is alleged to be a space exempt from [those principles], then there is no such thing.” John Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited” (1997) 64 U Chi L Rev 765, 791. 1 135 Constitutional Rights and “Private” Legal Relations: A Note on a Rawlsian View outside government that are no less threatening to the basic liberties of those exposed to them than are those of the government itself. Now, that fact might or might not fit neatly into anyone’s liberal nirvana—it might be, as the saying goes, a “bug” and not a “feature” of a well-oiled liberal society—but the point of the claim is that it may not be ex ante preventable in liberalism. In something like the way John Rawls sees the emergence of a clashing plurality of moral, metaphysical, and religious orientations—what he names as a “fact of reasonable pluralism”—as the predictable result of the exercise of human intelligence in a social setting of free institutions,4 so may we may see the emergence of oppression-capable social powers as predictable from the exercise of human energies and pursuits in a setting of general freedom of action, presupposed and cherished in the culture of a liberal society.5 We can put laws and policies in place to mitigate in advance the risks to liberty from any such potentially oppressive power-concentrations, but any attempt at a regulatory blanket sufficiently thick to level out completely the distribution of effective social powers could only come—or so it reasonably may be thought—at too great a cost to the liberally cherished idea of a general regime of freedom to act and to strive. Where that is the judgment that prevails, as apparently it has and does in most or all liberal societies, the argument is that the constitutional guarantees respecting basic liberties must then, in all liberal logic, come into play wherever potentially oppressive powers are found, not excluding in private/horizontal relations. That claim meets opposition. The opposition starts from a claim that horizontal extension of constitutional guarantees immediately (and contradictorily) entails incursion on both the general freedom and basic liberties of those who are thus made answerable; and are made answerable, furthermore, to constitutional mandates entrenched and rigidified beyond the powers of politically accountable lawmakers to modify or adjust them as required to strike the necessary balances; and 4 See John Rawls, Political Liberalism (first published in 1993) (with a new introduction and the “Reply to Habermas”) (Columbia U. Press 1996) (hereinafter cited as Rawls, PL). 5 On the valuation of general freedom of action in the Rawlsian liberal philosophy, see Frank I. Michelman, “The Priority of Liberty: Rawls and “Tiers of Scrutiny”” in Thom Brooks and Martha Nussbaum (eds), Rawls=s Political Liberalism (Columbia U. Press, 2012) 175, 189-190. A statement from Rawls, that “no priority as assigned to liberty as such, as if the exercise of something called “liberty” has a preeminent value” (Rawls, PL 292), should not be read as disparagement of a general liberal leaning toward background freedom of action. See ibid., 197-199. 136 FRANK I. MICHELMAN that the correct answer, then, in a democracy, is to apply the constitutional guaranties only to the government (which otherwise would not be bound to any restriction of its powers to oppress), and leave the rest to parliamentary legislation as situationally called for by the people. With the major arguments in this posture, pushes for extension of the constitutional guarantees into the private field are liable to be tagged at times as a left-wing, collectivistic political cause out of synch with the liberal mainstream. The liberal political philosophy of John Rawls has sometimes come in for charges of a normative tilt against such extension. Implicated in that charge is the Rawlsian philosophy’s supposed support for the idea of a range personal and associational liberties to be kept mainly off-limits to intrusion from society or subjection to society’s wishes. For example, a recent essay invokes a claim from liberal feminism that by insisting that certain social structures, actions, and ideologies are part of an inviolable private sphere within which almost no state involvement should be tolerated, liberals have often been too quick to free themselves from the obligation to critique unjust and discriminatory aspects of [social] structures, actions, or ideologies, and to allow their unhindered existence and growth.6 Whatever plausibility such readings might have had in the immediate wake of the publication of A Theory of Justice (1971), they seem to me to run plainly against the grain of Rawls’s conception of a written constitution’s service to political good-ordering as set forth in multiple editions of Political Liberalism running from 1993 to the latest in 2005.7 The guarantees there manifest as components in a framework law for a society’s political and legal order, to regulate key parts of that society’s “basic structure” for cooperation on fair terms among citizens all mutually recognized as free and equal. Rawls defines the basic structure as the society’s “main political and social institutions [and the way] they fit together into one system of social cooperation [and] assign basic rights and duties and regulate the division of advantages that arises from social cooperation over time.”8 Law governing private relations undoubtedly counts as part of that. So, to repeat: We Gila Stopler, “The Personal Is Political: The Feminist Critique of Liberalism and the Challenge of Right-Wing Populism” (2021) 19 Int=l J Const L 393, 395; see ibid., 394 n.3 (attributing this error to Rawls). 7 See John Rawls, Political Liberalism (first published 1993), expanded ed. (Columbia U. Press 2005). 8 John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (ed. E. Kelly, Harvard U. Press 2001) 10 (hereinafter cited as Rawls, JAF). 6 137 Constitutional Rights and “Private” Legal Relations: A Note on a Rawlsian View have as premises (i) that the constitution, for Rawls, lays down a higher-legal framework for fair operation of the basic structure, and (ii) that the basic structure includes the society’s law governing private relations (which I will hereinafter, for convenience, denominate as “private law” regardless of its provenance in statutory enactment or common-law adjudication). From that brace of premises, imperviousness of the private law to control from the constitution’s basic-liberty guarantees may seem from the start a surprising, not to say impossible deduction. It does not necessarily yet follow, though, that critics must be wrong to read in Rawlsian liberalism some sort of bias against subjection of the law of private relations to oversight from constitutional bill-of-rights inspection, out of a commitment to assurance, equally to all, of an effective umbrella of basic-liberty protections. Suppose (to take one possible case) that the development of private law on various topics is presumed already dedicated to the establishment and maintenance of a field of socially optimal freedom, competition, and consent and to parceling out accordingly its claim-rights, privileges, powers, and immunities (and correlative duties, no-rights, liabilities, and disabilities). Then the constitutional guarantees would have no net-improvement work to do in private law; their intrusion there could only have the effect of disturbing balances already responsibly struck. Exactly so have argued some participants in the debates I have mentioned.9 That argument cannot, however, correctly fit the liberal political philosophy of John Rawls. Such will be my contention in what follows. And yet, as we shall see, establishment of that claim will not yet fully defeat the concern about an excessive private-libertarian bent in the Rawlsian—or indeed (as I will suggest) any possible liberal—political philosophy. To the best of my knowledge, John Rawls did not ever address himself expressly to the issue of the so-called horizontal application of constitutional basicliberty guarantees. His philosophy’s response accordingly is left for us to infer from other features we find there. Four of those will figure saliently in the infer- See Frank I. Michelman, “The Bill of Rights, the Common Law, and the Freedom-Friendly State” (2003) 58 U. Miami L Rev 401, 431-433 (describing a strong attraction in some post-transition South African constitutional debates to this point of view). 9 138 FRANK I. MICHELMAN ence I will be drawing. In addition to (i) a conception of the constitution as a society’s higher-legal framework for assurance of fairness in its basic structure, these will be (ii) the justificatory function that Rawls assigns to the substantive constitutional law of a liberally well-ordered society; (iii) his conception of that law as comprising (not just a list of separate-standing guaranteed liberties but) a scheme of liberties each subject to adjustment of its outer extensions out of a due regard for the others; and (iv) his conception of that law as comprising a blanket guarantee to each person equally of “a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme for all.”10 THE RAWLSIAN-THEORETIC CONSTITUTIONAL BILL OF RIGHTS11 A. Justificatory Function A democracy, Rawls wrote, “necessarily requires that, as one equal citizen among others, each of us accept the obligations of legitimate law.”12 It was of the utmost importance, he thought, both practical and moral, that the coercions imposed by a positive legal order should all be such that reasonable and rational citizens could accept them as justified in the light of ends and values freely endorsed by them. That is a demanding condition. And here, you might think, would be one way to meet it. Come forth with a sufficiently robust conception of substantive principles of justice for political and legal ordering; show how and why an entire citizenry would endorse or could be brought to endorse those principles; and then show further how the society’s major political and legal institutions are arranged in visible correspondence to those principles, with an aim to carry them out as completely as possible. Now, that or something like it was the project of A Theory of Justice when published in 1971. The advance of Rawls’s work in Political Liberalism (1993), beyond where he had left it in Theory, is explained by him, in his introduction to 10 Rawls, PL 291. For a full and adequate account of the Rawlsian constitutional conception summarized here, see my forthcoming book-length treatment of the topic in Frank I. Michelman, Constitutional Essentials: On the Constitutional Theory of Political Liberalism. My treatment here is a truncated string of echoes from that work, overlooking countless complications and refinements—just enough, I hope, to support the argument I make in this paper. 12 Rawls, “Public Reason Revisited” (n 3) 782. 11 139 Constitutional Rights and “Private” Legal Relations: A Note on a Rawlsian View PL, as his considered response to an intervening fuller appreciation of the political-moral implications of the social fact (as he names it and we as we noted above) of “reasonable pluralism.”13 Then follows the complication. Political power being always, says Rawls, potentially coercive, is in a democracy a power by which citizens collectively impose on citizens severally—by which the citizens as a body “impose on themselves and one another as free and equal.”14 But thence springs a question: [I]f the fact of reasonable pluralism always characterizes democratic societies and if political power is indeed the power of free and equal citizens, in the light of what reasons and values . . . can citizens legitimately exercise that coercive power over one another?15 It is specifically in answer to that question that Rawls offers, in PL, the idea of a higher-normative prescript—a “constitution”—whose acceptability as an entrenched framework for all further political actions in that country any citizen might reasonably affirm, even as all would understand that some outcomes allowed by those terms will turn out repugnant to ideas of justice held by some fraction of citizens reasonably responding. The constitution thus is to serve as a table of terms for a procedural deflection of persisting substantive-moral disagreements over legislative policy, among citizens all judging reasonably. Subject to variations of wording that do not reach to our concerns in this paper, Rawls’s constitution-centered “liberal principle of legitimacy” reads as follows: Our exercise of political power is proper and hence justifiable [among citizens individually free and equal] only when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution the essentials of which all citizens may reasonably be expected to endorse in the light of principles and ideals acceptable to them as reasonable and rational. This is the liberal principle of legitimacy.16 13 See Rawls, PL xvi-xx. Rawls, JAF 40. 15 Ibid., 41. 16 Rawls, PL 217. See ibid., 237; Rawls, JAF 41. 14 140 FRANK I. MICHELMAN The LPL (as we shall familiarly call it) thus would have justification ride on the back of an actual constitution-in-force that meets a certain test of universal reasonable acceptability. By hypothesis, in a well-ordered society, the constitution actually now in force in the country does meet the test; it is, as we shall say, a “justification-worthy” constitution. Majorities justify to protesting dissenters their exertions of political power by pointing to the constitution-in-force, while a supreme court acts as institutional arbiter of that extant constitutional pact and its applications, when disputed, to various cases that come up.17 We have here a proposal, as I have taken elsewhere to naming it, for justification-by-constitution.18 I have also just called it above a proposal for a “procedural deflection” from ground-level disagreements over policy. Serving thus as a procedure does not mean the constitution’s terms deal only with political processes (we vote and the majority rules) as opposed to political outcomes (abridgements of the liberty of conscience are disallowed). Assurance of compliance with certain outcome-constraining terms can constitute a part of the procedural charter, to which resolution is deflected of divisive questions on which no further agreement can be found. So does it in the sight of Rawls. A political constitution cannot possibly be liberally justification-worthy, he maintains, if it does not incorporate guarantees respecting basic liberties.19 But then we see a challenge taking shape. In order to be justification-worthy, the constitution will have to guarantee certain liberties. Those guarantees, however, must still be cast in terms that avoid foreclosure of questions of fundamental import to some citizens, over which reasonable citizens divide. The terms must be set at accommodating levels of abstraction.20 That strategy, though, comes with its price, or call it a puzzle. How does it not just kick the can of disagreement down the road? Sooner or later, after all, hard cases arrive, to the resolution of which the body of substantive constitutional guarantees, written sparely enough to pass initially the test of universal-reasonable acceptability, cannot be decisively applied without exposure of divisive disagreement over the significations of the guarantees for the matter at hand. It seems that reasonability and rationality may here be coming apart. As reasonable, we may extend ourselves to the breaking point in 17 See Rawls, PL 233. See, e.g., Frank I. Michelman, ““Constitution (Written or Unwritten)”: Legitimacy and Legality in the Thought of John Rawls” (2018) 31 Ratio Juris 379, 383. 19 See John Rawls, “Reply to Habermas” (1995) 92 J Phil 132, 175. 20 See Rawls, PL 232 (“The principled expression of higher law is to be widely supported,” and so “it is best not to burden it with many details and qualifications.”). 18 141 Constitutional Rights and “Private” Legal Relations: A Note on a Rawlsian View coming to terms with reciprocating fellow citizens for a project of social cooperation of the most urgent moral concern to all. As rational, the point remains, we cannot be buying pigs in pokes, certainly not when our most fundamental personal concerns and commitments are at stake. B. Scheme of Liberties With Central Ranges and Equality of Right Each person has an equal right to a fully adequate scheme of liberties which is compatible with a similar scheme for all.21 Rawls offers explanation for how this challenge can possibly be met. Among free and equal citizens, any justification-worthy constitution will include guarantees respecting certain liberties under abstract names such as “conscience” and “property.” But since the liberties thus named can all without strain be extended in ways that will bring claims in their names sometimes into conflict, “the institutional rules which define these liberties must,” as Rawls writes, “be adjusted so that they fit into a coherent scheme of liberties secured equally for all citizens.”22 The scheme, then, will require unification by some known, single, overall governing aim that can adequately guide the adjustments and curtailments (of which guarantees? in which particular respects?) as needs make themselves known in courses of events. Rawls defends for this purpose a guiding aim to secure for each citizen the social conditions of a full and adequate development and exercise, over a complete life, of certain moral powers of the “reasonable” and the “rational.”23 We do not here take up what might be the warrant for this claim. The point to see for now is that the liberties listed in the underlying conception are never reasonably to be understood as (any one of them) “absolute.”24 It is the scheme of them all in conjunction that the justification-worthy constitution guarantees to all equally— from which it must follow that the extensions of the liberties all stand subject to 21 Rawls, PL 291 (offering a final statement of the first of the two principles of justice as fairness). Ibid., 295. 23 See ibid., 291, 333. 24 Ibid., 295. 22 142 FRANK I. MICHELMAN institutional adjustment as experience may show is required to hold them together as a unified expression of political ends and values, equally assured to all. The scheme retains its justification-supportive function in the society’s political life, Rawls suggests, even under ongoing adjustment of the respective extensions of its component liberties, as long as we can assume that (i) there resides within each component guarantee some widely agreed, fixed core of meaning or “central range of application,” and (ii) there is just about always “a practicable scheme of liberties . . . in which the central range of each is protected.”25 The justificationworthy constitution’s guarantee, then, is for a basic structure in which institutional adjustments of the extensions of the liberties will so far as possible “preserve intact” the central range of application of each.26 Rawls has offered historical experience as evidence of the possibility of satisfaction of those conditions, for at least some schemes of liberties he believes we would count as reasonably justificationbearing.27 I will take as illustrative Rawls’s treatment of the right regarding property, which he includes in his list of basic liberties. As we have noted, the schematizing criterion advanced by Rawls for adjustment of the liberties is overall conduciveness to the development and exercise by citizens of certain powers of moral agency. The basic liberty to hold property accordingly will have as its core mission the assurance to each citizen of “a sufficient material basis for a sense of personal independence and self-respect” to allow for the development and exercise of these agency powers.28 That liberty, then, will be open to possible institutional curtailments in respects deemed to fall outside that core. It would not encompass an absolute right to rule arbitrarily over any expanse whatever of space under individual or corporate proprietary title (think, just for starters, of shopping malls and industrial shop floors), where exercised so as to cramp excessively the expressive, associational, or conscientious liberties of others. Laws setting the rules for the exercise of power in such cases would have to be subject to some form of what is known these days as “proportionality” or “balancing” review for Rawlsian constitutional compliance.29 25 Ibid., 297-98. Ibid., 296. 27 See ibid., 297-98. 28 Ibid., 298. 29 See generally Vicki C. Jackson and Mark Tushnet (eds), Proportionality: New Frontiers, New Challenges (Cambridge U. Press, 2017). 26 143 Constitutional Rights and “Private” Legal Relations: A Note on a Rawlsian View IMPLICATIONS Rawls thus lays out his conception for a scheme of guarantees such that a constitution containing it could be freely endorsable by all citizens as free and equal in the light of principles and ideals acceptable to them as reasonable and rational, and hence could fulfill the constitution-condition laid down by the LPL for a justifiable practice of democratic politics in conditions of reasonable pluralism. This conception may or may not strike you as possible of fulfillment in any modern even moderately free society. That’s of course a perfectly valid concern, and one that I pursue in other work.30 Our question here, though, is whether, taking Rawls’s conception as he gives it, it contains or suggests any bias or resistance against horizontal application of constitutional substantive guarantees. The answer must be exactly to the contrary. The Rawlsian conception requires bill-of-rights inspection whenever plausible claims arise that the private law (as currently construed by effective legal or social authority) is operating to authorize or allow suppression of someone’s real enjoyment of a guaranteed liberty, without intra-schematic justification in terms of due regard for another’s such enjoyment. That would cover cases (to take here just a few examples from recent U.S. constitutional-legal controversy) where it is more or less plausibly claimed that the private law of tort is being wielded by non-governmental suitors to suppress a basic freedom of expression,31 or that the private law of families is being exercised by parents in contravention of children’s basic rights to education,32 or by husbands or parents in contravention of basic procreational-freedom or bodily-security 30 See Michelman, Constitutional Essentials (n 11); Alessandro Ferrara and Frank I. Michelman, Legitimation by Constitution: A Dialogue on Political Liberalism (Oxford U. Press, 2021) (forthcoming). 31 See Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988); Curtis Pub. Co. v. Butts; Assoc. Press v. Walker, 388 U.S. 130 (1967). 32 See Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205, 245 (1972) (Douglas, J., dissenting) (insisting that “the right [under the Bill of Rights] of students to be masters of their own destiny” be taken into account in judging the constitutionality of a state’s legal mandate for required school attendance, as applied against the wishes of religiously motivated parents, because “it is the future of the student” that is at stake. 144 FRANK I. MICHELMAN rights of wives or children.33 Note that you don’t stop these constitution-based objections against oppressive deployments of claimed private-law powers dead in their tracks by observing, truthfully as it may be, that the claimants in these cases to these powers are acting in response to genuine and respect-worthy calls of private conscience or religious faith. I have, for example, in the past explained at length and in detail how the Rawlsian liberal conception points the way to support of a legislative prohibition of certain surgeries on minor children, however much those surgeries might be demanded by truly caring parents and despite resulting impingements on those parents’ liberties of conscience.34 No doubt we may find counter-considerations to these claims—of conscience, say, or consent, on one or the other side of the relation—which we may judge sufficient to sustain the constitutionally impugned private law. We (or the judiciary we authorize in such cases to speak for us) might find ourselves led to define the respective extensions of the rights (or their central ranges of application) so as to exclude the claim in this case of an encroachment on one of them.35 Or we might find an encroachment but hold it on balance permissible in the context of the clash of rights-claims presented by the case and other resembling it. (I will not enter here the controversy over “proportionality” testing of basic-rights claims in constitutional law.) But what the Rawlsian principle of an equal right of everyone to a fully adequate scheme of liberties compatible with a similar scheme for all— taken, now, as a guarantee essential to any justification-worthy constitution—plainly cannot countenance is cursory dismissal of a claim to constitutional protection on the ground that the threat to basic liberty arises in a merely “horizontal” relation within the keeping of private law. Quite to the contrary, an obligation to see the claim through to a responsibly considered conclusion must fall, in due share or measure upon whoever would appeal to the Rawlsian principle of legitimacy to justify the force of democratic law upon dissenters. (I say “in due share” because 33 See Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth, 428 U.S. 52 (1976) (invalidating state-law requirements of spousal and (for women up to the age of eighteen) parental consent as prerequisite to lawful abortion); Planned Parenthood Ass’n v. Ashcroft, 462 U.S. 476 (1983) (upholding parental consent requirement but only on condition of full allowance for “judicial bypass”). 34 Michelman, “Priority of Liberty” (n 5) 192-196. 35 We might then be following the advice of Ronald Dworkin to work always at trimming our conceptions of chief liberal values so that the conceptions dovetail and do not “conflict.” See Ronald Dworkin, “Do Liberal Values Conflict?” in Mark Lilla, Ronald Dworkin, and Robert Silvers (eds), The Legacy of Isaiah Berlin (New York Review of Books, 2001) 73, 77-80, 90. 145 Constitutional Rights and “Private” Legal Relations: A Note on a Rawlsian View Rawls would undoubtedly allow for a public assignment of the lion’s share of judgment in such matters to a court or other trusted authority.36) REMAINDERS So that is where we have come so far. If the constitution’s office in a well-ordered society is to solemnize the assurances requisite to any justifiable practice of politics among free and equal citizens (as the LPL asserts); and if among those requisite assurances is one for a basic structure in which persons are secured against undue constriction of basic liberties; and if constriction of basic liberties can sometimes result from exertions of powers (rights, privileges, immunities) accrued by ordinary-level civil actors under law governing private legal relations; and if the possibility of such accruals cannot be anticipatorily foreclosed without negation of the general state of freedom cherished by liberalism, then some way must be found to bring the constitution’s guarantee against undue constriction to bear on that private law when and as occasion requires. And if, then, that guarantee’s standard of undue constriction is one for proportionality in the treatment of cases in which respectable claims to basic-liberty security come into conflict, then that is how the guarantee must extend itself into private-law adjudications. Now, here is the rub. You could grant all of that, and still there might remain in your mind some concern about an excessive tolerance for oppression-in-private in the Rawlsian liberal philosophy. Two considerations might join to keep the concern alive. One might be suspicion or detection of a bias in striking the balances that a Rawlsian-style proportionality review for private law will have to strike. A second would arise with the observation that not every liberty-endangering exercise of a Rawlsian basic liberty will come under the scope of such review. You might be concerned about an overall negative-libertarian, anti-protectionist bias—a bias for keeping the state as much as possible out of our lives—which experience shows just runs (you might say) in the historical liberal drinking water. I as American would be among the last to deny that such a bias can take hold, and See Frank I. Michelman, ““Constitution (Written or Unwritten)”: Legitimacy and Legality in the Thought of John Rawls” (2018) 31 Ratio Juris 379, 389. 36 146 FRANK I. MICHELMAN sometimes has, in a broadly speaking liberal political culture or among its political or legal elites. That bias is not, however, as far as I can see, any part of a deep logic of liberalism—a point to the support of which this paper has been calling John Rawls as witness. A second concern arises with the observation that not every exercise of a Rawlsian negative basic liberty can be deemed oppressive to someone else’s enjoyment of the scheme of basic liberties, in such a way as to bring into play the Rawlsian liberal mandate for occasion-inspired, constitution-based revisitation to the rules and standards of the law of contract, tort, family, business and other civil associations, trade and competition, and so on. It takes an injured or dominated party to make that happen: a muzzled employee, discriminatorily excluded customer, dominated spouse or child. Those and others so positioned can raise the occasions for Rawlsian mandatory reinspection of private law. But consider a civil action seeking judicial orders of suppression of maximally public, loud and clear, expressive and associational activities in support of counter-liberal political causes, where it is alleged (and let us even say no one denies) that the political success of such causes would mean the effective reversal or extinction of a liberal basic-liberties regime. Who would bring the action? No one can credibly say that their freedom or capacity to talk back has been placed at risk. In such a case, the scheme of basic liberties weighs in on only one side, that of toleration for the speech some claim to be dangerous; no purchase there is found for the Rawlsian mandate for inter-schematic adjustment for the sake of equal right and political justification. The case I have been describing is everywhere these days at our doorstep and beyond, and no doubt it gives cause for grave concern. It is not, however, a concern that implicates the question of horizontal application of constitutional guarantees respecting basic rights. What hobbles an all-out liberal-state quarantine of the propagation and spread of anti-liberal ideas and passions is not some hesitation to mess with the particular jural relations of parents with children, businesses with customers, publishers with news targets, bosses with workers, and so on. Those relations aren’t at stake in the venues of street rallies, broadcasts, legislative sessions, election campaigns, and so on where much of the disfavored but nevertheless protected activity after all takes place. What gets in our way is plainly and simply the liberal commitment to respect, to the limit of safety, everyone’s individual basic liberties of conscience, thought, expression, and association. It is the old, old liberal paradox of tolerance, for which the only answer yet found has been the standard liberal make-do response: to tolerate on principle as 147 Constitutional Rights and “Private” Legal Relations: A Note on a Rawlsian View we must, but not beyond the point of endangerment of the regime itself of toleration, of equal basic liberties and the rest of liberal democracy. That is where John Rawls, too, has taken his stand.37 See Rawls, PL 18-19, 64 & n 10; Frank I. Michelman, “The Bind of Tolerance and a Call to Feminist Thought: A Reply to Gila Stopler” (2021) 19 Int’l J Const L 408, 409-10. 37 149 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 149-170 ISSN: 1825-5167 POSICIÓN ORIGINAL, EQUILIBRIO REFLEXIVO Y RAZÓN PÚBLICA: LAS METODOLOGÍAS RAWLSIANAS DE JUSTIFICACIÓN1 DANIEL LOEWE Facultad de Artes Liberales Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago de Chile daniel.loewe@uai.cl ABSTRACT In A Theory of Justice, Political Liberalism and The Idea of Public Reason Revisited Rawls resorts to three different methodologies of justification: the original position, the reflexive equilibrium and the public reason. The article analyses these three methodologies in Rawls’ work and argues that the justification of the original position is derivative of the reflexive equilibrium, and that public reason likewise presupposes a sort of a broad reflexive equilibrium between comprehensive doctrines and political conceptions. K EYWORDS Theory of justice, original position, reflexive equilibrium, public reason, comprehensive doctrines. En A theory of justice (TJ) Rawls sostiene que su teoría recurre a la tradición contractual de Locke, Rousseau y Kant, elevando su nivel de abstracción (1971: 11).2 El contractualismo es una parte fundamental de su propuesta normativa que pretende justificar una concepción de justicia (justice as fairness) caracterizada por dos principios de justicia. En TJ hay dos metodologías de justificación en acción: la posición original (PO) y el equilibrio reflexivo (ER). Y en Political liberalism (PL), así como en The Idea of public reason revisited (PRR), se añade al corpus justificativo una más: la razón pública (RP). En este artículo examinaré estas tres metodologías justificativas. Procederé en tres pasos. Primero me centraré en TJ y examinaré la PO y el ER en 1 2 Esta investigación se ha realizado en el marco del Proyecto Fondecyt 1200370. Las referencias a TJ siguen la edición original de 1971. 150 DANIEL LOEWE tanto metodologías de justificación de los principios de justicia. El resultado de este examen es que la PO es derivativa del ER. A continuación me centraré en PL y en PRR y examinaré el mecanismo de la RP. Aunque la RP se distingue de las otras metodologías, ella todavía guarda relación con la metodología justificativa rawlsiana central: el ER. Finalmente obtendré algunas conclusiones generales. JUSTIFICANDO LOS PRINCIPIOS DE JUSTICIA: LA POSICIÓN ORIGINAL (PO) Y EL EQUILIBRIO REFLEXIVO (ER) Como teoría de justicia social, el foco de la teoría rawlsiana es acotado. No se trata de establecer un sistema ético completo que, por ejemplo, establezca las virtudes de las personas: “Justice as fairness is not a complete contract theory” (1971: 17). Su pretensión es establecer los principios de justicia en base a las cuales se han de organizar las instituciones sociales más importantes que componen la estructura básica de la sociedad (1971: 7-11; 54; 84). Aunque acotado, este objetivo es sumamente relevante: estas instituciones influyen, a veces de un modo casi determinante, en lo que las personas pueden lograr en la vida, es decir, en su posibilidad de perseguir y realizar sus planes de vida (aquello que desean realizar según sus ideas de lo valioso, o con sus conceptos, sus concepciones del bien). Rawls describe la sociedad como una empresa cooperativa de beneficio mutuo a través de las generaciones compuesta por personas libres e iguales. Y la labor de los principios de justicia en base a los cuales se ha de organizar su estructura básica es distribuir libertades y derechos fundamentales, así como las cargas y beneficios que surgen de la cooperación social. Dado que todos tenemos un interés superior en poder formar, perseguir y revisar nuestros planes de vida particulares, de eso se sigue que estamos interesados en que las instituciones sociales que componen la estructura básica de la sociedad estén organizadas de modo justo. En la justificación de su concepción de justicia, Rawls recurre expresamente a la tradición contractual de Locke, Rousseau y Kant (excluyendo explícitamente la de Hobbes), pero elevando el nivel de abstracción (1971: 11). Aunque hay muchas teorías contractuales diferentes, como lo son por lo demás las tres mencionadas, es posible identificar una idea común: en un estado de naturaleza los individuos lograrían un acuerdo sobre la organización política que toma la forma de un contrato vinculante que legitima el orden político. En esta lógica, y aunque sostiene que no se los debe confundir, él imagina una nueva versión del estado de naturaleza: la PO. Ésta “embodies features peculiar to moral theory” (1971: 120). Se trata de una modelación de una situación hipotética de elección de principios de justicia en la cual se escogerían los dos principios que caracterizan su concepción de justicia como equidad. Su diseño 151 Posición original, equilibrio reflexivo y razón pública: las metodologías rawlsianas de justificación expresa una situación de elección imparcial de los principios de justicia: “The original position is defined in such a way that it is a status quo in which any agreements reached are fair” (1971: 120). Los principios de justicia que allí se escogerían “are those which rational persons concerned to advance their interests would accept in this position of equality to settle the basic terms of their association” (1971: 118). En la caracterización de la PO es central el velo de la ignorancia, que restringe los conocimientos disponibles al deliberar o reflexionar acerca de los principios de justicia: It is assumed, then, that the parties do not know certain kinds of particular facts. First of all, no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength, and the like. Nor, again, does anyone know his conception of the good, the particulars of his rational plan of life, or even the special, features of his psychology such as his aversion to risk or liability to optimism or pessimism (Rawls, 1971: 137). En tanto reflexionemos guiándonos según sus características constitutivas, cada uno de nosotros puede situarse en la PO. Se trata de un experimento mental que modula una situación de elección, de modo que bajo la condición de que se reflexione de modo correcto, cada cual escogería lo mismo. Como consigna la cita, las partes, que es como Rawls denomina a los participantes en la PO en TJ (en PL las partes serán representantes de ciudadanos), no disponen de conocimientos particulares sobre sí mismas, aunque sí de conocimientos generales como, por ejemplo, sobre teorías económicas y psicológicas. Y aunque saben que tienen una concepción del bien, no saben cuál es. Tampoco conocen su posición social y económica, esto es, cuán privilegiadas o desaventajadas son en comparación social. Saben que disponen por sobre un umbral mínimo de capacidades físicas y mentales que les permite ser cooperadores sociales (esto es necesario porque, como vimos, la sociedad es una empresa cooperativa de beneficio mutuo), pero no saben cuán dotadas están por sobre aquel. Saben que en la sociedad está vigente una versión particular de lo que Hume denominó las “circunstancias de la justicia” (1971: 126-130), esto es, escasez relativa de recursos y generosidad limitada de la naturaleza humana. En este contexto, las partes deben escoger los principios de justicia en razón de los cuales se han de organizar las instituciones que componen la estructura básica de la sociedad en la que vivirán. En esta decisión no son impulsadas por la envidia ni por alguna motivación moral (dado que no conocen su concepción del bien, no pueden hacerlo), sino que por sus intereses racionales en maximizar la posibilidad de realizar su –desconocido– plan de vida con independencia de lo que los otros puedan alcanzar. En esta estructura argumentativa resulta central el concepto de bienes primarios. La característica de estos bienes es que resultan productivos para el desarrollo de cualquier plan de vida y por tanto todo ser racional desea disponer de ellos. Incluso más: todo 152 DANIEL LOEWE ser racional desea disponer de más que de menos, porque así incrementa su posibilidad de perseguir exitosamente su plan de vida (1971: 90-95). Esto implica a “thin theory of the good” (1971: 395-399). Es decir, hay bienes que resultan valiosos con independencia de las concepciones particulares del bien porque posibilitan cualquier plan de vida. Bienes primarios son libertades y derechos fundamentales (como nos son conocidos de los órdenes constitucionales), oportunidades, recursos en el sentido de ingresos y riquezas, y las bases sociales del autorespeto. La idea es que las partes en la PO escogerán aquellos principios de justicia que al organizar a la sociedad en la que vivirán distribuirán bienes primarios del modo más beneficioso para ellas. Pero dado que, como vimos, en razón del velo de la ignorancia no conocen sus particularidades (su concepción del bien, su fuerza física, talentos y su posición económica y social), no pueden preferir principios que las privilegien. Así, al escoger principios que promuevan sus intereses racionales, escogen simultáneamente principios que privilegien a cualquiera que se encuentre en su situación de elección, y estos son, por definición, todos. De este modo, la PO modela una situación de imparcialidad y las decisiones tomadas en ésta son justas (fair) (1971: 120). De ahí la denominación de la teoría como justice as fairness. De acuerdo a esta presentación, la justificación en la PO parece retrotraerse a un razonamiento deductivo: una vez situados en la PO y razonando según sus características constitutivas, estaríamos racionalmente compelidos a escoger los principios de justicia rawlsianos (Scanlon, 2003). Esta apreciación está en consonancia con la afirmación rawlsiana que la PO es un dispositivo de elección de principios de justicia que funciona de modo procedimental puro (1971: 120). Esto significa que una vez en ella, y guiando el razonamiento según su descripción, arribaríamos a los principios de la justicia. La teoría supone cuatro niveles de mayor a menor nivel de abstracción: el de los principios, el constitucional, el legislativo y el judicial. La idea es que se parte de los principios de justicia más abstractos escogidos en la PO, y ellos van influyendo, a medida que se van disipando las condiciones definitorias del velo de la ignorancia, cada uno de los otros niveles en la organización de la estructura básica de la sociedad. Los principios de justicia se van expresando en cada uno de estos niveles, cumpliendo un papel justificativo derivativo en toda la estructura institucional. Si recorremos el camino inverso desembocamos en la justificación de los principios en PO. Rawls afirma que en la PO este razonamiento deductivo se puede realizar recurriendo a la teoría de la decisión racional: “the theory of justice is part, perhaps the most significant part, of the theory of rational choice” (1971: 16). Esta apelación a la teoría de la decisión racional para escoger principios de justicia influyó probablemente en la recepción inicial de la teoría, aunque el modo en que Rawls recurre a ella es 153 Posición original, equilibrio reflexivo y razón pública: las metodologías rawlsianas de justificación probablemente errado (Harsanyi, 1975). Pero el estatus de la PO como modelo justificativo de principios no descansa en ello (lo que en ello descansa es la materialidad de los principios de justicia que en ella se escogerían, no el estatus de la PO como modelo justificativo).3 La idea de Rawls es que la PO modelaría una decisión bajo incertidumbre que al resolverse mediante el criterio de decisión Maximin desembocaría en sus principios de justicia. En TJ él incluso sostiene que se trata de una “moral geometry” (1971: 121) y que la PO sería un ángulo de Arquímedes (1971: 260-263; 584).4 Estas expresiones llevaron a algunos a considerar que la justificación de los principios de justicia en TJ descansaría exclusivamente en la PO en tanto modelación de una situación de elección que asegura unanimidad, y que de este modo se expresaría el mecanismo contractual de justificación: se trataría de principios que se obtendrían exclusivamente mediante la reflexión racional de los sujetos en la PO en razón de su interés propio, sujetos que, dado que no pueden distinguir lo que los favorece a ellos de lo que favorece a otros, escogerían por todos, expresando así la idea de un contrato en que se escoge lo que beneficia a todos los contrayentes. Como es conocido, mientras algunos consideraron que esta justificación contractual de la PO sería la fortaleza de la teoría ya que le otorgaría a ella y sus principios validez universal o general (dado que se retrotraen exclusivamente al uso de la racionalidad), otros consideraron, inversamente, que la PO es un mecanismo irrelevante para determinar qué es y qué implica la justicia y, por tanto, para justificar posibles principios de justicia: Rawls tendría una imagen de las personas como sujetos desencarnados, y así los principios se retrotraerían a las decisiones de sujetos sin historia, sin filiaciones o lealtades, sujetos que nada nos pueden decir a cerca de la justicia, o al menos nada Rawls rechaza que las decisiones bajo incertidumbre deban resolverse mediante el principio de razón insuficiente –del que por cierto se desprendería el principio de utilidad media–, pero lo cierto es que por 3 referencia a la teoría de la decisión racional no hay razones concluyentes para este rechazo y para escoger según Máximin. Esta es una determinación extraordinariamente adversa al riesgo, pero según la descripción de la PO no hay razones para ser tan pesimista y considerar, como Rawls lo expresa, que tenemos que pensar como si nuestro enemigo nos asignara nuestro lugar en la sociedad. Y por lo demás, si consideramos que hay razones para pensarlo de este modo, entonces ya no se trataría de una decisión bajo incertidumbre. 4 Como es conocido, en Political liberalism (PL), su segundo libro, Rawls expresamente sostiene que la interpretación de la PO como el mecanismo justificativo de los principios se basa en un error, uno que quizás se retrotrae a su falta de claridad expositiva en TJ. Es así como él sostiene en PL que “to see justice as fairness as trying to derive the reasonable from the rational misinterprets the original position” (1996: 53); y en la nota al pie correspondiente indica: “Here I correct a remark in Theory… where I said that the theory of justice is part of the theory of rational decision. From what we have just said, this is simply incorrect” (1996: 53, nota 7). 154 DANIEL LOEWE relevante. 5 En algunas interpretaciones de esta crítica incluso se confundió la descripción de las partes en la PO con la imagen que tendría Rawls del ser humano como un ser egoísta (lo que, por lo demás, expresado de este modo sería también incorrecto: las parte son desinteresadas, no egoístas) y asocial. Pero evidentemente esto es un error: la descripción de las partes en la PO no expresa ninguna concepción del ser humano, sino que se trata exclusivamente de una modelación de una situación de elección. Ya sea que se recurra a ella para elogiarla o criticarla, la consideración de la PO como el mecanismo justificativo de los principios de justicia se basa en un error interpretativo mayor. Como es conocido, Rawls conjetura que para cada concepción de justicia puede haber una situación original, es decir una descripción de la situación de elección tal, que los principios favorecidos por cada teoría resulten escogidos en ella (1971: 121). La pregunta que se presenta es, entonces: ¿se diferencia la justificación de los principios de justicia que ofrece la PO rawlsiana de la justificación de principios que pudiesen derivarse de una situación de elección alternativa? ¿O están todos los principios, que se obtienen mediante algún mecanismo derivativo desde alguna situación de elección, igualmente justificados? Aunque Rawls sostiene que desde diferentes diseños de la situación de elección se pueden obtener diferentes principios que caracterizan diferentes concepciones de justicia, su pretensión es que los que se obtienen de su PO serían principios de justicia con un mayor estatus justificativo. Con sus palabras, lo especial de su PO es que ella expresa mejor “the conditions that are widely thought reasonable to impose on the choice of principles yet which, at the same time, leads to a conception that characterizes our considered judgments in reflexive equilibrium” (1971: 121). Considerado de este modo, no es la reflexión deductiva en la PO según los mecanismos de la teoría de la decisión racional la que ofrece una justificación de los principios —esta sería una interpretación ingenua de la teoría—, sino las condiciones mediante las cuales se diseña y así define la PO las que lo hacen. La justificación por tanto es externa a ella. En esta interpretación, que Rawls en algunos sitios expresamente sostiene, la PO sería un modo de guiar el intelecto o tendría un papel heurístico (compare Barry, 1989: 271-282). Para entender adecuadamente la justificación de los principios lo que tenemos que examinar es el mecanismo mediante el cual se diseña la PO. Este tipo de críticas se desplegaron en uno de los primeros debates a que dio lugar TJ en la filosofía política, el así conocido debate entre el comunitarismo y el liberalismo. Entre los críticos más conocidos de Rawls en este debate, que articulan diferentes versiones –y con diferentes motivaciones– del argumento esbozado, se encuentran Sandel (1998); MacIntyre (2007); Taylor (1989); Walzer (1983). 5 155 Posición original, equilibrio reflexivo y razón pública: las metodologías rawlsianas de justificación Rawls sostiene que su PO debe ser considerada como resultado del proceso de ER. Esto es central para entender cabalmente el proyecto rawlsiano en TJ. Él mismo define su teoría de justicia como imparcialidad como: “a theory of our moral sentiments as manifested by our considered judgements in reflexive equilibrum” (1971: 120). El ER es un proceso mediante el cual ajustamos nuestros ideales y juicios considerados por una parte, con los principios de justicia por otra, hasta alcanzar un equilibrio entre ellos. Trabajando desde ambos extremos, dice Rawls, es decir desde juicios considerados a principios y desde principios a juicios considerados, avanzamos hasta obtener un equilibrio. No se trata de un equilibrio final fijo, sino que más bien de uno “not necessarily stable” (1971: 20) y por tanto en constante revisión reflexiva (por eso es un equilibrio reflexivo). Se trata más bien de un proceso permanente que asintóticamente parece avanzar hacia un equilibrio más completo y perfecto.6 Con mayor detalle, el ER se compone de tres momentos. En primer lugar se identifica un conjunto de juicios considerados relativos a la justicia. En segundo lugar, se formulan principios que den cuenta de esos juicios considerados. La idea es que si, inversamente, partimos desde los principios y los aplicamos deberíamos arribar al mismo conjunto primeramente identificado de juicios considerados (1971: 46-53). Finalmente hay que decidir cómo responder a la divergencia que previsiblemente se producirá entre juicios considerados y principios. Hay dos posibilidades: podemos ajustar los juicios a los principios, es decir revisar los juicios considerados según los principios, o podemos modificar los principios para que den cuenta de los juicios considerados. Trabajando desde ambos extremos, es decir, modificando juicios y principios, este proceso de ajuste continúa hasta alcanzar principios que correspondan a los juicios considerados. Así obtenemos un ajuste coherente entre juicios considerados y principios de modo que la concepción de justicia resultante está justificada. La idea de Rawls es que mediante este proceso de ajuste diseñamos la PO de modo tal que los principios que de ella (deductivamente) se obtengan coincidan con los principios que sostenemos mediante el ER. Como vimos, en el diseño de la PO recurrimos a las condiciones “that are widely thought reasonable to impose on the choice of principles” y que llevan a una concepción de justicia que “characterizes our considered judgements in reflexive equilibrium” (1971: 121). ¿Pero cuáles son los juicios considerados y las condiciones ampliamente consideradas razonables mediante los cuales, en un proceso de ER, diseñamos la PO? Rawls es muy escueto, sosteniendo incluso que “I shall not, of course, actually work through this process” (1971: 21), debiendo más bien entenderse el diseño de la PO que él presenta como la realización 6 Este proceso está claramente explicado en PL (97). 156 DANIEL LOEWE de este proceso. Sin embargo, a pesar de la falta de una reflexión explícita y sistemática, él sí sostiene algunas condiciones para la realización e identificación de juicios considerados, y expresa ciertos juicios tanto directamente7 como en el diseño mismo de la PO. En un muy citado pasaje él sostiene que: It seems to be one of the fixed points of our considered judgements that no one deserves his place in the distribution of native endowments, any more than one deserves one’s initial starting place in society. The assertion that a man deserves the superior character that enables him to cultivate his abilities is equally problematic: for his character depends in large part upon fortunate family and social circumstances for which he can claim no credit. The notion of desert seems not to apply to these cases (1971: 104). Son estos juicios considerados (o puntos fijos de nuestros juicios considerados) los que están a la base de la definición rawlsiana de la PO. Lo que la PO hace mediante el velo de la ignorancia es incluir en el modelo de decisión estos juicios considerados, en el sentido de que nadie puede obtener ventajas de aquello por lo cual no puede reclamar crédito o ser desaventajado por lo mismo. Rawls también nos indica cómo se obtiene este tipo de juicios: los juicios considerados son aquellos que se obtienen en condiciones favorables para el ejercicio de nuestro sentido de la justicia, es decir, condiciones que descartan los errores más comunes para el ejercicio del juicio práctico. De este modo, primero, los juicios considerados se obtienen cuando se conocen los hechos relevantes a la cuestión que se considera. Se trata de una condición de información completa. En segundo lugar se obtienen al pensar claramente sin estar sujeto a emociones que no embargan, como miedo. Esta condición evita la distorsión en la realización del juicio. Y finalmente no se puede estar sujeto a conflictos de interés, es decir, no se debe poder ganar o perder en razón del juicio que se exprese (1971: 48). Se presume que la persona que realiza el juicio tiene: “the ability, the opportunity, and the desire to reach a correct decision (or at least, not the desire not to)” (1971: 48). Vimos que la PO como mecanismo justificativo implica una reflexión deductiva en el sentido de que bajo sus condiciones constitutivas hay razones suficientes para que todo agente obtenga los principios por Rawls propuestos (suponiendo que su interpretación de la teoría de la decisión racional es correcta). Pero el caso del ER es diferente. Si bien los juicios considerados surgen bajo las tres condiciones delimitadas descritas, lo son para agentes particulares que consideran que ellos expresan creencias justificadas. Se trata de juicios considerados en tanto lo son para agentes singulares que consideran las creencias a su base como justificadas. Se trata, por tanto, de razones para agentes singulares y no de procedimientos racionales deductivos. Por cierto, no Por ejemplo, Rawls sostiene como ejemplo de juicios considerados que la discriminación racial y la intolerancia religiosa son injustas (Rawls, 1971: 19). 7 157 Posición original, equilibrio reflexivo y razón pública: las metodologías rawlsianas de justificación parece haber buenas razones para considerar que todas las personas obtendrán siempre el mismo conjunto de juicios considerados al guiarse por las tres condiciones descritas. Esto puede llevar a suponer que el ER ofrece un procedimiento de justificación de principios en base a las razones que las personas singulares evaluan como pertinentes para considerar que sus creencias particulares están justificadas. Pero el ER exige más que esto. Su correcto entendimiento requiere diferenciar entre dos posibles interpretaciones. En ambas los juicios considerados componen el punto de partida, en el sentido que los principios se deben adecuar a ellos. Pero en una interpretación se los entiende como información que sirve para inductivamente formar o identificar los principios, mientras que en la otra se trata de la información para la deliberación moral sobre la concepción de justicia. En ocasiones, parece ser que Rawls sostiene la primera interpretación. Por ejemplo, cuando para describir el proceso mediante el cual se obtienen los principios recurre a una analogía con las reglas que describen el sentido de gramaticalidad que tenemos en nuestra lengua nativa: se trataría de caracterizar las sentencias bien formuladas mediante principios claros que hacen las mismas discriminaciones que el hablante nativo (1971: 47). Así entendido, una teoría de justicia trataría de establecer principios claros de justicia que hagan las mismas discriminaciones que hacen nuestros juicios considerados. Este es un modo en que se puede interpretar la sentencia según la cual “one may regard a theory of justice as describing our sense of justice” (1971: 46). En esta interpretación la teoría de justicia se limitaría a describir nuestros juicios considerados mediante principios que den cuenta de ellos –tal como las reglas de la gramática dan cuenta de las mismas discriminaciones que realiza el hablante nativo–. Los juicios considerados serían mera información con la que se alimenta una función que da cuenta de ellos mediante principios de justicia. Pero este es una interpretación incorrecta del ER. (Rawls sostiene que este sería un “provisional aim of moral philosophy” (97: 48)). La analogía con la gramática es incorrecta, o al menos imperfecta de modo relevante: si somos hablantes competentes, probablemente nuestro sentido del lenguaje no cambia de modo relevante al conocer las reglas generales de la gramática que hacen las mismas discriminaciones que realizamos al hablar.8 Además, una vez que se ha obtenido las reglas gramaticales, estás quedan fijas, y sólo cambian cuando así lo hace el lenguaje. Como vimos, el ER es un mecanismo que funciona en ambas direcciones, de modo que los juicios considerados responden también a un ajuste con los principios. Así considerado, el ER como Aunque Rawls sostiene que “no doubt our sense of grammaticalness may be affected to some degree anyway by this knowledge [el conocimiento de los principios de una teoría linguística]” (1971: 49). Aunque sea así, se trata probablemente de una afectación marginal, ya que si la afectación es profunda y amplia, lo más probable es que no se trataba de un hablante competente. 8 158 DANIEL LOEWE mecanismo justificativo es deliberativo en un sentido socrático. No se trata de encontrar los principios que –como los principios generales de la gramática– den cuenta de la mayor cantidad de nuestros juicios considerados, sino que cuando estos juicios no sean expresables mediante principios que podamos considerar aceptables, debemos modificarlos (de hecho, Rawls modifica corrientemente sus juicios considerados cuando los compara con los principios): Moral philosophy is Socratic: we may want to change our present considered judgements once their regulative principles are brought to light. And we may want to do this even though these principles are a perfect fit. A knowledge of these principles may suggest further reflection that lead us to revise our judgements (Rawls, 1971: 49). Así entendido, el tipo de justificación de principios de justicia que ofrece el ER asemeja más bien un proceso deliberativo en sentido socrático. Los principios que así se obtienen, así como los juicios considerados que expresan creencias que las personas consideran como justificadas, son el resultado de un proceso de articular razones que las personas pueden considerar como buenas razones. Este es el sentido de lo razonable (que está a la base de la determinación de las condiciones que definen la PO). Este es un concepto central en la teoría rawlsiana, que en LP dará lugar a la condición de reciprocidad en el proceso de ofrecer y recibir razones. La interpretación deliberativa del ER como mecanismo justificativo permite evaluar dos críticas corrientes al ER (compare Scanlon, 2003). Por una parte, se suele sostener que el ER es conservador (compare Flanders, 2012; 2014). Esto se retrotraería a que como método justificativo sólo sería capaz de expresar mediante principios los juicios considerados existentes (la interpretación de los juicios considerados como información que alimenta inductivamente la formación de los principios). Pero como vimos, el método justificativo del ER nos ofrece un mecanismo para revisar los juicios productivamente, incluso cuando se ajustan a los principios. De este modo, los principios de justicia que así se obtienen no son una expresión automática de los juicios considerados y las creencias que se consideran justificadas en un momento y lugar en particular, sino que ellos son el resultado de un proceso deliberativo que se basa en intercambiar y evaluar razones. Por otra parte, el ER no es necesariamente relativista. Aquí la crítica sostiene que, dado que se trata de encontrar sistemas coherentes entre juicios y principios, el ER terminaría sancionando múltiples equilibrios, ninguno de los cuales puede reclamar más validez que el otro. Pero justamente porque el ER es un ideal hacia el que debemos avanzar permanentemente y no un estado final, lo que él posibilita es un proceso deliberativo permanente, que nos permite incluso contrastar nuestros equilibrios con otros equilibrios, iniciándose así un proceso de revisión de las distintas concepciones de justicia (aunque, evidentemente, nada se opone a la posibilidad de que efectivamente haya diversos equilibrios). Así considerado, el sistema 159 Posición original, equilibrio reflexivo y razón pública: las metodologías rawlsianas de justificación justificativo rawlsiano de los principios de justicia es coherentista, pero entendido de un modo deliberativo en el mejor sentido socrático. Si tomamos en serio este propósito, tenemos que reconocer que la aspiración de la teoría rawlsiana en TJ es identificar y justificar principios de justicia por relación a nuestro juicio práctico bajo consideraciones adecuadas. Los principios que así se obtienen no tienen la pretensión de ser mera expresión de decantados históricos, sino de ser la mejor expresión del uso del juicio práctico deliberativo partiendo desde condiciones sociales e históricas particulares: la de las democracias liberales contemporáneas (Compare Breben 2003). ESTABILIDAD Y LEGITIMIDAD: POLITICAL LIBERALISM Y LA RAZÓN PÚBLICA (RP) En Political liberalism (PL) hay una tercera metodología de justificación en acción: la razón pública (RP). Sin embargo, la diferencia entre las pretensiones normativas de TJ y de PL son tales, que el sentido de la justificación también lo es. En esta sección examinaré la RP y como se relaciona con la pretensión rawlsiana de PL y con la metodología justificativa del ER. A diferencia de TJ, en PL no se trata de justificar principios de justicia, sino que de hacerse cargo del problema de la legitimidad y estabilidad de la estructura institucional de la sociedad. Rawls sostiene que las sociedades liberales contemporáneas se caracterizan por el factum del pluralismo razonable (1996: 36; 63), esto es, la coexistencia de una pluralidad de concepciones morales razonables. Si bien a veces las concepciones se organizan en sistemas complejos de creencias que dan cuenta del valor moral, su origen y sus alcances prácticos, como es el caso de algunas religiones, en la mayoría de los casos se trata de concepciones menos articuladas con menor profundidad explicativa y que ofrecen guías para la acción más laxas. Rawls utiliza el concepto de doctrinas comprehensivas para referir a aquellos sistemas de creencias morales que especifican no sólo las instituciones políticas, sino un amplio rango de asuntos que se extienden y ofrecen respuestas constitutivas a preguntas acerca del valor de las concepciones del bien y formas de vida, tales como lo que constituye una vida valiosa, las virtudes a desarrollar, etcétera. Las doctrinas comprehensivas incluyen usualmente posicionamientos metafísicos y epistemológicos acerca de las creencias 160 DANIEL LOEWE morales. Rawls se refiere a doctrinas comprensivas religiosas, morales y filosóficas, y como ilustración menciona las religiones, el kantismo y el utilitarismo (1996: 37).9 El factum del pluralismo razonable presenta un desafío mayor para estas sociedades, porque las doctrinas comprehensivas no sólo se caracterizan por contenidos proposicionales diferentes, sino porque muchas veces se oponen y excluyen entre sí. Este desacuerdo no es una característica meramente contingente, sino que un desarrollo inevitable en estas sociedades que se sigue del uso que los ciudadanos hagan de las libertades que las caracterizan. Cuando los ciudadanos pueden hacer uso de sus libertades obtienen conclusiones diversas acerca de lo valioso (1996: 4; 36 y siguientes; 55; 136; 216 y siguientes). Del pluralismo de concepciones morales se derivan diferencias morales profundas al evaluar leyes, normativas y políticas públicas. A modo de ejemplo, en estas sociedades hay diferencias morales profundas relativas al aborto, a la presencia de la religión en la vida social, a la eutanasia, al uso de drogas, pero también temas relativos a políticas sociales, tributarias, etcétera. Pero si los ciudadanos abrazan diferentes doctrinas comprehensivas: ¿cómo puede una concepción de la justicia encontrar suficiente sustento entre los ciudadanos, de modo que la sociedad alcance estabilidad en el tiempo, es decir, los ciudadanos la consideren legítima y actúen de acuerdo a ella, aunque no la compartan? O con otras palabras: ¿cómo es posible que una democracia constitucional permanezca estable a través del tiempo? Para hacerse cargo de los desafíos que presenta el factum del pluralismo para la legitimidad y estabilidad de la estructura institucional de la sociedad (1996: 140-144) Rawls recurre a la RP. La aspiración es que las razones que se articulen por referencia a ésta sean tales, que puedan ser aceptadas por los otros. 10 En TJ Rawls había sostenido la tesis de la congruencia de las concepciones del bien y los principios de justicia (1971: 398 y siguientes; 567-575). Esta tesis sostiene que en una sociedad que se organiza según los principios de justicia rawlsianos, el sentido de justicia de las personas tendería en el tiempo a que abrazaran esos principios. Sin embargo, en PL él rechaza esta tesis. Este es probablemente una de las modificaciones más substanciales de la teoría desde TJ a PL. Como él reconoce, su concepción de justicia como equidad en TJ se basa en una doctrina comprehensiva de tipo kantiano Las discusiones más extensivas sobre la razón pública, refieren al estatus de las razones religiosas. La bibliografía sobre este tema es inabarcable. Una idea general de la discusión y las diferentes posiciones se encuentra en los artículos del libro editado por Tom Bailey y Valentina Gentile (2015). Compare también Eberle (2002). 10 En los debates sobre la RP hay varias versiones acerca de si las razones deben ser “accesibles”, “aceptables”, o “compartidas” por los otros. En esta determinación se juega buena parte de los debates internos acerca de la RP. En vez de muchos compare, Gaus y Vallier (2009); Vallier (2001); Larmore (2003); Waldron (2015). 9 161 Posición original, equilibrio reflexivo y razón pública: las metodologías rawlsianas de justificación ya que a su base se encuentra una concepción kantiana de personalidad moral que se especifica mediante dos poderes morales. Ellos implican (a) la capacidad para formar una concepción del bien, y (b) un sentido de la justicia, esto es, un deseo efectivo para emplear principios de justicia y actuar de acuerdo a éstos (1971: 19; 505-510). La igualdad moral se define mediante el concepto de persona así caracterizado (1971: 19). Para Rawls, la interpretación kantiana de la personalidad moral es tan importante para su propia teoría en TJ, que llega a sostener que su PO es una interpretación procedimental de la concepción kantiana de la legislación moral realizada por seres racionales iguales y libres (1971: 256). Sin embargo, con los conceptos de PL se trata de una doctrina comprehensiva de tipo filosófica. Y no es razonable sostener que las personas se pondrán de acuerdo sobre una doctrina comprehensiva como base de la sociedad. El único modo de que una sociedad que se organice mediante una doctrina comprehensiva permanezca estable a través del tiempo sería limitando las libertades que caracterizan a las democracias constitucionales. Con sus palabras: “A society united on a reasonable form of utilitarianism, or on the reasonable liberalism of Kant or Mill, will likewise requires the sanctions of state power to remain so. Call this “the fact of oppression”” (1996: 37). Si la congruencia de TJ es una tesis incorrecta, porque no es razonable suponer que el sentido de justicia de las personas tenderá en el tiempo a abrazar los principios de justicia propuestos, y el hecho de la opresión es incompatible con una democracia constitucional que para Rawls es siempre una democracia liberal, hay que explicar cómo la legitimidad y la estabilidad son posibles en una sociedad caracterizada por el factum del pluralismo. El concepto central aquí es el de razonabilidad. Como vimos, lo razonable se expresaba en el ER como una cierta disposición a ajustar juicios y principios en base a razones. En PL los ciudadanos razonables reconocen los límites del juicio (“burden of judgement”) y están dispuestos a ofrecer razones que sinceramente puedan esperar que los otros puedan aceptar. Los límites del juicio incluyen evidencia contestada, diferentes ponderaciones, indeterminación conceptual, experiencias diferentes y conflictos de valores (1996: 54-58). Reconocer estos límites implica reconocer que personas razonables ante la misma evidencia pueden obtener resultados diferentes. Por lo mismo, los ciudadanos razonables deben reconocer que es incorrecto hacer prevalecer sus puntos de vista doctrinarios en los otros en razón de su verdad o corrección. El pluralismo de las sociedades liberales se sigue así de las libertades de las que gozan sus ciudadanos como del reconocimiento de los límites del juicio: si los ciudadanos son razonables y por tanto los reconocen, no tienen razones para no tolerar los puntos de vista de los otros y en su lugar imponer los propios, ya que saben que frente a la misma evidencia se pueden obtener conclusiones diferentes. La tolerancia rawlsiana en PL se sigue del reconocimiento de estos límites. Las personas razonables 162 DANIEL LOEWE que reconocen estos límites deben estar por tanto dispuestos a ofrecer razones que pueden sinceramente esperar que los otros pueden aceptar. Este es la condición de reciprocidad. ¿Qué tipo de razones son estas? Es evidente que no pueden ser razones relativas a doctrinas comprehensivas. Como examinamos, el reconocimiento de los límites del juicio implica que no podemos razonablemente esperar que las razones que se siguen de las doctrinas comprehensivas sean reconocidas por todos aquellos que no comparten la doctrina en cuestión. Por ejemplo, en una discusión acerca del aborto ¿por qué un utilitarista del total debiese aceptar las razones articuladas por un católico en relación a su concepción de la animación, y vice versa? Por el contrario, deben ser razones que los ciudadanos de las sociedades democráticas constitucionales pueden razonablemente esperar que todos los otros miembros deben compartir con independencia de cuál sea la doctrina comprehensiva que abracen. Y aquello que deben compartir son los valores políticos compartidos en una democracia constitucional. Son estos valores y principios exclusivamente políticos los que definen la RP. Rawls tiene una pretensión acotada del espacio en que se requiere argumentar por referencia a estos valores mediante la RP: se trata de los debates acerca de esenciales constitucionales y asuntos de justicia básica (1996: 217 y siguientes).11 Los esenciales constitucionales refieren, por una parte, a la estructura de organización política y, por otra, a derechos y libertades ciudadanas. Él menciona el derecho a voto y a participación política, la libertad de consciencia, de pensamiento y de asociación, y la protección del imperio del derecho (1996: 227). Los asuntos de justicia básica refieren a asuntos distributivos (por ejemplo, su propio Principio de la diferencia sería uno sobre el que debiese discutirse según las condiciones de la RP porque corresponde a un asunto de justicia básica). Además, según Rawls la RP no implica un deber jurídico, sino que de un deber de civilidad (1996: 217 y siguientes). Esto quiere decir, que lo que nos debe llevar a argumentar por referencia a la RP es el respecto a los otros como ciudadanos, pero sus requerimientos no limitan la libertad de expresión. Se trata, por tanto, de un deber moral y no de un deber jurídico. Esto hace sentido en el universo teórico rawlsiano: ya sea en TJ o en PL las libertades y derechos fundamentales tienen una cierta prioridad. ¿Pero cuál es el contenido de la RP, o más específicamente: cuáles son los valores políticos que la caracterizan? Esto no debe prestarse a malentendidos. Una posibilidad sería considerar que los valores políticos compartidos en una democracia constitucional son aquellos que los ciudadanos efectivamente comparten. Esta Hay interpretaciones más amplias de la RP que hacen extensivos sus requerimientos a todas las decisiones políticas (Compare Quong, 2011). 11 163 Posición original, equilibrio reflexivo y razón pública: las metodologías rawlsianas de justificación interpretación es la tesis del consentimiento actual (compare Klosko, 2004). Según esta interpretación, para conocer el contenido de la razón pública debemos desarrollar investigaciones empíricas en sociedades concretas acerca de cuáles son los valores políticos que los ciudadanos efectivamente comparten en un momento particular. Pero a pesar de que en ocasiones sus modos de expresión parecen dar sustento a esta tesis, este no es el entendimiento rawlsiano. Él no se está refiriendo a los valores que los ciudadanos efectivamente comparten, sino que se está refiriendo a los valores que, en tanto ciudadanos de una democracia liberal, deben compartir. Se trata de una tesis de consentimiento normativo (Freeman, 2007). Por cierto el punto de partida es una democracia constitucional y aquellos valores que la caracterizan, pero ellos están mediados por una serie de idealizaciones que están a la base de la RP. Según Rawls, el uso de la RP exige que los participantes reconozcan la libertad e igualdad de los ciudadanos, y en base a un entendimiento de la sociedad como empresa cooperativa, exige que reconozcan la reciprocidad, y así estén motivados a ofrecer argumentos a los libres e iguales que razonablemente pueden esperar que puedan aceptar. Expresado de otro modo, los principios políticos a los cuales se puede recurrir en la RP son aquellos con los que coincidirían ciudadanos razonables. Y estos son los que caracterizan a los órdenes liberales constitucionales. Como Rawls lo expresa en PRR: Political values are not moral doctrines, however available or accessible these may be to your reason and commonsense reflection. Moral doctrines are on a level with religion and first philosophy. By contrast, liberal political principles and values, although intrinsically moral values, are specified by liberal political conceptions of justice and fall under the category of the political (1997: 583-584). Los principios y valores políticos de la RP son así valores morales, pero son valores morales que corresponden a concepciones políticas de justicia política de tipo liberal. Según Rawls, las concepciones políticas de justicia tienen tres características. En primer lugar, sus principios se aplican a las instituciones políticas y sociales básicas que componen la estructura básica de la sociedad. Esta característica hace que sea una concepción política, aunque no necesariamente la hace liberal. En segundo lugar. Ella se debe presentar con independencia de doctrinas comprehensivas, es decir, la concepción política debe ser “freestanding” (es decir, “independiente”, aunque evidentemente puede ser sostenida mediante un consenso por superposición por las doctrinas comprehensivas razonables). Y, finalmente, ella debe poder ser trabajada desde ideas fundamentales que se considera como parte de la cultura política pública de un régimen constitucional liberal, como es la concepción de los ciudadanos como libres e iguales, y de la sociedad como un sistema justo de cooperación. Esta última característica es la que hace que se trate de una concepción liberal política (1997: 584). Y según Rawls, una concepción política liberal de justicia debe reconocer tres 164 DANIEL LOEWE principios generales (que se pueden cualificar de múltiples modos): un principio que establece libertades fundamentales, uno que establece la prioridad de este principio por sobre consideraciones del bien común y consideraciones perfeccionistas, y uno que establece un mínimo material necesario para hacer uso de las libertades (1993: 223).12 La idea rawlsiana es que este núcleo de principios y valores puede ser sostenido por las doctrinas comprehensivas razonables, entre las cuales se produce un consenso por superposición. No se trata de un consenso fáctico entre doctrinas comprehensivas que determina este núcleo. La empresa rawlsiana es de moralidad política, no es un modus vivendi. La sociedad debe poder tener “stability for the right reasons” (1996: xlii; 390; 392). Hay un núcleo de valores políticos característicos de las democracias constitucionales y las doctrinas comprehensivas que tienen suficientes elementos para sostenerlo por referencia a sus propias doctrinas son razonables y forman así entre ellas el consenso por superposición. Para Rawls es importante que se sostenga este núcleo de valores por las razones correctas, es decir debido al reconocimiento de su corrección normativa política, y no por otras consideraciones –por ejemplo, de tipo estratégicas–. Como él sostiene en la Introducción de PL, el liberalismo político es hijo de la Reforma, pero también de la Ilustración. Las doctrinas comprehensivas razonables son aquellas cuyo contenido les permite sostener este núcleo de valores liberales. El ejercicio que tiene lugar a la base del consenso por contraposición es así una cierta versión del ER, un ER amplio (wide). Así como el ER en TJ refería a un proceso de ajuste entre juicios considerados y principios, en PL se trata de una ajuste entre el contenido de las doctrinas comprehensivas razonables y un núcleo de valores morales (exclusivamente) políticos que corresponda a esas doctrinas comprehensivas. Este núcleo político son aquellos aspectos de la doctrina comprehensiva relevantes para la consideración de las instituciones políticas y de las relaciones entre ciudadanos. De este modo, se obtiene el ER amplio cuando los ciudadanos comparten la misma concepción política, aunque sus doctrinas comprehensivas difieren. Se trata de un proceso de ajuste entre los contenidos de las doctrinas comprehensivas y los valores políticos que caracterizan a las democracias constitucionales. Así se logra un ER amplio entre los ciudadanos, porque “the same conception is affirmed in everyone’s considered judgements” (1996: 384, nota 16). En un contexto en que se da este consenso por superposición, y así los ciudadanos a pesar de sostener diversas doctrinas comprehensivas razonables afirman el mismo En razón de este último principio Rawls considera que el libertarianismo no es una doctrina razonable, y por tanto sus tesis no son parte de la razón pública. 12 165 Posición original, equilibrio reflexivo y razón pública: las metodologías rawlsianas de justificación núcleo de principios políticos (que es el característico de las democracias constitucionales liberales), todavía hay que justificar las respuestas concretas que se dan en las diversas discusiones que en ella surgen. Cuando se trata de discusiones acerca de constitucionales esenciales y asuntos de justicia básica el modo de justificación es la RP, es decir, un modo de argumentación por referencia a este núcleo de principios políticos compartidos (en el sentido explicitado). Al argumentar de este modo, los ciudadanos pueden considerar que las respuestas que se obtengan en este tipo de discusiones son legítimas, porque se han obtenido mediante razones que refieren a valores políticos que, como ciudadanos de democracias constitucionales, comparten, aunque no estén de acuerdo con ellas, y aunque, como Rawls sostiene, incluso las consideren moderadamente injustas. Mediante la RP, los participantes pueden sostener sus puntos de vista, interpretando los valores políticos y los procesos de ponderación y razonamiento sobre estos valores de una forma particular que responda a sus doctrinas comprehensivas. De este modo, la RP expresa un tipo de deliberación socrática entre los diferentes participantes en base a razones que se retrotraen al núcleo de valores liberales característicos de las democracias constitucionales. Por cierto, recurrir a una concepción de personalidad moral kantiana como la que Rawls sostiene en TJ, es una exigencia que por mucho supera las posibilidades argumentativas de la RP. Una concepción kantiana de la personalidad moral no expresa un valor exclusivamente político, sino que un valor moral, que se funda en una concepción discutible y discutida acerca de la autonomía moral, es decir, se trata de una doctrina comprehensiva más. Se requiere una concepción política de la persona a la que se pueda acudir mediante la RP. Así, al explicitar su contructivismo kantiano en PL, Rawls sostiene que: “the members of society are citizens regarded as free and equal in virtue of possessing the two moral powers to the requisite degree. This is the basis of equality. The moral agent here is the free and equal citizen as a member of society, not the moral agent in general” (1996: 109 –mis cusivas). El agente moral es el ciudadano libre e igual en cuanto ciudadano, es decir, en todas aquellas funciones que caracterizan la ciudadanía, y no se extiende a otras consideraciones de la agencia moral. Como vimos, la pretensión rawlsiana es que la concepción política mediante la cual se puede articular la RP es “freestanding”, es decir, no descansa en alguna doctrina comprehensiva. Tampoco en la kantiana que él sostiene el TJ. Pero esto no implica que Rawls rechace la concepción de justicia como equidad de TJ. Como vimos en TJ esta concepción descansa en una doctrina comprehensiva kantiana y por lo mismo, en tanto sujetos razonables que reconocemos los límites del juicio y así la condición de reciprocidad, no podemos exigir a otros que la acepten. Pero tal como desde las doctrinas comprehensivas razonables se puede abrazar este núcleo de valores y principios políticos, desde la concepción comprehensiva rawlsiana/kantiana de justicia 166 DANIEL LOEWE como equidad se puede sostener la concepción de justicia como equidad de PL, en tanto concepción de justicia política. En este caso, como vimos, no se trata ya del agente moral en general, sino que del agente moral en cuanto ciudadano libre e igual (1996: 109). De este modo, justicia como equidad como doctrina política sí puede ofrecer estabilidad social a través del tiempo. Pero esta concepción política es sólo una de las muchas posibles. Ella ciertamente cumple con las tres condiciones ya señaladas que una concepción política liberal de la justicia debe cumplir, pero también hay otras concepciones políticas que cumplen con ellas, organizando y articulando los valores políticos de modo diferente. Hasta ahora hemos supuesto con Rawls, que las sociedades son bien ordenadas, es decir en el caso de PL los ciudadanos reconocen el núcleo de principios característicos de las democracias constitucionales. Pero las sociedades no siempre son sociedades bien ordenadas, y por lo tanto no reconocen y no respetan el núcleo de valores liberales que están a la base de la RP. Rawls considera esta situación. En PL refiere a los abolicionistas que sostenían que la esclavitud era contraria a la ley de Dios (1996: 249 y siguientes). Aquí, los argumentos contra la esclavitud serían de tipo religioso. Sin embargo, Rawls sostiene que ellos no se oponen al ideal de la RP. En su opinion los abolicionistas podrían haber dicho que “they supported political values of freedom and equality for all, but given the comprehensive doctrines they held and the doctrines current in their day, it was necessary to invoke the comprehensive grounds on which those values were widely seen to rest” (1996: 251). En PL Rawls refiere a este como un entendimiento inclusivo de la RP. Posteriormente, en RPR, Rawls propone una proviso (es decir, una “condición”, que está en consonancia con el entendimiento inclusivo de PL). La condición sostiene que se puede recurrir a razones propias de doctrinas comprehensivas si es que, en el debido tiempo, se puede presentar una razón política que la respalde: Reasonable comprehensive doctrines, religious or nonreligious, may be introduced in public political discussion at any time, provided that in due course proper political reasons—and not reasons given solely by comprehensive doctrines—are presented that are sufficient to support whatever the comprehensive doctrines introduced are said to support (Rawls, 1997: 784). Las referencias son a Martín Luther King y sus demandas antisegregacionistas y a los abolicionistas. Pero la condición parece rendir menos de lo que Rawls supone. Los argumentos de Rawls relativos a las razones de los abolicionistas y también de los antisegregacionistas tienen una estructura temporal: el que cierto tipo de razones (R) sean consideradas parte de la razón pública, o al menos no contrarias a esta, en un periodo (T1) en que los valores no son ampliamente aceptados en la cultura política, se retrotrae a que en un periodo posterior (T2) ellas sí son parte de cultura política de 167 Posición original, equilibrio reflexivo y razón pública: las metodologías rawlsianas de justificación esa sociedad. Dicho de otro modo, la validez de R en T1 depende de que R sea reconocido en T2. Pero Rawls no nos dice cómo exactamente se relacionan T1 y T2. El problema es que no es clara cuál es y cuál puede ser la relación temporal que la condición establece entre las razones comprehensivas y las razones políticas que se pueden aducir. Hay dos posibilidades interpretativas: los abolicionistas pueden sostener en T1 razones comprehensivas que inmediatamente después son respaldadas por razones políticas (este sería un caso que se ajusta más a Martin Luther King, dado que las razones políticas ya estaban disponibles en la cultura política), o pueden sostener razones comprehensivas que en algún futuro incierto y desconocido puedan ser respaldadas por razones políticas. Pero esto es insatisfactorio: o la condición es innecesaria, o es impotente (Flanders, 2012). Si la primera interpretación es correcta, entonces la condición no ofrece casi nada, ya que se podría haber referido desde un comienzo a razones políticas. La única ventaja de la condición sería que, dadas las creencias ampliamente aceptadas en esa época, tendría un rendimiento contingente positivo para movilizar las emociones y los intelectos de las personas (y algo así dice Rawls en otro sitio: dadas las creencias de la época: “it was necessary to invoke the comprehensive grounds” (1996: 251)). Si, por el contrario, la interpretación correcta es la segunda, entonces la condición es impotente: dado que el futuro es incierto y desconocido, no podemos saber ex ante si hay razones políticas que respalden las razones comprehensivas y, por tanto, las razones comprehensivas son (epistémicamente al menos) siempre razones comprehensivas.13 FILOSOFÍA POLÍTICA Y RAZÓN PRÁCTICA A la base de PL yace una pretensión característica de la empresa rawlsiana y que la distingue de muchos otros modos de considerar la filosofía política: para encontrar las respuestas normativas correctas —por ejemplo, la concepción de justicia en base a la cual se debe organizar la sociedad— no basta con remitirse a aquello que el uso de la En mi opinión, la indeterminación del proviso expresa un problema del entendimiento rawlsiano de la RP: no es evidente mediante qué mecanismos los elementos normativos propios de la cultura de base (background culture) pueden llegar a ser parte de la cultura política, es decir del núcleo de valores en base a los cuales se desarrolla la RP. Evidentemente puede ser pura contingencia histórica. Pero no se aprecia el mecanismo mediante el cual este proceso se puede desarrollar mediante los mecanismos propios de la RP. En algún sentido, el núcleo de valores políticos que definen a las democracias constitucionales y en base a los cuales de desarrollaría la RP están ya dados, expresando algo así como el fin de la historia político filosófica. Pero esto es insatisfactorio: ha habido reformadores morales en la historia de la humanidad. Quizás todavía pueda haber otros, tal vez incluso de tinte liberal. En otro sitio he discutido este asunto (compare Loewe, 2021). 13 168 DANIEL LOEWE razón práctica nos dice acerca de la corrección de las doctrinas morales y políticas.14 Si esta fuese toda la historia, la concepción de justicia como equidad de TJ sería la respuesta. El problema no es que ella no sea correcta. Rawls insiste que es la más razonable de todas. El problema es que no se puede organizar a la sociedad por referencia a ella y esperar que sea considerada como legítima por todos los ciudadanos y así que la sociedad así organizada se mantenga estable a través del tiempo. Como Rawls ya sostenía en TJ: “justification is a matter of the mutual support of many considerations, of everything fitting together into one coherent view” (1971: 579). Uno de estos elementos en TJ era la tesis de la congruencia con todas las asunciones psicológicas motivacionales que ella implica. Pero el factum del pluralismo de las sociedades democráticas constitucionales contemporáneas y el reconocimiento de los límites del juicio que caracteriza a los sujetos razonables, nos debe llevar a admitir que la tesis de la congruencia no se sostiene y que por tanto debemos introducir otro elemento para poder dar cuenta de la legitimidad y así estabilidad de las sociedades contemporáneas. A diferencia de TJ, en PL se trata de estabilidad asumiendo el factum del pluralismo razonable. Y el elemento al que recurre es la RP –un modo de justificación que descansa en un ER entre las doctrinas comprehensivas razonables que sostienen los ciudadanos y los valores políticos que caracterizan a las democracias liberales constitucionales, y que se expresa de un modo deliberativo cuando los ciudadanos, los oficiales públicos, etcétera, deliberan sobre los constitucionales esenciales y los asuntos de justicia básica. BIBLIOGRAFÍA Bailey, Tom & Gentile, Valentina (2015). Rawls and religion. New York: Columbia university press. Dreben, Burton (2003). “On Rawls and political liberalism”. En Samuel Freeman (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Rawls. UK: Cambridge university press. Eberle, Christopher (2002). Religious conviction in liberal politics. UK: Cambridge university press. Flanders, Chad (2012). “The Mutability of Public Reason”. Ratio Juris, 25(2): 180205. 14 Compare el análisis de Dreben (2003). 169 Posición original, equilibrio reflexivo y razón pública: las metodologías rawlsianas de justificación Flanders, Chad (2014). “Public Reason and Animal Rights”. En Marcel Wissenburg & David Schlosberg (eds.), Political Animals and Animal Politics. UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Freeman, Samuel (2002). The Cambridge companion to Rawls. UK: Cambridge university press. Freeman, Samuel (2007). Rawls. New York: Routledge. Gaus, Gerald & Vallier, Kevin (2009). “The roles of religious conviction in a publicly justified polity. The implications of convergence, asymmetry and political institutions”. Philosophy & Social criticism, 35: 51–76. Harsanyi, John (1975). “Can the Maximin Principle Serve as a Basis for Morality? A Critique of John Rawls's Theory”. The American Political Science Review, 69(2): 594-606. Klosko, George (2004). Democratic procedures and liberal consensus. Oxford: Oxford university press. Larmore, Charles (2003). “Public reason”. En Samuel Freeman (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Rawls. UK: Cambridge university press. Loewe, Daniel & Schwember, Felipe (2021). “El Principio de Ahorro Justo y el fin del mundo”. Mutatis mutandis, en prensa. Loewe, Daniel (2015). “¿Cuán liberal es la teoría de las relaciones internacionales de Rawls?”. Veritas, 60: e1-e35. Loewe, Daniel (2021): “La razón pública rawlsiana y los animales”. En prensa. Loewe, Daniel (2021b). “Rawls y los otros animales”. En Paulette Dieterlen Struck, Gustavo Leyva, Martínez, Faviola Rivera Castro y Jesús Rodríguez Zepeda (eds.), A un siglo de John Rawls y a cincuenta años de Una teoría de la justicia. En prensa. MacIntyre, Alasdair (2007 (1981)): After Virtue, University of Notre Dame Press. Quong, Jonathan (2011). Liberalism without Perfection. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rawls, John (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard university press. Rawls, John (1996/1993). Political liberalism. New York: Columbia university press. Rawls, John (1997). “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited”. The university of Chicago law review, 64: 765-807. Rawls, John (1999). The Law of Peoples: With “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited”. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard university press. Rawls, John (2001). Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard university press. 170 DANIEL LOEWE Sandel, Michael (1982): Liberalism and the limits of justice, Cambridge University Press. Scanlon, Thomas (2003): “Rawls on justification”, en Samuel Freeman (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Rawls. UK: Cambridge university press. Taylor, Charles (1989): Sources of the self, Harvard University Press. Vallier, Kevin (2001). “Convergence and Consensus in Public Reason”. Public Affairs Quarterly, 25: 261-280. Waldron, Jeremy (2015). “Isolating public reason”. En Thom Brooks y Martha Nussbaum (eds.), Rawls´s political liberalism. New York: Columbia university press. Walzer, Michael (1983): Spheres of justice. A defense of pluralism and equality, Basic Books. 171 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 171-186 ISSN: 1825-5167 GENDER, SOCIAL JUSTICE, AND PUBLICITY PAULA CASAL Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies and Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona paula.casal@upf.edu ABSTRACT Suppose that the basic structures of two societies conform to Rawls’s principles of justice. One of these societies, however, includes—in addition to a just basic structure—an egalitarian ethos that further reduces inequalities that do not benefit the least advantaged. G. A. Cohen and others have argued that the second society is more just, thus rejecting any restriction of Rawls’s principles of justice to the basic structure. Andrew Williams has revived the basic structure restriction in the form of a publicity requirement. This paper highlights various problems with this attempt. In addition, it shows that an egalitarian ethos admits various plausible reformulations that could meet Williams’s publicity requirements. This only amounts to a partial victory for Cohen, however. In fact, the Rawlsian position could come out of this discussion strengthened, not because it can resist the egalitarian critique, but because it can incorporate its essence in the form of a set of more precise and specific public rules. K EYWORDS Basic structure, publicity, egalitarian ethos, John Rawls, G. A. Cohen, Andrew Williams. 1. INTRODUCTION Suppose that in our furniture-making cooperative we are all paid the same hourly rate, work approximately the same hours, and so earn very similar amounts. Let us call this phase Unproductive Equality. We then experiment with payment by output, and discover that the power of economic incentives is such that our company’s productivity has increased very noticeably. In fact, we are all now doing better than before.1 Our salaries, however, now differ far more than they used to do. We may call this new phase Productive Inequality. Many authors do not find the new ine- An incentive is a payment that is required for some individual to prefer one job to others. When, in order to obtain a higher salary, individuals bluff about loathing a job they actually like, they obtain rent, which is the portion of the salary above their reservation price. Rawlsians may want to defend only incentives, and not rents, but the arguments they employ, such as their appeals to efficiency and publicity, tend to apply to both. See e.g. Williams 1998; 2008: 44ff., 102. 1 172 PAULA CASAL qualities unfair. In their view, it was good that people were allowed to work somewhat different hours if they so wished, and it is now good that some are able to work more and earn more as a result. One could perhaps make people work equally hard without incentives, for example, by penalizing them unless they do so, or by conscripting individuals into the more socially needed occupations. We may call this Productive Equality. This case involves a trilemma that forces us to sacrifice at least one of three important values: liberty, equality, or efficiency (see Williams 1998: 227–8; 2008: 115; Wilkinson 2000, ch. 6). Confronted with this choice, many will sacrifice equality. This appears to be the conclusion reached by John Rawls and his followers (e.g. Rawls 1999a: 64, 68, 252). They reject Productive Equality, because they believe (i) that it compromises occupational freedom, and (ii) that such freedom should not be compromised in order to secure greater equality or greater material gains, in any society that has already reached a comfortable level of economic development. When a certain degree of material security has been achieved, liberty takes priority. “The priority of liberty,” Rawls explains, means that we cannot be forced to engage in work that is highly productive in terms of material goods. What kind of work people do, and how hard they do it, is up to them to decide in light of the various incentives society offers. (2001: 64) This is known as the Liberty Objection: we should not sacrifice occupational liberty for the sake of greater material gains. Liberty takes priority. Rawlsians also deny that Productive Equality is required by justice, because they also believe (iii) that compared to Unproductive Equality, Productive Inequality benefits some and is economically detrimental to none, and (iv) that non-detrimental inequalities are not unjust. This thought finds expression in Rawls’s Difference Principle, which rejects financial inequalities that are detrimental to the worst off, and permits only non-detrimental inequalities (Rawls 1999a: 65ff.; 2001: 61ff.).2 On this view, inequalities which are Pareto superior, because they benefit some and harm no one, should be allowed regardless of their magnitude.3 G. A. Cohen and other authors, like Joseph Carens (1981) and Martin Wilkinson (2000), criticize this conclusion, arguing that an egalitarian ethos that requires talented individuals to share their good fortune with the least advantaged will create less inequality without jeopardizing liberty or Pareto improvements. An egalitarian ethos that rejected any inequality that was not maximally beneficial to the least advantaged may not eliminate all inequalities but will create fewer inequalities than its absence. Inequalities may have to be limited, however, if they become large enough to threaten the principle of Equal Liberty. Real income inequality is at an all-time high in the US, with the top decile accounting for 49.7% of the income share. See e.g. Saez 2008-2013; Piketty 2014. 2 3 173 Gender, Social Justice, and Publicity A standard Rawlsian response to this argument is that, even if Cohen was right, and an egalitarian ethos that replicated the difference principle protected Pareto improvements while respecting liberty, such an ethos is not required by justice. Rawls begins A Theory of Justice by stating that “justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought” (1999a: 3), and later clarifies that “the primary subject of the principles of social justice is the basic structure of society, the arrangement of the major social institutions into one scheme of cooperation” (1999a: 47). An egalitarian ethos could be highly beneficial for the worst off, but it is not required by justice. This argument is usually known as the Basic Structure Restriction, or the Basic Structure Objection. This paper discusses the restriction as Andrew Williams interprets it and presents various objections to it. The paper proceeds thus. Section II distinguishes two interpretations of the basic structure restriction, as well as some problems that emerge with each of them. Section III explains a further interpretation of the restriction proposed by Andrew Williams. Sections IV and V note various problems with Williams’s proposal. Section VI explores some ways in which, even if Williams’s objections to the egalitarian ethos succeeded, egalitarians could overcome them by reformulating the egalitarian ethos. The paper ends by noting that all of this only amounts to a partial victory for Cohen. First, the ethos may still be implausibly overdemanding for the kind of society that Rawls had in mind. Second, the Rawlsian position could come out of this discussion strengthened, not because it can resist the egalitarian critique, but because it can incorporate its essence in the form of a set of more precise and specific public rules. 2. THE BASIC STRUCTURE RESTRICTION To challenge the basic structure restriction, Cohen draws on Susan Okin’s observation that Rawls sometimes refers to the basic structure narrowly, as a set of legally coercive institutions, whereas on other occasions, he refers to the basic structure broadly, as something that includes all major social institutions, such as the family. Family structures may be backed legally or through a combination of “convention, usage and expectation,” involving tradition, religion, or social pressure (Okin 1989: 92–3; Cohen 2008: 132). According to Cohen, the broad understanding is more plausible, and fits better with Rawls’s declaring the basic structure “the primary subject of justice,” because “its effects are so profound and present from the start” (Rawls 1999a: 7). A narrow, legalistic understanding seems arbitrary, as many sexist conventions and traditions, for example, have profound effects and are clearly unjust even when not legally enforced. 174 PAULA CASAL Cohen asks us to consider, for example, a sexist ethos, “consistent with sex-neutral family law,” which burdens working wives, but not husbands, with most domestic chores (2008: 137). Such an ethos will be both profoundly influential and unjust. Cohen notes that the slogan “the personal is political” is not only “widely used by feminists,” but is also “a feminist idea” with a substance and a general form. The substance of the feminist critique is that . . . Rawls . . . unjustifiably ignores an unjust division of labor, and unjust power relations, within families. . . But the . . . form of the feminist critique . . . is that choices not regulated by the law fall within the primary purview of justice. (Cohen 2000: 123; 2008: 117) Cohen uses the feminist critique of the family to rebut the narrow understanding of the basic structure, but finds Okin too charitable to Rawls (Cohen 2008: 117). He thinks that to declare the family basic-structural (Okin 1989: 93) is not enough. Rawls must rather abandon the narrow understanding of the basic structure, or else remain unamenable to feminist reform (Cohen 2008: 117–18, 134). Cohen argues that inequality could be greatly reduced if workers adopted an egalitarian ethos requiring them to work harder and take more socially useful occupations, without demanding higher salaries for doing so. Differential payments should, instead: (i) compensate for special labor burdens, (ii) reflect a “modest” agent-centered prerogative to be partial to oneself to a reasonable extent (Cohen 2008: 61), or (iii) motivate activity that cannot be summoned at will. Since such an ethos could have profound effects, an appeal to the broad understanding cannot exclude it. Cohen concludes that Rawlsians thus have to choose between an implausibly narrow understanding of the basic structure or a broader, more plausible understanding that is toothless against Cohen’s critique of Rawls. In order to defend Rawls’s basic structure restriction while granting that sexist families are unjust, Andrew Williams restates the basic structure restriction as a publicity restriction: basic-structural rules need not be legal but must be public. Consequently, he writes, “we should . . . favor conceptions whose scope is restricted to publicly accessible phenomena” (Williams 1998: 245), and adds: insofar as we care about [sources of inequality] for reasons of justice, we do so because they produce inequalities in ways that can be regulated by public rules. Thus, when faced with sources of inequality incapable of such regulation, we can support our denial that they involve injustice. (245) He lists the requirements of publicity thus: individuals are able to attain common knowledge of the rules’ (i) general applicability, (ii) their particular requirements, and (iii) the extent to which individuals conform to those requirements. (235) 175 Gender, Social Justice, and Publicity Responding to “the personal is political” with the rival slogan “justice must be seen in order to be done” (246), Williams argues that a gender-egalitarian ethos can be clearly stated, and that failure to conform to it “is readily apparent to the victims of the injustice” (242). By contrast, it is difficult to know whether individuals have conformed with Cohen’s egalitarian ethos (238–42), so we can justify denying that it is required by justice. Williams’s conclusion is that unless someone supplies a suitably public egalitarian ethos, we should “trust in tax rather than moralized markets” (246). Cohen responds that his ethos is as public as other Rawlsian principles (Cohen 2008: 363), but also denies that justice requires the sort of determinacy and precision that, according to Williams, Rawls demands (22, 149, 277, 344ff.). Williams responds to Cohen’s reply by restating the publicity objection in somewhat softer terms (Williams 2008). He omits his requirement that “justice must be seen in order to be done” and his general rejections of “moralized markets,” and no longer refers to publicity as a “condition” (Williams 1998: 233), a “requirement” (233), or a “restriction” (242, 243, 245). However, he still insists that the basic structure “excludes influential activities incapable of regulation by public rules” (Williams 2008: 479, 480), and that facts about limited information may suffice to explain why justice does not require an egalitarian ethos (490), leaving us without even a pro tanto reason to follow it (492). 3. REFORMULATING THE RESTRICTION Let us first distinguish various ways in which the basic-structure restriction can be interpreted. Rawls says that “basic” refers to “major” social institutions, including political arrangements like freedom of religion, economic arrangements like competitive markets, and social arrangements like the monogamous family (1999a: 6–7). Since he repeatedly refers to the “major” social institutions that influence individuals’ life prospects, this is the most natural and justified reading of the restriction. And it is also the one that makes his theory more plausible and coherent. The least plausible reading of “basic” is “legal.” Cohen is right to reject a legalistic, narrow understanding of the basic structure and to deem it incompatible with feminism. A broad understanding, by contrast, which deems the “major” social institutions “the primary” (7) or “the first subject of justice” (347), is not incompatible with feminism. It is more urgent, and cost-effective, to attend first to influential and widespread unjust practices than to one-off events that may even lack social meaning. For example, the occasional genital cut of a sensation-seeking couple lacks the purpose, significance, and consequences of standard female genital mutilation. The parties in the original position would not 176 PAULA CASAL want the individuals they represent to live in a society where this practice is as systematic as it is in some countries today, regardless of legal enforcement. And granting “primary” attentions to major institutions, and only “secondary” attention to minor institutions is not incompatible with feminism or common sense. In trying to make society more just, it makes sense to focus first on laws enforced by the state that are discriminatory and harmful to women. Having reformed the main institutions and laws, we can then attempt to modify minor institutions, and finally address the behavior of any individuals who continue to discriminate against women, when social institutions no longer do so. We could agree that “major” institutions are the “first subject of justice,” and then add that minor social institutions are the second subject, and that individual actions are the third. Since Rawls later describes institutions as “public systems of rules” (1999a: 47), however, Williams argues that “basic” means “public,” a term that, in turn, he interprets in a very specific way. Public rules include legal rules, but they do not include everything and they cannot include, in his view, this particular egalitarian ethos. Rawls distinguishes three levels of publicity. First level: Agreement. First, Rawls appeals to the value of publicity to discard principles that have a hidden source, such as “government-house utilitarianism” and other forms of esoteric morality, whether theocratic or lay (1999a: 398). For example, we should reject systems where only an elite knows the source or ground for our rules, imposing some rules that people would not have agreed to; for example, because they violate the “strains of commitment.” We should know what we are committing ourselves to, and not find ourselves in situations in which we may suddenly discover an unbearable sacrifice is expected of us because of certain rules (Rawls 1999a: 153, 371). Instead, he argues, first principles ruling major institutions should be publicly shared (1999a: 510; 1999b: 255, 324), in the sense that we should know about them as if they “were the result of an agreement,” and others should know that we know; although he notes that this is just “a reasonable simplifying assumption” (Rawls 1999a: 48), because this condition is not always fulfilled by actual institutions. Second level: Shared methods. The “second level of publicity concerns the general beliefs in light of which first principles of justice themselves can be accepted” (Rawls 1999b: 324): data on what men, women, and social institutions are like should derive from “shared methods of inquiry” (293, 324) like those of science rather than ideological visions. Regarding not just facts, but reasons, Rawls also advocates a “duty of civility” to appeal to “common, or neutral ground” (421, 459), for we do not respect others or treat them as free and equal if we only give them reasons that they cannot share (293, 579). God’s intentions, for example, are not publicly accessible, so we may accompany shared values with Bible citations (586, 591, 593), but must appeal merely to the relevant “part of the truth” on which there is consensus, and to “political values [that] . . . are not puppets manipulated from behind the 177 Gender, Social Justice, and Publicity scenes by comprehensive doctrines” (585). In addition, he argues that, particularly when “institutions rely on coercive sanctions,” it is important that they “stand up to public scrutiny” (293, 325–6). Third level: Availability. Finally, the third level requires that even if not all justifications are “publicly known” (324, 292), they should be “at least publicly available” (324) in the sense that people should be able to learn about the legal or philosophical traditions behind them. As Rawls states it, the ideal of public norms and reasons does not seem incompatible with the quest for gender equality. In fact, it is an antidote against ideologically based, scientifically unjustified sexism. On this view, we should reject norms that free and equal women would have never agreed to, had they been aware of their sources and unacceptable implications. None of this raises problems for Cohen. But Williams stresses Rawls’s concern with public checkability; for example, in his selection of primary goods as the metric of justice (Williams 1998: 239). On Williams’s view, a principle is public if we can know whether people conform to it. This suggests an end-stage conception of “public” as conformity-tracking, which contrasts with Rawls’s abovementioned focus on the verifiable sources of a principle and its authority, and the common-ground reasons that we must give to free and equal persons so that they respect and endorse the principles. But let us grant that checkability is an important part of publicity. How important is it? If the difference principle applies only to the basic structure, and the basic structure “excludes influential activities incapable of regulation by public rules” (Williams 2008: 479, 480), then the difference principle does not require Cohen’s ethos, if Williams is right that it is not public. Williams’s later piece, however, includes a long passage from Rawls referring to publicity as only a pro tanto, “other things equal” consideration (Rawls 1999b: 347; Williams 2008: 486). Either way, the publicity requirement still faces various difficulties. 4. GENERAL PROBLEMS WITH THE REFORMULATION The trade-off between plausibility and checkability In order to accuse the egalitarian ethos of being insufficiently precise, Williams targets Cohen’s plausibility-enhancing qualifications on the egalitarian ethos, such as (i) its allowing compensation for differential labor burdens, and (ii) its including an agent-centered prerogative to be partial to oneself to a reasonable extent. These are general problems in ethics. It is hard to calculate how burdensome something is for a particular person. Being allowed to be partial to oneself to some extent makes the limits of permissible behavior much more vague than requiring complete 178 PAULA CASAL impartiality. But most people find that ignoring special burdens or requiring complete impartiality is implausible. This is a common phenomena. Plausibility and checkability typically diverge. Qualifying simple principles such as “do not kill” or “do not steal” increases their plausibility, but also diminishes their simplicity and checkability. This happens to Williams himself: whereas claiming that all principles of justice are sound only if they are checkable is implausible yet simple and clear, claiming that checkability is sometimes a desideratum of unspecified importance is more plausible, but rather vague. It could be that no plausible principle regarding, for example, gender, world poverty, the environment, or war is checkable to the required degree either. But it would be implausible to conclude that we will have no principles until we find some that satisfy all the aforementioned criteria. The interdependence of publicity and justice It is plausible and feasible for Rawls to require publicity at the three levels described earlier. But we do not know if Williams’s three requirements must be fully satisfied, nor what happens when they are not. If lack of checkability is insufficient reason to reject a principle, then we need to know what other defects a principle must simultaneously possess for insufficient checkability to make a difference. If it is hard to ascertain whether a rule is sufficiently checkable, then we cannot know whether an inequality that is largely eliminable through it is unjust. This second problem is important because it may render unclear, informationally over-demanding, or impossible to determine what is just or unjust. Since checkability often depends on normative decisions regarding the permissible investigation of individuals, and the permissible expenditure for this purpose, we could end up lost in a circle of moving parts, where what is just depends on what is checkable, and what is checkable depends on what is just (or permissible) to check. It is good, for example, that we now have speed and alcohol detectors. But the reasons to have rules against speeding and driving in an impaired state were there before those innovations, and it would have been wrong to delay their introduction until the generalized use of these technologies became feasible, affordable, and politically acceptable. Perhaps these technologies make a difference, such as allowing us to impose more accurate fines: penalizing greater infractions more than minor infractions. But before these technologies were introduced, we did not even have a pro tanto reason against an ethos prohibiting speeding or drunk-driving. In fact, we had even more reason to defend such an ethos back then, as it was even more necessary than today. 179 Gender, Social Justice, and Publicity The restriction may be rendered toothless It is true that it is better to have reliable methods to check if people are speeding or drunk-driving than not to have them, but if publicity is only a tiebreaker, it can be rendered toothless. The initial dilemma appeared because, although defining “basic” as “legal” was sufficient to discard any egalitarian ethos, this reading was implausible. Taking “basic” to mean “major and profoundly influential,” was more plausible, but was insufficient to discard an ethos that could become influential. Similarly, in order for us to reject the egalitarian ethos for this reason alone, checkability would have to be a necessary condition for any rule to be just or unjust. But it would be implausible to reject a plausible and otherwise unobjectionable ethos that could reduce important problems merely because of conformity-tracking difficulties. If, then, checkability becomes only an other-things-equal consideration, a tiebreaker, or a desideratum that may be easy to defeat, then the objection is also insufficient to reject the egalitarian ethos, for the benefits of the diffusion of an ethos of public spiritedness may amply compensate for its imperfect checkability. Consider, for example, an ethos against littering at sea. The fact that checking conformity is impossible cannot be a reason against it. In fact, the impossibility of verifying what people do at sea seems irrelevant. Let us now turn to more specific problems that emerge regarding the gender egalitarian ethos, which is a case about which Cohen and Williams partially agree. They agree that justice requires a gender egalitarian ethos but disagree over whether it meets publicity requirements. 5. THE GENDER EGALITARIAN ETHOS AND PUBLICITY Cohen argues that the publicity requirement is not plausible in the case of the sexist family, because it may be hard to ascertain, for example, whether the backache that the husband invokes as a reason for not washing the dishes is substantial or contrived (Cohen 2008: 359). Williams claims, by contrast, that “a gender-egalitarian ethos” is public, but he does not state such an ethos himself (Williams 1998: 242; 2008: 480). Consider, then, rules like “equal housework for couples with equal jobs” or “equal opportunities for sons and daughters,” which prohibit inequalities of the sort that Cohen describes. William claims that the fact that Cohen’s workplace egalitarian ethos involves comparing differential labor burdens makes it nonpublic (Williams 1998: 238–9). The proposed rules, however, involve precisely such comparisons, and further complications too. Since jobs are unequally burdensome and time-consuming, and people are unequally able and resilient, Williams deems it nonpublic to calculate the egalitarian demands on each worker. But the gender egalitarian ethos also requires calculating 180 PAULA CASAL the labor burdens of a husband and comparing them to the labor burdens of his wife. These labor burdens must be compared, in order to see if they are equalized by differences in the housework performed by each. The result would then have to be compared with other households, in order to know if the rule is generally respected, or if the labor burdens of one gender tend not to be compensated at home. Here, moreover, not only the equal shares but even the total distribuendum is unclear, as partners often lack neutral, shared meanings for “sufficiently clean,” “safe for children,” or “appropriate meals or clothing.” Even in a very simple situation in which both parents have equal health, equally long and strenuous jobs, and so on, leading us to conclude that each must do half of the required childcare, we will still have to decide what provision of childcare is required by justice in their specific circumstances. Granting equal opportunities for sons and daughters may face even greater uncertainties. This would require taking into account differences in socially valued talents, the discrimination each is likely to face, as well as the burdens and benefits of male and female careers, which again involves comparing differential labor-burdens. As with Cohen’s workplace ethos, sometimes it will be crystal clear that we are violating the ethos; at other times we will be unsure. But morality requires goodfaith efforts, not omniscience. Even if we cannot know what happens in other homes, we should follow a gender-egalitarian ethos in our own and condemn as unjust the inequalities that result from its violation. Williams claims that, in the case of parents who give their sons and daughters unequal opportunities, as well as that of “partners who shirk,” the violation of a public rule “is readily apparent to the victims of the injustice” (1998: 242); but this need not be so. One reason is that a fundamental part of gender oppression consists precisely in what Mill called “the enslavement of the soul” (2008: 8–9). Women around the world feel duty-bound to accept conditions akin to serfdom and slavery, to deliver sex, and to take orders and even beatings and threats. Victims may fail to see the oppression, manipulation, deliberate intimidation, exploitation, or inequality, and not merely its injustice. Thus being “readily apparent to the victims” is not a reliable indicator of injustice. More worryingly, if the soundness of a norm of justice depends on our being able to know whether others follow it (Williams 1998: 233–4, 238–45), then whether we can know what other men get away with bears on what a man may do to his wife. If knowledge of conformity matters because conformity with a norm matters, then, if abuse is rife, this weakens the case for norms prohibiting it. This is implausible: the more widespread the abuse, the more firmly it should be condemned. The fact that in a certain society most men do not contribute to housework and oppress their wives does not make their doing so less unjust. If, then, it is not 181 Gender, Social Justice, and Publicity conformity, but rather the possibility of acquiring knowledge of conformity that matters, then the mere fact that we cannot know what others get away with would weaken the case for deeming it unjust. This also seems implausible. As we have learned from decades of feminist research, the problem with sexual abuse, harassment and other sources of oppression is precisely the fact that it takes place behind closed doors, remains unreported, and is notoriously difficult to demonstrate or measure. In fact, reported abuse is often lowest in the places and periods where sexism is greater (EU-FRA 2014: 31–2), and even discrimination is often invisible and practiced unconsciously (Hart 2005; Lee 2005). Typically, many hidden sources of gender inequality and “microaggressions” combine to perpetuate it (Rowe 1990). Such sources resist public regulation for many reasons, including: respect for privacy, apparent voluntariness, religious freedom, unavailability of reliable data, self-underestimation, anticipatory surrender, community closure, the pressures not to denounce one’s religious or ethnic group, and plain fear. Fear alone can suffice to impede transparency. But gender inequality is unjust, and the fact that it cannot be made to disappear with simple, clear, and easily checkable rules does not make it less so. Secretly felt and practiced sexism—like secret racism or homophobia—are unjust even if inherently nonpublic. One possible response would be to grant that publicity may not even be a pro tanto consideration when evaluating norms that diminish gender or racial equality, and to restrict to resource-distribution the claim that “when faced with sources of inequality incapable of such regulation, we can support our denial that they involve injustice” (Williams 1998: 245). This, however, would involve a very artificial distinction. Gender and racial inequality and distributive justice are deeply interconnected, and we would need a plausible justification for treating all the counterexamples explained here as special cases that fail to prove any general rule. Comparing the labor burdens of two workers is no more difficult than comparing the labor burdens of two workers who happen to be husband and wife or belong to different racialized minorities. If the first comparison of labor burdens is so difficult that it cannot be made, then the others are likely to suffer from very similar problems. Suppose, nonetheless, that there were some way to restrict the publicity objection to Cohen’s expansive interpretation of the difference principle. There are two possibilities here. One could argue that lack of publicity is always a defect, albeit insufficient to reject a principle in other cases. For example, lack of publicity can be overlooked when the benefits of conforming with a rule are great, and the cost of conforming with it is small. In the case of an ethos that includes a productive requirement, like Cohen’s, publicity matters because there are high costs in terms of occupational liberty, which has priority, and benefits which are insufficient because they involve merely material benefits for people who are already above a certain threshold of material comfort. Adopting this strategy would involve making the publicity objection rest heavily on the liberty objection, and it would require explaining 182 PAULA CASAL why, in the case of other principles, lack of checkability does not seem to provide any reason (even a defeasible one) not to follow or promote them. Another possibility would be to argue that, for reasons yet to be specified, checkability may be entirely irrelevant in the case of other ethical principles, and even in the case of other Rawlsian principles of justice, such as those condemning sexism or racism, and yet remains crucial for addressing inequalities in income and wealth. So, for example, taxation rules should be public and verifiable and tax authorities should be able to check that taxes have been paid correctly. There are different levels of taxation attached to different income levels, and certain conditions, such as the verifiable existence of children or other dependents, which can alter the final payment. But people are not allowed to modify what they owe in tax on the basis of how hard they find their jobs, or by appealing to their permission to be selfish to some extent. There are reasons to oppose altering the current tax system with similarly vague, subjective and uncheckable criteria, even if this could create more equality. This example will not convince everybody, but it illustrates how checkability could become relevant to the application of the difference principle, even if it was not considered relevant to other principles. Now, assuming this argument is successful, the following section explores a different way to defend the egalitarian ethos. 6. REFORMULATING THE ETHOS Williams admits that although he has shown that his interpretation of the basic structure restriction is not arbitrary, he has not shown that it is plausible. “Nor, worrisomely,” he adds, “have I proved that it is impossible to design a public egalitarian ethos or to devise further counterexamples against restricting the ambit of justice to public rules” (1998: 246). The previous sections focused on the problems with his requirement’s plausibility. This section focuses instead on the possibility of reformulating the egalitarian ethos in ways which satisfy the publicity requirement. One may argue that the exact formulation of an egalitarian ethos is not what matters, just as the formulation of a particular gender-egalitarian ethos is not what is central to feminism. Cohen’s critique includes his opposition to the market as a morally free zone where individuals can hold their talents hostage (Cohen 2008: 38), and his rejection of the idea of “distributive justice as a task for the state alone” (10). It also includes his judgment that ignoring how extremely influential and unjust an ethos can be is implausible, and contrary to the rationale for focusing on the basic structure. The specific formulation of the ethos he proposes is perhaps unfortunate, but as Cohen notes, from Rawls’s “unrestrained market-maximizing . . . [to] full self-sacrificing restraint” (10), there is a wide spectrum of intermediate positions. Perhaps, had Cohen merely described his prerogative as “ample,” it would have gained so much more acceptance that its decreased checkability may not have been 183 Gender, Social Justice, and Publicity a concern. After all, checkability is not the reason behind the numerous alternative formulations of the ethos he offered, often with Cohen’s approval (Carens 1981, 1986; Van Parijs 1993; Wilkinson 2000; J. Cohen 2001; Lippert-Rasmussen 2008; Titelbaum 2008; Shiffrin 2010; Casal 2013). Some of these just happen to be checkable, while others are explicitly so (Vandenbroucke 2001), and it is possible to invent further checkable rules. Consider, for example, a rule inspired by the egalitarian ethos that prohibits engaging in self-seeking industrial action if you are in the top half of the income distribution. Only those with below-average incomes will be able to go on strike to obtain salary increases. This rule will be easily checkable and it will increase equality. Another rule may prohibit threatening your government with moving your company abroad whenever changes in taxation are announced, so that taxation does not become more progressive. Any breaches of this rule will be known by the government, or by the voters who such threats try to influence, so this rule is checkable too. Similarly, consider a rule that requires you to support affordable reductions in the work week in order to reduce the level of unemployment, or to protect people in your firm from losing their jobs in a recession. Such an ethos could be checkable and could make a considerable difference. A fourth potentially public rule would prohibit us from bargaining to be paid more than the women (or members of other salient social minorities) in the firm where we work. All of these examples of rules inspired by the egalitarian ethos seem able to satisfy Williams’s publicity requirement and are not too controversial or overdemanding. This allows us to conclude that the basic structure restriction, with or without William’s publicity requirement, is unsuccessful in undermining Cohen’s critique of Rawls. On the other hand, this is only a partial victory for Cohen. In fact, if Rawlsians can accept all these checkable ethical rules, their position will be closer to Cohen’s, but also more difficult for him to defeat, as much of the force of the egalitarian ethos will have already been incorporated into the Rawlsian view. CONCLUSIONS G. A. Cohen has criticized John Rawls’s defense of incentive payments by proposing an egalitarian ethos that can improve the condition of the least advantaged, beyond what Rawls proposed. Cohen tries to show that even Rawlsians, given what they believe, should endorse the egalitarian ethos and consider incentives unjust. In response, Rawlsians have argued that the egalitarian ethos is not required by justice, arguing that the difference principle and other principles of justice are meant to apply to the basic structure of society (the major social institutions), rather than to the actions of individuals. The basic structure restriction can be variously formulated by interpreting the basic structure in broader or narrower terms. Both options, 184 PAULA CASAL however, present difficulties. The narrow view is implausible, and the broad view is toothless against Cohen. In order to rescue the basic structure restriction and defend Rawls against Cohen’s internal critique of A Theory of Justice, Andrew Williams has reinterpreted this restriction in terms of a publicity requirement. In so doing, he has shown that Rawlsians have more resources to resist the egalitarian ethos and charges of arbitrariness than Cohen had initially contemplated. Williams’s attempt, however, encounters difficulties, as checkability does not seem relevant to other principles, including other Rawlsian principles of justice. Its unique relevance to the difference principle still needs to be justified. The publicity requirement, then, cannot function alone to distinguish rules that may be required by justice from those that cannot. So we cannot reduce our substantive disagreement over the fairness of economic incentives by focusing on more procedural matters regarding the correct form of public rules. Perhaps we can support a preference for public rules in the very specific area of taxation. Fortunately, however, publicity requirements do not rule out various formulations of an egalitarian ethos. This seems like a victory for Cohen, but one could argue that the Rawlsian position in fact emerges stronger from this discussion, if more public rules like those mentioned earlier are accepted. Rawlsians could argue that, having incorporated those egalitarian public rules, there is no need to introduce an even more demanding and non-public egalitarian ethos. Williams’s defense, then, can result in a Rawlsian position that is harder to defeat, not so much because it can successfully appeal to publicity to resist egalitarian requirements, but rather because it can incorporate most of these requirements in the form of a set of more precise and specific public rules. 4 REFERENCES Carens, Joseph H. 1981. Equality, moral incentives, and the market: An Essay in Utopian Politico-Economic Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1986. Rights and duties in an egalitarian society. Political Theory 14 (1): 31–49. Casal, Paula. 2013. Occupational choice and the egalitarian ethos. Economics and Philosophy 29 (1): 3–20. Cohen, G. A. 2000. If you're an egalitarian, how come you’re so rich? Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. I am grateful to G. A. Cohen for many discussions of the ideas expressed in this paper, and to Andrew Williams for excellent comments on a recent draft. All websites were accessible on October 1, 2021. 4 185 Gender, Social Justice, and Publicity ———. 2008. Rescuing justice and equality. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Cohen, Joshua. 2001. Taking people as they are? Philosophy and Public Affairs 30 (4): 363–86. EU-FRA, European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. 2014. Violence against women: an EU-wide survey. https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2014/violence-againstwomen-eu-wide-survey-main-results-report. Hart, Melissa. 2005. Subjective decisionmaking and unconscious discrimination. Alabama Law Review 56 (3): 741–91. Lee, Audrey J. 2005. Unconscious bias theory in employment discrimination litigation. Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 40 (2): 481–503. Lippert-Rasmussen, Kasper. 2008. Publicity and egalitarian justice. Journal of Moral Philosophy 5 (1): 30–49. Mill, J. S. 2008. On liberty and other essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Okin, Susan. 1989. Justice, gender, and the family. New York: Basic Books. Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the twenty-first century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Rawls, John. 1999a. A theory of justice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ———. 1999b. Collected papers, ed. Samuel Freeman, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ———. 2001. Justice as fairness: A restatement. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Rowe, Mary P. 1990. Barriers to equality: The power of subtle discrimination to maintain unequal opportunity. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal 3 (2): 153–63. Saez, Emmanuel. 2008. Striking it richer: The evolution of top incomes in the United States. Pathways Magazine (Winter 2008): 6-7. Updated 2019 version: https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2017.pdf Shiffrin, Seana Valentine. 2010. Incentives, motives, and talents. Philosophy and Public Affairs 38 (2): 111–42. Titelbaum, Michael G. 2008. What would a Rawlsian duty of justice look like? Philosophy and Public Affairs 36 (3): 289–322. 186 PAULA CASAL Van Parijs, Philippe. 1993. Rawlsians, Christians and patriots: Maximin justice and individual ethics. European Journal of Philosophy 1 (3): 309–42. Vandenbroucke, Frank. 2001. Social justice and individual ethos in an open society: Equality, Responsibility, and Incentives. Dordrecht: Springer. Wilkinson, T. M. 2000. Freedom, efficiency and equality. London: McMillan. Williams, Andrew. 1998. Incentives, inequality, and publicity. Philosophy and Public Affairs 27 (3): 225–47. ———. 2008. Justice, incentives and constructivism. Ratio 21 (4): 476–93. 187 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 187-203 ISSN: 1825-5167 LIMITACIONISMO RAWLSIANO GUSTAVO PEREIRA Instituto de Filosofía Universidad de la República, Montevideo (Uruguay) gustavofelper@gmail.com ABSTRACT Limitarianism is a normative position that proposes the establishment of a maximum limit to the possession, use or enjoyment of valuable or scarce resources that a person can control. I am going to focus on the particular case of limiting wealth, since those who are very rich or extremely rich can have a highly negative influence on the life of democracy. This is the main reason to justify the limitation. I am going to defend a Rawlsian justification for limitarianism, which is based on the fact that wealth undermines the condition of the citizens being free and equal, and especially the fair value of political freedom. That is why in Theory of Justice it is stated that wealth can make a government look representative but only in appearance. This justification is also consistent with the antecedent of classical republicanism with which Rawls identifies himself, and with the measure of maximum wage. K EYWORDS Inequality, power, limitarianism, republicanism, human flourishing. INTRODUCCIÓN Hace cincuenta años, una de las obras más influyentes de la filosofía política contemporánea irrumpía en el mundo académico. En 1971 John Rawls publicaba Teoría de la justicia, un libro que iba a estar llamado a protagonizar los debates normativos más intensos de la segunda mitad del siglo XX y a marcar una nueva forma de entender la justicia, en la que la deontología kantiana ocuparía un rol articulador. La raigambre kantiana de la concepción rawlsiana de la justicia se manifiesta de muchas formas, pero es especialmente clara en el rol central que se le otorga a la idea de dignidad, que oficia de verdadero núcleo normativo de la teoría y que se expresa claramente en la primera página de Teoría de justicia al decir que: “Cada persona posee una inviolabilidad fundada en la justicia que ni siquiera el bienestar de la sociedad en conjunto puede atropellar. Es por esta razón por la que la justicia niega que la pérdida de libertad para algunos se vuelva justa por el hecho de que un mayor bien es compartido por otros. No permite que los sacrificios impuestos a unos sean compensados por la mayor cantidad de ventajas disfrutadas por muchos.” (Rawls, 1979: 17) 188 GUSTAVO PEREIRA Esto marca el carácter del liberalismo deontológico de Rawls por el que, a partir de esta idea de inviolabilidad de la persona, se justificará la arquitectura de su teoría que culminará en la situación de elección de los principios de justicia que regularán las principales instituciones sociales. Usando una metáfora del mundo de la programación informática, podría decirse que la inviolabilidad de la persona es el código fuente de la justicia rawlsiana. De esta idea de inviolabilidad de la persona emerge la condición de ciudadanos libres e iguales, que opera como el criterio normativo que articula una sociedad justa, en tanto opera como supuesto y a la vez como fin a realizar, en la justificación del ordenamiento institucional que regulará a la sociedad. Rawls utiliza sistemáticamente estos rasgos de los ciudadanos a partir de El liberalismo político, (1996: 29) y desde ellos se formula la pregunta básica que permitirá establecer cuál es el tratamiento justo que nos otorgamos unos a otros a través de las instituciones, a saber: “¿cuál es la más apropiada concepción de la justicia para especificar los términos justos de la cooperación social entre ciudadanos considerados libres e iguales, miembros de una sociedad con la que cooperan plenamente durante toda una vida, de una generación a la siguiente?” (Rawls, 1996: 25) El supuesto de los ciudadanos como libres e iguales es, entonces, uno de los puntos básicos a partir de los cuales se construye la justicia rawlsiana conjuntamente con el de sociedad bien ordenada. A su vez, el diseño de las instituciones de una sociedad justa deberá asegurar esta condición de ciudadanía, de tal manera que si en algún momento surgen circunstancias que la socavan o la afectan, tales circunstancias deberán ser removidas. En particular, tal condición puede verse comprometida por el poder que surge de la concentración de la propiedad y la riqueza. Debido a esto es que en diferentes momentos de su obra, Rawls enfatiza la necesidad de que los sistemas institucionales compatibles con la justicia tengan como resultado la dispersión de la propiedad. (1979: 259, 2002: 189) Del éxito de estas medidas depende que las instituciones puedan garantizar la condición de libres e iguales, en particular el valor equitativo de la libertad política. Esta es la razón de la preferencia de Rawls por la democracia de pequeños propietarios, ya que sus instituciones de trasfondo “contribuyen a dispersar la propiedad de la riqueza y el capital, con lo que impiden que una pequeña parte de la sociedad controle la economía y asimismo, indirectamente, la vida política.” (2002: 189) En virtud de esto una sociedad democrática justa debe limitar la propiedad y la riqueza debido a que son una fuente de poder que tiene la posibilidad de intervenir y distorsionar los procesos públicos de toma de decisiones con el objetivo de hacer prevalecer los intereses de ciertos grupos, socavando de esta forma el valor equitativo de la libertad política. Esta limitación de la riqueza controlable por los ciudadanos implica también una restricción a los posibles planes vitales que pueden 189 Limitacionismo rawlsiano llevar adelante, lo que va a estar justificado por la prioridad de la justicia, que es uno de los rasgos distintivos de la justicia como equidad. A partir de lo anterior es que voy a sostener que puede defenderse un tipo de limitacionismo estructurado a partir del alcance y la justificación normativa de la justicia rawlsiana. El limitacionismo consiste en una posición normativa que propone que deben establecerse límites máximos a la posesión, uso o disfrute de recursos valiosos o escasos que puede tener o controlar una persona, y esto afecta a la tierra, el agua u otros recursos naturales. En especial el caso en el que quiero concentrarme es el de la riqueza, ya que quienes son muy ricos o extremadamente ricos pueden llegar a tener una influencia altamente negativa en la vida de la democracia y en ello reside la justificación de la limitación. Esta posición ha sido desarrollada desde distintas perspectivas normativas (Piketty 2019, Robeyns 2017, Bertomeu y Raventós, 2020) y, como indiqué, considero que desde la justicia rawlsiana el limitacionismo puede llegar a tener una de sus formulaciones normativas más robustas. A continuación desarrollaré la justificación de lo que llamo limitacionismo rawlsiano, y para ello, en primer lugar, presentaré las instituciones que según Rawls permiten garantizar la justicia distributiva y cómo desde ellas puede introducirse la limitación al control de renta y riqueza. A partir de esto se discutirá la justificación normativa de la limitación, apelando a la condición de libres e iguales, especialmente al valor equitativo de la libertad política y su posible menoscabo a partir de que un grupo suficientemente rico pueda alterar en su favor los procesos públicos de deliberación y toma de decisiones. En esta justificación se descarta la posibilidad de apelar al florecimiento humano como criterio limitativo y se propone al criterio rawlsiano del menoscabo del valor equitativo de la libertad política. LAS INSTITUCIONES DE LA JUSTICIA DISTRIBUTIVA En la segunda parte de Teoría Justicia, luego de haber presentado los principios de justicia y la forma en que son justificados, Rawls describe las principales instituciones de una estructura básica que satisfaga tales principios, que, a su vez, serán las distintivas de una democracia constitucional. Su intención es presentar una idea aproximada de cómo los principios de justicia, a través de las instituciones, establecen una concepción política proyectable a las sociedades reales. (Rawls, 1979: 227) Para introducir el problema de la limitación de la renta y la riqueza y cómo se sitúa dentro del alcance de la justicia rawlsiana debemos concentrarnos en la etapa legislativa, ya que es en ella donde tiene lugar la intervención del principio de diferencia. Este principio “(p)rescribe que las políticas sociales y económicas tengan como objetivo la maximización de las expectativas a largo plazo de los menos aventajados, bajo las condiciones de una igualdad equitativa de oportunidades, en 190 GUSTAVO PEREIRA la cual se mantengan las mismas libertades para todos.” (231) El principio de diferencia regulará a las instituciones que permitirían asegurar que el resultado del proceso distributivo sea justo. Para presentar esas instituciones, en el numeral 43 de Teoría de la justicia se parte del hecho de que la estructura básica se encuentra regulada por una constitución justa que garantiza las libertades ciudadanas de conciencia, de pensamiento y el valor de la libertad política. También se supone la existencia de una igualdad de oportunidades que hace que el gobierno garantice “iguales oportunidades de enseñanza y cultura, a personas similarmente capacitadas y motivadas, o bien subvencionando escuelas privadas o bien estableciendo un sistema de escuelas públicas.” (Rawls, 1979: 257) Esa igualdad de oportunidades está también presente en la libre elección de ocupación que se logra al supervisar empresas y asociaciones privadas, de tal manera de impedir que haya restricciones en el acceso a las posiciones que se ofrecen. Además de esto, el gobierno asegura un mínimo social a través de diferentes medios como subsidios, asignaciones familiares o un impuesto negativo a la renta. (1979: 258) Las instituciones básicas que son requeridas para asegurar un proceso distributivo justo pueden dividirse, según Rawls, en cuatro ramas que tendrán cada una de ellas el objetivo de garantizar ciertas condiciones sociales y económicas; esas ramas son: asignación, estabilización, transferencia y distribución, a las que también agrega la rama del cambio. La rama de la asignación se encarga de garantizar un sistema de precios competitivo y controlar el poder del mercado, a la vez que a través de impuestos y subsidios corrige desviaciones de la eficiencia del mercado; para lograr esto, incluso puede revisar la definición de los derechos de propiedad. La rama estabilizadora tiene por meta lograr que quienes quieran obtener un empleo puedan lograrlo, de tal manera que “la libre elección de ocupación y el despliegue de finanzas se vean apoyadas por una demanda fuerte y eficiente.” (Rawls, 1979: 258). Esta rama, conjuntamente con la de la asignación, se encarga de asegurar que la economía de mercado funcione en forma eficaz. Por su parte, la rama de la transferencia garantiza el mínimo social requerido por los ciudadanos, ya que un sistema de precios competitivo por sí solo no es capaz de cubrir las necesidades de los individuos, y debido a ello no puede ser el único mecanismo distributivo. La rama de la distribución tiene por meta “conservar una justicia aproximada de las porciones distributivas mediante la tributación y los reajustes necesarios a los derechos de propiedad.” (259) Para ello se establecen, en primera instancia, restricciones a los derechos de herencia, especialmente a través de impuestos de sucesión, y en segundo término una tributación para obtener los ingresos necesarios para la justicia, “de manera que pueda proveer bienes públicos y hacer los pagos necesarios para satisfacer el principio de diferencia.” (259) Por último, hay una quinta rama que Rawls denomina del cambio y que consiste en que los gastos 191 Limitacionismo rawlsiano públicos estarán atados a un acuerdo sobre los medios que cubrirán sus costos, del modo más aproximado a la unanimidad. (1979: 264) Mi interés en la limitación de la renta y la riqueza conduce a colocar el foco de atención en la rama de la distribución y en la posibilidad de introducir una medida que podría llegar a ser parte de la tributación. Es importante indicar que el propósito de las medidas propias de la tributación no es recaudar por parte del gobierno, “sino corregir, gradual y continuamente, la distribución de riqueza y prevenir las concentraciones de poder perjudiciales para la equidad de la libertad política y de la justa igualdad de oportunidades. (259)” Esta es la intención que se seguirá en la justificación que se realizará de la limitación de la renta y la riqueza. A partir de lo anterior, tenemos que uno de los objetivos de la operativa de las instituciones será intervenir en las concentraciones de poder, ya que éstas afectan en forma negativa el valor equitativo de la libertad política, y de ahí también la condición de libres e iguales. De acuerdo con esto, para Rawls la herencia es permisible siempre que los resultados que emanen de ella sean consistentes con los principios de justicia, es decir, que redunden en la ventaja de los menos aventajados y sea compatible con la igualdad de oportunidades. Esto último remite a un conjunto de políticas institucionales que tienen por meta garantizar que esas oportunidades sean iguales en lo que concierne a la educación y la cultura para las personas que tienen similares capacidades. La igualdad de oportunidades también se manifiesta en asegurar el acceso a trabajos y empleos a partir de las capacidades y esfuerzos que sean requeridos por las tareas de las que se trate. (Rawls, 1979: 260) Las desigualdades en riqueza, una vez que superan cierto límite, comprometen a estas instituciones que están orientadas a realizar los principios de justicia, porque impiden que se asegure la condición de libres e iguales de los ciudadanos. Esto queda de manifiesto al afectarse el valor de la libertad política, ya que las diferencias de poder económico posibilitan intervenir de tal forma en los procesos de toma de decisiones que anulan la condición de libres e iguales. Es bastante claro que quien posee un emprendimiento agropecuario de gran porte, o es el dueño de una cadena de hoteles, o quien comanda una industria estratégica tendrán una capacidad de incidencia en los procesos de toma de decisiones sustancialmente diferente a la de un ciudadano medio que se desempeña como empleado administrativo de un banco, trabaja en la construcción o es docente en la enseñanza secundaria, y esto es lo que Rawls aspira a contrarrestar. La dispersión de la riqueza a través de los impuestos tiene por objetivo asegurar que la capacidad de intervenir en los procesos políticos de toma de decisiones no sea de tal orden que provoque “que el gobierno representativo se convierte en tal gobierno únicamente en apariencia.” (Rawls, 1979: 260) Podría decirse que las diferencias de riqueza o más claramente la concentración de la riqueza vulnera de tal forma el valor equitativo de la libertad política que pueden llegar a convertir a la vida democrática en una verdadera mascarada de lo que ésta debería ser. Es por ello que Rawls afirma que “los 192 GUSTAVO PEREIRA impuestos y las legislaciones de la función de distribución han de procurar que no se traspase ese límite”. (260) Lo que quiero proponer es que dentro del conjunto de posibles medidas impositivas debería ser incluida una que interviniese directamente en la dispersión de la propiedad y la riqueza, ya que en Teoría de la justicia el foco está puesto especialmente en la intervención en la herencia y la sucesión, dejando abierta la posibilidad de introducir otras posibles medidas que permitan realizar lo requerido por la justicia. Una forma de limitación de la riqueza como la que se da a través de la renta máxima es claramente compatible con la justicia rawlsiana, y esto es así porque contribuye a evitar que se socave el valor de la libertad política, y también que se vulnere la condición de libres e iguales. EL LIMITACIONISMO RAWLSIANO Limitacionismo rawlsiano y florecimiento humano Antes de desarrollar la justificación rawlsiana del limitacionismo, se examinará la posibilidad de defender el limitacionismo a partir de la idea de florecimiento humano. De acuerdo con las posiciones centradas en el florecimiento humano, las personas no deberían retener el dinero resultante de sus actividades económicas que se encuentre por encima de lo que se considera suficiente para llevar adelante una vida floreciente. El punto problemático es que el criterio de florecimiento humano podría no superar las exigencias de la justificación pública, y las dificultades que se presentarán a continuación abrirán el camino a la perspectiva rawlsiana. La posición que incorpora al florecimiento humano como criterio normativo será ilustrada a partir del trabajo de Ingrid Robeyns (2017), quien toma esta idea como articuladora de su limitacionismo económico1. Su propuesta, que se enmarca dentro del enfoque de las capacidades, tiene una justificación basada en la igualdad política y en la necesidad de atender necesidades locales y globales, pero a la hora de establecer el criterio normativo que permitiría la limitación, lo que ella denomina la línea de riqueza, (2017: 19) se apela al florecimiento humano. La línea de riqueza de Robeyns supone un conjunto de capacidades que, al ser realizadas en funcionamientos, le permiten a alguien alcanzar en forma ampliamente suficiente su florecimiento humano. La limitación se estructura en una posible aplicación a partir de este criterio, por lo que tendrá preeminencia sobre las razones que se ofrecen para justificar el limitacionismo o, mejor dicho, las razones que se ofrecen para justificar el limitacionismo son funcionales al florecimiento humano que se presenta como el punto normativo más sólido para la aplicación de la limitación. Robeyns se concentra en el limitacionismo económico, pero reconoce que esta perspectiva normativa puede igualmente afectar a otros recursos valiosos o escasos, como el agua o recursos naturales de ese orden. (2017: 4) 1 193 Limitacionismo rawlsiano No es el objetivo de este trabajo problematizar las posibles tensiones que existen en la propuesta de Robeyns, sino en indicar las dificultades que puede tener apelar al florecimiento humano como criterio para establecer la línea a partir de la cual realizar la limitación. La idea de florecimiento humano tal como es utilizada por Robeyns y otros (Scanlon, 1993; Arneson, 1999), es entendida como una concepción objetiva de bien-estar y no meramente como satisfacción de deseos. La objetividad a la que se apela significa que el bien-estar debe ser intersubjetivamente acordable, y para llegar a ello es preciso contar con una formulación lo suficiente general capaz de albergar los diferentes planes vitales de los individuos, es decir, debe tener una alta sensibilidad a la variabilidad interpersonal. Robeyns, como ya se indicó, utiliza el concepto de capacidades y funcionamientos que cumplen con este requisito de generalidad, de tal manera que es posible acordar que el florecimiento humano esté constituido por un conjunto de capacidades que serán especificadas en distintos funcionamientos, de acuerdo a los planes vitales de los individuos. (Robeyns, 2017: 24-27) Sin embargo, justamente en esto último reside la dificultad, porque como una misma capacidad puede ser realizada por distintos funcionamientos, algunos de ellos pueden llegar a justificar que la persona no vea limitado su nivel de riqueza. La razón para esto es que esos funcionamientos serían una realización de su idea de vida buena, y por lo tanto estaría justificado incluirlos en su idea de florecimiento humano. Pensemos, por ejemplo, en la capacidad de recreación, tiempo libre y hobbies que presenta Robeyns como constitutiva del florecimiento humano (2017: 26); esta capacidad se manifiesta en distintos posibles funcionamientos, y si bien muchos de ellos demandarán para su realización un monto no excesivo de dinero y riqueza, otros pueden llegar a requerir un monto que sí lo sea, y que en consecuencia estén por encima del límite que podría ser acordado. A su vez, tales funcionamientos estarían justificados en la medida en que serían el resultado de una concepción de la vida buena adoptada reflexivamente y elaborada a través de lo que Taylor (1977) ha denominado como evaluaciones fuertes. De acuerdo con esto, la elección de los funcionamientos que hace un agente, sería el resultado de evaluaciones que incluirían un lenguaje evaluativo que dependería de valores adoptados, y en ello radica la diferencia de la mera satisfacción de deseos, donde tal evaluación no se da. (Taylor, 1977: 114) Por lo tanto, estos funcionamientos calificarían para integrar lo que una determinada persona considera como florecimiento humano, que no es una simple satisfacción de deseos, pero que se especifica de acuerdo a la particularidad del plan vital que cada individuo adopta, ajusta y reconfigura en forma reflexiva. Para ilustrar esto, imaginemos a alguien que tiene como forma de realizar la capacidad de recreación, tiempo libre y hobbies el experimentar y diseñar propulsores con fuentes alternativas de energía. Esta persona no es un investigador 194 GUSTAVO PEREIRA y su vida no está dedicada a ello; su trabajo está en el mercado financiero en el que obtiene un ingreso que está un cincuenta por ciento por encima de la línea de riqueza que establece Robeyns. Estos ingresos le permiten a esta persona llevar adelante su investigación doméstica sobre propulsores amigables con el medio ambiente. Esta tarea que lo llena de satisfacción y lo hace sentir plenamente realizado, es costosa y poder llevarla adelante requiere un monto de dinero que supera la cantidad máxima que, según Robeyns, alguien podría retener. De inmediato surge una incomodidad con la situación, ya que si bien es aceptable que algunos aspectos de nuestros planes vitales sean restringidos, parece poco aceptable que lo sean debido a que se ha establecido una forma de estipular el máximo de dinero requerido para nuestro florecimiento humano. Lo que se presenta como inadecuado es que se establece externamente al sujeto el alcance de su idea de florecimiento humano, y eso no parece ser convincente desde una perspectiva de justificación pública. Parece muy difícil que un ciudadano acepte tal cosa sin percibirlo como una restricción arbitraria, especialmente porque no es una preferencia, sino el resultado de una evaluación valorativa que emana de su idea del bien. Todo indica que la idea de florecimiento humano en la justificación del limitacionismo debe enfrentar una fuerte tensión interna, ya que por una parte habilita a funcionamientos que, a su vez, son limitados por la propia idea de florecimiento humano. En este momento es posible recordar la conocida crítica a Sen consistente en que la métrica de las capacidades supone una concepción comprehensiva (Rawls, 1988: 259; Dworkin, 2000: 299-303), y su respuesta apelando a la generalidad de las capacidades básicas (Sen, 1992: 82-4) o capacidades elementales. (1999: 36). Estas capacidades son requeridas para el bien-estar de todas las personas y no dependen de cómo las preferencias y los valores afectan la conversión de medios en logros. Debido a esto es que serían justificables públicamente como constitutivas de un conjunto mínimo común a las diferentes concepciones del bien. La respuesta de Sen es convincente justamente porque justifica mínimos exigibles universalmente, pero no sucede lo mismo si se traslada esta justificación a máximos vitales como se sigue de la idea de florecimiento humano. La simetría a la que apela Robeyns entre línea de pobreza y línea de riqueza no se puede seguir, ya que, a partir de lo que se ha señalado, puede sostenerse que el concepto de capacidades no asegura la continuidad entre mínimos de justicia y florecimiento humano sin que se afecten las posibilidades de justificación pública. Lo que se puede acordar públicamente es asegurar condiciones a partir del desarrollo de capacidades elementales que permitan alcanzar el florecimiento humano, pero construir un criterio de limitación a partir de ellas vulnera las posibilidades de llevar adelante los planes vitales reflexivamente adoptados. Éstos pueden ser limitados, pero para ello es necesario un argumento más sólido desde la perspectiva de justificación pública que el del florecimiento humano. 195 Limitacionismo rawlsiano Estas dificultades refuerzan la postura, también reconocida por Robeyns aunque no llevada a cabo hasta el final,2 de que la restricción de las ideas del bien y de los planes vitales que surgen de ellas tiene en la prioridad de la justicia (Rawls, 1996: 206-207) un criterio más sólido para superar las exigencias de una justificación pública. Tal restricción es especialmente clara en el caso en que los planes vitales que llevan adelante los individuos estén explícitamente orientados al menoscabo de derechos fundamentales, por lo que el plan vital que abraza un nacionalsocialista en tanto supone afectar sustancialmente derechos fundamentales de otros será severamente restringido. Pero esta restricción también se dará en los casos en que la riqueza dote a quienes la poseen de tal poder que les permita alterar y distorsionar los procesos de toma decisiones (Rawls, 1979: 259; 2002: 189). La consecuencia de esto es que esta justificación normativa para tal restricción tiene una mayor posibilidad de ser públicamente aceptada que en el caso del florecimiento humano. En el caso del ejemplo que se ha indicado, la persona que dedica su riqueza a la investigación de propulsores ecológicos se vería igualmente afectada, pero es diferente que se le diga que su vida ya es suficientemente floreciente y por eso se le restringe la cantidad de renta y riqueza que puede controlar, a que se le diga que esa riqueza puede poner en riesgo el proceso democrático. Las justificaciones son claramente de un orden diferente, una impone externamente una cierta forma de llevar adelante nuestra vida, mientras que la otra apela a nuestra razonabilidad como ciudadanos. A esto cabe agregar que la limitación justificada a partir de la preservación del valor equitativo de la libertad política implicará una variación en el monto que se permitirá controlar, ya que parecería ser considerablemente mayor lo requerido para alterar los procesos políticos que lo que Robeyns sugiere como límite a partir de la idea de florecimiento humano. (2017: 27) En las sociedades democráticas es esperable que los ciudadanos sean capaces de acordar condiciones de funcionamiento mínimas del proceso de toma de decisiones, y, de la misma forma que se establecen garantías de participación, también debe asegurarse que el proceso político no sea distorsionado, alterado o instrumentalizado por quienes tienen una riqueza extrema. Esto supone que para los ciudadanos la democracia es un marco que permite desarrollar una vida en la que puede lograrse un incremento de la renta y la riqueza, pero la democracia es prioritaria frente a esta actividad. La democracia no es un medio para justificar la actividad económica y la maximización de sus resultados, sino que lo relevante es el valor equitativo de la libertad, en tanto que es expresión de los requisitos de la ciudadanía, y por lo tanto tendrá la prioridad indicada. Es posible que alguien defienda lo contrario, pero eso entra en colisión con una concepción de la democracia y libertad que suponen al ciudadano como razonable, es decir, no meramente como un agente maximizador, sino que lo entienden como capaz de Robeyns presenta el argumento de la igualdad política, pero lo problemático es el apelar luego a la idea de florecimiento humano para establecer la línea de riqueza. (2017: 6-10) 2 196 GUSTAVO PEREIRA acordar las cargas y los beneficios de la cooperación social. Esta es, como se ha indicado, la posición de Rawls, que también está presente en la tradición republicana que él mismo abraza. El antecedente republicano La preocupación rawlsiana por contrarrestar y corregir los efectos que puede tener la acumulación de la riqueza y la subsecuente concentración de poder en el valor de la libertad política y la igualdad de oportunidades sustenta la principal razón para justificar el limitacionismo. Esta perspectiva es convergente con la tradición republicana y su forma de explicar la libertad, en la que prima asegurar que no haya dominación, es decir, interferencia arbitraria sobre la voluntad de los ciudadanos, (Pettit, 1999; Skinner, 2004) y para ello las instituciones, siguiendo los principios de justicia, deberán cumplir con ese objetivo. Es importante destacar que esta interferencia que socava la libertad remite tanto a la capacidad actual de un agente de interferir en la voluntad de otros sin que éstos consientan, como a la capacidad potencial de hacerlo. De ahí que deban contrarrestarse circunstancias sociales en las que unos aprovechando la vulnerabilidad de otros, puedan someterlos a través de las relaciones que se establecen entre los ciudadanos, y entre estos y el Estado. Desde una perspectiva rawlsiana podría decirse que en las sociedades que no son justas, la dominación está presente en las estructuras y relaciones sociales que constituyen la estructura básica de la sociedad. (Lovett, 2010) Los principios de justicia y las instituciones sociales que éstos regulan tendrían como resultado contrarrestar la dominación. En particular, la rama de la transferencia y la de la distribución, como se ha indicado, garantizan por una parte un mínimo social por debajo del cual ningún ciudadano debería caer, y por otra, establecen límites a la riqueza y la propiedad. Ambas ramas institucionales operan de tal manera de asegurar la condición de libres e iguales, especialmente el valor equitativo de la libertad política. Esto supone que las circunstancias que generen dominación o servidumbre por parte de unos sobre otros deberán ser contrarrestadas, ya sean éstas las que dependen de la carencia de medios suficientes o las que dependen del poder que surge de la renta y la riqueza. Como ya se indicó, esta forma de entender la justicia se inscribe en la tradición republicana, como John Rawls explícitamente sostiene al tomar distancia de lo que denomina humanismo cívico e identificarse con el republicanismo clásico. (1996, 239-240) La razón para esto es que, para la primera perspectiva, nuestra condición de seres sociales se realiza de mejor forma a través de la participación política en las sociedades democráticas; es decir, la participación política constituye una forma de entender el bien al que deben aspirar los seres humanos. Esto define el carácter de concepción comprehensiva que tiene el humanismo cívico y en ello radica la principal diferencia con la concepción política que caracteriza a la justicia rawlsiana. 197 Limitacionismo rawlsiano Para la justicia como equidad, la política es un componente de la vida de las personas en sociedad, pero no es el centro articulador de esa vida; esto se desprende de asumir el hecho del pluralismo como un elemento irrebasable de las sociedades democráticas. En virtud de esto, el considerar que la participación política es lo que estructura la vida de las personas es simplemente un rasgo constitutivo de una concepción comprehensiva que convive con otras bajo el trasfondo del pluralismo razonable. (Rawls, 1996: 240) En contraposición al humanismo cívico, el republicanismo clásico (Rawls, 1996: 240-241; 2002: 195-196) es entendido por Rawls como “la concepción según la cual la seguridad de las libertades democráticas, incluidas las libertades de la vida no política (las libertades de los modernos), requiere de la activa participación de los ciudadanos, los cuales poseen las virtudes políticas necesarias para sostener un régimen constitucional.” (2002, 195) De acuerdo con esto, la participación ciudadana activa e informada orientada por el interés en la justicia es lo que impide que las instituciones sean instrumentalizadas por quienes “tienen hambre de poder y de gloria militar, o de los que persiguen estrechos intereses económicos y de clase, hasta el límite de excluir casi cualquier otra cosa”. (2002, 196) La condición de libres e iguales solamente puede asegurarse a través de esta participación, por lo que la vida democrática, si bien no puede ser organizada en torno a una idea comprensiva que hace de la participación política su centro, no permite una retirada completa a la vida privada. De esta forma la autoadscripción de Rawls a la tradición republicana asegura la convergencia de esta tradición con el liberalismo (De Francisco, 2006), dejando algunas posibles interpretaciones del republicanismo bajo el alcance del denominado humanismo cívico.3 La compatibilidad de la justicia como equidad con el republicanismo clásico lleva a que algunas de las medidas que históricamente han sido presentadas dentro de esta tradición sean parte de los antecedentes que tiene la justificación del limitacionismo en una perspectiva rawlsiana. Así, la dispersión de la propiedad (Rawls, 2002: 189), como rasgo inherente a los regímenes institucionales que son compatibles con la justicia como equidad, puede ser interpretada en una línea de continuidad con la reforma de Solón que incluyó la redistribución de la tierra, o con la ley agraria de los hermanos Graco que tenía por objetivo terminar con la oligarquía terrateniente que constituía una amenaza para la vida de la república. La incompatibilidad de la república con una desigualdad radical es también expresada enfáticamente por Maquiavelo en los “Discursos sobre la primera década de Tito Livio”, donde defiende la necesidad de poner freno a las ambiciones y corrupción de los magnates en tanto causan la servidumbre del pueblo. (2013: 307)4 A esto cabe agregar que las diferencias de riqueza y poder que se aspira a dispersar desde La versión de Arendt es un claro ejemplo de un republicanismo que cae bajo la categoría de humanismo cívico. 4 Estos tres ejemplos son especialmente destacados por Antoni Doménech (2017: 189-192). 3 198 GUSTAVO PEREIRA la perspectiva rawlsiana son también anticipadas en las Cato´s Letters, al establecerse la asociación entre dominio y propiedad, y que la igualdad en el poder depende de la igualdad de bienes, por lo que las grandes riquezas destruyen el equilibrio de poder y propiedad que es necesario para la vida democrática. (Trenchard y Gordon, 2009: 89-91) Mi intención no es focalizarme en la tradición republicana, sino simplemente utilizar estos ejemplos clásicos para ilustrar algunos posibles antecedentes que refuerzan la posición de que es imposible pensar en la libertad y en el ejercicio de la ciudadanía sin que las asimetrías de poder que surgen de la riqueza extrema sean contrarrestadas. Si existe la posibilidad de dominio de unos grupos sobre otros, la democracia se encuentra amenazada y por lo tanto esas asimetrías deben ser contrarrestadas. De ahí que el limitacionismo rawlsiano encuentra en estos antecedentes, presentes en la tradición republicana, una perspectiva que contribuye a su justificación. La convergencia con la teoría normativa de la democracia La justificación del limitacionismo también cuenta con una perspectiva convergente con la rawlsiana, además de la republicana, que es presentada dentro de la teoría normativa de la democracia. La preocupación por la igualdad política, o más precisamente la participación equitativa (Beitz, 1989; Bohman, 1996; Cristiano, 2008), es lo que justifica la limitación de la riqueza, ya que las desigualdades de este tipo tienden a transformarse en desigualdades de poder que constituyen una verdadera amenaza a la democracia. En particular Thomas Cristiano (2012) identifica distintas posibles formas en las que las diferencias de riqueza pueden afectar el proceso político. La primera de ellas es el financiamiento de campañas políticas con la expectativa de obtener un tratamiento especial por parte de quienes se ha financiado, una vez que éstos lleguen al gobierno. Esto no necesariamente opera como una exigencia del financiador, sino que lo hace simplemente como una influencia en los procesos de toma de decisiones de los políticos, que tiene por efecto afectar sus posiciones para continuar recibiendo el apoyo con el que se han beneficiado. Además, la influencia de ese dinero puede hacer que la agenda pública sea modificada al apoyar posturas alineadas con los intereses de los más ricos y bloquear otras; de esta forma es que ciertas razones poco a poco se convierten en sentido común y acompañan al ejercicio de poder (Forst, 2015), entendido como la capacidad de intervenir en las razones que asumimos para justificar las circunstancias que nos afectan o algunos estados de cosas que imperan en la sociedad. De esta forma es que se puede incidir en el diseño de la agenda pública, incluyendo, excluyendo o dotando de mayor o menor énfasis algunos temas que deben ser objeto de los procesos de toma de decisiones. Así, el tratamiento de los efectos del tabaco en la salud o el cambio climático, entre otros, han sido y son 199 Limitacionismo rawlsiano manipulados a través de la intervención sutil en los procesos de deliberación pública de los fondos de los interesados. La manipulación de estos procesos deja en evidencia que algunos ciudadanos pueden incidir en ellos de una forma radicalmente diferente a otros, tanto por la afinidad que logran de los políticos al contribuir económicamente a sus proyectos, como por la influencia que sus intereses pueden tener en los medios de comunicación. A partir de esto último es que perfilan la agenda pública, modifican creencias compartidas o estimulan una cierta forma de entender cuáles son las obligaciones que nos debemos unos a otros. Un claro ejemplo es el reforzamiento en la discusión pública de posiciones que ven a los impuestos como una forma de apropiación injusta del producto del trabajo y no como una contribución a la cooperación social, o también puede verse en la extendida creencia, especialmente en América Latina, de que somos completamente dueños de nuestro destino, y que por lo tanto si nos termina afectando la pobreza somos responsables de ello por no habernos esforzado lo suficiente. Los casos ejemplificados son situaciones en las que los ciudadanos pueden presentar sus creencias y razones en la esfera pública para justificar sus posiciones, y ello es parte de las libertades básicas propias de una democracia, pero sucede que algunos en virtud de su poder económico pueden hacer pesar sus convicciones de tal forma que logren que las creencias prevalentes terminen ajustándose a sus intereses. Este poder de influir tanto en las creencias compartidas como en los procesos de toma de decisiones, viola radicalmente la condición de iguales (Cristiano, 2012: 245) que subyace a la vida democrática y a una sociedad justa (Rawls, 1996: 29). A su vez, esto genera y estimula un sentido de superioridad injustificada e inaceptable en quienes controlan ese poder, a la vez que son percibidos por el resto de la sociedad como un grupo políticamente privilegiado. La contraparte de este ejercicio del poder es que quienes se encuentran en situaciones menos ventajosas pueden llegar a sufrir de sentimientos de vergüenza que los conduzcan a retirarse de la vida pública, es decir, se podría constituir una subclase “que se siente excluida y no participe de la cultura política pública.” (JE, 190) Es para contrarrestar estos efectos que Rawls afirma que la estructura básica además de asegurar la libertad y la independencia de los ciudadanos, tiene que “moderar continuamente las tendencias que conducen, andando el tiempo, a mayores desigualdades en estatus social y riqueza, y en la capacidad de ejercer influencia política y de sacar provecho de las oportunidades disponibles.” (Rawls, 2002: 212) Esta afirmación que Rawls hace en La justicia como equidad: una reformulación, retoma lo ya indicado en Teoría de la justicia, y pone de manifiesto su preocupación por garantizar la equidad de la libertad política, que conduce a la permanente corrección de la distribución de la riqueza como forma de evitar la concentración del poder. (1979: 259) 200 GUSTAVO PEREIRA La propuesta de la renta máxima El objetivo de la justicia rawlsiana, recién señalado, puede lograrse a través de la incorporación de medidas de limitación de la renta y la riqueza en la estructura tributaria, que serían complementarias a las que él menciona de la trasmisión patrimonial y la herencia, y la tributación progresiva. Como se ha señalado, la relación entre renta y riqueza con el poder es lo que lleva a limitar tanto el ingreso (sueldos, intereses bancarios, alquileres, renta de la tierra, dividendos y utilidades empresariales, derechos de autor y de deportistas), como la riqueza (activos mobiliarios, inmobiliarios o financieros). Dentro de las posibles medidas Daniel Raventós y María Julia Bertomeu, siguiendo una intuición de Toni Doménech, (Bertomeu y Raventós, 2020a: 198) han recordado la posibilidad de incorporar a las instituciones de las sociedades democráticas la renta máxima como medida tributaria. Dicha medida consiste en una tasa impositiva total para quienes perciban una renta anual superior a un cierto monto definido, es decir, que una vez que la renta anual alcance el monto estipulado no se puede retener más porque la imposición sería del cien por ciento. Según señalan Bertomeu y Raventós la renta máxima fue propuesta en 1942 por F. D. Roosevelt, quien defendió una tasa marginal del 100 por ciento para quienes tuviesen rentas que superasen los 25.000 dólares anuales, que actualmente serían aproximadamente 400.000 dólares. La propuesta de Roosevelt no logró imponerse, y en su lugar se logró una tasa del 94% para las rentas que estaban por encima de los 200.000 dólares. (Bertomeu y Raventós, 2020b) Probablemente este sea el antecedente contemporáneo más importante. El limitar la renta máxima que podría controlar una persona es una medida que requiere la construcción de una posible línea de riqueza, tal como ha sido propuesto por Robeyns, a partir de la cual establecer la limitación, como ya se indicó esta línea requiere contar con un criterio normativo para justificarla y para establecer el monto de la limitación. Los argumentos ofrecidos llevan a rechazar a la idea de florecimiento humano que ha sido planteada por algunos defensores de esta idea (Robeyns 2017, Piketty 2019, Bertomeu y Raventós, 2020a), y tomar en cambio la cantidad de renta que se considera necesaria para influir en forma determinante en la discusión pública. Establecer cuál sería el monto posible es un problema técnico con dificultades de distinto orden, que deberán ser solucionadas por el trabajo interdisciplinario. Parece bastante claro que la cifra que se establezca a partir del criterio de influir en forma distorsiva en el proceso político será lo suficientemente alta como para albergar una muy amplia gama de planes vitales y sus múltiples formas de realizarse. Una última consideración sobre la que quiero volver es que si el argumento normativo para justificar la limitación del control de renta y riqueza se sustenta en la posibilidad de intervención y distorsión de los procesos de discusión pública y toma de decisiones, entonces el criterio de limitación debe ser consistente con esto. 201 Limitacionismo rawlsiano Esta consistencia nos deja con un continuo normativo entre la justificación de la limitación y su implementación que fortalece la posición del limitacionismo y su posible aplicación.5 Este continuo, como señalé, no está presente en las propuestas que justifican la limitación por un argumento de igualdad política, pero luego apelan a la idea de florecimiento humano para su implementación, lo que deja a estas posiciones ante una inconsistencia normativa que vuelve vulnerable al limitacionismo a críticas como las que ya se han indicado. En particular, la que se sigue de la dificultad de justificar públicamente la limitación a partir de una cierta idea de florecimiento humano, que por más que tenga una formulación general no puede erradicar la sospecha de imposición de una cierta forma de realizar la vida desde una perspectiva externa a los agentes. CONCLUSIONES La renta y la riqueza constituyen un elemento de poder en las sociedades democráticas que vuelve necesario pensar en medidas para su limitación. La razón para esto es su posible influencia en los procesos públicos de toma de decisiones. Tal influencia, en tanto puede orientarse a favorecer los intereses de los más poderosos distorsiona el proceso democrático y vulnera tanto el valor de la libertad política, como nuestra condición de libres e iguales. Esto puede verse especialmente en la inclusión o marginación de la agenda pública de temas que responden a sus intereses, y también en la construcción de un sentido común compartido consistente con los intereses de los grupos más aventajados. Este es el núcleo justificatorio de la limitación, porque la democracia si bien habilita a que podamos beneficiarnos del producto de las actividades económicas en las que participamos, esto nunca puede tener prioridad sobre las condiciones que aseguran la equidad del procedimiento. La democracia y la condición de ciudadanía que la sustenta son el suelo común que tenemos para resolver nuestras diferencias y asegurar, a través de los acuerdos a los que arribamos con otros, condiciones que nos permitan llevar adelante nuestros proyectos vitales. El contexto de la filosofía rawlsiana apoya esta justificación, que a su vez, se presenta como superior a una posible justificación de la línea de limitación a partir del concepto de florecimiento humano. El punto que se ha destacado es la aceptabilidad en términos de justificación pública del criterio de limitación, en tal sentido es muy poco convincente que algunos aspectos de un plan vital sean restringidos a pesar de que emergen de una concepción del bien y de una valoración cualitativa de los mismos porque superan lo que se considera más que suficiente para tener una vida floreciente. Por contrapartida es bastante más convincente que 5 La propuesta de Robeyns presenta esta discontinuidad, lo que considero es su mayor debilidad. 202 GUSTAVO PEREIRA la limitación dependa del valor de la libertad política, que se vería socavada afectando la condición de libres e iguales que compartimos en tanto ciudadanos. BIBLIOGRAFÍA Arneson, R. (1999). Human Flourishing versus Desire Satisfaction. Social Philosophy and Policy, 16 (1), 113-142. Beitz, Ch. (1989). Political Equality: An Essay in Democratic Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bertomeu, M. J. y Raventós D. (2020a). Renta Básica y Renta Máxima: una concepción republicano-democrática. Daimon. Revista Internacional de Filosofía, 81, 197-213. ____ (2020b). Renta máxima y renta básica: dos potentes herramientas complementarias para una “vida política republicano-democrática normal”. Sin Permiso, 6 de diciembre. Bohman, J. (1996). Public deliberation. Pluralism, Complexity, and Democracy. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Christiano, T. (2008). The Constitution of Equality: Democratic Authority and its Limits. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ____ (2012). Money in Politics. En David Estlund (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Political Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 241-257. De Francisco, A. (2006). A Republican Interpretation of the Late Rawls. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 14 (3), 270-288. Doménech, A. (2017). La democracia republicana fraternal y el socialismo con gorro frigio. La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales. Dworkin, R. (2000) “Equality and Capability”, en Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, pp. 285-303. Forst, R. (2015). Noumenal Power. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 23(2), 111127. Lovett, F. (2010). A General Theory of Domination & Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Maquiavelo, N. (2013), Discursos sobre la primera década de Tito Livio. En Obras, Madrid: Gredos, 245-633. Pettit, P. (1999). Republicanismo: una teoría sobre la libertad y el gobierno. Barcelona: Paidós. Piketty, T. (2019). Capital e ideología. Barcelona: Paidós. Rawls, J. (1979). Teoría de la justicia. México: F.C.E. ____ (1988). The Priority of Right and the Ideas of the Good. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 17(4), 251-276. ____ (1996). El liberalismo político. Barcelona: Crítica. ____ (2002). La justicia como equidad. Una reformulación. Barcelona: Paidós. 203 Limitacionismo rawlsiano Robeyns, I. (2017). Having Too Much. En Jack Knight y Melissa Schwartzberg, Wealth: Nomos LVIII. New York: New York University Press, 1-44. Scanlon, T. (1993). Value, Desire, and Quality of Life. En Martha C. Nussbaum y Amartya Sen (eds.) The Quality of Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press: 1993, 185-200. Sen, A. K. (1992) Inequality Reexamined. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ____ (1999) Development as Freedom. Knopf: New York. Skinner, Q. (2004). La libertad antes del liberalismo. México: Taurus-CIDE. Taylor, Ch. (1977). What is Human Agency? En Mischel Theodore (ed.) The Self. Psychological and Philosophical Issues. Oxford: Basil Balckwerll, 103-135. Trenchard, J. y Gordon, T. (2009). Cato´s Letters, or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects, (1720) Ashland: Library of Alexandria. 205 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 205-213 ISSN: 1825-5167 SHADES OF COMMUNITARIANISM * PIERPAOLO MARRONE Dipartimento di studi umanistici Università di Trieste marrone@units.it ABSTRACT In this paper, I analyse some implications of Rawls’ notion of desert and legitimate expectations in order to show how some communitarian criticism of his individualism can be answered from a quasi-communitarian perspective which can be found in A Theory of Justice. K EYWORDS Rawls, fairness, desert, individuals. A Theory of Justice by John Rawls1 is a work that has profoundly influenced the philosophical debate. As it is well known, Rawls revived the contractualist paradigm, inserting it in the strand of liberal thought. One of the criticisms that have been addressed to Rawlsian contractualism has concerned its individualistic conception,2 often considered one of the central figures of his masterpiece together with a fasci- * I am grateful to the two anonymous referees for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. 1 J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, Revised Edition, 1999, from now cited as TG, followed by the number of the pages in the notes. The bibliography on Rawls is very vast and includes thousands of titles. For a useful approach to understand the first reception of his masterpiece, J.H. Wellbank, D. Snook, D.T. Mason, John Rawls: An Annotated Bibliography, New York, Garland, 1982. Collected reference texts remain N. Daniels (ed.), Reading Rawls: Critical Studies on Rawls’ A Theory of Justice, New York, Basic Books, 1975 and S. Freeman, The Cambridge Companion to Rawls, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003. 2 The first significant analyses of the concept of “individualism” are in A. deTocqueville, De la démocratie en Amerique, Paris, Flammarion, 2010, who considered it one of the negative aspects of American society, as recalled by A. Baier, How Can Individualists Share Responsibility? , in “Political Theory”, 21 (1993), pp. 228-248, who believes that Rawls’ individualism derives from Kant and does not allow to account for the reform of social prejudices, such as racism and sexism, which are usually directed towards forms of inclusiveness and not individualism. 206 PIERPAOLO MARRONE nation for the theory of rational choice, since “The theory of justice is a part, perhaps the most significant part, of the theory of rational choice”.3 It is a criticism advanced above all by communitarian thinkers, who consider the individualistic conception abstract and who instead see the ethical-political subject as the result of social relations and political traditions that constitute them, which in Rawls’ liberalism seem to be completely absent.4 I will try to show how the conception of the individual in Rawls is not individualistic5 and how there is no lack of good reasons for an anti-individualist interpretation of his philosophy. I will do this through an analysis of some passages of A Theory of Justice. The founding intentions of Rawls’ justice as fairness are very clearly delineated, so much so that they involve his entire construction from the very enunciation of the two principles of justice, the principle of equal freedom and the principle of difference which concerns distributive justice. “First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others. Second: social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all.”6 These two principles are lexicographically ordered - the second principle must be subordinate to the first and this is in accord both with Rawls’ idea that parties possess a sense of justice and with the idea that political power is constrained. This means that a restriction of freedom is compatible only with the preservation of freedom, but not with the extension of social welfare or with greater efficiency of institutions. Since the two principles shape all social institutions, the honours and burdens of cooperation must be judged from a foundational perspective, that is, from the perspective of perfect procedural justice7. Perfect procedural justice is the transcendental condition of our TG, p. 15. This idea, which in Rawls takes shape as an insurance theory consequent on the veil of ignorance is much more consistent with a general utilitarian framework, as J.C. Harsanyi, Nonlinear Social Welfare Functions, in “Theory and Decision,” 6 (1975), pp. 311-332, well understood. 4 The reference texts are A. MacIntyre, After Virtue, University of Note Dame Press, 2007; M. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998; C. Taylor, Sources of the Self, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 1989; C. Taylor, A Secular Age, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 2018. For a historical reconstruction see T. Reiner, The Sources of Communitarianism on the American Left: Pluralism, Republicanism, and Participatory Democracy, in History of European Ideas, 37 (2011), pp. 293-303. 5 For A. MacIntyre, After Virtue, cit., pp. 53-89, there is a nexus between individualism, bureaucratization and proceduralism, which lies at the heart of modernity. Rawls by making virtues dependent on feelings also makes them irrelevant to procedural purposes (p. 137). 6 TG, p. 53. M. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, cit., pp. 47-50 disputes the priority of the right over the good, because it makes the moral subject irrelevant; C.E. Baker, Rawls, Equality, and Democracy, in “Philosophy and Social Criticism”, 34 2008), pp. 203-246, believes that Rawls’ is an epistocratic conception of democracy. The suggestion is interesting, but I think it is refuted by the very qualification of justice as fairness. On epistemic democracy see D. Estlund, Democratic Authority, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2007. 7 Of course, this is an ideal condition, as is explicitly stated in TG, p. 320, which is as much a teleology as an archaeology of justice, as is well understood by A. Juarrero, Rawls: Teleology or Perfect Procedural Justice, in “Journal of Social Philosophy”, 26 (1995), pp. 127-138. Procedural justice is 3 207 Shades of Communitarianism judgment of any institution and of any act having social relevance and is the condition of possibility of just institutions and acts in accordance with the two principles. “Thus to see our place in society from the perspective of this position is to see it sub specie aeternitatis: it is to regard the human situation not only from all social but also from all temporal points of view. The perspective of eternity is not a perspective from a certain place beyond the world, nor the point of view of a transcendent being; rather it is a certain form of thought and feeling that rational persons can adopt within the world. And having done so, they can, whatever their generation, bring together into one scheme all individual perspectives and arrive together at regulative principles that can be affirmed by everyone as he lives by them, each from his own standpoint. Purity of heart, if one could attain it, would be to see clearly and to act with grace and self-command from this point of view.”8 The appeal to justice as fairness is nothing more than an appeal to correction according to principle. Since fairness has this corrective dimension, it should be conducted according to something that the one claiming correction possesses. Common sense thinks that this title that legitimizes the claim consists in some quality of the subject expressing it and in some moral quality of them that has been violated. Indeed, “There is a tendency for common sense to suppose that income and wealth, and the good things in life generally, should be distributed according to the moral desert. Justice is happiness according to virtue. While it is recognized that this ideal can never be fully carried out, it is the appropriate conception of distributive justice, at least as a prima facie principle, and society should try to realize it as circumstances permit.”.9 Among the good things in life, there is no doubt that there is the fact of being treated fairly. It is a Kantian suggestion that he who acts justly possesses a title to hope that we may be made worthy of happiness. Justice should the precondition of citizenship in a well-ordered society. M. Walzer, Spheres of Justice, cit., p. 61, considers instead that the membership granted to citizens cannot be subject only to formal conditions. 8 TG, pp. 514. For this reason, too, I do not think that those conciliatory interpretations that trace affinities between Rawls and communitarian thinkers (MacIntyre, Sandel, Taylor, Walzer) through a supposed closeness to Hegel are convincing, as happens in S. Schwarzenbach, Rawls, Hegel, and Communitarianism, in “Political Theory”, 19 (1991), pp. 539-571. C. Taylor, Sources of the Self, cit., pp. 87-90, interprets this procedural condition as an expression of a prudential and individualistic conception of morality. 9 TG, p. 273. Some have argued that the notion of merit is marginal in Rawls, such as S. Scheffler, Boundaries and Allegiances, New York, Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 173-196, but I think they are wrong. The notion of merit is not marginal, rather it is not independent, and it is not independent because it is understandable from the perspective of justice as fairness only in the context of the institutional constructions that derive from the two principles of justice. The treatment of merit signals a tension between retributive and distributive justice according to E. Mills, Scheffler on Rawls, Justice, and Desert, in “Law and Philosophy”, 23 (2004), pp. 261-272; for J. Greenblum, Distributive and Retributive Desert in Rawls, in “Journal of Social Philosophy”, 41 (2010), pp. 169-184, instead, it is the notion of merit within the economy of Rawls’ theory of justice that pushes him to reject traditional retributive theory. For A. MacIntyre, After Virtue, cit., pp. 152-153, moral merit has meaning only within an ethical-political community that fosters its flourishing, which is certainly not the well-ordered society of which Rawls speaks. 208 PIERPAOLO MARRONE imply happiness according to virtue.10 At least prima facie, it seems that the structures that constrain social cooperation in a liberal society should attempt to realise it to the extent that circumstances permit and according to the two principles of justice.11 Justice should represent, according to common sense, the realisation of some merit or should be sensitive to this. Goods should be distributed according to the Aristotelian principle of “to each his own”: this would seem to be the adequate conception of the realization of justice even in our imperfect world. Here is what Rawls thinks about it: “Now justice as fairness rejects this conception. Such a principle would not be chosen in the original position. There seems to be no way of defining the requisite criterion in that situation.”12 Does Rawls mean to say that the application of the principle of giving “to each his own” is impossible? The answer to the question must be positive, since “Moreover, the notion of distribution according to virtue fails to distinguish between the moral desert and legitimate expectations. Thus it is true that as persons and groups take part in just arrangements, they acquire claims on one another defined by the publicly recognized rules.”13 Indeed, we do not expect the justice of a decision whether political or judicial to be graded on the virtue of the subject relative to that decision. A procedure that did so would be wholly inadequate for a society designed around a situation of equality of initial conditions of opportunity (constrained by the original position and by insurance choice, which Rawls says it would be rational to make under those conditions). A distribution of justice according to virtue would therefore violate the conditions of fairness, while people and groups that are part of just arrangements acquire mutual claims determined by publicly recognized norms. 14 T. Pogge, The Kantian Interpretation of Justice as Fairness, in “Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung”, 35 (1981), pp. 47-65, believes that this idea is part of a non-strictist interpretation of Kantian ethics, which would be Rawls’ contribution to the reform of deontologism. For these Kantian presuppositions, M. Sandel, Liberalims and the Limits of Justice, cit., pp. 35-40. 11 In this sense I think that A. Sen’s suggestion, The Idea of Justice, Harvard, Harvard University Press, 2009, pp. 3-27, that Rawls’ represents an “institutional transcendentalism” is correct. Against Sen’s interpretation, see A.S. Laden, Ideals of Justice: Goals vs. Constraints, “Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy,” 16 (2013), pp. 205-219. 12 TG, p. 273. On this issue see the critique of W. Matson, Justice: A Funeral Oration, in Social Philosophy and Policy, 1 (1983), pp. 94-113, who finds the two principles of justice simply incompatible on the basis of a libertarian background theory. A. MacIntyre, After Vitue, cit., pp. 246-252, thinks instead that the two principles delineate a disembodied subject that is not reflected in the political community. 13 TG, p. 273. For a defense of this idea see T. Logar, Rawls’s Rejection of Preinstitutional Desert, in “Acta Analytica”, 28 (2013), pp. 483-494. For a critique see M. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, cit., p. 94, who argues that this would have the consequence of making individual differences contingent and meaningless. 14 V. Bufacchi, Motivating Justice, in Contemporary Political Theory, 4 (2005), 25-41, believes that Rawls’s theory misconciles us with the motivational shortcomings with respect to fairness and impartiality of real political arrangements. The critique is well-founded, but I think it fails to acknowledge the transcendental idea of justice that TG would like to ground. 10 209 Shades of Communitarianism Your legitimate expectations are grounded in fairness in the sense that “A just scheme, then, answers to what men are entitled to; it satisfies their legitimate expectations as founded upon social institutions. But what they are entitled to is not proportional to nor dependent upon their intrinsic worth.”15 Your expectations are legitimate because you by your actions have met what is required by just social institutions. It is these that make the titles you can claim valid. “Surely a person’s moral worth does not vary according to how many offer similar skills, or happen to want what he can produce. No one supposes that when someone’s abilities are less in demand or have deteriorated (as in the case of singers) his moral deservingness undergoes a similar shift. All of this is perfectly obvious and has long been agreed to.”16 These have no existence prior to the implementation of social structures that can recognize them. You are not at all the depositary of claims before there are structures that speak of them and recognize them in their own terms. It is the just political society that grounds any merits just as it grounds what we call civil society. It would be a misunderstanding to interpret this argument as some closeness between justice as fairness and Hobbes’ political philosophy. Hobbes did not distinguish between civil society and the state; rather, he identified them. At the beginning of TG, Rawls himself indicates that Hobbes’ philosophy is not among his sources of inspiration. “For all of its greatness, Hobbes’s Leviathan raises special problems.”17 These sources are Locke, Rousseau, Kant, which simply allow “to present a conception of justice which generalizes and carries to a higher level of abstraction the familiar theory of the social contract.”18 to a higher level of abstraction. Is this minimalism really credible? I think it is not, because what you are within the social contract revisited by Rawls is summed up in a set of negative conditions, which bind TG, p. 273. A. Zaitchik, On Deserving to Deserve, in “Philosophy and Public Affairs”, 6 (1977), pp. 370-388, believes that the correct perspective for this idea of the adherence of merit to just social arrangements is the Aritsotelic one and not the Kantian one. M. Walzer, Spheres of Justice, cit., 259262, believes that “the struggle for recognition” is an essential part of the construction of both personal identity and social movements. This struggle often makes use of the appeal to merit. 16 TG, p. 274. This opens up numerous problems with respect to the legitimacy of taking advantage of one’s natural endowments, as is shown by D. Gauthier, Justice and Natural Endowment: Towards a Critique of Rawls’ Ideological Framework, in “Social Theory and Practice”, 3 (1974), pp. 3-26. Some bioethical implications of Rawls’ theories are sharply discussed by J.S. John, Problems with Theory, Problems with Practice: Wide Reflective Equilibrium and Bioethics, in “South African Journal of Philosophy”, 26 (2007), pp. 204-215. 17 TG, p. 10. M. Secco, Por que não Hobbes? A crítica de John Rawls à Teoria Moral de Hobbes, in “Revista Opinião Filosófica”, 8 (2017), pp. 186-202, accurately reconstructs these reasons, but I think he confuses Rawls’ insurance strategies (veil of ignorance, maximin) with moral options. A. MacIntyre, After Virtue, cit., pp. 250-251, places Hobbes within the affair leading to modern individualism, of which Rawls is an exponent. 18 TG, p. 10. For an entirely different use of Locke see R. Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, New York, Basics Books, 1974. R. Oxenberg, Locke and the Right to (Acquire) Property: A Lockean Argument for the Rawlsian Difference Principle, in Social Philosophy Today, 26 (2010, pp. 55-66, argues instead for a proximity justified by the common idea of property acquisition within the constraints established by the social contract. 15 210 PIERPAOLO MARRONE precise normative contents. These negative conditions are summarized by the fact that a selfish decision-maker, i.e., a free rider, is not contemplated among the decision-makers who can legitimately shape the cooperative complex, because in order to decide as a free rider you must know that you are different from others, you must have an autobiography that is not available for the definite description of anyone else but you, i.e., you must possess a proper name, since “neither principle applies to distributions of particular goods to particular individuals who may be identified by their proper names.” 19 Egoism is not, therefore, excluded from the initial conditions of choice as a generator of logical and practical paradoxes. Egoism is not irrational: instead, it is the possibility inherent in the proper name, which must be excluded from the initial conditions of choice, generating, at least sub specie aeternitatis, perfect procedural justice. Perfect procedural justice is not, however, a utopia. It would be a misunderstanding to understand it that way. It is the transcendental condition of our very possibility of constructing and experiencing what is just. It is as much a condition of possibility for just social arrangements as it is a criterion for judging our empirical social condition. For this reason, “The essential point is that the concept of moral worth does not provide a first principle of distributive justice. This is because it cannot be introduced until after the principles of justice and of natural duty and obligation have been acknowledged. Once these principles are in hand, the moral worth can be defined as having a sense of justice”. 20 So what can you legitimately claim just for you from the standpoint of justice as fairness? Nothing, because to do so you would still have to start by saying “I”, since it must be you who subscribes to your claim and not someone else. “The virtues can be characterized as desires or tendencies to act upon the corresponding principles. Thus the concept of moral worth is secondary to those of right and justice, and it plays no role in the substantive definition of distributive shares.”21 They refer precisely to your autobiography and presuppose your proper name. The inclinations and desires are, in fact, part of who you are and what you have now become, and these are reasons to state that the concept of moral value plays no role in the substantive determination of distributive shares.22 In short: right is superordinate to good, which TG, p. 56. G. Gutting, Can Philosophical Beliefs Be Rationally Justified, in American Philosophical Quarterly, 19 (1982), pp. 315-330, originally juxtaposes rigid designator theory and Rawlsian theory. 20 TG, p. 275. G.B. Thomas, On Choosing Morality, in Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 5 (1975), pp. 357-374, points out an inconsistency between this exclusion of egoism and the idea that it is individuals who choose in the original position. I do not think the criticism is correct since Rawls speaks not simply of individuals, but of representative individuals. 21 TG, p. 275. B. Puri, Finding Reasons for Being Reasonable: Interrogating Rawls, in “Sophia,” 54 (2015), pp. 117-141, extends this inclination to the same conditions of reasonableness as the two principles. 22 This relegates the role of moral psychology to the background. For a partially different opinion, however, see I. Ottonello, L’oggetto del desiderio conteso fra Darwall e Rawls, in “Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics”, 14 (2012), pp. 323-343. 19 211 Shades of Communitarianism remains an overly inclusive and essentially ambiguous concept. “The case is analogous to the relation between the substantive rules of property and the law of robbery and theft. These offences and the demerits they entail presuppose the institution of property which is established for prior and independent social ends.” 23 The institution of private property, in fact, is not made to punish thieves but derives from reasons that are independent of the possibility of punishment and punishment. The idea of perfect procedural justice is not designed to reward moral merit and virtue and is, on the contrary, the condition of impossibility of rewarding virtue and moral merit. One might object that these are considerations that are diluted by others that appear in Rawls. Consider the apparent truism enunciated by Rawls: “In a wellordered society individuals acquire claims to a share of the social product by doing certain things encouraged by the existing arrangements. The legitimate expectations that arise are the other side, so to speak, of the principle of fairness and the natural duty of justice.”24 Nothing less unproblematic, it would seem. But even this flat phrase is not entirely innocent. Rawls is again arguing that if you deserve something it is because you are adequate to the form of the well-ordered society. Otherwise, if there were no well-ordered society your merit would have no chance of being recognized and would not even exist. What you can claim only makes sense within a scheme that is certainly not your product. On the contrary: it is you, as a citizen of a society conforming to the concept of a well-ordered society, who are a product of it. Indeed, if legitimate expectations are the other side of the principle of equity and the natural duty of justice “For in the way that one has a duty to uphold just arrangements, and an obligation to do one’s part when one has accepted a position in them, so a person who has complied with the scheme and done his share has a right to be treated accordingly by others. They are bound to meet his legitimate expectations. Thus when just economic arrangements exist, the claims of individuals are properly settled by reference to the rules and precepts (with their respective weights) which these practices take as relevant.”25 Acceptance of a particular just arrangement is not so much a voluntary act as it is the product of your cooperative rationality and is your valid title to citizenship. But then is there any distinction between holding a valid title to something and deserving it? To explain this distinction, its “familiar TG, p. 275. For an interesting extension of these issues in the field of environmental ethics, E. Reitan, Private Property Rights, Moral Extensionism and the Wise-Use Movement: A Rawlsian Analysis, in “Environmental Values”, 13 (2004), pp. 329-347. 24 TG, p. 275. How coherent the notion of a well-ordered society is investigated by H. Chung, The Instability of John Rawls’s ‘Stability for the Right Reasons’, in “Episteme”, 16 (2019), pp. 1-17, from 23 the perspective of game and decision theory, which to me seems inadequate to the complexity of Rawls’s theory. 25 On the idea of natural duty in Rawls see T. Belknap, Examining a Natural Duty of Justice and Its Implications, in “Dialogue”, 61 (2019), pp. 119-124. 212 PIERPAOLO MARRONE although nonmoral sense”26, Rawls elaborates on an example. Let us imagine that we have witnessed a sports match between two teams. We think that the losing team nevertheless deserved to win.27 The losing team exhibited the full repertoire of sporting practices required by the degree of excellence of that sport and if it lost it was because of unforeseeable contingencies, it remained deserving of winning. From the standpoint of valid title to claim the prize required by winning the race, it can claim nothing. Rawls’ example is illuminating in what it suggests. Similarly to the sporting example, even the best economic and legal arrangements will not always lead to optimal results. One understands well, then, the conclusion to which one wishes to arrive. You should perhaps have won. You had the qualifications and you had been recognised as having the ability to do so. However, you lost within the rules of the tournament in which you were participating and without violating anyone’s title. What can you really complain about? Bad luck, perhaps? But bad luck cannot of course be blamed on just social arrangements. These may provide correction and compensation mechanisms for just such cases, but the motivation for putting them in place is not the asymptotic approximation to fairness, but the stability of the social complex. So, you have no reason to complain in the very terms of the social agreement that, at least from a transcendental point of view, you would have signed. The only claim you could make would be in the terms of the social arrangement that recognizes you as a citizen of a just society. The moment you put forward an argument based on your moral merit you would place yourself outside the sphere of justice as fairness because you would introduce as a relevant element of considerations of justice that proper name which is completely irrelevant in the construction and design of just social arrangements28. Hence, “Its bearing here is that although we can indeed distinguish between the claims that existing arrangements require us to honor, given what individuals have done and how things have turned out, and the claims that would have resulted under more ideal circumstances, none of this implies that distributive shares should be in accordance with moral worth. Even when things happen in the best way, there is still no tendency for distribution and virtue to coincide.”29 One might think that this is only about distributive justice, but, even leaving aside the problem of merit pay, Rawls suggests that this is not the case and that to say so would lead us towards a strongly limiting TG, p. 276. M. Matravers, Legitimate Expectations in Theory, Practice, and Punishment, Moral Philosophy and Politics, 4 (2017), pp. 307-323, extends the idea of legitimate expectations to the 26 theory of punishment. This strategy would result in not having to resort to the equivocal idea of deterrence and would enhance the autonomy of moral subjects. 27 This is precisely an intuitionist move, as noted by C. Taylor, Sources of the Self, cit., p. 76. 28 D. Goya-Trochetto, M. Echols, J. Wright, The Lottery of Life and Moral Desert: An Empirical Investigation, in Philosophical Psychology, 29 (2016), pp. 1112-1127, present some important empirical evidence supporting this Rawlsian idea. 29 TG, p. 276. This is not necessarily a denial of personal autonomy, as is well pointed out by T. Logar, Rawls’s Rejection of Preinstitutional Desert, in “Acta Analytica”, 28 (2013), pp. 483-494. 213 Shades of Communitarianism view of justice as fairness, so much so that “ In a well-ordered society there would be no need for the penal law except insofar as the assurance problem made it necessary. The question of criminal justice belongs for the most part to partial compliance theory, whereas the account of distributive shares belongs to strict compliance theory and so to the consideration of the ideal scheme. To think of distributive and retributive justice as converses of one another is completely misleading and suggests a different justification for distributive shares than the one they in fact have.”30. So what can you sensibly claim from the perspective of perfect procedural justice? Actually, nothing, since there would be no wrongs to right and no social positions to compensate for, since the unequal social position is simply motivated by attracting talent to professional positions where they are most needed. Equity is already built into the original position from the beginning, and it is so from the very perspective of denying the importance of the proper name. It becomes, therefore, nonsense to make demands for corrections based on what a person really is, subsequent to the contractualist move, which was designed precisely to avoid them. So, the conclusion that, as I see it, must be drawn from this discussion is that Rawls does not make the distinction between persons seriously, which is precisely the critique he addressed to utilitarianism (“Utilitarianism does not take seriously the distinction between persons.”)31. This is certainly not because Rawls is an individualist, but precisely because he is not. TG, p. 277. This is the criticism of R.M. Hare, Rawls’ Theory of Justice, in Philosophical Quarterly, 23 (1973), pp. 241-252. J. Lucas, On Justice, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1980, believes that there is no reason why even under conditions of informational deprivation subjects should not make risky calculations and therefore sees no reason to adopt Rawls’ insurance strategy. 31 TG, p. 24. M. Zwolinski, The Separateness of Persons and Liberal Theory, in Journal of Value Inquiry, 42 (2008), pp. 147-165, notes that the need to presuppose the separation of persons is necessary in Nozick’s libertarianism, but not in Rawls’ liberalism. 30 215 Symposium I Joel Colón-Ríos, Constituent Power and the Law, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2020 216 217 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 217-231 ISSN: 1825-5167 ON CONSTITUENT POWER AND THE LAW BY JOEL COLON-RÍOS ROBERTO GARGARELLA Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) Argentina Roberto.gargarella@gmail.com ABSTRACT This is a review of Joel Colon Ríos’ book “Constituent Power and the Law”. The review considers Colon Ríos’ book as the most important contribution so far examining the theory of constituent power, the doctrinal discussions around the subject, and the legal implications of the theory. The review examines some problems that are present in the book, related to (what it calls) the problem of “mediation” (who takes the place of “the people,” in actual practice?); the problem of “interpretation” (who interprets the “will of the people”, in actual practice?) and the problem of “historic abstinence” (which suggest exploring the theoretical discussion on the notion of constituent power in light of the political and social context where those discussions emerged). K EYWORDS Constituent Power, Colon Ríos, Democracy, Imperative Mandate, Referendum, Constitution, Constitutional Assembly INTRODUCTION Since the moment of its publication, Constituent Power and the Law, by Colon Ríos Colon Ríos, became a must read for legal scholars and social scientists in general. Colon Ríos’ work examines “the legal and institutional implications of the theory of constituent power” (1) and offers an exhaustive tour de force around the most important and influential ideas on the matter. All relevant authors who wrote on constituent power find a place in the book, and are the subject of careful scrutiny: Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emmanuel Sieyes, Donoso Cortés, Jovellanos, Juan Germán Roscio, Miguel Antonio Caro, Carré de Malberg, Carl Friedrich, Sánchez Agesta, A.V.Dicey, Maurice Hauriou, Hermann Heller, Hans Kelsen, Constantino Mortati, Georg Jellinek, Carl Schmitt, Ernst Bockenforde, among many others. Writings and speeches; legal doctrinaires and political activists; judicial sentences and political decisions: everything is included in Constituent Power and the Law. Colon Ríos scanned the whole history of our legal discussions and found a way to incorporate it all in his book. Despite the scale of the task undertaken, the author is able to fulfil its promises and enrich the readers without suffocating them. 218 ROBERTO GARGARELLA Constituent Power and the Law is a wonderful -admirable in fact- exercise of academic erudition. A GENERAL (CRITICAL) APPROACH TO THE BOOK Colon Ríos’ book is primary an exploration of “the place of the concept of constituent power in constitutional history and in the history of constitutional thought” (296). But his project transcends the careful dissection of arguments and ideas. The author also wants to get involved in our contemporary doctrinal and political debates about constituent powers and the law. Colon Ríos studies those discussions, exploring “their connections with, and relevance for, current constitutional practices” (2-3). He intervenes in present political discussions showing the way in which some relevant arguments from the past influence our present legal debates and demonstrating the relevance that old institutional proposals (i.e., imperative mandates) have for understanding present institutional changes and initiatives. In addition to this, Colon Ríos advances his own ideas concerning how the notion of constituent power could be understood, defined and limited. I personally have little to say about Colon Ríos’ erudite exercise, beyond certain minor disagreements regarding how to read the place of this or that institution (i.e., imperative mandates, referendums, the right to recall) in the context of modern political thought and present political practice. Given the large agreements I share with the author, in what follows, I will mainly focus my attention on Colon Ríos’ dialogue with contemporary doctrines and politics. In do doing, I shall pay particular attention to the arguments he uses in support of his views, which in many occasions I find fragile. Let me anticipate what my main concerns are, regarding Colon Ríos’ argumentations. To begin with, in occasions, I find that the positions he maintains look more like statements than as arguments, while in other occasions, they appear as arguments in need of additional support. For instance, in some circumstances, Colon Ríos presents the views he supports as if they were justified just because of their genealogy or their reputable origins (i.e., because they have been supported or advanced by solid thinkers, like Rousseau). In other cases, support for a certain initiative appears to derive from the authoritative support that it occasionally received, i.e., from the Venezuelan or Colombian Court. And this, despite the fact that the initiatives in question lost all or almost all the support they had once received, throughout the history of modern political thought (which does not imply that the views in question are wrong, but suggests that we need to make additional and renewed justificatory efforts in order to defend them nowadays). There are other, more specific and relatively minor problems that I find, repeatedly, in his book, in relation to the normative and institutional views that 219 On Constituent Power and the Law by Joel Colón-Ríos Colon Ríos maintain. Although I will explore a few of these difficulties, I shall mainly focus my attention on two of them: On the one hand, on what I shall call the problem of “mediation”, and on the other, the problem of “interpretation”. By a problem of “mediation” I shall refer to a difficulty that appears when, in actual practice, we delegate to a specific organ or individual or group of individuals the task that, in theory, we reserve for an abstract entity such as "the people" or "the community." The problem at stake becomes clear when we unveil the fact that, in actual practice, it is not “We the People” the one who acts or decides but, in fact, an individual or an entity (with its own interests and biases), who claims to be deciding or acting in the people’s name.1 Possibly, the origin of these difficulties lies in the “analytical mystery” or the “theoretical fog” that usually surrounds the concept of “the people”: Who can say, when, and according to what titles, that his own voice expresses the actual voice of the people (instead of simply taking its place, in order to take advantage of such a situation)? Think, for example, about the situation in which “the electorate”, or perhaps their political representatives claim to speak on behalf of the “sovereign people” in order to ratify or not the Constitution that was written by a constituent assembly.2 Where is “the (real)will of the people” in those circumstances? Who offers the best expression of the voice of “We the People”? The electorate? Their representatives? The constituent assembly? The electorate, but only when it speaks after the President called for a referendum? All of them, in different ways? Or think -perhaps more dramatically- about a situation where the President writes the content of a proposition to be voted by the electorate in a Jon Elster, for example, confronted a problem of the kind in his book Ulysses Unbound (Cambridge U.P. 2000), where he abandoned his initial approach to constitution-making, based on the myth of Ulysses. Elster had examined the myth of Ulysses in his book Ulysses and the Sirens (Cambridge U.P. 1979), where he presented the writing of a constitution as an act of precommitment, comparable to Ulysses’ strategy of self-binding. The idea was that, by writing a constitution, “the people” (meaning the entire population, the whole community) tie their hands to the “mast” of the constitution, in the same way that Ulysses had done, in order to resist the bewitching songs of the sirens. Twenty years later, Elster abandoned this parallelism, after recognizing that “In politics, people never try to bind themselves, only to bind others” (Elster 2000, ix). The decision to abandon Ulysses’ example is, in my view, a consequence of recognizing what I called the problem of “mediation”. 2 In this example, things become extremely complicated, as a result of what I shall examine as the problem of “democratic extortion”. In such a situation, voters are forced to support something they repudiate, in order to get something that they intensely want. Imagine, for instance, that we were invited to ratify Bolivia’s last Constitution, which comprises 411 articles. Imagine, too, that, in such circumstance, millions of us profoundly agreed with the introduction of new indigenous rights in the Constitution, while profoundly disagreed with just one article of the Constitution, namely the one that authorized a new Presidential reelection. In order to get what we most wanted -indigenous rights- we finally decided to ratify the Constitution, thus accepting, also, what we repudiated the most presidential reelection. Now: in what sense could someone claim that this popularly ratified Constitution “expressed” -in a reasonable, acceptable, proper manner- the “will of the Sovereign”? Why would it be so, when the Constitution includes, at its core, what we repudiate the most? Finally -I submit- these are the problems derived from “mediated” situations, where “We the People” actually lack any real possibility to discuss and decide about our own destiny. 1 220 ROBERTO GARGARELLA referendum. Shouldn’t we expect, in such a situation, that the President used that opportunity to channel and advance his/her own interests, rather than “the will of the People”? All these different problems emerge from an initial difficulty: we want “We the People” to speak -and we want to hear it- but we cannot precisely define who is authorized to speak on behalf of the people, in actual practice, in specific circumstances. Then, all our “mediation” problems surface. The problem of “interpretation” has a structure similar to the problem of “mediation”. In any case, while the issue of “mediation” tends to appear in relation to the actions of the political branches, the problem of “interpretation” is usually (although not necessarily) associated with the actions of courts. In addition, while the problem of “mediation” refers to the initiatives of a specific person or institution (say, the President) acting in the name of the people (i.e., the President writing a proposal to be considered in a referendum), the problem of “interpretation” tends to emerge when a decision made by (or, more precisely, attributed to) “the people” is reconstructed (say, by a certain institution) in a specific way or becomes translated into specific policies. Typically, the problem under examination appears after an election, or a plebiscite, or a referendum, or any other instance of popular consultation. In such circumstances, it may happen that a particular official or institution intends to "read" the message expressed by "We the People", assuming that it is in a position to "decipher" that message in a way that is not obvious to the rest and granting itself the authority to do so on our behalf. Finally, by the end of my review, I shall refer to a different problem, which I find particularly relevant in the context of Colon Ríos’ book. This is what I shall call the problem of “historic abstinence.” This problem appears, in the context of the book I am exploring, when the author refers to a certain political and judicial decision without making any reference -without providing us with any additional informationabout the specific political context where those statements or arguments appeared. I understand that, for legal scholars, nothing is more important than the (abstract) arguments that judges or politicians present in their respective public forum. However, and particularly in relation to the kind of facts that are examined in this book -instances of constitutional creation; constitutional reform; etc.- references to the political context are particularly important. If we accept the idea that most constitutions are written in time of crisis,3 then it becomes apparent that we need to pay attention to the particular circumstances in which constitutional ideas are formulated (particularly so in the fragile institutional contexts that are frequently examined in Colon Ríos’s book). In those conditions, it may well happen that seemingly abstract and sound arguments result, in the end, simply a façade of what is in fact a mere exercise of arbitrary power. Thus, according to Jon Elster “constitutions almost always are written in the wake of a crisis or exceptional circumstances”, see Jon Elster (1995) “Forces and Mechanisms in the ConstitutionMaking Process, 45 Duke Law Journal 364-396. 3 221 On Constituent Power and the Law by Joel Colón-Ríos Let me make one final clarification, before presenting my comments. I understand that many of the observations that I am going to suggest about Colon Ríos’ work are directly related to my own academic biases. I recognize that, due to my training and my interests, I may demand the author about details and arguments that -perhaps- he simply decided to put aside, in his book, because they were not related to his project. My training is analytical and, therefore, I will repeatedly ask him conceptual clarifications. Likewise, I recognize that some demands that I am going to make depend on theoretical assumptions that Colon Ríos may reject. For example, I defend a (modest) "methodological individualism" that will lead me to ask him, repeatedly, about the way in which he defines the ideas of "people" or "sovereign" (i.e., who, specifically, are part of the people, and how do we know it, and how do we identify them?). For similar reasons, I will be interested in knowing more about "motivational" issues, related to the social mechanisms (the "nuts and bolts") that are described in the book: I am always curious about the microdevelopment of social processes (how do we go “from here to there”?).4 As can be seen, many of the questions and observations that I will make depend directly on my own line of research, which may simply be outside the interests of the author. In that case, I have only to apologize for inciting the author to distract himself from his own project. IMPERATIVE MANDATE, REFERENDUMS CONSTITUENT POWER AND Let me begin this exploration by just saying a few words about Colon Ríos’s analysis of the imperative mandate and constituent referendums, which play a central role in the author’s whole analysis. The institution of imperative mandate has an ancient and noble origin. It has been the object of profound and extremely influential political discussions. The imperative mandate was, for instance, at the center of the debate between Edmund Burke and Henry Crueger in Bristol 1774; it occupied a prominent place among the institutional proposals presented by the British Radicals during the 17h and 18th Century (we can find traces of it in the writings and speeches of James Burgh, Joseph Priestley and John Cartwrigth, among many others); and it played a crucial role in the constitutional debates developed during the “founding period” in the US, thanks to the work of so-called AntiFederalists activists. Personally, I am and have always been an enthusiastic advocate of the imperative mandate and similar participatory mechanisms, such as the right to recall, mandatory rotation, annual elections, popular initiatives, etc. Unfortunately, these kinds of proposals lost the prominent place they had achieved See, for instance, Jon Elster (2015), Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 4 222 ROBERTO GARGARELLA at one point of history and became either repudiated or forgotten within modern political discourse. Those who were promoting the right to write instructions/imperative mandates (Crueger, the Anti-Federalists) “lost” the political battles they were fighting at their time. As a consequence, still today -as Colon Ríos properly recognizes- there are many constitutions that explicitly reject or prohibit the imperative mandate, and there are many constitutional scholars that consider it a totally unattractive proposal (i.e., like Cass Sunstein, who examines the right to write instructions from the perspective of a deliberative democracy).5 In spite of all those defeats, rejections and prohibitions, I still find the imperative mandate, and similar institutional devices, attractive. But, at this point of history, we cannot just assume that it is an acceptable, clear, useful and -most of all- justified mechanism, because -say- we find Rousseau’s views on the matter more persuasive than Sieyes’ positions; or because a certain Constitutional Court came to support it in the way we find appropriate. We cannot ignore such history of political defeats, and the existence of almost three Centuries of arguments showing the implausibility of the instruments that we favor. We cannot just content ourselves by showing that there are some relevant connections between, say, the imperative mandate and the constituent power; or point to the existence of some new constitutions that now rescue the imperative mandate from its ostracism. Rather, we must show why, in spite of the important arguments posed against the imperative mandate during Centuries, the institution would still be defensible nowadays. In addition, we should demonstrate why -given our present knowledge of history and politics- those kinds of political instruments represent -still today- proper means for the political purposes we favor (say, make the will of the people manifest), and also means that are preferable to other alternatives (say, alternative dialogic devices). Colon Ríos studies Rousseau’s defense of the imperative mandate (Chapter 2); presents the views of authors, such as Sieyes, who rejected that institution, which they found potentially threatening of the constitutional order (i.e., in Chapters 4 and 5); and establishes some connections between the imperative mandate and certain actual constitutional practices where, for instance, an extra-constitutional assembly is authorized by referendum (Chapter 10). However, after reading the book, it does not become clear why an institution that had been rejected, by so many and for so long - an institution that had virtually disappeared from political discourse for more than a century - now deserves to re-occupy the center of the constitutional scene. Similarly, it is not clear what could justify the imperative mandate today, when it appeared to be unjustified yesterday. Let us assume the case - perfectly understandable - that Colon Ríos is not interested in dedicating his book primarily to questions of philosophical justification. That is totally fine. But how do we determine then what are the scope and limits of what can be done, through the See, for instance, Cass Sunstein (1993), The Partial Constitution, Cambridge: Harvard U.P., chapter 1. 5 223 On Constituent Power and the Law by Joel Colón-Ríos imperative mandate, in the name of the will of the people? And, on the basis of what could we later say that the electorate is authorized to order the "total reform" of the Constitution, in some cases but not in others? And on what bases could we affirm, a few pages later, that the electorate’s mandate expresses the voice of the sovereign in certain situations, but not in others? The answer cannot be -say- ‘that's how Rousseau thought about it’ or ‘that's how Schmitt defined it’? Nor can the answer be that ‘this is what the Constitutional Court of Colombia determined (in some cases, but not in others).’ In short, on many occasions (such as the one illustrated by the case of the imperative mandate) the book can leave a curious and friendly reader, with serious doubts about the ultimate foundations of what is stated in its pages. REFERENDUMS AND THE CONSTITUENT MECHANISM FOR THE EXERCISE OF CONSTITUENT POWER ASSEMBLY AS A THE ORIGINARY Let me now explore Colon Ríos’ approach to constituent assemblies, and the way he analyses their nature, their scope and limits. Examining the case of the Constitutional Assembly in Venezuela, 1999, Colon Ríos recalls his “analysis in Chapter 9” where he “suggests” that “it is true that the assembly is not the originary constituent power,” and that “such a power lies with the people”, but not -as the Supreme Court of Justice in Venezuela maintained- that the assembly is “a derived constituent power…at least not if such a characterization is understood as necessarily involving a limited constitution-making jurisdiction” (284). For Colon Ríos, the assembly “should instead be understood as a mechanism for the exercise of the originary constituent power of the people, as a means that is used for the exercise of that power in the absence of a better alternative” (ibid.). Moreover, Colon Ríos declares, rather than defends, the idea that “in the absence of any specific limits that can be derived from a referendum question” the assembly would, at the very least, “be bound by two limits that are inherent in a commission to draft a constitution on behalf of the sovereign: the assembly has to actually draft a constitution…and respect the identity of the constituent subject (i.e., it cannot transform itself into a sovereign entity)” (243). This is why, for instance, he objects to the assembly’s decision to attribute to itself a “general legislative power” and -worse of all- to continue in session, instead of dissolving itself, after the constitution was popularly ratified on 15 December 1999 -all of which was later ratified by the highest Venezuelan Court (286, we shall come back to this case later).6 He claims: “To describe the assembly as ‘sovereign’ as the sovereign of the people itself, and therefore as not subject to the separation of powers” –he concludes- “would be inaccurate” (244). An assembly that violated the established separation of powers (by acting in an executive, ordinary legislative, or judicial capacity) would be “acting ultra vires the real sovereign…ultra vires the 6 224 ROBERTO GARGARELLA I tend to agree with most of Colon Ríos’s conclusions in this respect, but the arguments and premises from which he derives these conclusions are still unclear to me. If we go back to the Chapter 9, to which he refers, and look for the specific reasons that he offers in support of his views, what we find are some statements he makes while commenting Carl Schmitt’s views on the matter. But, of course, it is not clear that we have reasons to adhere to either Schmitt’s views or Colon Ríos’s statements in that respect, even though we may find them, at least in principle, sound: we are looking for the reasons that may help us dissipate certain important objections. In addition, I find many problems in what Colon Ríos presents as rather apparent conclusions –problems that suggest that Colon Ríos is not presenting a pristine, logic or merely obvious conclusion, but rather making reasonable, for me attractive, but still controversial and problematic claims. To begin with a minor point: I do not clearly understand his reference to the “two limits” that “at the very least” would be inherent in a commission to write a constitution on behalf of the sovereign. I don’t clearly understand why those two are the most fundamental limits faced by an assembly. Imagine, for example, that, given the difficult political circumstances that we are confronting (say, problems with federalism, social crisis, financial crisis, etc.) we -the members of the constitutional commission- decide not to write a constitution, but rather something like the US 1777 “Articles of the Confederation.” This document would help the different states to stay together and define certain basic principles of our institutional organization. Unfortunately, however, our text is not yet a Constitution. Like the “Articles of the Confederation,” the document would leave (too) many issues undecided, perhaps because we properly recognized that it would be impossible for us, in these circumstances, to reach a more substantive agreement. The outcome seems clear: contrary to the mandate that we received, we did not write a Constitution! Now, could someone reproach what we have done, telling us that we have failed to comply with our mandate? -we dishonored the “sovereign will”? I am not sure. We did less than required, rather than more; we did not exceed our mandate; nobody can seriously say that we “usurped” the “will of the people” that we were supposed to develop. We can say something similar about the second “limit” mentioned by Colon Ríos’ in his analysis, namely “respect the identity of the constituent subject (i.e., it cannot transform itself into a sovereign entity).” Let me illustrate my objection by using another example taken from US constitutionalism. As we know, the Federal Convention that finally wrote the US 1787 Constitution was not supposed to write a Constitution. That was not its mission! (in that sense, it did not respect its commission that authorized its exercise in the first place” (ibid.). Colon Ríos concludes his analysis by saying that “as a matter of principle, the use of the concept of constituent power of the people to attribute sovereign jurisdiction to a constitution making body in violation of a popularly ratified constituent mandate, lacks justification” (289). 225 On Constituent Power and the Law by Joel Colón-Ríos “identity”). Its original mission was to create a new government and revise the “Articles of Confederation”. The fact is, however, that the Federal Convention did much more than that, and wrote an extremely important and influential Constitution. But, again: Could someone claim that the Convention “usurped” the “will of the people” or exceeded its mission in a reprehensible way, even when it “changed” its identity? (In what sense it would obvious that “We the People” demanded, at that very moment, and in those circumstances, a Constitution, rather than a softer federal agreement?) In sum, through these comments, I just wanted to suggest some counter-intuitive implications that I found in Colon Ríos’ reference to the “two limits” of the commission. The purpose was, simply, to reinforce a larger point, namely, that in occasions it is difficult to find what the justifications are, for the claims and conclusions that the author proposes. Let me now refer to the problems of “mediation” and “interpretation” that I mentioned at the beginning of this review. Think, for example, about cases like the following. Fearing his/her loss of power, the President rushes to call a constitutional referendum, invoking the "will of the people." However -and, in order to preserve his/her own powers- the President writes the referendum’s proposal in a peculiar way: he/she invites us (“We the People”) to change the Constitution, but only in certain parts, which do not affect or undermine any of his/her capacities (i.e., the President invites us to change the Bill of Rights, but not the organization of power). Or think about this other example, perhaps more common than the previous one. The President ambitions to expand her power, beyond what the Constitution authorizes, so she organizes a referendum, invoking the will of the people, to extend her mandate beyond that constitutional limitation. Or, even more seriously, think about the following example (an instance of what I call a “democratic extortion”): The President organizes a referendum where he proposes a reform that many citizens resist (authorize his own re-election), along with other change (s) that many people demand (i.e., more rights to political participation). In this (rather common) situation, we are forced to vote against our will, in order to make another decision that we favor, possible. In all these cases, a common problem appears- the problem of "mediation." Here, the President assumes him/herself as a "mediator" of a will that it is not his/her own, and uses his/her power in a way that undermines, rather than help express, the will of the sovereign. Obviously, the problem is exacerbated when a “mediating” body such as the Supreme Court claims the ability to pronounce the "last" word or its right to “decipher” the "true" will of the people. In this case, we face what I called the problem of "interpretation" (I will explore this problem below, in connection to the issue of judicial review). Let me simply add a final comment in this regard: Many of the problems that were examined here -I submit- have their ultimate origin elsewhere (I mean, not in the difficulty to specify what the notion of "constituent power" actually means), 226 ROBERTO GARGARELLA namely, in the difficulty that “We the People” find, here and now, to think, discuss and decide collectively about our own affairs. This is the product, I believe, of the obstacles that are present in most of our institutional systems, which make our collective conversation virtually impossible. This is the product, too, of the lack of incentives we have, to make that discussion possible. In any case - in the context of this review -I will not examine these issues (which are central in my own research) in more detail.7 JUDICIAL REVIEW AND CONSTITUENT POWER In the important section IV of Chapter 10 of his book, Colon Ríos deals with a relevant problem that has attracted lots of academic attention in recent years, namely the problem of constituent power and judicial review. Colon Ríos starts his analysis by making reference to a controversial decision by the Colombian Court, through which the court “sanctioned the convocation of an extraordinary constitution-making body in direct violation of the constitution’s amendments rule” (289). In that opportunity, the court justified a departure from established constitutional law by relying on the concept of constituent power. The court showed that the peculiar mechanism that was then chosen –a constituent assembly convened by referendum- represented “a legitimate means for constituent activity”. The Colombian Court (like the Venezuelan main Court) “emphasized the democratic/participatory character of the process at issue, particularly when compared with the established rules of change, which left the amending power in the exclusive hands of legislative supermajorities” (290). Colon Ríos also examines other difficult situations, where courts try to find a solution to (and these are the words of the Colombian Court) “the tensions between the sovereign people and constitutional supremacy” (ibid.). In some of these cases –Colon Ríos tells us- the notion of constituent power appears “as a juridical principle that, although not part of positive law…allows courts to determine what acts should be attributed with legal validity” (ibid.). Under this approach –he claims- “the more a constitution-making process realizes what in Chapter 5 was identified as the principle of participation, the more open a court would be to sanction a violation of the constitution’s rule of change” (ibid.). Now, what are Colon Ríos’s ground to reach those conclusions? In page 291, for example, Colon Ríos admits that his previous reasoning “rests on the assumption that in a system where judge have among their functions the limiting of political power with the purpose of protecting the constitutional order…courts should be understood as having jurisdiction to regulate in some way the exercise of constituent I have studied this issue, in particular, in my book Law as a Conversation Among Equals (Cambridge University Press, 2022). 7 227 On Constituent Power and the Law by Joel Colón-Ríos authority” (291). According to this perspective, he suggests, “courts could also intervene where a lawfully or unlawfully convened constitution-making body attempts to go beyond the conditions that arise from a constituent referendum” (ibid.). “In so doing” -he concludes- “the court would not be limiting the constituent subject but rather protecting it; making sure its mandate has been respected” (292). One condition –he adds- is that the court exercise this power “with great care”, with deference to the constitution-making body and only “in rare situations”, because “the purpose is not to negate a constitution-making body’s jurisdiction to alter the material constitution but to ensure that it abides by any substantive limits contained in a referendum question” (ibid.). I find many problems in Colon Ríos’s approach to judicial review and the constituent power -this, in spite of the many limitations and cautions that he presents in this regard. Again, the main difficulties that I find have to do with issues of “mediation” and “interpretation”. Here, in addition, I shall refer to a different problem, which I shall call the problem of (judicial) motivation. With regard to the issues of “mediation” and “interpretation”, my view should be clear at this point. In principle, the idea of having an “external control” directed at “protecting” rather than “limiting the constituent subject” sounds fine and reasonable. But it is far from clear whom should be in charge of this task and for what reasons, and how and when this immense and threatening power should be exercised. We should never forget that we are dealing with one of the most important and potentially dangerous public powers -the power to establish a new constitution. Consequently, the one who gets the “final say” or, for this case, the “decisive word” on the matter, gains an extraordinary authority (recall the example of the Colombian Courts saying in some -controversial- cases “yes” and in other also controversial- cases “no” to the constitutions-making body). Taking into consideration the unfinished, complicated discussions we had on judicial review and the counter-majoritarian difficulty, in the last 200 years, I would resist transferring or recognizing those powers to the courts. Particularly so considering the interpretative problems we have for “deciphering” the messages of the constitutionmaking body: unfortunately, after two centuries of discussion about interpretive theories, we are still a long way from having widespread agreement on the subject. The problem we face becomes even larger and more difficult to solve when we take into account the “fact of disagreement” that characterizes the life of our contemporary, multicultural societies (Waldron 1999). As anticipated, through his analysis of judicial review, Colon Ríos offers quite precise recommendations about the tasks that judges must assume in these circumstances. For instance, he recommends courts to exercise their functions with great care, only rarely, with deference, and also -he adds- “with attention to the entire nature of the constitution-making process at issue” (292). This special attention may require judges, in some cases, to offer, as its “best course of action”, “a judicial 228 ROBERTO GARGARELLA indication that a new referendum should take place” (293). As usual, I tend to sympathize with Colon Ríos’s suggestions on the matter. However, I have many doubts about his views -particularly, considering the institutional relevance of the judicial responsibilities that we are thinking about. Many of my doubts are related to what I call a problem of “judicial motivation.” The point is: Why, given present, normal conditions, would we expect judges to be motivated in the way we desire? Why, in these cases, should we expect them to act carefully, deferentially, and only in the face of extreme circumstances? Why should we expect them to act in a modest and self-restricted way, thus resigning the chance to expand their capacities, strengthen their powers, extend their functions, increase their influence, fortify their possibilities to extort the other branches so as to obtain more benefits and privileges for the bench? In the end: Why should we expect judges to act in the way we prefer, when they have all the institutional incentives for acting in the opposite way? Things become much more worrisome when we think about the courts we know -the courts we know from the “here and now. I am here thinking about courts that seem alienated from the people’s control, involved in exercises of self-protection and mutual protection with the political branches, and permeated, in their actions, by money and power. Needless to say, things become directly dramatic in some of the countries that Colon Ríos examines in his work (typically Venezuela) where members of the Court appear as mere “puppets” of those in power. In those present- conditions -one may wonder- why would we have to trust the constitutional readings of a Court, and even take their rulings seriously and respectfully? A quite extreme and very recent illustration of the problem appeared in recent years, in Bolivia, when President Evo Morales lost a referendum that he himself had promoted in order to gain popular authorization to run for office for a fourth term. Remarkably, the Plurinational Constitutional Court, after a demand set by Morales’ Movement to Socialism (MAS) party, decided, on a unanimous verdict (TCP Sentencia Constitucional Plurinacional N° 0084/2017, November 20th) that limits barring elected authorities from seeking re-election indefinitely (i.e., the constitutional limits that Bolivian citizens’ supported, through their vote in the referendum) entered in conflict with the American Convention on Human Rights and thus violated human rights. In the words of Macario Lahor Cortez, head of the Plurinational Court, “All people that were limited by the law and the constitution are hereby able to run for office, because it is up to the Bolivian people to decide.” Let me just add that, from a dialogic perspective, this decision was obviously unacceptable: it challenged, with no reason, a responsible majoritarian claim expressed in the referendum. 229 On Constituent Power and the Law by Joel Colón-Ríos HISTORIC ABSTINENCE Before concluding my summary examination of Colon Ríos’s book, I want to call the attention to a final difficulty that I find in it, which I would describe as its “historic abstinence” or, more precisely, the absence of political history in the book. I do not present this omission as a problem just because I like history or because I happen to give more value to works that are rich in the historical analysis that they include. I think that Colon Ríos’ study misses to consider crucial information, and in that way does not help/encourage us to pay attention to contextual data that would be crucial to understand the scope and limits of the legal analysis that he presents. Let me start by repeating myself: Colon Ríos’s book deals with an issue – constituent power- that is extremely important and also, because of what it implies, extremely dangerous. The book revolves around a “power” that implies the use of the coercive forces of the community regarding the most fundamental public matters – how to organize the “basic structure” of society, how to distribute political power, what rights to protect and how, etc. As Colon Ríos aptly shows in the book, there are strong disagreements about how such powers should be used and understood. These disputes are theoretical, abstract, legalistic, but also -if not fundamentally- they are political quarrels. Not surprisingly, those who are in power feel usually tempted to resort to the extraordinary capacities involved in the exercise of constituent powers, when and because they want to modify the rules of the game in their favor. To state this is not to engage into an exercise of “conspiracy theory,” but just a way to recognize the world we live in. We live in a political and legal world that, unfortunately, offers us daily examples of abuses of the kind. This also explains why constitutional law needs to take careful notes about these abuses -which constitutionalism has usually tried to do. In fact, since the birth of modern constitutional, scholars, activists and politicians tended to presume that those in power would be tempted to remain in power and make things more difficult for the opposition. These were, for instance, the assumptions that motivated the adoption of the system of “checks and balances” in the United States, during the 18th Century. And this is also the (pessimistic) rationale that we find behind proceduralist approaches to constitutional law, in our time. Proceduralists of the kind suggest constitutionalism to dedicate its main legal energies to prevent the foreseeable abuses coming from those in power –they suggest preventing the so-called “malfunctioning” of the institutional system. As John Ely famously put it, trying to define the contours of a justified exercise of judicial review, Malfunction occurs when the process is undeserving of trust, when (1) the ins are choking off the channels of political change to ensure that they will stay in and the outs will stay out, or (2) though no one is actually denied a voice or a vote, representatives beholden to an effective majority are systematically disadvantaging 230 ROBERTO GARGARELLA some minority out of simple hostility or a prejudiced refusal to recognize commonalities of interest, and thereby denying that minority (Ely 1980, 103). My point is, simply, that our legal analysis needs to be informed by those abusive tendencies, which we all recognize when we study political history and comparative constitutionalism. This is something that, unfortunately, Colon Ríos does not properly develop in his book. My impression is that –in order to take “the law” seriously- Colon Ríos tried not to “mess” with “dirty” political discussions of the kind, which could “contaminate” the abstract and universal character of the legal debates he examines. As he made clear from the very first page of his work, Colon Ríos wants to distinguish the study of his topic -constituent power- from “naked exercises of force” that have been “deployed by dictators and military juntas” to depart from the rule of law (1). Thanks to this “historical abstinence”, Colon Ríos’s study can travel through time, combining names and authors without problems: his work can easily move from Rousseau to Sieyes, from Schmitt to Brewer Carías. What seems to matter is –only or mainly- the legal soundness of the claims made by this author, expressed in that book, or enforced through that judicial decision. Unfortunately, however, by proceeding in that way, Colon Ríos neglects some crucial political information -an omission that, I suggest, affects the attractiveness of his entire enterprise. The idea is: always, but particularly in fragile institutional contexts (such as those that are the object of Colon Ríos’s work) the legal order and finally the “voice of the law” – tends to be captured and/or manipulated by those in power so as to provide a legal appearance to otherwise unjustifiable -merely arbitrary- political decisions. In those tragic but common political circumstances, by putting political history between brackets (in other words, by simply reading the words of courts and legal doctrinaires in the abstract, devoid of politics) we do not take the law (more) seriously, but rather the contrary. In that way, we end up looking at legal norms as if they were what they are not. In that way, we may end up giving the law an appearance of validity that it may lack or do not deserve. Unfortunately, this is a difficulty that I see over-present in Colon Ríos’s important work. Let me illustrate my concern with just one crucial example that appears in chapter 10 of the book, which relates to the case of Venezuela, the working of the 1999 constituent assembly and the rulings of the Supreme Court. For instance, in page 287, Colon Ríos quotes (and properly criticizes) a decision by the Venezuelan Supreme Court, in which the Court maintained that (these are Colon Ríos’s words) “the limits approved by the electorate in the referendum…did not bind the assembly to the constitutional order created in 1961,” which meant that “the National Constituent Assembly…did not exercise a derived power, but an originary constituent one.” For the court -Colon Ríos continues- “the assembly” was “a sovereignty entity”: the judges thus justified “a departure from the mandate contained in the authorizing referendum” and recognized that the assembly could “act during the transition from the old to the new constitution” (288). Now, even 231 On Constituent Power and the Law by Joel Colón-Ríos though I tend to share Colon Ríos’s critical view about the Court’s decision, his analysis does not incorporate some extremely important facts, which are crucial for understanding and evaluating the legal arguments at stake. In the illustration he offers we miss to know, for example, that during those days, the Venezuelan Court decided to self-dissolve because it could not stand the extreme abuses committed by the Constituent Assembly. In the words of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, namely Cecilia Sosa -who resigned in August 1999- “The court simply committed suicide to avoid being assassinated. But the result is the same. It is dead."8 At that time, Justice Sosa publicly denounced that it had become impossible to exercise judicial review in those circumstances, and that the Assembly was launching an attack against democracy.” Her desperate denounce appeared after a judicial emergency decree approved by the Constituent Assembly, through which the Assembly created a commission in charge of investigating the performance of the judges of the Supreme Court, the Council of the Judiciary, and approximately 1,200 national judges. When the political history behind judicial decisions looks like it looked in Venezuela, 1999, then it becomes a problem to take seriously the arguments of the Court -as if they were, obviously, legally valid- and examine them as if they emerged from relatively normal democratic circumstances. Those arguments -I submit- lack validity in the context of our constitutional democracies, and consequently do not deserve to be “tested” in our forum of principle. To conclude, I would like to go back to the beginning. I want to do so just to repeat what was said: my agreements with the author are so many, and I have learned so much from him, through this book, that in my review I have preferred to concentrate my analysis on a few disagreements that I have with his approach. Having presented my comments, I would simply like to insist with the idea that Constituent Power and the Law is an exceptional book that changes our understanding on the matter. From now on, any serious study on constituent power will have to include exhaustive references to Colon Ríos’ work. Therefore, we can only thank him for the remarkable contribution he made to the discipline. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/429304.stm; https://elpais.com/diario/1999/08/25/ internacional/935532004_850215.html (italics added). A report about political attacks on justice, in Venezuela, and the facts that derived in Sosa’s resignation can be found here https://www.icj.org/wpcontent/uploads/2001/08/venezuela_attacks_justice_2000.pdf 8 233 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 233-246 ISSN: 1825-5167 THEORY AS /OR HISTORIOGRAPHY? CONSTITUENT POWER (OF THE JURIST) AND THE LAW (OF THE STATE) ZORAN OKLOPCIC Department of Law and Legal Studies Carleton University, Ottawa Zoran.oklopcic@carleton.ca ABSTRACT Rather than to critique the substance of Joel Colón-Ríos’s indisputably important contribution to the scholarship on constituent power, the aim of this essay is to put in question the historiographical mode of theoretical engagement which prevails in the contemporary debates about this important concept, as well as to question its ostensible present-day significance—especially to the politically engaged projects such as Colón-Ríos’s—which, at the very least, deserves to be discussed more directly, explicitly, and systematically. KEYWORDS Constituent Power; Historiography; Legal Order; Legal Change; State. Numerous dogmatic ideas of contemporary public law are still entirely rooted in the mid-nineteenth century … [It] is among the tasks of constitutional theory to demonstrate how much some traditional formulas and concepts are entirely dependent on prior situations, so they are not at all old wine in new bottles, but instead only an outmoded and false etiquette. Carl Schmitt, Constitutional Theory (1928) INTRODUCTION Constituent power is one of the most important constitutional concepts, and Joel Colón-Ríos one of its most eminent theorists. Set against the backdrop of his is other major work on the subject,1 his most recent monograph, Constituent power and the 1 Joel Colón-Ríos, Weak Constitutionalism: Democratic legitimacy and the question of constituent power. (Routledge 2012). 234 ZORAN OKLOPCIC law,2 offers not only a magisterial exploration of the ways in which late-18th and 19th century jurists in Spain and Latin America envisioned the relationship between constituent power and the law, but also a historically-informed critique of currently prevailing approaches to constituent power. Read together, both works advance ColónRíos’s long-standing theoretical project: to offer a compelling radical-democratic reinterpretation of the fundamental concepts of modern liberal constitutionalism. While Weak Constitutionalism did so in a more direct fashion--by offering a sustained critique of the most influential liberal approaches to constitutional government— Constituent power and the law pursues the same goal in a more roundabout way: by developing a historically-informed but ‘eminently juridical’ notion of constituent power. As articulated by Colón-Ríos, constituent power ought to be understood as both conceptually distinct from the notion of the sovereignty of the people, as well as practically consequential in the context of the debates about the nature and scope of the jurisdictional authority of constituent assemblies, the extent to which the acts of such assemblies may be determined by the outcomes of constitutional referendums, as well as the situations in which such determinations may be enforced in the courts of law. Thus understood, constituent power is defended no only against those who worry about its potential to justify ‘abusive constitutional practices’, but also against those whose notion of constituent power appears in a more sympathetic light; in the context of the debates about ‘unconstitutional constitutional amendments’. Though seemingly rejecting the notions of constituent power that prevail in other disciplines, both camps continue to share the same baseline notion of constituent power as a ‘substantively unlimited’, and hence potentially dangerous, constitution-making ‘faculty’. CONSTITUENT POWER, THE LAW … AND WHAT ELSE? While Colón-Ríos is certainly right to draw attention to this point, it is unclear whether his—or any other scholarly account of constituent power—can evade not making assumptions about the nature of political power in general, or about what, under a particular set of circumstances, makes its exercise ‘constituent’. Though such notions need not inform the juridical conceptions of constituent power directly, they must inform them somehow, if only by shaping the understanding of the conceptions from which they are analytically distinguished. If so, this means that rather than conclusively banishing constituent power qua unlimited constitution-making faculty from the sphere of juridical knowledge Colón-Ríos simply evacuated the questions 2 Joel Colón-Ríos, Constituent power and the law (Oxford University Press 2020). 235 Theory as/or Historiography? Constituent Power (of the Jurist) and the Law (of the State) about its non-juridical manifestations, onto the terrain dominated by the questions about the power of a sovereign people to establish a new constitutional order from scratch.3 The sensibility of a distinction between the juridical character of constituent power and the political character of the people that acts in its ‘sovereign capacity’ hinges not only on the formal distinction between constituent power and sovereignty, but also on some notion of what acting in sovereign capacity—which is to say exercising power as a sovereign—looks like in practice. Just like constituent power, the ‘sovereign capacity’ that Colón-Ríos attributes to the people is a notion which only makes sense from the perspective of jurists themselves. Or, to put it differently, those who’d consider it advantageous not to specify whether the capacity in question refers to (a) to the notional ability of all peoples to establish new constitutional orders, (b) to the typical capability of most peoples to do so, which varies in space and time, or (c) to the specific capacity of an actually existing people, relative to the its aspirations and circumstances? Though (a) seems to be trivially true, the sensibility of (b) and (c) is much more dubious, especially once one confronts the outcomes of popular revolutions and other transformative constitutional changes in a more panoramic historical perspective. I will return to this point in the next section, but what’s important to stress at this point is the position of constituent power within a universe of conceptual binaries, starting with the notion of constituted powers. Though set aside by the organizing distinction of the book, Colón-Ríos’ conceptual ‘demotion’ of constituted powers couldn’t change the mutually constitutive character of those two notions of power. This point is neither onceptually trivial, nor practically inconsequential, especially once we recall that constituted powers refer to (1) the comprehensive organization of political—which is to say—public powers, which are assigned to various institutions and exercised by different officeholders, 3 For a distinction between potestas and potentia, and the understanding of the latter as s a creative ‘societal force’, which, inheres in the community at large, see Jiří Přibáň, 'Constitutional Imaginaries and Legitimation: On Potentia, Potestas, and Auctoritas in Societal Constitutionalism’ (2018) 45 Journal of Law and Society S30, 31. 236 ZORAN OKLOPCIC (2) traditionally distributed across three ‘branches’ of government: legislative, executive, and judiciary in conformity with the principle of the separation of powers, and as (3) distinct from the institutions which, remain beyond the imagination of contemporary (liberal) constitutionalism: the institutions of the state itself. This concept of constituted powers in turn hinges on the distinctions, which ColónRíos, at different places in the book either explicitly recognizes, or the validity of which he must presuppose in order to be able to make a case of a distinction between sovereignty and constituent power of the people—starting with the traditional distinction: (i) between formal constitutions, as the records of constitutional norms, compiled within a single document, in a written form—and material constitutions, (ii) between the sovereignty that exists as the attribute of a particular kind of community (i.e. the people)—and the sovereignty as the mark of a particular kind of territorial regime (i.e. the state), (iii) between revolutions as the successful uprisings of downtrodden citizens against incorrigibly despotic governments—and civil wars as never-ending fratricidal struggles, fueled by sectarian passions; (iv) between legitimate revolutions as the exercises of constituent power that culminate in the adoption of a new constitution in conformity with the ideals of popular sovereignty—and illegitimate coups as the events as the events that violate popular sovereignty and that result in the overthrow of democratically legitimate governments; (v) between the extra-constitutional overthrows of legitimate governments as the illegitimate exercises of (typically military) power—and the extraconstitutional overthrows of illegitimate governments as the legitimate exercises of sovereign’s ‘prerogative power’, (vi) between constitutional revolutions as the causes of major constitutional changes, (which in many cases amount to constitutional transformation) and constitutional amendments as the modalities of minor constitutional changes, (vii) between revolutions against the rulers of sovereign states who govern despotically (where the foundation of a new constitutional order doesn’t require an act of secession)—and revolutions against the despotic rule of 237 Theory as/or Historiography? Constituent Power (of the Jurist) and the Law (of the State) imperial governors (where, starting from scratch, the foundation of a new constitutional order begins with secession), (viii) between the act of secession that results in the formation of a new state in conformity with the will of its people, within an area that used to fall under the sovereign authority of another state —and the act of partition that results in the externally imposed division of the most precious property of a sovereign people: its territory. Territory is ignored in the study of constituent power, as are the things that allow all who are concerned with the issue of constituent power to imagine it as the territory of a modern state: 4 (I) a distinction between the core and the periphery, as the constitutive feature of the territorial units that jurists and non-jurist alike must in mind when they refer to constitutive power in a particular way4--not as the people’s constituent power, but as the constituent power of the people: an agent whose collective identity can only be discerned in relation to an already existing spatiotemporal referent—and, (II) the topography of human sociality, which most political ideologies mentally carve into distinct and ambiguously antagonistic regions, spheres, domains, and jurisdictions: society and economy, public and private, moral and legal, legal and political, public and private, normal and exceptional, domestic and foreign. In order to be recognized as territories, bounded spaces must not only be immunized from corrosive outside influences, but must also be internally unified, which, first and foremost means centralized: internally oriented toward a single administrative seat of power (most often in the form of a deliberately chosen national capital, the choice of which is typically one of the first provisions one encounters in any state constitution). Once centralized--or to put it even more precisely, capitalized--state theory becomes inscribed with constitutive duality between the core and the periphery, which, in conjunction with the linear (accumulative) and the non-linear (non-accumulative) processes, gave rise to two kinds of forces: (1) centrifugal as the force that causes things to propagate, spread, cascade, proliferate, and disseminate, and (2) centripetal, which makes them assemble, gravitate, and concentrate. Cf. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (tr Donald Nicholson Smith, first published 1974, Blackwell Publishers 1991) 281 passim. The first is inscribed in the images of revolutionary masses which--before they exercise constituent power, must first get together in city squares--streets and horse tracks. The second is on display in the multi-stage conceptions of constitution-making, such as those on display in Sieyes’ Third Estate, where national constituent power emerges through delegation, in a way that can be described as bottom-up from the perspective of the hierarchical organization of France, but which in its material manifestation involves the movement of elected delegates: elected by those assembled in their local parishes, assembling in regional centres in order to elect those who will in turn assemble, as their delegates in the national constituent assembly in Paris. 238 ZORAN OKLOPCIC Needless to say, jurists don’t preoccupy themselves with the categories that parcel out the universe of human sociability into the discrete regions of reality that are further subdivided into discrete chunks of spacetime. Nor do they worry too much about the ways in which constituent power manifests itself in material reality. Still, the templates and categories whose characteristics they take for granted continue shaping their implicit notions about what the power of the actually existing people typically looks like, in action. Though neglected, the character of both should be of particular importance in the context of the theories which are honest enough about the political gamble that informs their proposal. The legitimacy of primary assemblies may be grounded in the notion of a sovereign people akin to that advocated by Colón-Ríos, but their intelligibility hinges on the vision of democratic government that is radically at odds with the idea of constituent power regulated by the law—the law of a territorially integral state. The people of that state is ‘sovereign’ because that state that prefigures its identity is sovereign itself-- not in virtue of the innate capacity of its people to create a new constitutional order for itself from scratch (which would, in effect, endow it with the kind of constituent power that ColónRíos argues against). CONSTITUENT POWER AND CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE THE CHANGING NOTIONS OF The practical concerns that drive Constituent Power and the Law cannot but raise the questions about the ability of Colón-Ríos’s argument to unearth the ‘full juridical potential’ of constituent power.5 This, I think is a fair point to make, especially since it’s obvious that that potential—from the perspective of the arguments of the authors that Colón-Ríos reacts against—hinges not on their refusal to make a distinction between constituent power and sovereignty, but rather on their commitment to a highly restrictive notion of basic constitutional structure; itself sustained by a seemingly openended, but, on closer inspection, rather tendentious notion of constitutional ‘change’. Billed as a category that encourages more attention to the actual processes not captured by the concepts of amendment and revolution, ‘constitutional change’ emerged as a term which allowed constitutional scholars to kill three birds with the same stone: (a) to evaluate previously incomparable forms of forms of constitutional change as minor or major, partial or total; (b) to introduce a new category, unconstitutional constitutional changes, which lends conceptual support to the idea of 5 Colón-Ríos, supra note 2. 239 Theory as/or Historiography? Constituent Power (of the Jurist) and the Law (of the State) basic structure, yet (c) continue exploiting traditional distinction between constitutional and extra-constitutional constitutional change. Instead of directing attention to the truly neglected forms of ‘change’, the concept of ‘constitutional change’ functions as a device which draws our attention away from what could, in principle, make such changes ‘constitutional’. Had it been taken more seriously, the idea of constitutional change would have resulted not in the reaffirmation of the essentially etymological conception of constitutional amendment, but in a more radical rethinking of the appropriateness of the terms used to discuss it: from constitutional ‘revision’ and transformation, to constitutional amendment and dismemberment.6 For Richard Albert, ‘the distinction between amendment and revision, [the] basic structure doctrine is predicated on the theory that amendment cannot be used to transform the constitution or to change its identity.’7 As a result, ‘self-conscious efforts to repudiate the essential characteristics of the constitution and to destroy its foundations’, irrespective of their conformity with formal requirements of constitutional change, are actually, not amendments at all’. Unlike amendments— whose aim is to ‘better achieve the purpose of the existing constitution’—the changes whose aim is to ‘dismantle the basic structure of the constitution’ and establish a new one, ‘rooted in principles contrary to the old’, ought to count as the acts of ‘dismemberment’.8 Dismemberment is a curious metaphor to use, not only because it aspires capture a wide array of constitutional changes—from those which are hard to imagine as dismembering anything (such as those that would establish a republican, instead of monarchical form of government) to those which could be understood as the acts intended to ‘destroy’ the ‘foundations’, only from the perspective of those who interpret those foundations in a very specific, and invariably contestable way. The ‘dismemberment’ of the United Kingdom that would appear as a destructively unilateral secession of Scotland from the perspective of the Westminster government (for instance) would from the perspective of Scottish government appear as a perfectly legitimate outcome of withdrawing from a constitutively composite constitutional order. From the perspective of a unit that sees itself as a withdrawing member, the very term ‘Transformative constitutional change’: an act of constitution-making that: (1) resulted in the formation of an institutional configuration, (2) was intended both as a replacement as well as the supersession of notional ‘predecessor’, (3) that commits to memory that what it (intended) to irrevocably leave behind, (4) even though their respective distinguishing features and intended functions make them mutually incommensurable. 7 Richard Albert, ‘Constitutional Amendment and Dismemberment’ (2018) 43 Yale Journal of International Law 1–3 8 Ibid. 6 240 ZORAN OKLOPCIC ‘dismemberment’ would probably appear as suspiciously colourful, if not tendentious and partisan. Though there are scholars, such as Yaniv Roznai, who critique Albert’s ‘dismemberment’ along similar lines, but still agree that the term ‘amendment’ cannot be used for the forms of constitutional change which aim to ‘transform’, ‘revolutionize’, or ‘replace’ existing constitutions.9 Unlike ‘anti-constitutional’ forms of constitutional change—which, according to Carlos Bernal, ‘undermine’ extant constitutions by aiming to ‘replace’ them in entirety—constitutional amendment only implies a ‘minor’ change in the ‘non-essential elements’ of the constitution.10 Rather than arbitrary, this understanding of constitutional amendment follows directly from its root-verb, emendere, which in Latin means ‘to improve’, or ‘correct’. If ‘correct’ derives from Latin corrigere, whose original meaning was to literally ‘make a crooked thing straight’, amendment would need to be understood in a highly restrictive sense: as a form of constitutional change that brings a deviating part in conformity with the rest of constitution or which substitutes a malfunctioning component with the one which is more fit for its purpose. The form of constitutional change that truly conforms to the etymology of amending in the sense of emenderereparare-corrigere would only be ‘constitutional’ to the extent to which it could be seen as replacing something that was either a minor factory mistake, or something that got broken or crooked through use, over the course of time. If amendment were truly a constitutional change that is intended to cor-rect or repair, the only way to amend the constitution constitutionally would be to remain truthful to the exact specifications that come with its model.11 The issue here lies not only in the inevitable tendentiousness of constitutional metaphors, but also in the inherent limitations of the theoretical arguments that derive so much argumentative force from an eminently parochial constitutional terminology which makes little sense from the perspective of languages that make it possible to speak of constitutions as ‘passed, ‘adopted’, or ‘voted into effect’, not ‘amended’, ‘revised’, ‘replaced’, or ‘substituted’. Yaniv Roznai, ‘Constitutional Amendment and “Fundamendment”: A Response to Professor Richard Albert’ (2018) 43 Yale Journal of International Law, 26. 10 Carlos Bernal, ‘Constitution-Making (without Constituent) Power: On the Conceptual Limits of the Power to Replace or Revise the Constitution’ in Richard Albert, Carlos Bernal and Juliano Zaiden Benvindo (eds), Constitutional change and transformation in Latin America (Hart Publishing 2019) 27. 11 By analogy, if a light on your 1959 Cadillac had to be repaired, the only way to repair it is to take it out, and put a new one which is exactly the same in its place. 9 241 Theory as/or Historiography? Constituent Power (of the Jurist) and the Law (of the State) CONSTITUENT POWER AND THE LAW(S) OF HISTORY In contrast to the authors against which Colón-Ríos reacts today, the sovereignty of the people—which in Stephen Holmes the mid-1990s classic liberal constitutionalism, Passions and Constraint appeared in the guise of Ulysses--constrained by the norms of its own choosing, written down in the text of the constitution—not divined from that constitutions ethereal basic structure. If so, why bother with the concept of the ‘basic structure’—why bother, that is, if it’s almost impossible to imagine constitutional changes that would undermine the capacity of the ‘people’ to exercise self-government, without at the same time undermining at least one of the elements of basic constitutional structure, as it’s currently understood?12 Which brings us to a broader—equally important—point. The historians who 'have at various times expressly asserted that their subject should have very little relevance for modern theory’ have not only 'failed to discourage the philosophers [who] have continued the ancient practice of pillaging the classics in search of ideas and styles to be revived for their own time’, but have themselves 'also been distinguished contributors to discussions among political philosophers about issues such as republicanism, democracy or justice’.13 While one need not agree with Hayden White (who likens ‘pessimistic and accommodationist tone of intellectual historiography’ to a ‘post-coital kind of melancholy’) those who do constitutional theory historiographically might do well to historicize their own scholarly style, and consider the possibility that it might ‘reflec[t] a more general crisis, either in humanistic scholarship or in society as a whole’.14 The oddity of contemporary scholarly fixation on constituent power becomes even more apparent against the backdrop of its marginal treatment in the field-defining monographs over the last 75 years: from Carl Friedrich’s Constitutional Government (first published in 1937, and then regularly reissued after the Second World War) to Pennock and Chapman’s Constitutionalism (published in 1979), or Bellamy and Castiglione’s Constitutionalism in Transformation (published, more than a decade and half later, in 1996). In Friedrich’s monograph, for instance, constituent power is discussed in the context of a more fundamental discussion between political revolution and constitutional amendment, which, in turn, are themselves dwarfed by the extensive 12 Stephen Holmes, Passions and Constraint: On the Theory of Liberal Democracy (University of Chicago Press 1996). 13Richard Tuck, ‘History’ in Robert E. Goodin, Philip Pettit and Thomas Pogge (eds), A companion to contemporary political philosophy (Blackwell Publishing 2007) 69. 14 Hayden White, The fiction of narrative: Essays on history, literature, and theory, 1957–2007 (JHU Press 2010) 83. 242 ZORAN OKLOPCIC discussions of the themes which remain of virtually no interest to contemporary constitutional theory: from ‘bureaucracy’, ‘diplomacy’, and ‘prosperity’ to ‘interest groups’, ‘economic councils’, ‘planning’, and ‘propaganda and the control of communications.15 As for Pennock and Chapman’s volume, it gives a passing nod to the ideal of popular sovereignty in the introduction, but many of the concepts that present-day constitutional theorists consider absolutely central to the reality of modern constitutional government—from constituent power to (perhaps even more strikingly) political community and constitutional identity—received no mention whasoever.16 And while constituent power did make a singular appearance in Bellamy and Castiglione’s landmark volume on ‘constitutionalism in transformation’ a decade and a half later its position in the debates about the prospects of constitutional government still appears to have been rather marginal.17 What contributed to the explosion of interest in constituent power in the years ahead seem to have been four distinct trends: (1) post-communist constitution-making in Central and Eastern Europe, which, in the case of former communist federations in the Balkans and the Caucausus triggered violent conflicts over territorial sovereignty, (2) the emergence of secession as a legitimate, or at least debatable, political aspiration of minority nations in Western multinational democracies since the early 1990s, (3) growing anxiety about the absence of democratic legitimacy in the context of European integration and the attendant debates about the locus of ultimate constitutional authority in the European Union, and finally (4) the apparent centrality of the language of constituent power in the context of constitutional transformations in Latin America in the late 1990s and early 2000s. 15 Carl J Friedrich, Constitutional Government and Democracy. Revised Edition (Blaisdell Publishing 1950) 16 Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman (eds) Constitutionalism: Nomos XX (NYU Press 1979). 17 Richard Bellamy and Dario Castiglione, Constitutionalism in Transformation: European and Theoretical Perspectives (Wiley-Blackwell 1996). In Preuss’s case, imagining territorially based ‘communities’ as the contemporary incarnations of Sieyes ‘body of associates’ (without considering broader constitutional arrangements which brought them into existence) allowed him to distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate attempts to exercise constitutional authority--with the former, as exemplified by the territorially acrimonious constitutional transformations (in the former Yugoslavia, or Soviet Union) and the later, as manifested display in the formation of notionally liberal constitutional orders (in other parts of Central and Eastern Europe, such as Hungary and Poland). 243 Theory as/or Historiography? Constituent Power (of the Jurist) and the Law (of the State) Whatever the case, those who chose to resort to the language of constituent power throughout the course of history did so not because they suddenly discovered its eminently juridical character, but because treating it as eminently juridical seemed to be politically advantageous--in concrete situations, at a given place and time. This—as the epigraph to this article already suggested—might have direct implications for the task of constitutional theory, which, in good part (at least according to Schmitt) ought to consist in ‘demonstrat[ing] how much some traditional formulas and concepts are entirely dependent on prior situations, so they are not at all old wine in new bottles, but instead only an outmoded and false etiquette’.18 CONSTITUENT POWER AND THE TASK OF THEORY Though Schmitt’s notion of the task of constitutional theory remains, for the most part, ignored in contemporary scholarship, it’s also worth mentioning that some of those who today go against this indifference today carry Schmitt’s critical vision even further when they argue—as is the case with Edward Rubin, for instance—that most ‘basic concepts that we use to describe our current government are the products of social nostalgia’: ‘the three branches of government, power and discretion, democracy, legitimacy, law, legal rights, human rights, and property are all ideas that originated in pre-administrative times and that derive much of their continuing appeal from their outdated origins’. While they keep encouraging our ‘collective yearning for the preadministrative state’, ‘these concepts are [neither] the most useful [n]or meaningful ones that we could find to describe contemporary government’. In consequence, concludes Rubin, ‘[w]e should then seek an alternative conception that will help us fulfill our emotional commitments, reflect the heuristic quality of thought, and provide a framework for microanalysis.19 For reasons that cannot be discussed within the scope of this essay, neither a project to weed out the the allegedly outdated conepts of modern constitutionalism, nor a project to replace them with more fitting ones is likely to pose a serious challenge to the currently hegemonic historiographical style in constitutional theory. What is quite possible (desirable, even) is to approach the concepts such as constituent power with keener sensitivity to the factors that shape the character of its conceptions, and which cannot be attributed to the differences between scholarly ‘perspectives’, professional ‘vocabularies’, or disciplinary ‘traditions’. 18 Carl Schmitt, Constitutional Theory (Jeffrey Seitzer tr, Duke University Press 2007) 54. Edward L. Rubin, Beyond Camelot: Rethinking politics and law for the modern state (Princeton University Press 2007). 19 244 ZORAN OKLOPCIC Put differently: though professional commitments and scholarly self-understandings certainly play an important role in shaping the content of individual conceptions, it is not unreasonable to assume that they play a much more modest role when it comes to the scholarly theories of the concepts that are eminently polemical. To call such concepts ‘juridical’ only accentuates their rhetorical function: to deny legitimacy to some aspirations, while lending dignity to the constitutional accommodation of others. From that perspective, the notion of constituent power may also be seen as: (I) a recipe--to be used in the process of constitution-making (such as for instance: take one rotten authoritarian government and expose it to the heat of popular demonstrations; once a despotic government dissolves, turn the people that overthrew it into a body of citizens eager to take part in the constituent process that culminates in the adoption of a new constitution), (II) a sedative--intended to be consumed by the judges of the apex courts (as well as other legal officials tasked with defending constitutional status quo) should they start panicking about extra-constitutional character of constitutional transformation20, in which case it also serves as (III) a pincer—to be used to deflate the political pretensions of liberal constitutionalism by radical democrats, but which is also increasingly used against the agenda of radical democracy, by liberal constitutionalists, but which both sides use as (IV) a certificate--to be accorded to those who succeeded in establishing a constitutional order which conforms to the preferences of those whose expert knowledge puts them in charge of identifying what counts as the people, and what as constituent power. Given the commendable degree of self-awareness that distinguishes his scholarship, it is not unreasonable to assume that Colón-Ríos’s might gladly agree with this the gist of this taxonomy.21 At the same time, it is also likely that he’d still want to insist on an eminently juridical character of the notion of constituent power that he puts forward in his latest book. Even so, one might still wonder how realistic is it to expect that a concept that emerges from a regionally contained, linguistically delineated and theoretically selective inquiry about eminently state-centred doctrines of constituent power (however 20 Cf. Mark Tushnet, Peasants with Pitchforks, and Toilers with Twitter: Constitutional Revolutions and the Constituent Power’ (2015) 13[3] ICON 639. 21 Cf. Joel Colón-Ríos, ‘Five conceptions of constituent power’ (2014) 130 Law Quarterly Review 306. 245 Theory as/or Historiography? Constituent Power (of the Jurist) and the Law (of the State) masterful that inquiry may be) ends up playing ‘a key role in determinations of legal validity’ outside of the contexts in which it emerged?22 If historically-sensitive theoretical contributions to purely academic debates could have just as easily produced conceptions that are ‘scholarly’ or ‘theoretical’, can calling them ‘juridic al’ hope to persuade anyone else but those who claim to be in possession of special ‘juridical’ knowledge that allows them to properly determine how and why the political turn into the legal and legal into the political)?23 This seems to be a fair question because the hopeful superiority of Colón-Ríos’s concept of constituent power, hinges on the accuracy of his historico-political bet: that situating it firmly within the framework of extant constitutional orders, won’t ‘domesticate’ the insurrectionary potential that inheres not in ‘constituent power’, but in the citizens themselves, acting in their ‘sovereign capacity’, as the members of the people. And even if one accepted that what makes the concept of constituent power ‘juridical’ is the prominent place it enjoys in the ever-more comparative constitutional jurisprudence, it is still not clear why would one want to think of such concept as ‘eminently juridical’ if the motivating expectations of its author happen to be explicitly political. If the identity of a particular concept as ‘eminently juridical’ depends on it being distinguished from another concept which remains political, calling the first juridical would only seem to make sense if the ‘political’ character of the latter is also juridical, but not ‘eminently’; or if they are both juridical and political at the same time, each in a particular sense of the word, which, on closer inspection--only makes sense if their relationship as simultaneously juridical-political or as co-constitutively juridical and political, is mediated by a notion that sets the terms on which the ‘juridical’ and the ‘political’ appear mutually intelligible. Though absent from the subtly understated title of Colón-Ríos monograph that term become obvious once one pauses to ask a by no means trivial question: Constituent power and the law of what? At that point, it becomes apparent that the ongoing references to the ‘juridical’, refer to the terms on which the law of the state in the West— not just any law—makes power constituent, the people sovereign, and the power of the people, ‘in its sovereign capacity’, political.24 Irreespective of Colón-Ríos’s remarkable 22 Colón-Ríos, supra note 1, at 305. For the defense constitutional theory historiographically conceived, see Richard S. Kay, 'Response to the Contributors’ (2020) 52:5 Connectictut Law Review 1. 24 ‘Unequivocally, from the twelfth century, one can grasp the autonomy of the legal space in a biunivocal correspondence with the widespread conviction that the administration of the law must be assigned to a class not of theologians or ideologists, but of technocrats- the jurists [who] carry out activities on the basis of specialist knowledge, [and] which is cultivated by [these] professions themselves, and [which is] perceived by lay persons as independent from the incumbent ruler [who] in the West ...can be legitimately chosen, and function, only according to the law. Thus it is this technical and cultural 23 246 ZORAN OKLOPCIC scholarly achievement, one once again cannot but wonder which of the following two more likely. That proposing an alternative notion of constituent power indeed ends up providing, however marginally, the kind of support that radical-democratic emancipatory projects worldwide really need to ensure the long-term survival of their constitutional projects? Or that insisting on an ‘eminently juridical’ character of an eminently political concept, ends up lending credibility to something else: the insatiable ambitions of one professional class to achieve complete hegemony over the terms on which political matters turn into legal form (which quite possibly couldn’t be further removed from Colón-Ríos own idea of radical democracy)? framework that sets the background for any discussion of the ‘political’ dimension of the law.’ Mauro Bussani, 'Democracy and the Western Legal Tradition' in Mauro Bussani and Ugo Mattei (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Comparative Law (Cambridge University Press 2012) 388 and 391 (emphasis ZO). 247 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 247-260 ISSN: 1825-5167 THE SOVEREIGN IS HE WHO HOLDS CONSTITUENT POWER? YANIV ROZNAI * Harry Radzyner Law School Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (Israel) yaniv.roznai@idc.ac.il ABSTRACT This essay reviews Joel Colon-Rios "constituent power and the law". It focuses on four main issues: The distinction between constituent power and sovereignty; the populist exercise of constituent power; the limited secondary constituent power; and the question whether the primary constituent power is indeed unlimited. Through the discussion, the comment will highlight the strengths of the book and its contributions to the literature and jurisprudential practice concerning the nature and possible limits of the constituent power. K EYWORDS Sovereignty, Constituent Power, Delegation, Amendment Power, Kenya, Israel, Judicial Review of Amendments I. DISTINGUISHING POWER SOVEREIGNTY FROM CONSTITUENT Imagine the following scenario. On September 16, 2020, the Israeli public media corporation “Kann” published a call for songs to be submitted to the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest, at the end of which more than 220 songs were submitted to the professional committee. Out of all the submissions, the professional committee selected 9 songs that were uploaded to the network’s website for public voting. In January 2021, three songs performed by Eden Alena were uploaded to the site, which went up to the next stage, for the audience to choose from: “La La Love”, “Set Me Free”, and “O La La”. In the first place, the audience chose “Set Me Free” with 71.3 percent of the vote. However, a number of Knesset Members (the Israeli Parliament) did not like the choice of the audience, and became more attached to the “O La La”, which they perceived as less political. Therefore, immediately after the public voting, the Knesset quickly enacted, while exercising coalition discipline, Basic Law: O La La for the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest, according to which the song to be presented at the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest * Associate Professor, Harry Radzyner Law School, Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. 248 IANIV ROZNAI is actually “O La La” won third place, with 11.5 percent of the vote. Does the Knesset have the authority to enact such a basic law, carrying a constitutional status? While there was no shortage of continental literature on the concept of constituent authority, for example in German,1 and French,2 Anglo-American literature ignored the subject for many years. In England, apparently, it was a byproduct of the absence of a formal written Constitution, and in the United States due to the perception that Article V of the Constitution converted the revolution in a democratic way to change the Constitution. But after this long hibernation, the issue of constituent power returned to the forefront of constitutional theory. Only in recent years, a number of new books focusing on the nature and scope of constituent power have been published.3 One of them is the recent book by Joel Colón-Ríos – Constituent Power and the Law,4 a leading theorist of constituent power, who as already published an influential book on the subject matter.5 It is, in my opinion, the most comprehensive study of the intellectual history of the concept of constituent power. The reader will find in it history, theory and comparative insights. It is a study that comprehensively documents and examines the use of the concept of constituent power by thinkers, jurists, and politicians in the modern and contemporary history of constitutionalism. The book seeks to challenge the conventional view according to which constituent power is an unlimited power, acting outside the law. Colón-Ríos demonstrates how the exercise of constitutive power may actually be limited by law and emphasizes its juridical character. A central argument is that constitutive power and sovereignty must be distinguished. One of the book’s greatest contribution is in its discussion not only of theories that are usually associated with debates concerning sovereignty and constituent power (such as those of Sieyès, Schmitt, Rousseau, Locke, Lawson, Kelsen, Jellinek and de Malberg) but in exposing the readers to thinkers and politicians who are generally unfamiliar to English-speaking readers (to mention few: Mortati, Donoso Egon Zweig, Die Lehre vom Pouvoir Constituant: Ein Beitrag zumStaatsrecht der französischen Revolution (J.C.B. Mohr, 1909) 2 Claud Klein, Théorie et pratique du pouvoir constituant (P.U.F., 1996) 3 See, for example, Mikael Spång, Constituent Power and Constitutional Order - Above, Within and Beside the Constitution (Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2014); Andrew Arato, The Adventures of the Constituent Power - Beyond Revolutions? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Matilda Arvidsson, Leila Brännström, Panu Minkkinen (eds.), Constituent Power - Law, Popular Rule and Politics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020); Lucia Rubinelli, Constituent Power – A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020); Markus Patberg, Constituent Power in the European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020); Héctor López Bofill, Law, Violence and Constituent Power - The Law, Politics and History Of Constitution Making (Routledge, 2021). 4 Joel Colón-Ríos, Constituent Power and the Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020) [Hereinafter: CPL]. 5 Joel Colón-Ríos, Weak Constitutionalism - Democratic Legitimacy and the Question of Constituent Power (Routledge, 2012). 1 249 The Sovereign Is He Who Holds Constituent Power? Cortés, Guizot, Taparelli, Lumbreras, Sánchez Agesta, Melchor de Jovellanos, Rocio, Caro, and Fernández Concha). It reveals a wide literature – from eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries - that has so far escaped the Anglo-American theoretical debates on constituent power. The scope and breadth of the book is truly astonishing. From Rousseau’s and Sieyès’ views (chapters 2+4) in France, through constitution-making episodes in Spain (1812), Venezuela (1811), and Colombia (1886) (chapter 5) to various approach of nineteenth-century authors and politicians concerning who is the holder of the authority to fundamentally change the constitution. It engages with possible boundaries of constituent power through the perspective of Spanish and French doctrinaires (chapter 7), the notion of the material constitution, through the work of Mortati, Haurious and Heller, among others, and with the jurisprudence of courts acknowledging the notion of unconstitutional constitutional amendments (chapter 8). It then analyses the distinction between constituent power and sovereignty, the former being a limited faculty to create only constitutional (and not judicial or executive) content (chapter 9), a distinction I shall return to. Finally, it looks at the “the people” as holders of constituent power analyzing constitutionmaking powers and imperative mandates, by looking at the Venezuelan 1999 constitutional process. It is truly an encyclopedic resource on constituent power. And it is an important resource because of the complexities of the concept of constituent power, as phrased by the Parisian law professor Julien Oudot in 1856 that sometimes it is a powerful dictatorial act that imposes its power on the governed, sometimes it is a revolution acceptable to the citizens, and in other cases it is a pre-organized authority within the constitutional order framing how this power may be exercised. The proper answer to the question “what is constituent power”?, Oudot wrote, “whatever you do not want it to be, dear reader!” 6 Precisely on this point, I found Colón-Ríos’ contribution extremely helpful, as he argues that constituent power is not everything that one might want it to be. Constitutive power is distinguished from sovereignty. The two concepts are very often confused. For example, Andreas Kalyvas defines “the sovereign as the one who determines the constitutional form, the juridical and political identity, and the governmental structure of a community in its entirety. The sovereign is the original author of a new constitutional order and sovereignty qua constituting power manifests itself in a genuine process of constitutional making…”7But the two concepts are not identical. As Colón-Ríos writes: Julien Oudot, Conscience et Science du Devoir: Introduction à une Explication Nouvelle du Code Napoléon (A. Durand ed., 1856), 397 7 Andreas Kalyvas, ‘Popular Sovereignty, Democracy, and the Constituent Power’ (2005) 12(2) Constellations (2005), 223, 226. 6 250 IANIV ROZNAI A sovereign can produce constitutional laws and even engage in ordinary legislative or executive activity; it has an unlimited discretion to determine its own competences, it is the Kompetenz-Kompetenz. But when an entity, such as a constituent assembly, is authorized to adopt a new constitution, even if this occurs outside of the constitution’s amendment rule, it does not become ‘the sovereign’. It rather exercises a special jurisdiction which may be substantively unlimited (i.e. it can adopt any constitutional content) but is still subject to a commission: that of making a constitution.8 He shows how during the 19th century, various scholars have embraced the idea of extra-parliamentary constituent organ that would have exclusive constitutionmaking jurisdiction, and thereby limiting the constituent power of ordinary governments and legislatures. Yet, at the same time, this extra-parliamentary organ, authorized to exercise constitution-making power, should be prohibited from exercising any of the ordinary governmental powers.9 As he elaborates: Sovereignty…is the unlimited jurisdiction to transform any will into law; the sovereign is the source of, and is not subject to, the separation of powers. It can engage in executive, legislative, judicial, and constitution-making acts. The kind of uncontrolled jurisdiction attached to sovereign power is usually exercised during periods where a political actor (frequently an authoritarian one) becomes a de facto sovereign, usually under the pretext that society needs to be saved from a perceived emergency. Constituent power is an element of sovereignty. Accordingly, whoever is the source of the sovereign power also enjoys constituent authority. But unlike the exercise of sovereignty, the exercise of constituent power within an established constitutional order will always take place based on a commission. To the extent that that commission only authorizes the relevant entity to engage in the task of drafting (or at most of enacting) a new constitution, it requires that in creating novel constitutional content, the entity commissioned with constituent authority respects the established separation of powers. That entity can, of course, propose a constitution that separates powers in novel ways, but cannot exercise the executive, judicial, legislative powers itself.10 This approach may carry significant practical implications as various constituent assemblies have been exercising what David Landau calls ‘ancillary powers’ such as legislating, organizing elections, and constituting other state institutions, which can often be used to consolidate powers in the Constituent Assembly in manners that can be used to undermine democracy.11 Another implication may be the judicial invalidation of constitutional acts which are – in fact not constitutional but legislative or judicial in nature. For example, in a decision of the Czech Constitutional Court concerning an ad hoc constitutional act that terminated the term of office of the CPL, 26. CPL 151. 10 CPL 263. 11 See David Landau, ‘”Ancillary” Powers of Constituent Assemblies’ (presentation presented at a conference in honor of Mark Tushnet, June 19, 2021). 8 9 251 The Sovereign Is He Who Holds Constituent Power? Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, and called for early elections in a specific situation, the constitutional court held that by its content, it is not a statute; rather, an individual, specific decision, dressed in the form of a constitutional act: “an ad hoc constitutional act (for an individual case) is not a supplement or an amendment to the Constitution,” but is in fact a breach of the Constitution. Emphasizing: “If the Constitutional Court is forced to answer the question of whether Art. 9 par. 1 of the Constitution also authorizes Parliament to issue individual legal acts in the form of constitutional acts (e.g. to issue criminal verdicts against specific persons for specific actions, to issue administrative decisions on expropriation, to shorten the term of office of a particular official of a state body, etc.), the answer is – no!”12 Or, consider recent jurisprudential developments from Israel. On May 23, 2021, the Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ) delivered an important decision setting and defining the limits for the use of Basic Laws – laws of a constitutional ranking – for the purpose of solving temporary political and coalition problems.13 Without elaborating on the complexity of the Israeli constitutional system,14 the significance of the case is that the HCJ set out a detailed test for disqualifying amendments to the Basic Laws that are in fact a misuse of the title ‘Basic Law’. According to President Esther Hayut, at the first ‘identification stage’, the court should examine whether the Basic Law or its amendments carry the characteristics or features of a constitutional norm. In this context, the court suggests three tests that may assist the court in this identification: first, stability – whether the arrangement is of a temporary nature whose applicability is predetermined in time or whether we are facing a stable, forward-looking permanent arrangement; second, generality – whether it is a norm with general structural applicability or a norm that has personal characteristics; third, constitutional fabric – whether the arrangement is consistent with the nature of those issues that have been regulated in the Basic Laws. This is not a closed list of tests, and each case must be examined ad casum.15 In the second stage, to the extent that the petitioner has been able to demonstrate that the characteristic of the arrangement does not comply with one of the abovementioned Czech Constitutional Court 2009/09/10, Case Pl ÚS 27/09, Constitutional Act on Shortening the Term of Office of the Chamber of Deputies. Cited in Yaniv Roznai, ‘Legisprudence Limitations on Constitutional Amendments? Reflections on the Czech Constitutional Court’s Declaration of Unconstitutional Constitutional Act’ (2014) 8(1) Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law 29, 32. 13 HCJ 5969/20 Stav Shafir v. The Knesset (May 23, 2021) (ISr.). See Yaniv Roznai & Matan Gutman, ‘Saving the Constitution from Politics: The Israeli High Court of Justice and the Misuse of Constituent Power Doctrine’ VerfBlog (30 May 2021), https://verfassungsblog.de/saving-the-constitution-from-politics/ 14 For elaboration, see Suzie Navot & Yaniv Roznai, ‘From Supra-Constitutional Principles to the Misuse of Constituent Power in Israel’ (2019) 21(3) European Journal of Law Reform 403. 15 Shafir v. The Knesset (n 13), para. 37 to President Hayut’s judgment. 12 252 IANIV ROZNAI tests, the burden then shifts to the government to point to a justification for including the arrangement in a Basic Law.16 In a manner similar to the ‘constitutional fabric’ test - and perhaps much will be written on the distinction between the two positions - Justice Dafne Barak-Erez proposed to adopt, as a third characteristic in the identification test, the criterion of “differentiation” from the other authorities. And so she wrote: This means that the Knesset, while exercising its constituent authority, is not empowered to replace the role of any of the other three governing bodies - the executive, the judiciary and the legislature. Therefore, misuse of a basic law in this respect will, as a rule, be a situation in which there is an attempt to label as ‘Basic Law’ an arrangement that seeks to clearly ‘invade the territory’ of one of these authorities. A Basic Law, by virtue of its definition, as intended to constitute a chapter in the constitution, cannot replace the decision of the executive branch (for example, by a constitutional provision determining the appointment of a person to a specific role, or granting a license to a particular entity); a Basic Law cannot replace a court in giving a decision in a legal proceeding (for example by way of acquittal or conviction); a Basic Law cannot even include an operative arrangement requiring an ordinary legislation (such as tax relief).17 This position of Justice Barak-Erez is backed by many years of constitutional theory, as we learn from Colón-Ríos’ book, that distinguished constituent power from sovereignty, whereby the former is obligated to maintain the separation of powers and cannot exercise ordinary governmental powers such as legislative, judicial or enforcement; it must establish or create constitutional norms: “Sovereignty was a total power to transform any will into law; constituent power was about the adoption of new constitutions.”18 II. FROM OSCAR ORBAN TO VICTOR ORBÁN In chapter 6, on the Identity and Limits of the Constituent Subject, Colón-Ríos tells the story of Oscar Orban, a Professor of Public Law in Liège during the late 19th century. According to Orban, in order for the division of sovereignty into constituent and constituted powers to effectively limit, exercising constituent power must include direct popular intervention.19 If by definition, constituent power is exercised vis-à-vis constituted institutions, it is required that ‘the people’ can exercise constituent power outside the ordinary governmental institutions, for example through the right to change the constitution through popular initiative.20 This Ibid., at para. 43 Ibid., at para. 23 to the judgment of Justice Barak-Erez. 18 CPL 84. 19 Oscar Orban, ‘Des Immunités Constitutionnelles’ (1895) 3 Revue du Droit Public et de la Science Politique en France et a L’étranger 193, 209; cited in CPL 150. 20 ibid. 213–214; cited in CPL 150. 16 17 253 The Sovereign Is He Who Holds Constituent Power? popular initiative mechanism for constitutional change by the citizens is beneficial for two reasons: protecting its non-delegable character from being exercised by governmental institutions – i.e. limiting the constituent power of the ordinary governmental branches, and providing a mechanism for a constitutional change that constituted institutions or officials are reluctant to pursue. It is a manifestation of the distinction between people and government.21 Imagine if this was the prevailing approach in Hungary, a country that has experienced not one but two constitutional revolutions in less than 30 years, without popular participation and with a constituent process controlled solely by parliament. Consider, for example, the tectonic shift in the Hungarian constitutional landscape in 2010. A government led by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was elected with the support of a two-thirds majority in Parliament and thus with the ability to amend the constitution. The goal of Prime Minister Orbán was to construct a new political, economic, and social system. As he stated in a public speech in 2014: “the new state that we are constructing in Hungary is an illiberal state, a non-liberal state. It does not reject the fundamental principles of liberalism such as freedom … but instead includes a different, special, national approach.”22 Within nineteen months of the election, the 1949 Constitution (that was transformed in 1989 to a liberaldemocratic one) was amended twelve times, for partisan and political purposes, before it was replaced in 2011 by a new “Fundamental Law” that became effective in 2012. This transformation from a liberal to a non-liberal regime was made possible due to the Fidesz party’s possession of a two-thirds majority in parliament, which allowed it to misuse the amendment process and ultimately to unilaterally replace the constitution for partisan political interests.23 This constitutional transformation is an exemplar of the populist constitutional project that is built, among others, on two main characteristics: majoritarianism as the tool of governance and instrumentalism as a political strategy.24 Populism, as a constitutional project, seeks not only to speak on behalf of ‘the people’ and arguably to correct past injustices but also to radically change the rules of the game. The tool for achieving this change is through majority decision-making rule that expresses – for the populist – the will of the people. Political majority is a relatively uniform entity that conservative populism compares to the whole nation – the winner takes it all. The majority represents the people, and since the people is the sovereign so Cited in CPL 150-151. Office of the Prime Minister, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Speech at the 25th Bálványos Summer Free University and Student Camp, July 26, 2014, http://www.kormany.hu/en/the-primeminister/the-prime-minister-s-speeches/prime-minister-viktor-orban-s-speech-at-the-25th-balvanyossummer-free-university-and-student-camp 23 See Gary Jacobsohn & Yaniv Roznai, Constitutional Revolution (Yale University Press, 2020), 75-101. 24 See Paul Blokker, ‘Populism as a Constitutional Project’ (2019) 17(2) International Journal of Constitutional Law 536, 541-547 21 22 254 IANIV ROZNAI the majority is sovereign and any limitations on its power are illegitimate. Hence, populism is built on an extreme approach of majoritarianism and hostility towards political pluralism and separation of powers.25 This claim, to be the sole representative of the people, becomes even stronger when the political majority controls the constituent power as incorporated within the constitutional rules of change. That way, populist constitutionalism tends to collapse the distinction between ordinary politics and constitutional politics, which is manifested in a constant and frequent change of constitutional norms and rules in the context of day-to-day politics. When the government controls the amending process and uses it for its own partisan interests, this creates not only a crisis for the status and rule of the constitution, but also turns the entire constitution-making process to a unanimous, partisan and monistic process, instead of one that aims for a broad consensus.26 Oscar Orban’s approach was meant precisely to limit Victor Orbán’s populist constitutional project. III. A LIMITED SECONDARY CONSTITUENT POWER A recurring theme in the book, is the question of the relationship between original/primary and derived/secondary constituent power. As the book correctly notes, increasingly, the jurisprudence of courts around the world have acknowledged that the constitution’s material core, or fundamental principles, are beyond the scope of the secondary constituent power.27 The basic idea is that the constitutional amendment power is not unlimited. The amendment power is a delegated legal competence which acts as trustee of the people and therefore is limited both explicitly and implicitly. Firstly, it is limited by those explicit limitations / eternity clauses stipulated in the constitution. Secondly, the body which holds the constitutional amendment power in trust cannot use it to destroy the constitution from which the body’s authority derives in the first place. The amendment power is the internal method that the constitution provides for its self-preservation. By destroying the constitution, the delegated amending power thus undermines its own raison d’être. Amending the constitution in a way that would destroy the old and create a new constitution would be an action ultra vires. Also, since every constitution consists of a set of basic principles and features, which determine the totality of the constitutional order and the “spirit of the constitution” and its identity, the constitutional amendment power cannot be used to destroy those basic Nadia Urbinati, ‘The Populist Phenomenon’ (2013) 51 Raisons politiques 137, 139, 146-153; Nadia Urbinati, Populism and The Principle of Majority, in Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser et al. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Populism (Oxford University Press, 2017), 571, 572. 26 Blokker (n 24), 545-547. 27 CPL 192-193. 25 255 The Sovereign Is He Who Holds Constituent Power? principles. The alteration of the constitution’s core would result in the collapse of the entire constitution and its replacement by another. This decision, however, is not left for the delegated organs, but for the people’s primary constituent power and is ought to be taken via proper channels of higher-level democratic participation and deliberations.28 However, this theory becomes complicated when the amendment formula itself includes the people through, for example, a popular referendum. Would an exercise of constituent power through such popular mechanisms be subject to limits and to judicial review? This question becomes burning as more and more amendment formulas include the people.29 Consider these four related (but somewhat different) approaches: According to one approach, as manifested by courts in France and Ireland, when the people are directly involved in the constitutional amendment process, there are no limitations on the amending power and the court will not review the decision by the ‘sovereign’ people itself.30 According to a second approach, as manifested by an obiter dictum of the Slovak Constitutional Court, when striking down an amendment to the Constitution for violating the substantive core of the Constitution. According to the Court, its decision on the judicial review of constitutional amendments “were constrained by the original constituent power (i.e. the people), which could confirm or reject them by constitutional referendum.”31 A third case is that from Peru. The Constitutional Court has admitted for processing a claim of unconstitutionality against a constitutional reform that passed by a referendum.32 The court repeated that Congress’ power to reform the constitution is not one of unlimited character, since it must observe the limits both formal and material characterizing the design and structure basic of the Constitution of 1993. Congress, by exercising its reforming power cannot disrupt the identity or essential structure of the Constitution, which is due to the fact that the constitutional reform laws are the creation of ‘a Constituted Constituent Power’. There is a serious suspicion of alteration of the constitutional identity, the court notes, if the reform affects human dignity, the people’s sovereignty, the democratic rule of law, the republican form of government and, in general, political regime and form of State. I elaborate on this in Yaniv Roznai, Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments – The Limits of Amendment Powers (Oxford University Press, 2017). 28 See Xenophon Contiades & Alkmene Fotiadou (eds.), Participatory Constitutional Change The People as Amenders of the Constitution (Routledge, 2017). 30 See e.g. Richard Albert, Malkhaz Nakashidze, and Tarik Olcay, ‘The Formalist Resistance to Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments’ (2019) 70 Hastings Law Journal 639, 661-665. 31 Judgment PL. ÚS 21/2014, para. 177. See Tomáš Ľalík, ‘The Slovak Constitutional Court on Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendment (PL. ÚS 21/2014)’ (2020) 16 European Constitutional Law Review 328. 32 EXP.00013-2020-PI / TC, 31.1.2021, https://tc.gob.pe/jurisprudencia/2021/00013-2020AI%20Admisibilidad.pdf 29 256 IANIV ROZNAI So far, the court examined reforms that were adopted by Congress. However, what if the reform has been approved through a referendum? In this case, it is arguably the holder of the sovereignty who is summoned to give his verdict regarding any proposed constitutional amendment. The court holds that it must establish a position and to listen to the parties, in relation to the possibility of exercising control of validity of constitutional reforms that have been adopted through referendum. The court must determine whether the control of constitutionality of reform that have been approved by referendum is feasible, and if so to what extent. It would also be necessary for the court to clarify whether the constitutional reforms enacted by a popular referendum are limited by material limits. It remains to be seen what the court will decide. The fourth approach, is that of the High Court in Kenya. On 13 May 2021, a panel of five High Court justices unanimously adopted a significant ruling33 disqualifying the Constitution of Kenya (Amendment) Bill, 2020. The bill aimed to implement President Uhuru Kenyatta’s so called “Building Bridges Initiative (BBI)” and was supposed to be the most significant change to the state’s governmental structure since the constitution was adopted in 2010. The High Court ruled that the constitutional amendments are unconstitutional and, most importantly, that the so-called Basic Structure Doctrine applies in Kenya. What is interesting, for our matter, is that according to the court, the sovereignty of the people in its constituent capacity is expressed in the following three layers: 1. Primary Constituent Power – the extraordinary power to draft or radically change a constitution. This is, in the tradition of Sieyès, the immediate expression of the people. This authority is free and independent of any constitutional restrictions and is unlimited by the constitutional rules and procedures of the previous Constitution. 2. Secondary constituent power – constitutive authority for constitutional changes which are not material and therefore do not change the basic structure of the constitution. In Kenya, this power “is exercisable through a referendum subsequent to public participation and Parliamentary process” and may be exercised only in accordance with the procedure set forth in Articles 255-257 of the Constitution. 3. Constituted power – those limited powers created by the Constitution and derived from it. It is a delegated authority limited by the Constitution. Republic of Kenya in The High Court of Kenya at Nairoby, Constitutional and Human Rights Division Petition No. E282 of 2020, David Ndii & Others v Attorney General & Others (13.05.2021), https://www.afronomicslaw.org/sites/default/files/pdf/BBI%20Consolidated%20Judgment%20%20Final%20Version%20-%20As%20Delivered.pdf; see Yaniv Roznai, ‘The Basic Structure Doctrine arrives in Kenya: Winds of Change for Constitutionalism in Africa?’, VerfBlog (19 May 2021), https://verfassungsblog.de/the-basic-structure-doctrine-arrives-in-kenya/ 33 257 The Sovereign Is He Who Holds Constituent Power? In Kenya, this limited power to amend the constitution is in the hands of the parliament. The basic structure doctrine, according to the court, protects fundamental aspects of the constitution from amendment by the secondary or constituted constituent power. In other words: the essential features of the constitution that form the basic structure can only be changed through the people by exercising the primary constitutive authority. The Court’s reasoning on this dimension of primary constitutive authority marks an extremely important development. In Kenya, the court states, this power can be exercised in four stages: 1. Civic education to provide the public with sufficient information regarding the possibility of participating in the process of establishing or amending the constitution; 2. Public participation, in which the people share their positions on constitutional issues; 3. Deliberations in a Constituent Assembly for the formulation of constitutional ideas through representatives specially elected for establishing or amending the Constitution; 4. A referendum for the adoption or rejection of the constitution or the amendments to the basic structure of the constitution.34 If constitutional theory regarded the people in its ‘original constituent power’ capacity as either the initiator of the process but not necessarily its executor,35 or alternatively, its ratifier in the end,36 the Kenyan judgment is crucial in elaborating that for constitutional moments to truly manifest the people’s will, popular participation in constitutional moments should not be limited to a solely ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote in a referendum but should extend to the stages before, throughout, and after the process of constitutional change. As I claimed elsewhere, “it is the manifestation of ‘we the people’, not simply ‘oui, the people’.”37 But the Kenyan judgment leaves open the question whether the manifestation of ‘primary constituent power’ is limited or not. To that question I now turn. Ibid., at para. 474 of the judgment. For this distinction see, for example, Colón-Ríos, Weak Constitutionalism (n 5). 36 For an analysis, see Jeffrey A. Lenowitz, Why Ratification? Questioning the Unexamined Constitution-making Procedure (Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Columbia University, 2013). 37 Yaniv Roznai, ‘“We the People”, “Oui, the People” and the Collective Body: Perceptions of Constituent Power’, in Gary Jacobsohn and Miguel Schor (eds.), Comparative Constitutional Theory (Edward Elgar, 2018), 295-316. 34 35 258 IANIV ROZNAI IV. AN UNLIMITED PRIMARY CONSTITUENT POWER? In chapter 6, Colón-Ríos shows us that various authors (such as Durán y Bas, Taparelli, and Mellado), claimed that “constituent power itself may be subject to substantive limits”, mainly the exercise constituent power is accompanied by “natural law obligations that advance some conception of the common good.”38 Colón-Ríos is correct in this reading of constituent power based on these, and other scholars such as Hauriou and Sieyès. But when discussing possible limits to constituent power, there was one issue missing from the book – the notion of international or supra-national law. Indeed, from the perspective of international law, it is quite clear that a state must meet its international obligations regardless of local legislation that contradicts them, whether it is ordinary or constitutional legislation.39 Thus, for example, Article 27 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Art in 1969 states that “a state may not rely on the provisions of internal legislation as justification for non-compliance with a treaty.” In its 1932 opinion, the Permanent Court of Justice noted that a state could not use its constitution as an excuse to evade an obligation under international law or a valid treaty. Likewise, the European Court of Human Rights has also ruled, in a number of cases, hat it has the power to discuss constitutional legislation and examine its compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights. Thus, for example in the judgment of Sejdie and Finci v. Bosnia and Herzegovina, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the constitutional provisions restricting the right to be elected to people belonging to the Bosnian, Croatian or Serbian nationalities are discriminatory, violate the European Convention on Human Rights and must be amended. Similar decisions regarding constitutional provisions that are inconsistent with human rights treaties have been made in regional human rights courts in America and Africa. Another example is the 1984 Security Council Resolution 554, which established the 1983 South African Constitution, which established apartheid, contradicts the principles of the UN Charter, including racial equality, and declared the new constitution “null and void.” Do these decisions signal the death of sovereignty, Sovereignty RIP in the words of Don Herzog?40 Perhaps not, as these limitations apply mainly in the external juridical sphere and have difficulties in affecting the legal validity of constitutional norms domestically.41 Yet, I was hope to see more discussion on the question of international law, which is not entirely a recent question. CPL 160. See Yaniv Roznai, ‘The Boundaries of Constituent Authority’ (2021) 52(5) Connecticut Law Review 1381, 1394-1399. 40 Don Herzog, Sovereignty, RIP (Yale University Press, 2020). 41 See Yaniv Roznai, ‘The Theory and Practice of ‘Supra-Constitutional’ Limits on Constitutional Amendments’ (2013) 62 International & Comparative Law Quarterly 557, 560. 38 39 259 The Sovereign Is He Who Holds Constituent Power? I wish to suggestion another limitation: the very concept of constituent power may carry other certain inherent limitations, by the fact that at the basis of the theory of constituent power is the power of the people to create and recreate their constitutional world. In order to protect the very idea of constituent power; in order for constituent power to be exercised in the future and to allow and facilitate the people’s exercise of constituent power, those rights which form the basis of constituent power must be protected. In other words, the exercise of constituent power cannot result in the abolition of rights such as freedom of expression and assembly, and political rights, which are necessary in order for constituent power to reappear in the future. The exercise of constituent power must maintain its “capacity to rethink and constitutional order as a whole.” Minimum core of rights that are necessary for constituent power to be exercised and re-exercised must be kept. Furthermore, the exercise of constituent power must be consistent with the idea of “the people”. An exercise of constituent power that results in the alienation of groups in the society undermines the very raison d'être of constituent power. If ‘the people’ or some parts thereof are excluded from the polity and are no longer able to exercise constituent power, this should influence the legitimacy of the constitution-making process. One cannot use ‘constituent power’ in order to undermine the very notion of ‘constituent power’. This limitation, is of course one of legitimacy, not of legality.42 V. CONCLUSION So, returning to the question with which I opened this essay, can we, by exercising constituent power, decide who is the winning song for the Eurovision song contest? In his book, Colón-Ríos provides a strong response: constituent power only involves a constitution-making authority: Constituent power is the power create novel constitutional orders and it is in that respect not bound by positive law. Nonetheless, … the exercise of constituent power will always be based on, and limited by, a commission. Unlike a true sovereign, an entity authorized to exercise constituent power cannot transform any will into law, but only produce constitutional law. … A Constituent Assembly authorized to draft (or even to enact) a new constitution will still be normally subject to the separation of powers and cannot exercise the ordinary power of government.43 Whereas sovereignty is the power to create any legal content free from the constraints imposed by the separation of powers, constituent power is the faculty to create only constitutional content, and accordingly, agents possessing constituent 42 Roznai, ‘The Boundaries’ (n 39), 1404-1406. 43 CPL 259-260. 260 IANIV ROZNAI power do not exercise governmental, legislative, executive, or judicial functions.44 Constituent power is not the shir exercise of force, just like a bank robbery with a gun. It is a juridical act; a special type of act with a special juridical task – that of creating constitutional norms. So, to conclude, “The constituent authority may be many things”, Richard Kay writes in his article on Constituent Authority, “but it is not anything we want it to be.”45 Thank you, Prof. Colón-Ríos, for writing such a magnificent book, that would be a valuable resource to anyone interested in the concept of constituent power, for years to come. 44 45 761 CPL 226 Richard S. Kay, ‘Constituent Authority’ (2011) 59 American Journal of Comparative Law 715, 261 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 261-273 ISSN: 1825-5167 REPUBLICAN AND SCHMITTIAN CONCEPTIONS OF CONSTITUENT POWER COMMENTS ON COLÓN-RÍOS’S CONSTITUENT POWER AND THE LAW MIGUEL VATTER College of Business, Government and Law Flinders University (Australia) miguel.vatter@flinders.edu.au ABSTRACT This paper discusses Colon-Rios's reconstruction of the idea of constituent power in relation to his interpretations of Rousseau and Schmitt. It distinguishes a republican reading of constituent power as immanent to the juridical order from Schmitt's attempt to join constituent power with dictatorship. K EYWORDS Immanence, rule of law, republicanism, Rousseau, Schmitt AN IMMANENT CONCEPTION OF CONSTITUENT POWER For a long time the concept of constituent power lay at the margins, if not entirely outside, of jurisprudence. These days, constituent power is often understood as the key component in any attempt to resolve the tensions between constitutionalism (rule of law) and democracy (rule of people). As Niklas Luhmann pointed out, the idea of a constitution became an essential part of modern societies because it allowed for the symbolic articulation of the legal and political systems, or legal authority and political power, in their functionally differentiated roles. Indeed, a modern constitution is like light: just as the latter can be understood to be both wave and particle, so a constitution can be understood to be both legal norm and political act. A constitution can both set legal limits to political power and determine politically who gets to make law. The concept of constituent power, because it joins to the point of indistinction a political and a juridical valence – or, stated otherwise, because it unifies within it both a moment of sovereignty and one of constitutionalism – consequently holds a crucial function in modern politics, as well as being itself an object of dispute between political and juridical sciences. At the 262 MIGUEL VATTER same time, and for the very same reason, the concept of constituent power also risks becoming the Trojan Horse of one or the other social system. In my opinion, Colón-Ríos’s new book positions him as first among equals in the field of studies on constituent power. This is not only because of its impressive range over the history of modern and contemporary jurisprudence. And not only because it contains convincing illustrations of the explanatory power of its hypotheses when it comes to the empirical analysis of constituent processes in modern and contemporary history. In my opinion the main merit of the book consists in its bold, systematic attempt to offer a reconstruction of the concept of constituent power such that its jurisprudential meaning can no longer be denied, while at the same time vindicating its democratic pedigree. When in Political Theology Schmitt described the development of the theory of the state in modern Europe, he claimed that the 19th century saw a concerted attempt to think about the state from “representations of immanence.”1 He was referring both to the rise of democracy and socialism after the abolition of “divine right” monarchies, but also to the rise of scientific naturalism as paradigmatic form of explaining reality. For Schmitt the origin of the concept of constituent power is to be found in this immanent turn taken by the discourse of legitimacy. This requirement of immanence is not only applicable to society as a whole, but also within its sub-systems as well. At a minimum, it should be possible to offer an account of constituent power that is “immanent” to modern jurisprudence itself. Thus, from the start of his book Colón-Ríos speaks of the “idea that in any juridical order there is a supreme constituent authority” (1, emphasis mine). In another formulation, he says that the “question of constituent power” refers to “whether the original constituent power can manifest after a constitution is in place” (16, emphasis mine). Colón-Ríos considers that the question must be answered in the affirmative if a constitution is to be able to play its role as structural articulation of functionally differentiated subsystems: setting limits to what governments can legally do (e.g., try to amend constitutions in top-down fashion), but also bolstering the political power of the people, viz. democracy (e.g., when constitutional courts take up social demands for inclusion and equality that the political system is unwilling to process). In short, the great merit of Colón-Ríos’s book is to be the first real attempt to provide such an immanent account of constituent power and reveal the “juridical potential of the theory of constituent power” (16). This is an important goal given that historical experience shows how easy it is to employ the concept of constituent power within political projects that seek to destroy the autonomy of the juridical “All the identities that recur in the political ideas and in the state doctrines of the nineteenth century rest on such conceptions of immanence [Immanenzvorstellungen]: the democratic thesis of the identity of ruler and ruled, the organic theory of the state with the identity of state and sovereignty” (Schmitt 1988: 50) 1 263 Republican and Schmittian Conceptions of Constituent Power. Comments on … order, viz. the rule of law, in favour of the naked assertion of force from a part of society. The central thesis of the book is the claim that “the juridical nature of constituent authority” is preserved as long as one does not “obscure the distinction between constituent power and sovereignty” (3). Everything therefore depends on gaining clarity about what “sovereignty” means in distinction from “constituent power”. For one can draw distinctions in a weaker and a stronger sense. One can say, for example, that sovereignty and constituent power are different, yet compatible, and we need both; or, one can also say: sovereignty and constituent power are opposed and mutually exclusive. To anticipate my thesis, it seems to me that Colón-Ríos is ambivalent about what kind of distinction he wants to make here. Although the entire book can be read as one long argument explaining what he means by this distinction, given my area of expertise in the history of political thought, in my comments I shall focus on those chapters that seem to me to offer the politicotheoretical underpinnings of how Colón-Ríos articulates this crucial distinction as well as evidence to his ambivalence. These are the chapters on Rousseau and on the idea of constituent power as “sovereign dictatorship” advanced by Schmitt and adopted by Colon-Ríos. As I understand the historical argument, Colón-Ríos believes there are two sources for the idea of constituent power in modernity: one is Rousseau, the other is Sieyes, who baptized the term pouvoir constituant. Sieyes inaugurates the tradition that identifies constituent power – understood as the “unlimited constitution-making faculty” (3) – with a transcendent origin of the juridical order, viz., with an instance that is absolute or ab-solved from law, and in this sense “sovereign”. This transcendent origin can be located in a moment of extra-legality and revolution that acts as a deus ex machina with respect to the “machine” of the legal order. But for Colón-Ríos, I think correctly, the more widespread understanding of constituent power – often associated with Carré de Malberg – as the power of amending a constitution via legal procedures is also ultimately “transcendent” of the juridical order, except that it locates the instance of legal absolution within the machinery of the law, as a deus in machina. An example of which could be the indistinction between sovereign and legislative powers in the Westminster Parliament as “a legally unlimited power of constitutional change” (15). The innovative historical thesis of the book is that we owe to Rousseau the other possibility of thinking constituent power as immanent within the juridical order. Rousseau has a juridically immanent idea of constituent power because he distinguishes sovereignty from constituent power. At the same time, Rousseau gives us the key to understand constituent power as truly democratic, as an expression of popular sovereignty, whereas Sieyes disconnected constituent power from the 264 MIGUEL VATTER power of the people and handed it over to the legislative power of their representatives.2 As I understand the systematic argument, Colón-Ríos’s thesis is that constituent power can play a democratic role only if it is identified with a species of dictatorship. This surprising claim derives from Schmitt, whom Colón-Ríos rehabilitates by arguing that his account of both sovereignty and constituent power is misunderstood if placed on the side of transcendence, and politically on the side of a “conservative revolution” that favours the coup d’État. Rather, Schmitt’s identification of constituent power as a form of dictatorship is the only account that is faithful to the rule of law and to its democratic, political legitimacy. While I tend to agree with Colón-Ríos’s first thesis, I will disagree with his attempt to give a “republican” or Rousseauian employment of Schmitt. ROUSSEAU, CONSTITUENT REPUBLICANISM POWER, AND NEO-ROMAN Colón-Ríos’s thesis is that Rousseau’s famous distinction between sovereignty and government is the royal road to a correct understanding of constituent power as immanent within a juridical order. In principle I agree with him, but everything depends, of course, on how one understands the idea of “sovereignty” or the “general will” in Rousseau. Here things risk getting immediately off to a false start in so far as Colón-Ríos seems to agree with recent commentators like Richard Tuck who see a strong continuity between Rousseau’s idea of sovereignty and those developed by Bodin and Hobbes before him. The Bodinian and Hobbesian idea of sovereignty presupposes that all political power and all legal authority are united in one single point, namely, the sovereign (who, in turn, is a representative personation of the state). As I have argued elsewhere, this is a profoundly antirepublican conception of popular sovereignty.3 For the key Roman and neo-Roman insight is that a republic is a polity based on a constitution that separates political power from legal authority. That said, for the most part Colón-Ríos’s actual reading of Rousseau quickly recovers its basic neo-Roman stride in so far as it adopts the Roman principle that a “people” is correlative to the law.4 Thus, Colón-Ríos emphasizes that Rousseau’s concept of sovereignty is always connected to the adoption of “fundamental laws”. In typical republican fashion, he On Sieyes and constituent power, see now (Rubinelli 2020). (Vatter 2019). 4 See Cicero’s famous definition of a republic cited by Augustine: “For the people, according to his [Cicero’s] definition, is an assembly of the multitude associated by a consensus of laws and by a community of interests [populum enim esse definivit coetum multitudinis iuris consensu et utilitatis communione sociatum]” (Augustine 1984: 19.21). On this passage in medieval and renaissance political thought, see now (Kempshall 2001). 2 3 265 Republican and Schmittian Conceptions of Constituent Power. Comments on … insists time and again that Rousseau is not a theorist of direct democracy, a doctrine according to which the people ought to govern themselves directly. He clearly states that the people as sovereign only appears when “a body of law is created or altered,” that is, only in constituent moments (40). He shows that for Rousseau constituent assemblies must be convened by law and they attest to “the legal possibility of an exercise of constituent power is for Rousseau an integral part of a legitimate constitutional order” (49). Colón-Ríos emphasizes that Rousseau receives the ideas of Marsilius of Padua according to which the whole body of citizens are the legislators and their constitutions institute the power of the state or prince. Similarly to Althusius and Lawson, in Rousseau the fundamental right of popular sovereignty is a constituent one: it refers to the “power of disposing… and constituting everything necessary and useful for the universal association” (31). In Rousseau, the people become a subject “having the power to create a constitutional order anew, a constituent subject authorized to produce any constitutional content” (32). I am entirely in agreement with his reading of Rousseau as “a clear precursor of the notion of constitutional supremacy under a representative form of government” (43). The great advantage of a republican conception of the people is that popular sovereignty is never construed as anterior to, and therefore also exterior to, the (rule of) law. Whereas for the Hobbesian concept of sovereignty, which understands it as superior to the law, the law is always seen as an impediment of the natural liberty to do whatever one sees fit, for the neo-Roman conception of freedom, laws are what makes for the freedom of a people.5 Not only do they make for its freedom, they also make for its power. After all, legal rights (for example the right to vote) are evidently not simply protections of an inner space of free choice, but they are also – if not primarily – a way to empower people such that they can no longer be dominated. In that sense, law makes for popular sovereignty, although given the monarchic association of the term, the neo-Roman republican tradition prefers to speak here of a people’s power and independence (which in the German idealist version becomes “autonomy”). This is the real background of Rousseau’s conception of sovereignty, and given that power is immanent to law (or in Spinoza’s formula: jus sive potentia) it makes perfect sense to claim, as Colón-Ríos does, that Rousseau stands behind the idea of constituent power as immanent to the rule of law. This view of Rousseau as upholding the autonomy of law runs against a wellknown paradox: if the people is a function of the law, how can they, in turn, be the “authors” of the law?6 As all true paradoxes, there is no evident solution to it. Although I am sympathetic to Colón-Ríos’s attempt to tackle this difficult question, (Skinner 2001); (Pettit 1997); (Vatter 2012). See (Honig 2007) and (Vatter 2011) for two distinct approaches to this paradox. See also the approach of (Lindahl 2007). 5 6 266 MIGUEL VATTER I fear that his solution may also betray an understanding of the separation between sovereignty and constituent power that has problematic consequences for his overall argument, as I shall illustrate below in my discussion of Schmitt. Rousseau’s answer to this paradox is found in the obscure figure of a legislator who persuades rather than compels people to adopt a given constitution. Rousseau is clearly drawing here from an ancient tradition that thematizes “philosophical” lawgivers, such as Solon, Lycurgus, Numa, and Moses.7 Although Michael Walzer has claimed that appeal to such legislators indicates that Rousseau thought a people could not give itself a constitution, Colón-Ríos disagrees. For him the figure of the legislator in Rousseau is not a systematic necessity but a practical one: some peoples, depending on their stage of political development, may need such a figure, but this does not argue against the belief that the people is in principle the only real constituent subject. More importantly, Colón-Ríos offers a deflationary and juridical reading of this figure: “the legislator, in short, is the individual or entity tasked with the responsibility of proposing a body of laws to a constituent people” (48). In a quick footnote he admits that there subsists the problem of how to determine who is such a constituent people, since by definition such a subject has now to be determined prior to the choice of the legislator, who is merely delegated by the constituent people to draw up the legal constitution. But precisely such a deflationary reading seems to commit Colón-Ríos to the belief that a people with “plenitude of powers” always precedes the formulation of a constitution, and thus leads him towards the Schmittian view that a constitution is “the concrete, comprehensive decision [by a people or its representative/MV] over the type and form of its own political existence” (Schmitt 2008: sect.8, 125). Yet, there is no necessity to go down this path. On the contrary, it is possible to argue that the figure of the legislator as distinct from the assembled people, points to the distinction between legal authority and political power. The fact that this legislator is also a “philosopher” (or a Ciceronian rhetor)8 is an allegorical presentation of the principle of legal autonomy – that valid law needs to be produced legally – and of the principle that the rule of law stands under certain constitutional principles (or “basic norms”) that are rational and call upon the exercise of judgment (not acclamation) on the part of the people assembled under this constitution.9 In my opinion Colón-Ríos never entirely disambiguates his understanding of Rousseauian popular sovereignty. It is unclear whether for him, in the last instance, the “people” are sovereign because they are the source of both political power and of legal authority, or whether, as in the republican tradition, the people’s power is On Moses as founder, see (Karsenti 2012); on philosophical legislators, see (Fraenkel 2012); for the figure in the republican tradition, see (Vatter 2017). For a recent discussion of the figure, see the special issue of Etica&Politica, vol.23, n.1 (2021) on “ancient legislators in modern thought”. 8 See the treatment of the Ciceronian “legislator” qua founder in (Syros 2011). 9 I refer to my discussion in (Vatter 2020b). 7 267 Republican and Schmittian Conceptions of Constituent Power. Comments on … not only distinct from the authority of the law, but is in turn dependent on the law’s autonomy. Phrased another way, it is unclear to me whether for Colón-Ríos the “power of the people” or “popular sovereignty” is a Hobbesian sovereign which delegates part of its power, qua constituent power, to an assembly for purposes of writing a constitution, or whether, as I have argued elsewhere, the power of the people just is its constituent power, and such constituent power is not only active in drafting constitutions, but also in judging, along and in dispute with the organs of the state, of what counts as law. When Colón-Ríos discusses Rousseau, he seems to tend to the latter, republican option. But when he discusses Schmitt, it seems to me that he defends a more problematic understanding of the distinction between sovereignty and constituent power. CONSTITUENT POWER AS SOVEREIGN DICTATORSHIP In chapter 9 Colón-Ríos develops theoretically the basis for his understanding of the distinction between sovereignty and constituent power which is intended to ground the immanence of constituent power within the legal order. He starts from the commonplace that a constitution exists to limit or temper the unbridled or absolute exercise of power.10 For this reason, a constituent subject cannot be sovereign – there are some things it cannot do. “The exercise of constituent power… only involves a constitution-making authority; it can only produce constitutional norms.” By way of contrast, a sovereign subject excludes the separation of powers and can create any legal content whatsoever because its “will” is itself “law”: quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem. Colón-Ríos argues that it was Schmitt who develops the correct understanding of the “limited” nature of constituent power in contradistinction with absolute sovereignty. On this reading, Schmitt considers the constituent assembly as not sovereign because “it exercizes a special jurisdiction which may be substantively unlimited (i.e., it can adopt any constitutional content) but that is still subject to a limited mandate: that of making a constitution” (226). Because constituent power is subject to a mandate, Schmitt introduces a distinction between sovereignty and sovereign dictatorship. Whereas sovereignty is something held by monarchs (or, in modern democracies, by a people), a sovereign dictator acts on the basis of a commission “from a sovereign who is unable or unwilling to exercise its unlimited political force directly” (226). Thus, “constituent power is understood as a nonsovereign power” (226). The paradox of constituent power, after Sieyes, lay in the idea that legal authority and limited government originated from an a-legal and ab-solute origin. ColónRíos’s solution to the paradox is that constituent power – as mandated – is actually 10 For a classic restatement, see (Krygier 2012). 268 MIGUEL VATTER of a “limited” nature. Yet it is not clear in what such a limitation consists in, for Colón-Ríos admits that, even when commissioned by a “democratically elected assembly,” limited constituent power assumes “a jurisdiction formally akin to that exercised by dictators and military juntas.” A paradigmatic example of such a constituent assembly is the revolutionary French National Convention which acted as a “sovereign dictatorship of revolution” (cited on 240). The concept of a sovereign dictator was introduced by Schmitt in his book Dictatorship. In this work, Schmitt sought to trace the idea of constituent power from Sieyes back to Rousseau’s discussion of Roman dictatorship. In turn, Rousseau’s discussion took up Machiavelli’s ground-breaking analysis of Roman dictatorship in the Discourses on Livy, which was presented as being of finite duration and acting on commission of the Roman people and Senate in order to confront a present danger to the whole political body, such as a foreign invasion.11 The important fact is that such a dictatorship, albeit reflecting a surplus of executive power, did not abrogate the constitutional division of powers. Colón-Ríos compares it to the authority granted the executive branch to issue emergency decrees that may contravene certain articles of the constitution (239). By way of contrast, Schmitt argues that the idea of constituent power is a new form of dictatorship which he calls “sovereign dictatorship”. For Colón-Ríos, as a sovereign dictator, the subject of constituent power is a jacked-up version of the Rousseauian legislator: “if one gives Rousseau’s legislator the power of his dictator (i.e., the power of producing conclusive legal acts) one gets sovereign dictatorship: a dictator authorized to replace the existing constitutional order” (240). But this description gives the impression that there is no difference between the republican, Rousseauian idea of constituent power and Schmitt’s version of it. Instead, in my opinion, with his idea of a sovereign dictator Schmitt deconstructs Rousseau’s Social Contract. For Schmitt accuses Rousseau of having resolved the paradox of constitutionalism by separating right from power, legislator from dictator. In other words, Rousseau’s solution is too republican for Schmitt. Conversely, Schmitt’s solution is anti-republican: the legislator must be given “the power of a dictator…. This relationship will come about through an idea that is, in its substance, a consequence of Rousseau’s Contrat social, although he does not name it as a separate power: le pouvoir constituant [the constituting power]” (Schmitt 2014: 111). The sovereign dictatorship brings together the executive might of a dictator with the legislative authority of the legislator in what Schmitt calls a “plenitude of powers” previously attributed to Popes or Emperors. The theological odour of his vocabulary is not accidental, since the task at hand calls for the “total negation” of the existing constitution and the creation ex nihilo of a new one. This revolutionary situation “should normally relinquish any legal justification – since, by definition, a 11 For the current debate on Machiavelli’s conception of dictatorship see (Geuna 2015). 269 Republican and Schmittian Conceptions of Constituent Power. Comments on … constitution that is to come does not yet exist. Consequently we would be dealing with sheer power” (Schmitt 2014: 111). But this is not so for Schmitt: the sovereign dictator remains a juridical figure in so far as “the power assumed is one that, without being itself constitutionally established, nevertheless is associated with any existing constitution in such a way that it appears to be foundational to it – even if it is never itself subsumed by the constitution, so that it can never be negated either (insofar as the existing constitution negates it). This is the meaning of pouvoir constituant [constituent power]” (Schmitt 2014: 111, emphasis mine). On this definition, constituent power is at once an extra-legal and infra-legal power. What gives it this character is its “sovereign” element, for traditionally sovereignty is simultaneously inside and outside of the legal order. In Political Theology he will make this feature of sovereignty explicit by defining it as the legal power to decide a state of exception to law.12 At the same time, the fact that Schmitt adds the phrase “in such a way that it appears to be foundational” suggests that constituent power may in actuality not be “foundational” of the constitutional order, that is, constituent power is not really immanent to a legal order. We shall see what this mysterious phrase could mean below. Colón-Ríos adopts Schmitt’s solution because he is impressed by Schmitt’s insistence “that once the constitution is adopted, not only does sovereign dictatorship end, but it ceases to exist as a legal possibility: ‘A sovereign dictatorship is irreconcilable with a constitutional form of government’” (241 citing Schmitt). Schmitt is indeed insistent on this point: “Either sovereign dictatorship or constitution; the one excludes the other” (Schmitt 2014: 124). How to read this mutual exclusion? Colón-Ríos takes it to mean that Schmitt limits constituent power out of respect for the popular sovereign and its new constitution. For me, Schmitt’s either/or seeks to establish a permanent dualism between constituent and constituted powers, as if they could not be given a univocal reading. This pits democracy against constitutionalism, and, in my opinion, constitutes a rejection of the very thesis that Colón-Ríos wants to defend, namely, that of the immanence of constituent power in the juridical order. Another problem is that, to justify a “limited” (yet nonetheless “sovereign”) constituent power, Colón-Ríos has to bring back a non-republican conception of the sovereign: “sovereign dictatorship amounts to the exercise of constituent power on a mandate from the true sovereign” (244, emphasis mine). Here the distinction between sovereignty and constituent power is not intended to abolish an absolutist sense of sovereignty, as it was in Rousseau and in the republican tradition. Rather, the concept of constituent power, to distinguish itself as juridical because of its “limited” nature, has become dependent on the prior positing of the absolute unity of power and authority of sovereignty from which it draws its authorization (241). In so doing Colón-Ríos assumes that a “true sovereign” – in its Hobbesian form – 12 See the discussion in (Agamben 1998). 270 MIGUEL VATTER really exists, viz., in the form of “the people in a democracy” (242). This requires a big leap of faith: the people as “true sovereign” seems more the stuff of populist dreams than an established social fact. Colón-Ríos is thinking of the possibility of convening a constituent assembly to act as sovereign dictator through a referendum posed to the electorate whose sole question is: “should the constituent assembly be convened to create a new constitution?” (242). However, a brief look at republican sources indicate that the fact alone that such a sovereign dictatorship is commissioned by a “sovereign” people is not enough to justify its employment. Indeed, the problems of this solution were discussed already by Machiavelli when he thematized, and distinguished, the republican institution of dictatorship from the experiment of the Decemvirs, which was a body commissioned to give Rome a new constitution. Machiavelli points out that such a body quickly designed itself as a “permanent” source of constitution-making as a way to maintain absolute power and abolish all legal authority, causing a popular uprising that helped secure once and for all the belief in a constitutional separation of powers that could never be contravened if Rome were to maintain its liberty. Things get more complicated because in Schmitt’s posterior texts like Political Theology and Constitutional Theory Schmitt offers decisionist definitions of popular sovereignty that seem to be indistinguishable from his idea of sovereign dictatorship. Schmitt was fully aware that there was no going back to monarchic sovereignty in its pre-revolutionary form. The name of the game after the French Revolution was popular sovereignty – but how to understand this sovereignty in the age of mass mobilization? In my opinion, Schmitt believed that only a dictator could take decisions that realized popular sovereignty. As mentioned at the start, Schmitt was entirely aware that in late modernity monarchy was replaced by democracy. But what this means for him is that dictatorship has become the horizon within which to understand the new grammar of popular sovereignty. Colón-Ríos argues that all three of the above cited works by Schmitt form a coherent theory of constituent power. His claim is that the sovereign who decides of the state of exception in Political Theology is “an entity or individual who seeks to exercise the powers that in Dictatorship Schmitt associated with commissarial and sovereign dictators by itself, that is, in the absence (or in violation) of a commission” (245). What this means is that the sovereign dictator is “sovereign” in a different sense than a monarch is “sovereign”. Different how? Schmitt was aware that even in the most absolutist forms of medieval monarchy, the king in some sense was always “under law”. But he is equally convinced that the belief in an anteriority of law with respect to sovereignty is no longer applicable in modernity. Hobbes represents the great watershed moment in which sovereignty, like a black hole, sucks into itself all law. Thanks to the works of Foucault and Agamben on modern governmentality, we now surmise that the actual reason for this major shift is that in 271 Republican and Schmittian Conceptions of Constituent Power. Comments on … modernity, and certainly by the 19th century, the power of government became independent from both constitutionalism and sovereignty. Hence the famous dictum, “the king reigns, but he does not govern.” Governments do not work through laws, nor are they sovereign in the technical sense. Schmitt’s thinking reflects this priority of government over rule of law by incorporating it into his idea of the sovereign, essentially identifying democratic sovereignty with sovereign dictatorship. I think Colón-Ríos’s crucial discussion of the influence of Donoso Cortes on Schmitt shows this clearly. Colón-Ríos discusses Schmitt’s citation of a famous parliamentary speech by Donoso Cortes on dictatorship in which the Spanish reactionary claimed that it was better to live under a “dictatorship of government” than under one of “insurrection” (246). According to Colón-Ríos this meant that Donoso’s concept of the dictator – in a prophetic anticipation of general Franco – took upon itself the plenitude of powers in order to protect the state against “anarchy.” Such dictatorial powers is what Schmitt calls “sovereignty” in Political Theology (246). However, according to Colón-Ríos, Schmitt’s “sovereign dictator, in contrast, was all about the creation of new constitutional orders. Schmitt’s distinction between sovereignty and constituent power is best understood as leading to the conclusion that a constituent assembly authorised to adopt a new constitution is not the sovereign, but a sovereign dictator commissioned to exercise constituent power on behalf of the true sovereign.” The difference between Donoso Cortes’ dictatorial sovereign and Schmitt’s “sovereign dictator” is that the former can abolish constitutions whereas the latter, in so far as its aim is a constituent one, “cannot prescribe a mechanism for its own elimination.” Yet, as can be clearly seen in the long citation that introduced Schmitt’s idea of sovereign dictator, this figure is expressly introduced not in order to preserve an old constitutional order, but to abrogate it and create an entirely new one. Thus, I think it is more correct to say that Schmitt is not simply putting for the claim that constituent power becomes the “legal” dictatorship exercised by a sovereign people as a means to attain a constitutional government. Rather, such sovereign and constituent dictatorship is from the start an instrument of governmentality, and thus what we have here is the subreption of sovereignty in government, an entirely antirepublican move, made possible in and through a process of constitution-making.13 Schmitt’s defence of the constitutional role of dictatorship is the path through which constitutionalism is incorporated into democratic governmentality precisely against Rousseau’s point who “systematically argued in favour of a formal means for the people to act independently of government” (55). Of course, Colón-Ríos is fully aware that constituent activity undertaken under conditions of “emergency” provides “fertile ground for the conflation between sovereignty and constituent power” (259). Indeed, his book is a sophisticated and welcome attempt to exorcize this possibility and still retain the idea of constituent 13 I refer to my discussion of this hypothesis in (Vatter 2020a). 272 MIGUEL VATTER power. But I think that he downplays the significance of Donoso Cortes’s subsumption of constituent power under the “dictatorship of government” in its struggle against “anarchy” and “socialism.” Because declarations of states of emergency are governmental acts, his hope that constituent assemblies – “understood as a mechanism for the exercise of the originary constituent power of the people” – will be “more like Rousseau’s Legislator than like Schmitt’s sovereign dictator” (259) remains a pious one. BIBLIOGRAPHY Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Augustine, Saint. 1984. The City of God. Translated by John O'Meara. New York: Penguin. Fraenkel, Carlos. 2012. Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza. Reason, Religion, and Autonomy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Geuna, Marco. 2015. "Machiavelli and the Problem of Dictatorship." Ratio Juris 28 (2):226-241. Honig, Bonnie. 2007. "Between Decision and Deliberation: Political Paradox in Democratic Theory." American Political Science Review 101 (1):1-18. Karsenti, Bruno. 2012. Moise et l'idée de peuple. La vérité historique selon Freud. Paris: Cerf. Kempshall, M.S. 2001. "De Re publica 1.39 in Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought." In Cicero's Republic, edited by J.A. North J.G.F. Powell, 99-135. London: Institute of Classical Studies, University of London. Krygier, Martin. 2012. "Rule of Law." In The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law, edited by Michel Rosenfeld and András Sajó, 233-249. New York: Oxford University Press. Lindahl, Hans. 2007. "Constituent Power and Reflexive Identity: Towards an Ontology of Collective Selfhood." In The Paradox of Constitutionalism, edited by Martin Loughlin and Neil Walker, 9-24. New York: Oxford University Press. Pettit, Philip. 1997. Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rubinelli, Lucia. 2020. Constituent Power. A History. New York: Cambridge University Press. Schmitt, Carl. 1988. Political Theology. Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Cambridge: MIT Press. Schmitt, Carl. 2008. Constitutional Theory. Translated by Jeffrey Seitzer. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Schmitt, Carl. 2014. Dictatorship. From the origin of modern concept of sovereignty to proletarian class struggle. Translated by Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward. London: Polity. 273 Republican and Schmittian Conceptions of Constituent Power. Comments on … Skinner, Quentin. 2001. "A Third Concept of Liberty." Proceedings of the British Academy 117:237-268. Syros, Vasileios. 2011. "Founders and Kings Versus Orators: Medieval and Early Modern Views on the Origins of Social Life." Viator 42 (1):383-408. Vatter, Miguel. 2011. "The People Shall be Judge. Reflective Judgment and Constituent Power in Kant's Philosophy of Law." Political Theory 39 (6):749-776. Vatter, Miguel. 2012. "The Quarrel between Populism and Republicanism: Machiavelli and the Antinomies of Plebeian Politics." Contemporary Political Theory 11 (3):242-263. Vatter, Miguel. 2017. "Machiavelli, "Ancient Theology," and the Problem of Civil Religion." In Machiavelli on Liberty and Conflict, edited by Nadia Urbinati David Johnston, and Camila Vergara, 113-138. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Vatter, Miguel. 2019. "Liberal Governmentality and the Political Theology of Constitutionalism." In Sovereignty in Motion, edited by Neil Walker and Bas Leijssenaar, 115-143. New York: Cambridge University Press. Vatter, Miguel. 2020a. Divine Democracy. Political Theology After Carl Schmitt. New York: Oxford University Press. Vatter, Miguel. 2020b. "Principles and Power: Constituent Power and the Paradox of Democracy." In Almanacco di Filosofia e Politica II, Istituzione. Filosofia, politica, storia, edited by M. Di Pierro, F. Marchesi and E. Zaru, 83-106. Macerata: Quodlibet. 275 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 275-282 ISSN: 1825-5167 THE SCOPE AND LIMITS OF THE JURIDICAL PEOPLE MARIANA VELASCO-RIVERA Law School, University of Göttingen (Germany) School of Law, New York University (USA) mvelascorivera@aya.yale.edu ABSTRACT In this review essay I discuss some of the aspects that I think are opportunities to further develop the theoretical contribution that Joel Colón-Ríos makes in his latest book Constituent power and the Law (Oxford University Press 2020). Accordingly, this review essay is divided in two sections. In the first section I argue that the perils of conflating the sovereignty and constituent power are not limited to constitution-making instances but that they are also present in constitutional amendment episodes. In the second section I discuss two aspects related to the scope and limits of Colón-Ríos’ theory: could constituent power be exercised through means other than constitution-making instances? How much trust should we trust referendums as effective means to determine the will of the people? K EYWORDS Constitutional change; constitution-making; constitutional amendment; constituent power; referendums; popular sovereignty; unconstitutional constitutional amendments. We often hear that the concept of constituent power is a slippery one and one that is hard to grasp because of its political and/or sociological nature. It is often disregarded as a concept that has nothing to do with the law but as describing something that one would know it is there when one sees it. Often it is understood as a sort of supernatural force. In Constituent Power and the Law, Colón-Ríos rejects this idea and seeks to show how this conventional approach and understanding is not sufficient to fully grasp the concept of constituent power.1 He argues that constitutional theory, by only and overly focusing on the political and extra-legal features of constituent power, has disregarded and failed to understand its juridical nature. Accordingly, Colón-Ríos sets out to show how constituent power indeed has a juridical nature. In so doing, he delivers a work of historical, theoretical and practical value. 1 Joel Colón-Ríos, Constituent Power and the Law (2020). 276 MARIANA VELASCO-RIVERA In a way, Constituent Power and the Law demystifies the concept of constituent power by showing how it has travelled, how it has been treated across constitutional history and how constitutional theorists, political actors as well as courts in different contexts have deployed it. It does so while illustrating the legal effects that constituent power has had in the real world. In a nutshell, Colón-Ríos develops a theory of constituent power based on the distinction between sovereignty and constituent power– two concepts that are often conflated and/or used interchangeably. By distinguishing between these two concepts,2 he convincingly argues that, on the one hand, constituent power may be exercised through legal means; and, on the other, that constituent power is almost by definition is a limited constitution-making authority—that is to say, one that cannot go beyond the established separation of powers and subject to judicial scrutiny.3 The practical value of Constituent Power and the Law lies in its conceptual clarity. By revisiting classic scholarship (among others, from Rousseau, to Sieyès, to Schmitt, to Kelsen, to Jellinek) Colón-Ríos manages to shed light on present pressing questions related, for example, to the theory and practice of the unconstitutional constitutional amendment doctrine. This feature, in my view, will make it an indispensable resource not only for legal scholars but also for judges and legal practitioners. In what follows I discuss some of the aspects that I think are opportunities to further develop Colón-Ríos’ theoretical contribution. Accordingly, this review essay is divided in two sections. In the first section I argue that the perils of conflating the sovereignty and constituent power are not limited to constitution-making instances. In the second section I discuss two aspects related to the scope and limits of Colón-Ríos’ theory: could constituent power be exercised through means other than constitution making instances? How much trust should we trust referendums as effective means to determine the will of the people? The perils of conflating sovereignty and constituent power: going beyond constituent assemblies As mentioned above, Colón-Ríos develops his theoretical contribution based on the distinction between sovereignty and constituent power. In his view, “[a] sovereign…is best understood as an individual or entity who enjoys an uncontrollable jurisdiction to transform its will into law. The exercise of constituent power, in contrast, only involves a constitution-making authority; it can only produce constitutional norms.”4 This distinction is of particular importance and one, that in my view, should be taken Id. at 226–259. Id. at 262–294. 4 Id. at 225. 2 3 277 The Scope and the Limits of the Juridical People seriously. In his words: “…when the distinction between sovereignty and constituent power is blurred, the scope of the jurisdiction of the latter tends to be exaggerated, sometimes in dangerous ways.”5 In Chapter 9, Colón-Ríos explores the ways in which sovereignty and constituent power have been conflated in key works of the early 20th century (e.g. Jellinek and Carré de Malberg)6 and illustrates such conflation and its perils both in authoritarian and democratic contexts (i.e. the military dictatorships of Chile and Spain, the constituent assembly called by Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela (2017) and the Constitutional Assembly of Colombia (1991))7 to show that “the assumption of sovereign powers is not exclusive to entities operating in authoritarian contexts.”8 From the detail in which he discusses the Colombian case (he dedicates 6 pages to 9 it), it seems that Colón-Ríos’ main concern (apart from correcting the conflation of sovereignty and constituent power) is to correct the common understanding of constituent assemblies (i.e. constitution-making bodies) as actors with unlimited power so as to prevent runoff assemblies that may depart from democratic principles in dangerous ways—and, as mentioned before, he does offer a sound theory to justify imposing substantive limits to them. In this sense, Colón-Ríos main focus are those situations in which a new constitution would be adopted, as opposed to situations in which constitutional change takes place within an already established constitutional order. Yet in my view, Colón-Ríos’ warning also applies to high courts when engaging in constitutional review of constitutional amendments. It is based on this conflation that, for instance in Mexico, the Supreme Court of Justice has refused to impose substantive limits to the amendment power. For instance, in the Controversia Constitucional 82/2001, a case where it had to decide on the constitutionality of the Indigenous Peoples Rights Reform of 2001, the Mexican Supreme Court rejected the idea that the amending power was subject to any type judicially enforceable limits, arguing that the constitutional amendment “c[a]me from an organ that is the direct successor of the [o]riginal [c]onstituent power, vested with powers that would correspond to the latter, but that before disappearing… [the original constituent power] expressly transferred [to the] Reforming Power”.10 Through this interpretation, in practice, the Mexican Supreme Court has, consequently put the amendment body for all practical purposes outside the law and beyond the separation Id. at 226. Id. at 227–238. 7 Id. at 247–258. 8 Id. at 249. 9 Id. at 250–255. 5 6 10 Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación [Supreme Court of Mexico], 6 Sept 2002, CC 82/2001, at 79 (Mex.) 278 MARIANA VELASCO-RIVERA of powers—that is, it has treated it as if it were the sovereign. This means that, as long as they comply with the process established by the constitutional amendment rule, Mexican representatives would be effectively able to depart from democratic principles without being subject to any kind of substantive scrutiny. The similarities of the reasoning of the Mexican Supreme Court and the reasoning of its Colombian and Venezuelan counterparts are striking. Take for example the Colombian Supreme Court of Justice’s ruling on the legality of the convocation of a Constitutional Assembly in 1990. The court argued that “the action of the primary constituent power [the constituent assembly] ‘escapes any limits originating in the previous juridical order and, as a result, is free from any form of review that attempts to compare it with the precepts of that order’.”11 On the other hand, consider the Venezuela Supreme Court of Justice’s reasoning in the ruling that decided on the legality of the [25 August 1999] decree in which the National Constituent Assembly arrogated ordinary legislative power during the constituent process of 1999 (discussed in Chapter 10).12 In that case, the Venezuelan court expressed that “the claimant ignores that the Constituent power is autonomous, unlimited and indivisible”.13 As mentioned from the outset, the book examines the work of authors that engaged in debates ultimately related to the doctrine of unconstitutional constitutional amendments, and it illustrates the ways in which different courts have treated certain concepts, showing the real political and legal consequences that affect the lives of many. Colón-Ríos, however, does not lay out how his theoretical proposal would operate in amendment episodes, which brings us to the next section. The scope and limits of the Juridical People The theoretical value of Constituent Power and the Law, as suggested above, lies in its clear distinction between sovereignty and constituent power. In Colón-Ríos’ view, “[c]onstituent power is the power to create novel constitutional orders and it is in that respect no bound to positive law. Nonetheless, …the exercise of constituent power will always be based on, and limited by, a commission. … a constituent assembly authorized to draft (or even to enact) a new constitution will still be normally subject to the separation of powers and cannot exercise the ordinary powers of government.”14 For Colón-Ríos, that limit will be based on a constituent mandate contained in “a referendum question, which will refer to the nature of the task given by the true Colón-Ríos, supra note 1 at 252. Id. at 284–287. 13 Cited in Id. at 286. 14 Colón-Ríos, supra note 1 at 258–259. 11 12 279 The Scope and the Limits of the Juridical People sovereign (the people) to its commissioner (the constituent assembly)” and will be enforced by popular ratifications and/or courts.15 For the most part, Colón-Ríos successfully achieves his main objective, but a question that remains open relates to the scope and limits of his theory. To be sure, this is less a criticism to Colón-Ríos’ work than the signaling of an opportunity for further development. The scope and limits of Colón-Ríos’ theory are not entirely clear on at least two counts. First, it is not clear whether constituent power could be exercised through legal means other than constitution-making instances (i.e. ordinary legal means); and, second, the limits of referendums as effective means to determine the will of the people are not sufficiently examined. Throughout the book, the possibility of exercising constituent power seems to be exclusive to formal constitutional change (specifically to constitution-making) and bound to the idea that constitutional change only takes (or should take) place during extraordinary times. The attention that Colón-Ríos gives to constitution-making episodes,16 raises the question of whether his theory (that is, the possibility of exercising constituent power through legal means) would include other forms of constitutional change (e.g. formal or informal and/or changes that take place through ordinary legal means). In other words, it is not clear what exactly can be understood as an exercise of constituent power and what cannot be understood as such. Across the book, at times Colón-Ríos seems to suggest that constituent power is only exercised when there is a change to the material constitution in the context of a constitution-making episode (especially in Chapter 9 and 10). However, we know that fundamental constitutional change may take place outside instances where entirely new constitutions are created. In this sense, Constituent Power and the Law falls short of distinguishing between types of formal constitutional change and elaborating whether it would be possible to exercise constituent power through ordinary, less immediate, legal means. In my view, those latter types of means could potentially lead to important and deep transformations without necessarily entailing the adoption of a new constitution, but that due to the scope and nature of such transformations, they could be understood as engaging in the exercise of constituent power. Take for example, the exercise of the right to vote. It is hard to imagine a better example than the right to vote to illustrate the way flesh and blood human beings can assume a juridical presence with an enormous potential of bringing about fundamental transformation in a constitutional order. Perhaps even more so than in the context of the very adoption of a new constitution. This would be the case of transformative presidencies that did not need to change the constitutional text to result in important transformations, such as the election of FDR in the United States. The idea of bringing 15 Id. at 258–259, 262–294. 16 See e.g. the discussion of the imperative mandate today Id. at 266–269. 280 MARIANA VELASCO-RIVERA about change through the exercise of the right to vote is somewhat similar to Sanford Levinson and Jack Balkin’s theory of partisan entrenchment which mainly posits that fundamental or revolutionary constitutional change can happen through ordinary institutional means.17 However, the question that remains unanswered is whether Colón-Ríos theory allows space to understand what we could call “mediated” exercises of constituent power. Finally, provided that constitutional change may take place through means other than constitution-making, another outstanding question and a potential limit to ColónRíos’ theory relates to the role of referendums. Under Colón-Ríos’ approach, constituent referendums, as well as ratification referendums, play a central role in the possibility of identifying the limits to a constituent assembly as well as of enforcing them. The question in this regard is whether putting so much trust in referendums as effective proxies of popular sovereignty is granted. As we know, referendums do not happen in a vacuum and, therefore, are not free from the political context in which they are deployed. As such, referendums are inevitably prone to create conditions for politicians to stir public opinion in favor of their interests and agendas in ways that are not always necessarily aligned with the public interest. In this regard, one may think of the case of Brexit and the Leave/Remain campaigns in the lead up to the EU referendum in the UK in 2016 and its aftermath. Another example would be the 2016 peace agreement referendum [plebiscito] in Colombia. The Brexit referendum raises questions regarding the reliability of this mechanism as a proxy for the exercise of popular sovereignty, particularly when considered against the backdrop of media coverage and its power to shape public opinion, as well as in light of the spread of misinformation (both by politicians and political bots on social media) that at the same time shape those opinions. For instance, based on an analysis of press coverage during the four-month Brexit referendum campaign, Levy, Aslan and Bironzo of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, reported that 41% of the coverage was pro-leave against 27% pro-remain.18 Explanations for these figures could go from unfair access to media coverage to simply more political savviness from the Leave campaign. The dominant presence of the Leave campaign in the media, however, makes one wonder the extent to which preferences were shaped by it and if things would have turned out differently should the media coverage had been evenly distributed. Additionally, there is the issue of the role of political bots and social media in political campaigns that, as reported by Bastos and Mercea, has become Jack M. Balkin & Sanford Levinson, Understanding the Constitutional Revolution, 87 Va. Law Rev. 1045–1109 (2001). 18 D. a. L. Levy, B. Aslan & D. Bironzo, UK press coverage of the EU referendum (2016), https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8a0aac1f-8805-4ce4-96a8-207c1479c0c6 (last visited May 24, 2021). 17 281 The Scope and the Limits of the Juridical People a subfield in political science, among other things because of their potential detrimental impact on electoral politics, policy discussions and deliberations of contentious issues.19 Howard and Kollyani show that the Brexit referendum was subject to political bot interference on Twitter.20 In particular, they found that political bots had a small but strategic role in referendum conversations and that the family of hashtags associated with the argument for leaving the EU dominated.21 Similarly to the uneven presence of the Leave campaign on traditional media, the issue of political bots and their power to shape preferences is something that, in my view, should be taken seriously if we are to use referendums as mechanisms to determine the will of the sovereign people. The political campaigns leading up to the 2016 peace agreement ratifying referendum [plebiscito] in Colombia and the victory of the “No” campaign and the government’s decision to implement the agreement regardless of the referendum results, is another example of the complexities that relying on this type of mechanism as a proxy of popular sovereignty might entail.22 Aware of the painful reality of the Colombian armed conflict and without trying to oversimplify the issue, one could argue that political campaigns leading up to the peace agreement referendum were reduced to a political battle between President Santos and his adversaries—where the messages to the citizens oversimplified a rather complex issue to a dichotomic choice. Whereas on the government side, instead of socializing the content of the agreement the message was: if you vote yes, you vote for peace; if you vote no you vote for war; the No campaign’s message was: if you vote yes, you vote for dictatorship, a coup d’état and/or “Castrochavismo” and/or constitutionalizing the “gender ideology”.23 Juan Carlos Vélez, the “No” campaign manager, reportedly admitted in an interview that the campaign strategy was to appeal to emotions rather than reason when stating: “we appealed to indignation, we wanted people to go out angry to vote”.24 Additionally, in Marco T. Bastos & Dan Mercea, The Brexit Botnet and User-Generated Hyperpartisan News, 37 Soc. Sci. Comput. Rev. 38–54, 40 (2019). 20 Philip N. Howard & Bence Kollanyi, Bots, #Strongerin, and #Brexit: Computational Propaganda During the UK-EU Referendum (2016), https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2798311 (last visited May 24, 2021). 21 Id. at 5. 22 There is a growing literature focusing on the risks and benefits of the use of referendums in peacemaking and peacebuilding processes see e.g. Lauren Marie Balasco & Julio F. Carrión, Required Consultation or Provoking Confrontation? The Use of the Referendum in Peace Agreements, 55 Represent. J. Represent. Democr. 141–157 (2019); Katherine Collin, Peacemaking referendums: the use of direct democracy in peace processes, 27 Democratization 717–736 (2020). 23 La Pulla, El plebiscito sacó la peor porquería de Colombia, El Espectador (2016), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4VcX4FAIaY (last visited May 24, 2021). 24 El Espectador, La cuestionable estrategia de campaña del No, ELESPECTADOR.COM, October 6, 2016, https://www.elespectador.com/politica/la-cuestionable-estrategia-de-campana-del-no-article658862/ (last visited May 24, 2021). 19 282 MARIANA VELASCO-RIVERA the Colombian case, even though the referendum was not legally binding,25 the government decided to continue with the implementation of the peace agreement regardless of the referendum results. The outstanding question in this regard is if, all things considered, the government acted against the will of the Colombian people. I am aware that, especially on issues of peacemaking and peacebuilding as is the case of Colombia, there are no simple answers. My only aim here is to highlight the risks of putting too much trust on referendums as proxies of popular sovereignty. These two examples illustrate that oftentimes, the issues involved in referendums are politically divisive and perhaps, particularly prone to polarization. Perhaps, the problems and complexities I have outlined in the lines above speak more about the responsibility the actors involved in referendum campaigns (e.g. public officials and journalists) have when informing citizens about the issues involved in referendums, as well as about the rules regulating referendums, than to their potential effectivity as proxies of popular sovereignty. Yet, as politics is something inevitable in the operation of public law mechanisms, it is an element that, in my view, was somewhat absent in Colón-Ríos’ account. This does not mean that referendums should not be used in processes of constitution-making or constitutional change, but that there is a need to further develop the ways in which they may be designed in order to make them reliable proxies of popular sovereignty. As mentioned from the outset, Constituent Power and the Law offers a much needed demystified account of the concept of constituent power that, like all meaningful scholarly contributions, lays out new questions and opens up opportunities for further development. I have no doubt that this book will be discussed for many years to come. 25 Corte Constitucional [Constitutional Court], 18 Jul 2016, Sentencia C-379/16 (Col.); Luis Jaime Acosta, Corte Constitucional de Colombia avala plebiscito por la paz, Reuters, July 19, 2016, https://www.reuters.com/article/colombia-paz-idLTAKCN0ZZ03H (last visited May 24, 2021). 283 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 283-291 ISSN: 1825-5167 ON THE LIMITS OF ELITIST THEORIES OF CONSTITUENT POWER CAMILA VERGARA Law School Columbia University cv2272@columbia.edu ABSTRACT In times of crisis it is necessary to revisit the theorization of radical change and the mechanisms through which it can be realized in a peaceful and orderly manner. Joel Colón-Ríos’s Constituent Power and the Law is a timely book that promotes our understanding of the concept of constituent power as well as of its juridical application. Despite its contributions, in this critical review I claim that, because the book is thought through an elitist democratic theory framework that presupposes the unitary nation-state, it excludes the republican theory tradition that is premised on the socioontological division between the powerful few and the many, and that conceives the periodic exercise of constituent power by the people as necessary to keep a republic uncorrupted. In addition, I take issue with Colón-Ríos’s interpretation of Rousseau as a supporter of the direct exercise of foundational constituent power by the people in (silent) primary assemblies, and the resulting reduction of the people’s exercise of constituent power to mere authorization and ratification—to the detriment of processes involving popular deliberative decisionmaking that lead to a mandate. Finally, I critically engage with his conceptualization of the ‘material constitution,’ arguing that the definition he applies is too broad to be useful. Including formal and substantive ordering rules and principles as part of the strictly material interpretation of the constitution, which emerges from power relations, conceals the specific contributions that the material framework brings to the study of constitutions and the law. K EYWORDS Rousseau; Condorcet; primary assemblies; material constitution Interest on the constituent power and the prerogative to establish a new constitutional order arise historically alongside sociopolitical crisis. As decaying orders make desirable the attempt at structural innovations, and radical change needs to be juridically justified to be considered legitimate, ideas about the constituent power, its subject, origin, expressions, prerogatives, and limits, usually thrive within disintegrating regimes. Given the increasing consensus on the current ‘crisis of democracy,’ the untenable degree of inequality that has allowed for the accumulation of obscene 284 CAMILA VERGARA amounts of wealth in ever fewer hands alongside generalized precarity, and the emergence of ethnonationalist illiberal leaders and parties attempting to make tradition and the nation ‘great again,’ deeper knowledge about the historical conception of the constituent power and its juridical deployment seems necessary to think creatively about ways to get out of crisis without an outright revolution. Joel Colón-Ríos’s Constituent Power and the Law provides us with important resources to understand constituent processes from the point of view of their successes and failures, both in terms of ideas and their implementation. As its title indicates, the book is centered on the relationship between constituent power and legality. Casting a wide net, Constituent Power and the Law includes not only the better studied theoretical approaches to the concept of constituent power that developed in France and Germany, but also the Spanish and Latin American constitutional traditions. In his survey of theories of constituent power, Colón-Ríos begins with a brief review of early modern legal thought advocating for popular sovereignty, from Marsilius of Padua’s Defensor Pacis (1324) to the English tradition of Johannes Althusius, George Lawson, and John Locke, and then centers on post-18th century ideas and constituent experiences. Even if the book takes Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emmanuel Sieyès, and Carl Schmitt as main intellectual resources to understand constituent power and its relation to the law, the most interesting chapters are devoted to the careful reconstruction of other, less known theoretical and juridical sources. Of special note is the treatment in Chapter 5 of the transformation of ‘the people’ into ‘the nation’ in processes of constitution making during the 19th century in Spain, Venezuela, and Colombia; the tracing in Chapter 7 of historicist and doctrinaire arguments rejecting constituent power developed by Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, Francois Guizot, and Donoso Cortés; and the analysis of the recent constituent processes in Colombia (1991) and Venezuela (2017) through the lens of Schmitt’s theory of sovereign dictatorship in Chapter 9. Despite the ambitious scope of the project and the enormous contribution of putting into dialogue different approaches to the constituent power that have developed since the 18th century in different countries, Constituent Power and the Law still remains within the contours of democratic theory and therefore, to my mind, unable to provide adequate tools for structural change. The selection and interpretation of authors within the democratic theory paradigm —which originates in the fiction of a unitary sovereign people— excluded two important contributions to the literature that do not necessarily fit in the popular sovereignty model that became hegemonic after the modern revolutions, and that today appears to be in crisis: 1) the ideas of authors working within the republican theory tradition, which begins not from unity but from discord based on the socio-ontological division between the powerful few and the many (Niccolò 285 On the Limits of Elitist Theories of Constituent Power Machiavelli being the most prominent),1 and 2) the challenges posed to the theory and practice of constituent power by the recent constitutionalization of plurinationality in Ecuador (2008) and Bolivia (2009). By excluding the theories of republican foundings and constitutional renewals as well as the juridical existence of multiple peoples as potential bearers of constituent power within a shared territory, the book presents a tradition of constituent power that presupposes the unitary nation-state and is mainly elitist, conservative, and anti-populist, centered on stability, tradition, and representation, rather than on conflict, social change, and political action. In this manner, Constituent Power and the Law undoubtedly contributes to our understanding of why our constitutional models have been so impervious to structural change but does little to offer alternative tools to rethink constituent power for the 21st century. In what follows I address the critique to the ‘popular sovereignty paradigm’ through Colón-Ríos’s particular interpretation of Rousseau and his conceptualization of the ‘material constitution.’ The basic intuition that drives Colón-Ríos’s analysis is that the relation between constituent power and the law is not only productive, but also “opens the way for radical forms of political participation” (p. 305), such as the exercise of constituent power by the people themselves in local assemblies. In order to theoretically ground this insight, he appeals to Rousseau’s constitutional thought, which was one of Sieyès’s most important influences, even if to develop an anti-Rousseauian model of representative government. In Chapter 2 Colón-Ríos reinterprets Rousseau as a radical democrat who was in favor of the people exercising constituent power through primary assemblies— even if he does not make direct reference to this mechanism in any of his texts. This bold reinterpretation of Rousseau, however, is not adequately substantiated with textual evidence but rather is based on a connection, against the grain, between the exercise of constituent power and scattered references Rousseau makes to the need for periodic assemblies of the people. As a theorist of constituent power, we could hardly classify Rousseau as a democrat since he gives the power to create a new constitution to a single Legislator (even if the text needs to be ratified by the people) and explicitly deprives the people of self-convoking as well as deliberating and proposing laws. Colón-Ríos does away with the prominent figure of the Legislator developed in The Social Contract arguing that “Rousseau did not present the Legislator as a necessary condition for the creation of a legitimate state, but as a practical reality” and that “there is no reason why the Legislator cannot take the form of a collective entity or why… the For Machiavelli on constituent power see Filippo del Lucchese, “Machiavelli and Constituent Power: The Revolutionary Foundation of Modern Political Thought” European Journal of Political Theory 16.1 (2017): 3–23; Camila Vergara, “Machiavelli’s Republican Constituent Power” in Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy. New Readings, edited by Diogo Pires Aurélio & Andre Santos Campos (Leiden: Brill 2021) 1 286 CAMILA VERGARA Legislator cannot be the people themselves” (p. 47). Even if it can certainly be argued that Rousseau did not conceive the Legislator as absolutely necessary, or necessarily as one individual, the idea that the people themselves could be the Legislator escapes the Rousseauian framework. The Legislator needs to “discover” the rules of society, which requires not only “a superior intelligence beholding all the passions of men without experiencing any of them” but also the capacity of “changing human nature” through a “sublime reason, far above the range of the common herd” (II.7). Moreover, the Legislator must “investigate the fitness of the people, for which [the laws] are destined” because some people, “like the foolish and cowardly patient who rave at sight of the doctor,” may not be inclined to accept good laws to improve their faults (II.8). Rousseau clearly does not believe the masses can emancipate themselves by taking an ‘observer position’ to critically examine their society and design a system of regulation conducive to the expansion of liberty. His thinking is very much in line with Montesquieu’s elitist constitutional thought, which argues some peoples, given their geographical location, climate, and costumes, are not suited to live in a free republic. Rousseau’s ideal model is not democratic Athens or plebeian Rome, but disciplined Sparta, a republic directed by the elite, in which the citizen-soldiers only assemble when convoked, to ratify laws put before them by their noble leaders. In this type of system, the power to ratify slides easily into a mere acclamation of the leader and pledge of support for the government, becoming a bonding ritual instead of an exercise of critical judgment. In the epistle dedicatory to the Second Discourse, Rousseau explicitly rejects the Roman model in which the people actively participated in the legislative process and the magistrates were excluded from popular deliberations, as well as the Athenian model in which everyone had “the power to propose new Laws according to his fancy.” In Rousseau’s ideal republic, the sovereign assembly is therefore silent, nondeliberative, and needs to be convoked by law or by a magistrate; self-convoked assemblies “should be regarded as unlawful” (III.13). The people have the power to ratify or veto only the law proposals from government; they are unable to argue against them or propose modifications. This plebiscitarian model, in which the power of the people is reduced to ratifying pre-made laws, does not allow for the channeling of radical change from below. To be really sovereign, able to transform the constitutional structure when needed, the people need to have the prerogative to initiate binding legislation and constitutional reform, a power that was gained by the Roman plebeians with the passing of lex Hortensia in 287 BC, which eliminated the Senate’s veto power over plebeian law. Neither Sparta nor Rousseau’s ideal republic gave the common people the prerogative to direct government action or define the content of law. Giving the common people the power to ratify or veto basic law —something that it is only present in few 287 On the Limits of Elitist Theories of Constituent Power constitutions today, mainly as referenda for constitutional amendments and adoption of new constitutions— is qualitatively different from giving them the power to deliberate and autonomously decide on law and structural reform. The former is only a means to resist further oppression and legitimizes the current state of affairs, while the latter challenges de status quo, opening the possibility for the common people to change oppressive power relations and material conditions. While Rousseau, as part of the elitist conservative tradition, conceives the people as mere recipients of law, a sleeping sovereign that is consulted and encouraged to show its approval from time to time, plebeian thinkers conceived the assembled people as political actors who need to actively control the juridico-normative direction of society. Therefore, even if I agree that a democratic theory of constituent power for our times, in which technology makes universal participation possible, should require that the people themselves exercise foundational power through deliberative local assemblies, the stretching of Rousseau’s theory to make him a supporter of primary assemblies that are able to exercise original constituent power does not provide firm theoretical ground to stand on, or institutional or procedural tools to materialize the exercise of the legitimate power to modify the basic structure. If Rousseau is not the appropriate source to study the exercise of constituent power from below, neither is Sieyès. Despite the great impact of his political pamphlet “What is the Third Estate?”, the most prominent constitutional thinker committed to incorporating mechanisms for the exercise of popular constituent power during the French Revolution was not Sieyès but Nicolás de Condorcet, the Marquis-turnedchampion-of-the-people, who was elected to the National Convention and then appointed to preside over the commission that drafted the original constitutional project of the 1793 Constitution. Colón-Ríos argues that the idea of giving primary assemblies constituent power “represents a Rousseauian alternative to Sieyès’s project,” when it was really Condorcet who wrote extensively on this topic. Le Girondine —as Condorcet’s constitutional project that was approved by the constitution committee of the National Assembly is commonly known— established a network of primary assemblies with binding power and a set of procedures to assure the correct aggregation of local decisions as well as enforcement mechanisms to assure the compliance of representative government.2 However, in the approved but never implemented 1793 Constitution, primary assemblies did not have binding power or enforcement rules, The constitutional proposal on which Le Gironde was based on contained many other innovative proposals to empower the common people to control government. For an extended discussion of Condorcet’s constitutional thought see Chapter 5 “Condorcet on Primary Assemblies” of my book Systemic Corruption. Constitutional Ideas for an Anti-Oligarchic Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2020). 2 288 CAMILA VERGARA which allowed for them to be effectively reduced to mere electoral and consultative institutions, “precursors to the contemporary polling station” (p. 93), instead of sites for political action and constituent power. Since Sieyès was also in the constitution committee and was against giving primary assemblies the prerogatives to initiate legislation and exercise constituent power, the analysis of the discussions in Chapter 4 on constituent power during the French revolutionary period would have benefited from a deeper engagement with Condorcet’s constitutional proposal alongside the mutilated version imposed by the Jacobins, as well as the argumentation deployed by Sieyès and Condorcet in those meetings regarding the imperative mandate and the exercise of popular constituent power. An examination of these discussions would have brought more forcefully to the fore the fundamental difference between popular ‘consultative’ inputs and binding resolutions, issue that has caused much controversy in recent participatory experiments such as the Citizen’s Assembly in Ireland (2016) and the Citizen’s Convention on Climate in France (2020). Moreover, centering the analysis on these exchanges between Condorcet and Sieyès would have established a sturdier foundation for positioning primary assemblies as legitimate bearers of democratic constituent power, rather than trying to build it based on a strained reinterpretation of Rousseau, who has thin democratic credentials and even outright anti-populist inclinations.3 The tendency to conflate ratification and deliberative decisionmaking reverberates in the historical discussions surrounding the imperative mandate and representation recounted in Chapters 4 and 5, debates that are then picked up again in Chapter 10, which is dedicated to contemporary constitutional orders. While Rousseau famously argued that the will of the people cannot be represented, Colón-Ríos shows in Chapter 4 how Sieyès attacked the direct exercise of legislative power by the citizens and supported representatives as surrogates for the nation—a line of thought that would help conceive representative assemblies as sovereign and open the door to usurpation. The rejection of delegation and binding instructions in favor of representation was also echoed in the constitution-making episodes during the 19th century in Europe and Latin America, which were “characterized by the early rejection of the imperative mandate and the exclusion of great majorities of the population from constituent activity” (p. 100). In Chapter 5 Colón-Ríos artfully traces in the discussion on the Colombian Constitution of 1886 how the imperative mandate begun to be identified with the pouvoir commettant, the power to authorize a commission. The Colombian For a discussion on Rousseau’s anti-populist politics see John P. McCormick, Reading Machiavelli: Scandalous Books, Suspect Engagements, and the Virtue of Populist Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2018), Chapter 4 “Rousseau’s Repudiation of Machiavelli’s Democratic Roman Republic” (pp. 109-143). 3 289 On the Limits of Elitist Theories of Constituent Power National Constituent Council, elected by the people to write a new constitution, was seen as “acting on an ‘imperative mandate’ from the Nation (even if its individual members were not bound by particular instructions of their constituents)” (p. 124). This idea of the ‘commission as mandate’ developed by focusing on its ‘negative’ aspect: the prohibition it imposes on the constituent representative organ to exercise ordinary governmental powers or any other function other than writing a new constitution. Colón-Ríos explores the limits of this equation between the constituent referendum and the imperative mandate in Chapter 10 through the case of Venezuela (1999), where the National Constituent Assembly, authorized by a constituent referendum to write a new constitution, exercised nevertheless not only constituent power but also sovereignty, transgressing the separation of powers by, for example, suspending and removing judges suspected of corruption (p. 285). Colón-Ríos convincingly shows how after ‘the people’ were transformed into ‘the electorate,’ their constituent action was successfully reduced to an electoral exercise of authorization and ratification. The examination of this discussion does not only clarify the important transmutations the concept of constituent power has suffered in the history of ideas and jurisprudence but also is extremely timely and relevant given the current challenges that are being mounted ‘from below’ to the established representative procedures, as the recent developments in the ongoing constituent process in Chile have shown; tens of thousands of active citizens, teenagers, and immigrants have turned to local cabildos to participate and exert extra-legal influence on the Constitutional Convention tasked with writing the new constitution.4 My final critique of this stimulating book that manages to successfully combine political theory and legal studies, has to do with the conceptualization of the ‘material constitution,’ which Colón-Ríos claims is “generally understood as including the norms that establish the basic structure of the state and that regulate the legal relations between state and citizens” (p. 186), the “equivalent to the constitution’s fundamental content” (p. 194). This overly broad and ambiguous understanding of the material constitution —what is considered fundamental is in itself a political question— is explored in Chapter 8 through the works of the early 20th century thinkers Maurice Hauriou, Hans Kelsen, Carl Schmitt, Hermann Heller, and Costantino Mortati. However, Colón-Ríos interprets the material constitution as having a different meaning for each of these authors, with only Heller and Mortati referring to the concept directly as one that incorporates the relations of power in society. Paradoxically, Colón-Ríos defines the material constitution in non-material terms. By omitting the centrality of material For an account of the first year of the popular constituent process in Chile see my article “Burying Pinochet” Sidecar–New Left Review January 2021 <https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/buryingpinochet> 4 290 CAMILA VERGARA conditions and power relations, and by focusing rather on the constitution’s “basic structure” and “fundamental content,” this conception of the material constitution allows for the confusion between the juridical structure that sustains and reproduces power relations and norms. This confusion seems unnecessary since neither Kelsen nor Schmitt discuss the ‘material constitution.’ While Kelsen did not refer to the constitution as material but rather conceived it as the positive source of legality, Schmitt preferred the language of the “spirit” of the constitution to convey the substantive, essential elements that make up the constitutional identity. These formalist and essentialist conceptions of the constitution are not particularly material, and therefore including them as part of the tradition of the material constitution muddles our understanding of the concept, obscuring the specific contributions that a material lens could bring to the study of constitutions and the law. For instance, as I have argued in Systemic Corruption, material constitutionalism would allow us to engage in a dialectical analysis of the relation between power and the law —the material conditions of society and the legal, juridical, and formal provisions that (are supposed to) determine them. The constitutional ideology that emerges from this exercise would stand in contrast to Kelsenian legal positivism—which denies the political nature of constitutions and reduces their analysis to jurisprudence, excluding the application of law and its consequences in material terms— as well as to Schmitt’s theory of the constitutional identity, which would later inform the interpretation of the constitution that developed in Germany after the 1958 Lüth case,5 in which the ‘material’ aspect of the constitution was related not to the relation between power and law, but to the “expression of ‘the substantive’ in law,”6 as a system of values centered on a pre-existing ethical “substance”: the principle of human dignity.7 Conceiving the material constitution as premised on a particular substance or essence, in which law carries normativity because it conforms to a determined spirit or set of principles, is quite different from conceiving the constitution as premised on the recognition that norms develop from power relations, and that the legitimacy of law should be determined depending on the role it serves in the material conflict between domination and emancipation in society. From a material perspective, the vast majority of constitutional democracies today are de facto electoral oligarchies. Institutions, rules, and procedures work not for the benefit of the majority, but to protect and increase the economic and political power 5 Lüth case, BverfGE 7, 198 (1958) B.II.1. Jacco Bomhoff, Balancing Constitutional Rights: The Origins and Meanings of Postwar Legal Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 74. 7 1949 German Constitution, Art. 1.1 “Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.” 6 291 On the Limits of Elitist Theories of Constituent Power of elites; representative governments have tended, independently of who occupies the seats of political power, to legislate and regulate in their favor. As a result, today the richest 10% controls most of the wealth and productive capacities in almost all democracies around the world, including the United States. The oligarchization of democracy is a structural problem that demands structural solutions, a change of paradigm, a legal revolution as the first step to revert the patterns of accumulation and dispossession that are reproduced through the basic order. Such a transformation can only be legitimately carried out through the exercise of constituent power via clearly defined procedures aimed at enhancing deliberation and preventing manipulation. To this end, it is not only necessary to study the intellectual history of constituent power as a concept, but also its juridical application and the legal reasoning employed by assemblies and courts. Constituent Power and the Law is an important epistemic step in this direction, not only because it traces the discussions of the concept in political theory and jurisprudence but also because it hints towards rethinking constituent power from its popular exercise in primary assemblies, a radical idea that almost became law in revolutionary France and is in urgent need of reconsideration. The necessary normative, institutional, and procedural resources to materialize the constituent power’s radical democratic potential are however not to be found in hegemonic practices and ideas, or in their reinterpretation. We need to look beyond elitist theories of constituent power, which attempt to suppress it or that allow a selected few to monopolize it, and move towards an interpretation of the constituent power ‘from below’ aimed at fostering and channeling the creative energy of the people to periodically renew the basic structure. 293 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 293-313 ISSN: 1825-5167 CONSTITUENT POWER AND THE LAW REPLY TO CRITICS JOEL I. COLÓN-RÍOS New Zealand Centre for Public Law Victoria University of Wellington joel.colon-rios@vuw.ac.nz ABSTRACT This article offers a reply to the criticisms and challenges posed by Camila Vergara, Miguel Vatter, Mariana Velasco-Rivera, Yaniv Roznai, Roberto Gargarella and Zoran Oklopcic to Constituent Power and the Law. The reply is presented in six sections covering the following themes: (1) Rousseau’s primary assemblies and the role of the Legislator; (2) the distinction between sovereignty and constituent power; (3) the types of political practices that can be attributed to the constituent people; (4) the limits of the primary constituent power; (5) the role of constitutional and political history in the book; and (6) the nature of the claim that constituent power should be understood as a juridical concept. K EYWORDS Sovereignty; constituent power; referenda; primary assemblies; Rousseau; Schmitt While working on the manuscript of Constituent Power and the Law I had two main concerns, which I imagine are common among authors of academic books. The first one was that no one would read it and, the second one, that people would will read it but find it uninteresting or incomprehensible. One of the great joys of having a book symposium is that the first of those concerns disappears. The problem, however, is that the second one increases, as those who are asked to read your book are your most respected colleagues. After reading the essays that form part of this symposium, I am happy to report that that second concern has disappeared as well. The six responses to the book seriously engage with my arguments and, while expressing important points of disagreement and challenging some of the book’s main conclusions, suggest that I was able to make clear my (perhaps wrong) ideas about constituent power. In what follows, I will try to respond to what I understand to be the main challenges found in each of the responses. My reply is presented in six sections organised thematically. Even though each section 294 JOEL COLÓN-RÍOS is largely devoted to the discussion of one of the essays, there is some overlap (i.e. some sections refer to the critiques of more than one of the commentators). I. ROUSSEAU’S ASSEMBLIES, ROUSSEAU’S LEGISLATOR I will start with Camila Vergara’s essay, which I read as resting on two key criticisms. The first one has to do with my interpretation of Rousseau. This is not a minor critique. Rousseau plays a key role in the book, to the point that, in a certain way, the main arguments made in the final chapters are already found in his work. Or, at the very least, they are reflected in what Professor Vergara calls my “bold reinterpretation” of Rousseau “as a radical democrat who was in favour of the people exercising constituent power through primary assemblies”. Professor Vergara thinks that interpretation cannot be sustained for two reasons. First, that apart from some “scattered references Rousseau makes to the need for periodic assemblies of the people”, my interpretation is not “adequately substantiated with textual references”. Second, that Rousseau is not really a democrat because “he gives the power to create a new constitution to a single Legislator (even if the text needs to be ratified by the people) and explicitly deprives the people of selfconvoking as well as deliberating and proposing laws”. Vergara’s interpretation of Rousseau is certainly plausible; it is in fact consistent what may be identified as the dominant interpretation of his thought. Nonetheless, it is an interpretation that actively ignores or (presents as noncentral) the most democratic aspects of his thought (as for example, the need for periodic assemblies of the people, which in my view plays a much more important role in the Social Contract than that attributed by Vergara) and stresses, often without contextualisation, any passage that evidences his elitism. I find this surprising given the time Rousseau was writing. An author who claimed that the English people lived in slavery because they were subject to laws not subject to popular ratification, or that argued in favour of the imperative mandate so that citizens could control the members of a legislative assembly (in countries so large that required a representative law-making body), arguably has at least equal democratic (or, for that matter, republican) credentials than his 18th century counterparts. Needless to say, as many other 18th century authors, he was full of prejudices and contradictions. In any case, I what wanted to show in the book (particularly in Chapter 2), is that in Rousseau’s distinction between sovereignty and government, and in his insistence in seeing sovereignty as a type of power that can only be exercised directly by the people, one can find important elements of the tradition of constitutional thought (a tradition also full of prejudices and contradictions) in which the theory of constituent power was developed. That tradition of constitutional thought, however, eventually left behind Rousseau’s most democratic institutional proposals. The first one, and with this I 295 Constituent Power and the Law. Reply to Critics begin to respond to Vergara’s specific critiques, were the previously mentioned periodic (popular) assemblies, which were connected in important ways to the previously mentioned institution of the imperative mandate. As far as I know, Vergara is correct that Rousseau never used the term ‘primary assembly’. Nonetheless, it is abundantly clear that, leaving aside for the moment which specific functions they would have or how would they be convened, Rousseau thought that the entire people of a political community should assemble periodically (for reasons of space, I will not reproduce here the relevant passages, which are cited in Chapter 2 of the book). The question then is whether Rousseau’s assemblies should be counted as ‘primary assemblies’, which is partly a question about what is a primary assembly. The question is a tricky one because the notion of a ‘primary assembly’ has become increasingly associated with -often informal- mechanisms of democratic participation that go beyond the role they have usually played in constitutional practice. For example, in some 19th century constitutions in Europe and Latin America, primary assemblies were local electoral colleagues called to elect delegates to higher level assemblies and, sometimes, they were authorised to recall certain state officials.1 As that latter power suggests one key feature of those entities had historically been their ability to issue binding instructions (i.e. the imperative mandate), a practice that was nonetheless generally abolished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. As Vergara explains (and as I discuss in Chapter 4 of the book), in 18th century France, primary assemblies would have acquired important deliberative and decision-making powers (including the power to initiate future constitution-making processes), had the Girondin draft constitution been approved by the National Convention. Nowadays, the term ‘primary assembly’ (which is sometimes used interchangeably with the terms ‘cabildos’, ‘popular assemblies’, ‘local councils’), has come to describe local entities, sometimes self-convened, where citizens deliberate about different aspects of their political future. When (informally) self-convened, primary assemblies naturally lack legally binding powers, but they can nonetheless serve as an important site of democratic participation. If our political systems were radicalized in the direction of participatory democracy (a radicalization that I would support), one would imagine primary assemblies with the formal power of self-convocation, with the right to issue binding instructions to higher level assemblies, with the right to initiate constitutional changes and to deliberate, and then approve or reject, constitutional proposals. If Vergara’s point is that Rousseau did not explicitly defend that type of arrangement, she is certainly right, but of course Rousseau did not describe at that level of detail any particular institution. Nonetheless, and I think here is where we disagree, Rousseau’s constitutional thought is entirely consistent, and indeed points, in that See for example, Chapters X and XI of the Constitution of Chile of 1823; Chapter IV of the Constitution of Chile of 1822. 1 296 JOEL COLÓN-RÍOS direction. First, as noted earlier, popular assemblies played a major role in his institutional proposals: they were the only legitimate means for the exercise of constituent power.2 Second, aware that in large societies it would not be possible to convene an assembly of the entire people, Rousseau considered acceptable the convening of multiple popular assemblies so that all citizens have the ability to participate in the exercise of sovereignty.3 Third, Rousseau explicitly supported the imperative mandate: this was an essential part of his critique or representation.4 All this is more than enough to say that Rousseau’s thought I consistent, and indeed goes beyond, the type of primary assemblies regulated by some 19th century constitutions. But is it also consistent with the more radical versions of these mechanisms? There seem to be two main obstacles, both identified by Vergara: the mode of convocation of primary assemblies and their powers (e.g. Can they deliberate? Can their merely accept or reject particular proposals?). Vergara writes that in Rousseau’s “ideal republic, the sovereign assembly is…silent, nondeliberative, and needs to be convoked by law or by a magistrate; self-convoked assemblies ‘should be regarded as unlawful’”. It is hardly surprising that, for Rousseau, an informally convened popular assembly is unable to produce any legally binding norms. Otherwise, there would not be any kind of guarantees that the assembly (or assemblies) is actually a meeting of ordinary citizens as opposed, for example, to a self-convened group of members of a political elite. The suggestion that an informally convened popular assembly would be “unlawful” appears at first sight much more problematic, as it seems to proscribe informal political deliberation by groups of citizens. However, to conclude that that passage means that any informal (and political) meeting of citizens should be treated as an illegal act (i.e. illegal in the sense of deserving some kind of punishment) would be a way too uncharitable reading of Rousseau (and in any case I don’t think that is Vergara’s view). It is much more likely that what Rousseau meant is that no informally convened group of citizens can claim to be a sovereign entity or to participate in the legal exercise of sovereignty, a prohibition common to most constitutional regimes in the world. Moreover, that does not mean that the law (or the constitution), cannot regulate the process through which primary assemblies can be convened, which could involve self-convocation (as, in fact, the Girondin constitutional draft did). As for the powers of popular assemblies, it is true that Rousseau’s sees their role as that of accepting or rejecting proposed laws (i.e. constitutional changes, as explained in Chapter 2 of the book). There is nothing in his work, however, condemning the possibility of the law vesting 2 Jean- Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and The Discourses (Everyman’s Library, 1973) 259. 3 Ibid 260. See also Rousseau’s essay on the ‘Constitutional Project for Corsica’ (1765). Jean Jacques Rousseau, ‘Considerations on the Government of Poland and on its Proposed Reformation’, April 1772 (ISN ETH Zurich) 16; Rousseau, The Social Contract (n 2) 263. 4 297 Constituent Power and the Law. Reply to Critics primary assemblies with the power to deliberate about future constitutional changes. Here Vergara’s objection would be forthcoming: the Legislator. If the Legislator has the exclusive authority to draft new constitutional content, then primary assemblies can only have the power to accept or reject the Legislator’s proposals. The question of course is, what is the Legislator, a question that is also raised by Miguel Vatter’s essay, discussed below. Rousseau is not the first writer to refer to a ‘Legislator’ like figure. Niccolò Machiavelli, who usually sided with the many over the few, maintained that, since “the many are not capable of instituting anything”, as a general rule, a republic should be “organized by one man alone”.5 But as I show in Chapter 2 of the book, in the history of political thought, “the Legislator” could also refer to an entire people or to an assembly of the people, as opposed to a single individual. For example, Rousseau wrote that in a state where the people is sovereign, the Legislator speaks through a popular assembly.6 However, even if the Legislator takes the form of an assembly that drafts a constitution to be later rejected or ratified by primary assemblies, Rousseau’s system would still fall short of the most democratic conceptions of the latter entities. It would nonetheless be at the very least equivalent to the type of constitution-making process that is today described as ‘democratic’. I agree with Vergara that that kind of process is not enough, and I am sympathetic to her own proposals in her Systemic Corruption.7 So, in the end it is true that Rousseau does not go far enough, but it would be truly remarkable for an 18th century theorist to delineate an ideal democratic constituent process for the 21st century. I don’t think, however, that that is enough reason to classify his thought as elitist or conservative. Vergara’s second critique has to do with my treatment of the material constitution. She writes that I define the material constitution in “non-material terms”, “omitting the centrality of material conditions and power relations, and…focusing rather on the constitution’s ‘basic structure’ and ‘fundamental content’”. I don’t have much to say in response to this important critique (even though I will come back to the question of the material constitution in my response to Mariana Velasco-Rivera), because I think that Vergara is right. The role that the notion of the material constitution plays in the book can be described as a strictly ‘doctrinal’ or ‘juridical’ one. That is to say, it does not seek to uncover, for example, the power relations that emerge from the material conditions of society. Rather, my references to the notion of the material constitution follow a juridical tradition according to which not all provisions contained in a constitution are equally important, and the most important ones can only be altered through an exercise of constituent power. ‘Material’, from the perspective of this tradition, usually means Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy (Oxford University Press, 2008) 45. See Joel Colón-Ríos, Constituent Power and the Law (OUP, 2020) 47-48. 7 Camila Vergara, Systemic Corruption: Constitutional Ideals for an Anti-Oligarchic Republic (Princeton University Press, 2020). 5 6 298 JOEL COLÓN-RÍOS something like ‘substantive from a constitutional point of view’ or ‘legally fundamental’, as opposed to pointing toward real power and economic relations.8 Vergara’s challenge to move beyond that tradition, as part of a move against what she calls “the oligarchization of democracy”, is indeed a welcome one.9 II. SOVEREIGNTY OR CONSTITUENT POWER This brings me to Vatter’s equally powerful criticisms. Vatter puts to the test the basis of the distinction between sovereignty and constituent power which, as he explains, is one of the main, if not the main, argument of the book. In an incredibly rich summary of the way I develop that distinction (a summary that is in many ways superior to the original!), Vatter notes that, according to the book, “Rousseau has a juridically immanent idea of constituent power because he distinguishes sovereignty from constituent power…[and] gives us the key to understand constituent power as truly democratic”. However, Vatter maintains that the book eventually betrays that conception, because I ultimately claim that “constituent power can play a democratic role only if it is identified with a species of dictatorship”. “This surprising claim”, he writes, “derives from Schmitt, whom Colón-Ríos rehabilitates by arguing that his account of both sovereignty and constituent power is misunderstood if placed on the side of transcendence, and politically on the side of a ‘conservative revolution’ that favours the coup d’État”. Although largely agreeing with my reading of Rousseau, Vatter objects to what he describes as my “attempt to give a ‘republican’ or Rousseauian employment of Schmitt”. According to Vatter, the problem has to do with the fact that, in my development of the relationship between the people and the constitution, I appear to commit to the view of the people as holding a “plenitude of powers” and as preceding the creation of a constitution. This view, he explains, drives me toward Schmitt’s conception of a constitution as a decision of the constituent subject, of a unified entity whose purely political will becomes law. However, Vatter maintains there is a way of avoiding that road. Instead of understanding the sovereign people as a unified entity that delegates an element of its sovereignty (i.e. its constituent power) to an assembly that drafts a constitution on its behalf, one could instead argue that “the power of the people is just its constituent power, and such constituent power is not only active in drafting constitutions, but also in judging, along and in dispute with the organs of the state, of what counts as law”. The latter alternative, Vatter explains, is consistent with a republican reading of Rousseau but inconsistent with Schmitt’s constitutional thought. I confess I am attracted to Vatter’s solution, but partly There are, of course, some exceptions, as that of Costantino Mortati and Hermann Heller, examined in Chapter 8 of book. 9 Vergara (n 6). 8 299 Constituent Power and the Law. Reply to Critics because, even if it relies on different theoretical foundations, I think it is not necessarily in conflict with the practical implications of my own approach. First, Vatter is right that when discussing Schmitt, I embrace the kind of view of the relationship between the people and the constitution that he finds problematic: the people as a sovereign entity that, unable to create a constitution on its own, delegates parts of its power to a constitution-making assembly. However, the role that that view plays in the argument is a legal one, that is, it is what serves to justify the judicial imposition of legal limits on the power of constitutional change of any entity (e.g. the ordinary amending authority) that is not the people or that is not acting on a direct popular mandate. In providing that justification during the life of a constitutional order, my understanding of popular sovereignty is consistent with the continuing relevance of constituent power beyond the initial act of constitutional creation. Moreover, that relevance is not only negative (i.e. it is not only about the limitation of political power) but, as suggested by Velasco-Rivera in her essay (discussed below), can also be positive, can also assume a creative form. For example, because the people is sovereign, it should have the right to issue imperative mandates (as I argue in Chapter 10 of the book) on the entity tasked with the drafting of a new constitution. Moreover, in an ideal democratic setting, it should also be able to initiate processes of constitutional change independently, and even against the will, of the ordinary institutions of government. I also agree that, as suggested by Vatter, the people should be able to participate in determinations of what count as law, and that would include, as I have argued elsewhere, the power to override judicial determinations declaring the validity or invalidity of a law on constitutional grounds.10 However, if I understand him correctly, Vatter’s point seems to be a deeper one: that the people is not a sovereign law maker, that there is no unified instance of popular power whose ultimate role is to produce legally binding norms. Rather, the people is a constituent subject that continuously judges whether political power is being legitimately exercised.11 For Vatter, it is only if understood in this way that the idea of popular sovereignty can be accepted. Vatter’s conception of the separation of sovereignty and constituent power is thus more radical than mine: for him, the sovereign (i.e. the state) lacks constituent power, and the constituent subject (the people) lacks sovereignty. In other words, sovereignty and constituent power are in a permanent relationship of opposition, where the latter serves to keep citizens free from the potential arbitrary will of the state. For me, the state is neither the sovereign (that is, there can be positive laws that it is legally unable to adopt) nor the constituent power: both lie with the people. Joel I. Colón-Ríos, “The Counter-Majoritarian Difficulty and the Road not Taken: Democratizing Amendment Rules”, 25 Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 53 (2012). 11 See Miguel Vatter, “The People Shall be Judge: Reflective Judgment and Constituent Power in Kant’s Philosophy of Law”, 29 Political Theory 749 (2011). 10 300 JOEL COLÓN-RÍOS Nonetheless, sovereignty and constituent power are separated because the people cannot exercise its sovereignty, but rather delegate parts of it: in a constitution-making context, it delegates the power to draft a constitution to an assembly. Even if Vatter is right that, from a theoretical perspective, this approach could be seen as being in tension with the republican tradition, it does not necessarily negate the practical or institutional relevance of the people’s constituent power once a constitution is in place or its potential to facilitate freedom. The idea that according to the theory of constituent power defended in the book, a constitution-making body can be described (as in Schmitt) as a sovereign dictatorship, may of course give one pause. But all I mean by that is that in virtue of being called to exercise constituent power, a constituent assembly is not, unlike, for example, an absolute monarch, a real ‘sovereign’: it always acts on a mandate from the people, a mandate that should be understood as legally enforceable and that can potentially involve substantive limits as to the kind of constitutional content that can be validly created. Vatter notes that I write that constituent assemblies have often assumed “a jurisdiction formally akin to that exercised by military dictators and military juntas”12, but that passage was precisely describing examples where the notion of a mandate was not accepted.13 III. THE PEOPLE UNDER A CONSTITUTION I doubt I was able to make justice to Vatter’s challenging essay, but I hope it is clear that despite the divergence in our accounts of the relationship between sovereignty and constituent power, we are not too far away in terms of the institutional implications that follow from our own views. Velasco-Rivera’s insightful essay pushes the argument in the book in a similar direction and with equal force. She writes that the book does not make “clear whether constituent power could be exercised through legal means other than constitution-making instances” and that 12 Colón-Ríos, Constituent Power and the Law (n 5) 228. That is, that passage was not pointing to the way in which I think these entities should be understood. The relevant passage, found in the introduction to Chapter 9, reads as follows: “In contrast, when the distinction between sovereignty and constituent power is blurred, the scope of the jurisdiction of the latter tends to be exaggerated, sometimes in dangerous ways. In Part IV [of Chapter 9], I will consider examples of different individuals and entities that, in the 20 and 21 centuries, have assumed what I describe above as sovereignty and presented themselves as unbound by the separation of powers. The emphasis will be on the Colombian Constituent Assembly of 1991, which can be understood as the paradigmatic case of this phenomenon in a formally democratic context, and in the Venezuelan Constituent Assembly of 2017. These were elected (in the latter case, controversially) entities which, on the basis that they held constituent power, assumed a jurisdiction formally akin to that exercised by dictators and military juntas. While the exercise of that kind of power by a democratically elected assembly can in some cases result in the improvement of the constitutional order, the confusion between sovereignty and constituent power can also serve to justify important departures from democratic principles”. Colón-Ríos, Constituent Power and the Law (n 5) 228. 13 th st 301 Constituent Power and the Law. Reply to Critics “the limits of referendums as effective means to determine the will of the people are not sufficiently examined”. I think Velasco-Rivera is right on both counts. The first point, as she puts it, is about whether the exercise of constituent power is present in the context of constitutional changes that take place through ordinary legal means (i.e. outside of a formal process of constitutional change). She calls this the “mediated” exercise of constituent power. The main example provided by Velasco-Rivera has to do with the exercise of the right to vote, such as a situation where citizens elect a new government that engages in fundamental transformations of the political and economic system, even if those transformations do not involve changes in the existing constitutional text. Consider, for instance, the case of a progressive political movement that promises that, if prevailing in an election, would intervene in important ways in the regulation of the economy, dramatically alter the state’s environmental policies, improve the provision of social services through significant changes to the taxation system, , and adopt other major redistributive strategies. There will probably come a point where some of those changes would be subject to constitutional challenges and therefore require a formal constitutional amendment. It is nonetheless certainly possible for many -or perhaps most- of those type of changes to occur without a single alteration of a typical liberal written constitution. If the majority of the population elects that government, they would have indirectly contributed to a change that would probably be much more fundamental than, for example, a formal constitutional amendment that replaces a bicameral legislature with a unicameral legislative body, or even than an amendment that abandons federalism in favour of unitarianism. Under the understanding of constituent power advanced in the book (and this is something that brings me back to Vergara’s second critique), only the latter kind of changes would count as “a change to the material constitution” and therefore as involving an exercise of constituent power. I wonder whether understanding those type of changes as involving an alteration in the material constitution (and therefore involving the exercise of constituent power) may be counterproductive: it would place much needed social and economic transformations outside of the scope of the ordinary institutions of government. The fact that my approach fails to properly recognise the fundamental nature of those kinds changes is nonetheless problematic. Moreover, I agree with Velasco-Rivera that the exercise of constituent power may take place outside the context of formal constitutional change.14 I am not sure, however, about the extent to which constitutional theory is currently able to address those problems or to accommodate those views. That is to say, it is nowadays widely accepted that a constitutional order may change even in the absence of a formal constitutional amendment, not only through judicial decisions but also through changes in In fact, we are co-authors of a work-in-progress that develops that point: Mariana Velasco-Rivera & Joel I. Colón-Ríos, “On the Implications of a Permanent Constituent Power” (on file with authors). 14 302 JOEL COLÓN-RÍOS unwritten constitutional rules (i.e. constitutional conventions). It is also clear that a change in the material constitution may occur outside of the constitutional amendment rule and therefore leave the constitutional text intact. What is still largely missing, from the perspective of contemporary constitutional theory, is a conception of the constitution that treat things such as the taxation system, the governmental approach to the regulation of the economy, or the state’s relationship with nature, as materially constitutional by definition. It is true that in countries with unwritten constitutions some of those things are treated as ‘constitutional’: in New Zealand, for example, many would include, as part of the unwritten constitution, statutes as the Resource Management Act. Nonetheless, in most contexts (that is, in jurisdictions with written constitutions), for a change that takes place outside the constitution’s amendment rule to be described as ‘constitutional’, it must be in some way connected to the constitutional text. For example, a change in the conventions regulating the protection of the right to freedom of expression may be considered an alteration of the material constitution, because it modifies the way in which a (material) part of the constitutional text (i.e. the bill of rights) operates. Similarly, a major economic transformation, say a transition to a system in which there is no private ownership of the means of production, would normally also count as a change in the material constitution, but not because it literally changes the material relations of power existing in society, but because it alters -or conflicts with- the protection of property rights. However, changes related to redistributive policies (as those mentioned above) that do not modify the interpretation or application of the constitutional text would normally fall outside the traditional conception of the material constitution under which the book operates. Granted, there are some authors who go beyond that traditional conception (notably Mortati and Heller), as well as important attempts to continue moving in that direction.15 But as I noted above, the conception of the material constitution developed in the book is strictly ‘doctrinal’ or ‘juridical’ in nature. The reason is connected to the book’s overall aim. I wanted to show how the relationship between constituent power and the law should be understood in light of concepts that inform contemporary constitutional theory. For example, my argument about constituent assemblies acting on a legally enforceable mandate is not presented as a reformulation or a novel development of the theory of constituent power. Neither is the distinction between constituent power and sovereignty nor my views about the relationship between the notion of the material constitution and the doctrine of unconstitutional constitutional amendments. These arguments are rather presented as the natural implications of ideas and doctrines (constituent power, sovereignty, material constitution) established through constitutional history. There have been, Marco Goldoni & Michael Wilkinson, “The Material Constitution”, 81(4) The Modern Law Review 567 (2018). 15 303 Constituent Power and the Law. Reply to Critics as shown in the book, moments of rupture and changes in that history. But my goal was not to provide alternative or new conceptions of those ideas and doctrines; rather, I wanted to show that they are consistent with, and sometimes point toward, institutional arrangements very different to our current ones. Accordingly, important questions such as ‘to what extent constituent power can be exercised outside moments of constitution-making (or re-making)’, or in what ways ‘do material constitutional changes’ that take place outside a constitution’s amendment rule involve the exercise of constituent authority, largely fall out of the scope of the project. That, however, cannot be the response to Velasco-Rivera’s other main point: that the argument in the book relies in a central way in referendums as a means for the expression of the will of popular majorities. As Velasco-Rivera notes, referendums “are not free from the political context in which they are deployed” and are thus “inevitably prone to create conditions for politicians to stir public opinion in favour of their interests and agendas”. The question then becomes one about whether we should take referendums as “reliable proxies of popular sovereignty”. I share Velasco-Rivera’s concerns with referendums. In fact, I think those concerns not only apply to referendums, but also to any electoral event where individuals are asked to choose between different alternatives or candidates. That is to say, to a significant extent, the problem with the potential manipulation of referendums (through, for example, the social media) is ultimately a general problem of electoral democracy in contemporary societies. There is nonetheless something particularly problematic about referendums. Unlike general elections, where citizens select among different candidates who are called to assemble and deliberate about new laws and policies, referendums ask citizens to choose among two (or sometimes more) alternatives, with no formal place for deliberation. However, one should note the following. First, all laws and policies adopted by a representative assembly are ultimately approved in a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ referendum: a referendum among the members of the assembly. And while it is true that those laws and policies will only be subject to the assembly’s final vote after a period of deliberation, were their content and form is finalised, the same is true of the options eventually submitted to the electorate in a referendum. The key difference is that while an assembly is able to formally deliberate on whether a proposal should be accepted or rejected, the entire electorate (at least in the typical ‘constitutional democracy’) is not. But this should not be exaggerated: on the one hand, informal deliberation among citizens prior to a referendum does take place in democratic societies (even if subject to the potential manipulation noted above) and, on the other, formal deliberation in an assembly may not be genuine (e.g. it may be controlled by interests groups). Second, note that in the book, the role of referenda is limited to two main instances: the issuing of constituent mandates and the ratification of a constitutional text. The latter use of referendums, I think, is not controversial. Most people, even 304 JOEL COLÓN-RÍOS those who think referendums are a terrible form of decision-making, would agree that the popular ratification of a constitution is, at least sometimes, necessary for its legitimacy. The use of the referendum as a means to issue constituent mandates should not, in my view, raise any major issues either. The main reason is that the role of such referendums is largely a negative one: it is about placing limits on an entity (a constituent assembly) that would otherwise have sovereign power. This does not make a referendum more or less reliable as a proxy for popular sovereignty, but it does reduce the stakes of a ‘wrong’ referendum result. Moreover, ideally, a constituent mandate would be initiated from below, for example, presented to the electorate by primary assemblies as the ones supported by Vergara and, as shown in the book, associated with the exercise of constituent power at different moments in constitutional history. Needless to say, that would require a major transformation in our constitutional arrangements, but one that would find strong support in historical and contemporary discussions about the appropriate means for the exercise of constituent power. IV. INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE LIMITS OF THE PRIMARY CONSTITUENT POWER The relationship between referendums and constituent power is also discussed at some length in Yaniv Roznai’s excellent essay. He rightly points to the fact that, in some jurisdictions, courts have treated referendums (in the context of formal constitutional change) as equivalent to the exercise of constituent power while, in others, referendums are seen at most as an important part of a constitution-making process but not as the primary means through which the constituent subject acts. As I have argued elsewhere, I think that the latter view is the correct one.16 Moreover, the argument presented in Chapter 10 of the book rests on that view. There, I distinguish between constitutional and constituent referenda. The former takes place when a proposed constitutional change is approved as part of the procedures established in the constitutional amendment rule (and therefore it has a constituted nature); the latter are instances where the sovereign people, acting through the electorate, exercises its constituent power directly, that is, in the absence of a commission. Under this approach, the use of the ordinary amendment process contained in the constitutional text to alter the material constitution, even if it involves a (constitutional) referendum, would invade the exclusive jurisdiction of the constituent power. The exercise of constituent power can thus (and in my view should) be accompanied by a referendum, but it requires more intense instances of popular See Joel I. Colón-Ríos, Weak Constitutionalism: Democratic Legitimacy and the Question of Constituent Power; Joel I. Colón-Ríos, “Constituent Power and Referendums”, Contemporary Political Theory (2021). 16 305 Constituent Power and the Law. Reply to Critics participation and intervention as those considered in the book (e.g. elected constituent bodies, imperative mandates, primary assemblies). But even if that approach is accepted, as Roznai notes, the question becomes if there are any limits to the kinds of constitutional changes that could be adopted through a sufficiently democratic constituent process. He suggests three specific potential limitations. The first one has to do with international law and, as Roznai notes, I do not address it directly in the book.17 Roznai writes that “from the perspective of international law, it is quite clear that a state must meet its international obligations regardless of local legislation that contradicts them, whether it is ordinary or constitutional legislation”. The question is thus whether an entity called to exercise constituent power (e.g. a constituent assembly) is subject to the international law obligations applicable to the state in which it operates. Roznai offers a possible answer: those limits may apply in the “external juridical sphere” but have “difficulties affecting the legal validity of norms domestically”. If one assumes a situation of a constituent assembly that has been tasked to draft a constitution without been subject to a mandate limiting the kind of content to be created, that answer is probably the right one. That is to say: whether international law is superior to domestic law in the domestic legal system is ultimately determined by the constitutional law of the country at issue. For example, the general rule applicable in some jurisdictions is that an ordinary law contrary to an international obligation is legally valid domestically, even if such an act would entail a clear violation of international law. In other jurisdictions, the constitution may place international law above domestic law and even above the constitution itself. In the latter case, a law or constitutional amendment contrary to a state’s international obligation would not only be illegal under international law but also invalid in the domestic legal system. But note, however, that the ultimate decision about whether a conflict between a domestic statute (ordinary or constitutional) and an international obligation results in the invalidity of the former, is to be found in the national constitution. Accordingly, it would be odd to maintain that a constituent assembly authorised to create an entirely new constitutional order is legally bound to respect rules of international law that are domestically binding because of a rule contained in the very constitution that it has been called to replace (naturally, the question of whether the members of a constituent assembly have a moral or political obligation to respect international law is a different one). The idea of violating international law seems, on its face, problematic: what comes to mind, for example, are the adoption of constitutional provisions contrary to international human rights obligations. However, the type of international obligations that is likely to be contradicted by a new constitution are those connected to, for example, international investment treaties that may limit the state’s ability to For Roznai’s take on this topic, see Yaniv Roznai, “The Boundaries of Constituent Authority”, 52 Connecticut Law Review 1381 (2021). 17 306 JOEL COLÓN-RÍOS regulate the economy or to protect the natural environment. We could be in a different situation if the constituent assembly is subject to a mandate such as that applicable to the current Chilean Constitutional Convention: “The text of the new constitution that will be submitted to referendum shall respect…the international treaties ratified by Chile that are currently in force”.18 In the Chilean case, that provision is non-justiciable19 but suppose the following.20 The people of X jurisdiction are asked the following question in a popularly initiated referendum: “Do you wish to convene a Constituent Assembly for the creation of a new constitution consistent with all of this country’s international obligations?”. According to the argument in the book, such a referendum question, if answered in the affirmative, should be understood as a constituent (and imperative) mandate, legally enforceable against the constituent assembly. In that kind of situation, international obligations would legally limit the type of constitutional content that a constituent assembly can adopt, because such a limit arises from a popular decision. The second limit proposed by Roznai is that “the exercise of constituent power cannot result in the abolition of rights such as freedom of expression and assembly, and political rights, which are necessary in order for constituent power to reappear in the future”. The question here is what does “cannot result” mean in Roznai’s formulation. If it means that an exercise of constituent power that abolishes those rights would be illegitimate, then this is something that I not only agree with but that I have explicitly defended elsewhere.21 If “cannot result” means that the abolition of those rights by a constituent assembly would be illegal then, I also agree, as that is one of the main implications of understanding such an entity as acting on a mandate to create a constitution. As noted in Chapter 10 of the book, “the task of drafting a constitution in a contemporary society would normally involve the creation of a document that establishes a democratic form of government, that separates powers, and that recognises rights”.22 The violation of that limit (a limit arising from a direct popular decision), would not only create a problem of legitimacy but also one of legal validity. The third limit proposed by Roznai is that “the exercise of constituent power must be consistent with the idea of ‘the people’”. “If ‘the people’ or some part thereof are excluded from the polity and are no longer able to exercise constituent power”, Roznai writes, “this should influence the legitimacy of the constitutionmaking process”. Again, it is difficult to disagree with this point, particularly when presented from the perspective of legitimacy. However, if considered from the Article 135, Chilean Constitution of 1980, as amended in 2019. And for good reasons, since it arose from a decision of the elites and not, for example, from a popular initiative. 20 See Article 136, ibid. 21 Colón-Ríos, Weak Constitutionalism (n 14). 22 Colón-Ríos, Constituent Power and the Law (n 5) 291. 18 19 307 Constituent Power and the Law. Reply to Critics perspective of legality, I think Roznai’s point would still stand. Indeed, in Chapter 9 of the book, I argue that inherent in a commission to exercise constituent power there is an obligation to respect the identity of the constituent subject. This is another way of saying that a constitution-making body cannot transform itself into a sovereign entity: the assembly not only has to abide by the limits that accompany its commission, but it cannot alter the entity who issued the commission in the first place. Assuming a democratic context (that is, a constitution-making process initially based on an inclusive conception of the people), the kind of situation described by Roznai would be ultra vires the constitution-making body’s mandate. In this sense, I think there is much in common and very little disagreement between Roznai’s views and mine. V. IMPERATIVE MANDATES, JUDICIAL REVIEW, AND HISTORY I have mentioned a few times already that in the book, I argue that constituent assemblies should be understood as subject to an imperative mandate, and that that mandate can be judicially enforced. Roberto Gargarella’s intervention takes issue with the method through which that argument (as well as some others) is made. He writes that “in occasions, the positions [I maintain] look more like statements than as arguments, while in other occasions, they appear as arguments in need of additional support”. Sometimes, Gargarella maintains, I present certain views as “if they were justified just because of their genealogy or their reputable origins” (e.g. because they find support in the writings of Rousseau) or because they are reflected in some judgments. Even if those views are at first sight attractive, Gargarella worries that since many of them (like, for example, the notion of the imperative mandate), “lost all or almost all the support they had once received throughout the history of political thought”, “additional and renewed justificatory efforts” are needed to defend them. I think that is a fair and powerful criticism. Should what past authors and courts have said about, for example, constituent power, be in any way decisive about the desirability of certain constitutional arrangements today? Put in that way, the answer must be ‘no’. My objective in the book, however, was different. What I wanted to show is that institutions like the imperative mandate or primary assemblies, which as Gargarella writes were rejected by most jurisdictions centuries ago, are not simply superficially attractive from a democratic perspective. Rather, they are in fact entirely consistent with, if not required by, the notion of the people’s constituent power, a notion currently embraced in most constitutional orders. Accordingly, if one takes that notion seriously, one cannot simply ignore those alternative arrangements or treat them as remnants of a past that has been rightly left behind; one must bring them back to current discussions as possible democratic improvements to the constitutional status quo. Those discussion would not only 308 JOEL COLÓN-RÍOS have to consider whether those institutions find support on this or that constitutional theory, but must also include questions such as how would they impact contemporary party systems, how likely are they to increase popular participation in politics, and what kind of results they are likely to provide. As Gargarella notes, the book does not engage in that latter type of discussion, which would have to draw not only from constitutional theory, but from political philosophy, democratic theory, sociology, political science. Of course, this is not to mean that in the book I do not defend particular arrangements. I nonetheless defend them from the perspective of constitutional theory: I seek to show that they are firmly grounded on generally accepted doctrines or conceptions. A key example, which Gargarella takes issue with, is the idea that I previously alerted to that “in the absence of any specific limits that can be derived from a referendum question”, a constituent assembly would at the very least “be bound by two limits that are inherent in a commission to draft a constitution on behalf of the sovereign: the assembly has to actually draft a constitution and respect the identity of the constituent subject (i.e., it cannot transform itself into a sovereign entity)”. Gargarella maintains that instead of defending that idea, I simply declare it. He also writes that he does not “understand why those two are the most fundamental limits faced by an assembly”, and gives several interesting examples of situations in which an assembly may decide not to abide by those limits (either by coming short from writing a constitution or by going beyond its mandate, as the Philadelphia Convention did). Here I think there is an actual disagreement, even if minor, between us. First, the reason I only identify the two limits mentioned above, is not because they are more fundamental or more important than other limits or because they outweigh any other type of consideration. It is, rather, because if one has a mandate to do something (e.g. write a constitution), at the very least one is required to do that. Moreover, in order for a mandate to work as a mandate, the individual or entity acting under it cannot have the power to replace, or change the identity of, the individual or entity issuing it. Second, I agree that there are instances in which a constituent assembly, for different reasons, goes beyond (or otherwise fail to comply) with the mandate it has been given, and that in hindsight, such acts would be more than justified. But that is true of anyone acting under a mandate. For example, even in a civil law context, an individual acting under a mandate can usually justify non-compliance in certain situations. The fact that those exceptional situations may exist (e.g. that the Philadelphia Convention did well in going beyond amending the Articles of Confederation) says little about whether an assembly should normally respect the conditions inherent in a general constitution-making mandate. Gargarella also advances a different critique, one focused on my views about the potential role of the courts in enforcing the content of a constituent mandate. 309 Constituent Power and the Law. Reply to Critics Suppose that a constituent assembly convened for the specific purpose of drafting a federal constitution (a mandate that would be contained in a referendum question) decides to create a unitary state, and an individual or group challenges that action in a (already existing) constitutional court. According to the view defended in the book, the court would have a good justification to review that decision. As Gargarella notes, I maintain that such a review power should only be exercised in rare situations, and that sometimes the best course of action would be a judicial indication of the need of a new referendum. He nonetheless writes that he “would resist” recognising these judicial powers, “[p]articularly so considering the interpretative problems we have for ‘deciphering’ the messages of the constitutionmaking body”, and the disagreement prevalent in contemporary societies. In light of what he calls the problem of “judicial motivation”, he asks whether “given present, normal conditions”, we should actually expect judges to act carefully, to be deferential to constitution-making bodies, as opposed to using those opportunities to “strengthen their powers, extend their functions, increase their influence, [and] fortify their possibilities to extort the other branches as to obtain more benefits and privileges”. These are important concerns, and the only possible answer I can give in this short essay is the following. First, given that constitution-making is, by itself, a rare occurrence (even in countries that have historically adopted multiple constitutions), the exercise of this judicial power would also be rare. Second, as suggested above, in the best scenario, an assembly’s compliance with its mandate would be determined by the citizens themselves in a referendum, and not by a court. Third, the courts’ review power in these instances would of a special nature: courts would be assessing a decision not in terms of its consistency with an entire constitution, but in terms of its consistency with the mandate contained in a single referendum question. Moreover, the court would ideally be operating in a context of heightened popular mobilisation (if not, there would be other problems present in the constitution-making process), which by itself could go a long way in influencing judicial behaviour. It is certainly possible to imagine cases where a court would nonetheless find a way to increase its power even in that type of context. Even though that risk is present, the alternative (at least in situations where an assembly’s decisions are not subject to popular ratification) would to treat a constitution-making body as a sovereign entity. Gargarella’s final challenge (which in some ways overlap with Zoran Oklopcic’s critique, discussed below) points to what appears to be a more general problem. He calls this the problem of “‘historic abstinence’ or, more precisely, the absence of political history in the book”. He says that the book “misses to consider crucial information, and in a way that does not help/encourage us to pay attention to contextual data that would be crucial to understand the scope and limits of the legal analysis” presented. Gargarella is certainly right that, particularly when discussing 310 JOEL COLÓN-RÍOS specific judgments, I only provide the details that I considered necessary to understand the facts of the case and the reasoning of the judges. This is of course not ideal, but in the context of this project, I don’t think it is as problematic as Gargarella suggests. The key example he discusses illustrates why. Gargarella refers to a discussion of a decision of the Venezuelan Supreme Court of Justice, in which I argue that the court incorrectly treated the Constituent Assembly of 1999 as a sovereign entity. My discussion of that decision had a specific aim: to exemplify the ways in which some courts have treated sovereignty and constituent power as equivalent. Gargarella notes that my discussion of that case did not incorporate “some extremely important facts, which are crucial for understanding and evaluating the legal arguments at stake”. “During those days”, he explains, the court “decided to self-dissolve because it could not stand the extreme abuses committed by the Constituent Assembly. In the words of the Chief Justice…Cecilia Sosa -who resigned in August 1999- ‘The court simply committed suicide to avoid being assassinated. But the result is the same. It is dead’”. To fully understand those statements, one would not only have to explain that the court continued to exist and issued multiple judgments after Justice Sosa’s resignation, and that the decision was described as a ‘self-dissolution’ because, in practice, it meant that while the assembly was in place, it had a (sovereign) power superior to it. One would also have to explain the reasons behind the climate of extreme political polarisation present when the decision was rendered, as well as the nature (and possible justifications) of the actions of the assembly and of the reaction of some judges in the Supreme Court of Justice. Understanding that climate, however, is not necessary to see the ways in which the majority of the court failed to distinguish between constituent power and sovereignty. Gargarella says that given the political history behind the decision, the court’s argument lacks “legal validity”. Perhaps he means that it was made under duress or that it is simply a disguised exercise of political power. Be that as it may, it is the same kind of argument that courts in other jurisdictions have developed in support of their refusal to exercise the review powers discussed earlier. VI. MAKING CONSTITUTIONAL THEORY While Gargarella points toward what he sees as an absence of political history in the book, Oklopcic’s questions the extent to which my examination of the language of constituent power through constitutional history can contribute to our understanding of its relationship with law or, more specifically, of its alleged juridical character. My focus will be on that challenge, even though Oklopcic’s essay also contains insightful comments about the nature of constituted power and of the notion of constitutional change, as well as an interesting discussion of the place of 311 Constituent Power and the Law. Reply to Critics territoriality in discussions about constituent power.23 For Oklopcic, “those who chose to resort to the language of constituent power throughout the course of history did so not because they suddenly discovered its eminently juridical character, but because treating it as eminently juridical seemed to be politically advantageous -in concrete situations, at a given place and time”. Under this view, in describing constituent power as a juridical concept, I am ultimately making a political argument. That is to say, I am using the concept of constituent power as a rhetorical device, just as past political actors did; the adjective ‘juridical’ simply serves to accentuate that function. For example, it may be, that my ultimate aim is to provide additional support to a democratic conception of constitution-making, to make extra-constitutional (but democratic) changes more palatable to courts, or to criticise the “political pretensions” of liberal constitutionalism. As he suggests, I am sympathetic to those aims. However, Oklopcic suspects that I would “still want to insist” in the “eminently juridical character of the notion of constituent power” put forward in the book. Oklopcic rightfully asks: how could this be? “How realistic is it to expect that a concept that emerges from a regionally contained, linguistically delineated and theoretically selective inquiry about eminently state-centred doctrines of constituent power ends up playing ‘a key role in determinations of legal validity’ outside of the contexts in which it emerged?” Moreover, in describing constituent power as a juridical concept, I may (unintentionally) contribute to the ambitions of some jurists to “a complete hegemony over the terms on which political matters turn into legal form”. These are powerful ideas, and they are not easy to respond to because, in the end, they may be right. Let me begin by explaining what I mean by ‘juridical’. As Oklopcic suggests, whatever ‘juridical’ means, it is clear that it means something different from (and perhaps it is the opposite of) ‘political’. A juridical concept, as I understand it, is a concept that is not part (or not necessarily part) of positive law, but that is deployed by citizens, government officials, and judges to determine what counts as law or that otherwise has other legal implications. In a public law context, there are many concepts like this: separation of powers, federalism, parliamentary sovereignty, and the rule of law (I imagine one could also find examples in private law). For instance, a court may determine that the actions of a Prime Minister are legally invalid because they would entail a change in an Act of Parliament (and that determination may rest on the concept of parliamentary sovereignty), or that a statute affecting the tenure of judges is invalid because it would violate the concept of the separation of powers. When I write that constituent power is a juridical concept, or that it should be understood as a juridical concept, I mean that like those other concepts, it can (and has) played a role in the making of determinations of legal validity. Proposed constitutional changes, for example, have For Oklopcic’s approach to constituent power, see his Beyond the People: Social Imaginary and Constituent Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2018). 23 312 JOEL COLÓN-RÍOS been identified as valid because they have been the result of what has been described as an exercise of ‘constituent power’. It is true, as Oklopcic writes, that through history, political actors and constitutional theorists have resorted to the language of constituent power in concrete situations and for particular purposes (e.g. the legitimation of a new constitution, the limiting of parliament’s law-making power). Moreover, it may be that in each of those contexts, ‘constituent power’ assumed different, or at least slightly different, meanings. That is, meanings that served the ultimate political goals of the relevant actors. From this perspective it does look odd to call constituent power an “eminently juridical”: it is clearly used to achieve political objectives, even if those objectives eventually assume a legal form. Note, however, that the same is true of other concepts that would fall under my understanding of ‘juridical’. The concept of parliamentary sovereignty, for example, emerged as a result of a series of political struggles between Parliament and the Crown. Moreover, political actors have resorted (and still resort) to it to achieve specific political objectives (discussions about the Brexit referendum provide a recent and notable example), and there are still debates about the nature and limits of parliamentary sovereignty. However, none of that means that the concept of parliamentary sovereignty does not have legal implications, or that the fact that it has had legal implications is of minor importance. On the contrary, to embrace the concept of parliamentary sovereignty commits one to the idea that any rule that is contrary to an Act of Parliament (including a judge-made rule) is not law. Similarly, to embrace the concept of constituent power also commits one to certain views about what should count as (constitutional) law and about how constitutions should be made. Whether the specific content of those commitments is a democratic one depends on one’s understanding of constituent power. That is to say, seeing constituent power as a juridical concept is only desirable (from a democratic perspective) if one thinks that constituent power can only legitimately belong to the people. It is only then that its exercise would be seen as involving, participatory constitution-making processes, primary assemblies, constituent assemblies bound by imperatives mandates, and so on. In the book, I examined the ways in which the language of constituent power has been used in the past to argue of those kinds of political practices. While some of those practices (as Gargarella points out) were eventually left behind, they were left behind by democracy’s opponents24 and should perhaps be rescued by today’s democrats. In this sense, what I tried to do was to highlight the historical connections between constituent power and those democratic practices and then show that, once accepted, those connections may have actual legal implications. For example, the idea that the bearer of the constituent power is the people can provide a strong basis for a legal argument E.g., by those who defended the constituent power of the nation as opposed to the constituent power of the people). 24 313 Constituent Power and the Law. Reply to Critics according to which a constitutional change so fundamental that it amounts to the creation of a new constitution should be considered invalid if adopted by a legislative super-majority, and that it should instead take place through a highly participatory procedure. But note -and I think this is the critical point- that those juridical roles were always there. Think, for instance, of the anti-popular implications -in terms, for example, of who would be treated as a full citizen by law- of the idea of the constituent power of the nation, discussed in Chapter 5 of the book). The question, in that sense, is not whether constituent power should be understood as a ‘juridical’ concept or not, but about the content to be attributed to it. Accordingly, Oklopcic is certainly right that mine is a political intervention, that presenting constituent power as a ‘juridical’ concept ultimately serves the role of supporting certain political ideas about constitution-making and constitutional change. However, far from risking a colonisation of politics by lawyers, I think that what this illustrates is that constitutional thought (and the resulting constitutional law) is ultimately produced in a terrain of political struggle. It may be that rather than responding to Oklopcic’s important challenge, I have simply restated it. As I noted at the beginning of this section, I think that Oklopcic is right that the concept that I am describing as ‘juridical’ (in light of what I meant by that term) is also, in a very fundamental sense, ‘political’. Our disagreement, I believe, is that while I maintain some faith in constitutional theory’s potential to move in the direction of radical democracy, Oklopcic worries that those attempts are, at best, destined to fail or, at worst, waiting to be co-opted or to turn counterproductive. And on that point, I am afraid he may be right as well. 315 Symposium II Adriano Fabris, Etica e ambiguità. Una filosofia della coerenza, Morcelliana, Brescia 2020 316 317 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 317-344 ISSN: 1825-5167 L’ESISTERE PRESO SUL SERIO RIFLESSIONI SU ETICA E AMBIGUITÀ DI ADRIANO FABRIS  CARLO CHIURCO Dipartimento di Scienze Umane Università di Verona carlo.chiurco@univr.it ABSTRACT In my discussion of Adriano Fabris’ Etica e ambiguità [Ethics and Ambiguity], I will consider three main objections. 1) Firstly, I will discuss Fabris’ attempt to criticize and reshape the Aristotelian ἔλεγχος, as it appears in the fourth book of Metaphysics, from a performative perspective, showing that it already falls within, and is substantially invalidated by, the semantic domain of Aristotle’s distinction between “contradiction” and “self-contradicting”. 2) Secondly, since Fabris invokes a reform of Western philosophy’s general attitude towards action and relation, I will show how classic ontology (notably Plato’s notions of being, as opposed to Parmenides’, and dialectics) already provides a robust example of a deeply relational (though admittedly not performative in the sense highlighted by Fabris) notion of being. 3) Thirdly, I criticize Fabris’ notion of relation, because it indifferently refers both to ontology and ethics, whereas a proper ethical consideration of it, while necessarily involving ontology, should be treated as distinct from the former. KEYWORDS Action, relation, ethics, ontology, dialectics, contradiction, Plato, Aristotle. CAMBIARE STRADA RISPETTO ALL’OCCIDENTE I. Non credere al bene, ma alla bontà1: con queste scarne ma potenti parole, poste quasi all’inizio di Vita e destino, Vasilij Grossman enuncia il nucleo della riflessione che andrà a sostanziare le successive settecento pagine del suo romanzo. Simile è lo spirito che anima Etica e ambiguità (EA) di Adriano Fabris, terzo e (per ora) conclusivo capitolo di una trilogia iniziata nel 2010 con TeorEtica e proseguita nel  Elenco qui, in ordine alfabetico, le sigle utilizzate per abbreviare i titoli delle opere citate con maggiore frequenza: EA = A. Fabris, Etica e ambiguità, Morcelliana, Brescia 2020; R = Id., RelAzione. Una filosofia performativa, Morcelliana, Brescia 2016. 1 V. Grossmann, Vita e destino, Adelphi, Milano 2008, p. 22: «“Non ci credo, io, nel bene. Io credo nella bontà”», afferma Ikonnikov, ultimo rappresentante della lunga schiera di folli in Cristo della letteratura russa. 318 CARLO CHIURCO 2016 con RelAzione (R). Fabris raccoglie lo spirito più autenticamente etico del pensiero contemporaneo, l’istanza liberatoria, per progettare una liberazione che non sia rifiuto, esclusione, demolizione della tradizione occidentale, ma il suo ripensamento. La liberazione, qui come già in RelAzione, è condotta soprattutto contro il canone apofantico del pensiero, esemplificato dalla teoria aristotelica del fondamento, che nell’ἔλεγχος trova la difesa più formidabile del proprio status originario, ma è ampliata anche al modo oggettivante con cui Platone, secondo l’Autore, concepirebbe l’universale. L’accusa al discepolo di Socrate è forse ancora più grave, proprio perché egli aveva sperimentato in prima persona la realtà dell’ingiustizia nella condanna del suo maestro, e proprio da questa ingiustizia, la cui evidenza però non era stata sentita come tale dai cittadini di Atene, aveva preso avvio il suo percorso filosofico, che avrebbe portato alla prima, e forse ineguagliata quanto a potenza, rivendicazione dell’autonomia della filosofia. È infatti «dalla necessità di rispondere a tale ingiustizia» che sorge quella spinta a «svincolarsi dall’infinito confronto fra opinione diverse» allo scopo di «individuare ciò che, al di là di esse, vale come punto di riferimento per tutti stabile e da tutti condiviso»:2 la filosofia, insomma, è sì ricerca della verità, ma esistenzialmente sostanziata – e perciò resa coinvolgente – dalla ricerca della giustizia3. Ma Platone concepisce questo «punto di riferimento per tutti stabile e da tutti condiviso», l’universale, come un’«universalità … fissata come qualcosa di oggettivo e ed eterno», che, in quanto tale, «si trasforma in qualcosa d’insensato, che s’impone con violenza e che può richiedere, per essere indicata, sostenuta e difesa, altrettanta violenza»4 – la violenza sottile, subdola, introvertita del filosofo che si erge a custode di tale mondo parallelo, la cui realtà di principio ipostatizzato rende possibile la verità delle conoscenze e dei giudizi5, e sacerdote del suo accesso: «in ciò sta il suo primato rispetto agli altri esseri umani»6, e, tanto per Platone quanto per una nutrita schiera di sodali, la legittimità del suo diritto a regnare su quest’altro mondo. Che si tratti della sostanza aristotelica o dell’archetipo platonico, insomma, la filosofia cade in questo peccato originale: la reificazione della realtà, dell’esistenza, di quella vita da cui pure essa sorge, e in vista della quale è nata – non solo per rispondere alla domanda su cosa sia, ma anche su cosa sia la vita buona. L’accusa va compresa in tutta la sua portata: non si tratta, infatti, solo di denunciare la tendenza delle lingue umane alla fissazione, senza la quale, verosimilmente, la loro operatività semantica verrebbe meno, ma una decisione consapevolmente presa nell’età in cui la filosofia era essa stessa cosa viva e ancora in formazione, e perciò mutevole e cangiante, e EA, p. 9. Ivi, p. 19: «La motivazione di tale indagine è di rispondere a un’ingiustizia e di determinare le condizioni affinché quest’ingiustizia non si ripresenti più». 4 Ib. 5 Ivi, p. 18. 6 Ivi, p. 19. 2 3 319 L’esistere preso sul serio. Riflessioni su Etica e ambiguità di Adriano Fabris che però ha finito per determinarne irrimediabilmente il corso in un senso ben preciso: per l’appunto, la logica della fissità e del netto predominio dell’apofantico7, cui mutatis mutandis anche le scienze empiriche e le tecniche, oggi assolute dominatrici del campo, pur sempre rispondono8, seppur alla loro maniera, cioè secondo le proprie metodologie. II. ETICA È AMBIGUITÀ Di fronte a ciò, la possibilità di risposta evocata dall’Autore è racchiusa nella polarità concettuale che dà il titolo al libro: l’etica, ossia la relazione come principio, e l’ambiguità, ossia il riconoscimento del carattere strutturalmente mutevole, temporale, non fisso né fissabile, della realtà9. Se nell’impostazione heideggeriana, la cui suggestione traspare un po’ ovunque nei testi considerati, la seconda costituisce il piano più propriamente teoretico e per così dire ontologico della riflessione, la posizione di Fabris riguardo la prima opera un ampliamento di prospettiva dello stesso pensiero di Heidegger che ne costituisce anche una rettificazione, e non di poco conto10. Ciò accade non solo perché, contrariamente alla nota indicazione presente nella Lettera sull’umanismo, egli non vede l’etica né come il «vincolo» la cui importanza cresce proporzionalmente al «disorientamento» dell’uomo11, né, al contrario di certa tradizione metafisica, come il pendant pratico della riflessione teoretico-ontologica, ma come un, anzi, il componente essenziale di quella, secondo quanto ampiamente teorizzato e argomentato in R; ma anche perché l’etica si organizza come il nodo, insieme relazionale e totalizzante (nel senso, come si dirà subito, che la realtà è trama di relazioni), che spiega questo suo essere totalizzante, teoretico-e-pratico, e, insieme, coinvolgente12, struttura e vita, principio e principiato: la relazione (o, volendo tener fede al disegno dell’Autore, relAzione). La relazione non è infatti una categoria con cui conoscere la realtà – pur sempre subordinata alla sostanza, come in Aristotele13, o alla soggettività trascendentale, come in Kant – ma è la trama stessa del reale: non solo della nostra realtà umana – cosa in fondo anticipata da molti, dalla processualità dialettica in R, pp. 176-178. Ivi, p. 175. 9 Si veda, sulla centralità dell’elemento tempo, ivi, pp. 73 segg. Sul senso ambiguo di tale ambiguità, cfr. infra V.1. 10 Cfr. ad es. le critiche mosse in EA, pp. 36-40, sull’impercorribilità della soluzione heideggeriana. 11 M. Heidegger, Lettera sull’umanismo, in Segnavia, Adelphi, Milano 1994, pp. 267-315, pp. 304-305. 12 Cfr. EA, p. 27: «La certezza della relazione diventa certezza nella relazione. Come tale non è più certezza: è coinvolgimento». Cfr. anche infra, la nota 26. 13 Cfr. R, p. 146. 7 8 320 CARLO CHIURCO Hegel fino all’originario appartenere alla sfera comunicativa in Watzlawick; e in fondo anche nella riflessione circa il primato della dimensione della cura risuona, benché poco o nulla argomentato, lo stesso motivo – ma della realtà in quanto tale. Tutto è sempre in relazione, dunque è sempre relazione, un relarsi, perché tutto è agire14: e l’agire, va da sé, è intrascendibile. In questo singolare ritorno a un’auroralità dal sapore presocratico, la relazione è, insieme, ἀρχή e στοῖχεῖον, ciò che principia le cose (più che causarle15) – e cioè: ciò che, vivo, agendo, relazionandosi al principiato, apre in esso e per esso una rete di possibilità relazionali, che, in quanto anch’esso vivo e agente relazionantesi, potrà o meno far proseguire e portare a frutto – e ciò che, insieme, le costituisce materialmente – giacché ogni “cosa”, ogni “ente”, in sé e per sé, non è che relAzionarsi. Ma non è possibile concepire la relAzione – il “principio relAzione”, parafrasando Jonas – in termini statici, e Fabris difende questa posizione ricorrendo a una duplice batteria argomentativa: ci obbligano al riconoscimento di tale dinamismo necessario della relAzione, da un lato, la ricognizione dell’evidenza, sia logica che, soprattutto, fenomenologica, del suo essere viva, e ciò che vive, agisce, non può essere che dinamico. Dall’altro, la constatazione del fallimento – anch’esso già ampiamente descritto in R – di tutte le posizioni filosofiche, sia metafisiche come antimetafisiche, nel porsi come quella forma coinvolgente, che, in EA, è la spia della sconfitta dell’etica e della filosofia – i cittadini di Atene non vedono, al contrario dei filosofi, l’evidenza dell’ingiustizia della condanna di Socrate perché non coinvolti nella filosofia e da essa –, e, nel testo precedente, denotava invece lo scarto tra vita (che è agire, relAzione) e pensiero, quello scarto che è l’inevitabile risultato della filosofia che ha scelto l’apofasi, la fissazione praeter necessitatem (al di là, cioè, di quella imposta dai limiti strutturali delle lingue), la reificazione come tratti distintivi propri, e passati in seguito alla civiltà che su di essa si è edificata, l’Occidente. Un’ultima, ma importantissima, precisazione: “fallimento”, qui, significa l’impossibilità di escludere una volta per tutte la dimensione aporetica dal pensiero, risolvendola nella fissità aproblematica di ciò che è fisso16. Il senso di tale impossibilità oscilla però tra un valore negativo ed uno positivo. Esso cioè può essere, ad esempio agli occhi della tradizione del pensiero fondativo, una vera e propria sconfitta, ciò che segna il collasso di questo tipo di progetto filosofico, ponendolo per ciò stesso sotto il segno della pretesa di sovranità – e non è forse ogni sovranità essa stessa una pretesa? Ma può anche essere (ed è appunto la posizione di Fabris) il riconoscimento che la filosofia abita originariamente tale dimensione. Di nuovo: tale riconoscimento non è la conseguenza di una sconfitta, l’accettazione rassegnata di ciò con cui siamo costretti a confrontarci, anche perché Cfr. ivi, p. 137: «L’universo delle relazioni si compie come multiverso: mondo di mondi; mondo in espansione». 15 Cfr. EA, pp. 33-34; si veda anche la critica alla concezione causale dell’agire in R, pp. 116-128. 16 Cfr. EA, pp. 14-23. 14 321 L’esistere preso sul serio. Riflessioni su Etica e ambiguità di Adriano Fabris una tale posizione non escluderebbe di immaginare nuove, magari più accorte, ipotesi fondative, capaci di imparare dagli errori del passato (ciò che, a ben vedere, in fondo costituisce il modus operandi delle scienze empiriche e delle tecniche), bensì il guadagnare di bel nuovo – anche questa, una potente suggestione heideggeriana – un modo diverso di fare filosofia. Il che, tradotto, significa che l’agire che è la filosofia non può fare a meno dell’aporia, non perché il fondazionismo abbia storicamente fallito, ma perché l’aporia è lo spazio costitutivo del pensiero: lo conferma il fatto che pensare conduca sempre all’apertura di nuove aporie, anche quando pensa di aver chiuso la dimensione aporetica una volta per tutte (come accade in Metafisica IV17). È per questo che la filosofia abita l’ambiguità: essendo però che la filosofia è un agire – il farsi dell’incalcolabile trama delle relazioni che è la realtà stessa – allora anche l’etica le risulta essenzialmente legata: l’etica, infatti, è la possibilità di scelta che, come Ercole al bivio, ci viene innanzi ogni volta che abitiamo una delle plurime biforcazioni che il prodursi della trama relazionale del mondo incessantemente manifesta. Proprio perché la realtà è una trama di relazioni, e ogni relazione è un nodo di questa trama, in e da ognuno di questi nodi si dipartono più fili relazionali, quindi più possibilità di scelta per il soggetto (a sua volta relazionalmente inteso) che di volta in volta in questo o quel nodo viene a trovarsi. Possibilità di scegliere cosa? Di accettare la relazionalità stessa: la scelta etica – il fare il bene anziché il male – è infatti proprio questo, lo Jasagen non al cieco ritorno dell’uguale – alla realtà come cecità meccanicistica e indifferente a tutto, anche a se stessa, degli atomi o del codice genetico, la «natura matrigna» di Leopardi – ma ad essere relazionali nella relazionalità che essenzialmente il mondo è: ossia, alla realtà come apertura originaria, e sempre costantemente rinnovata nel suo farsi come tale, di possibilità, in cui, dunque, l’ambiguità non può – e dunque non deve – essere esclusa. Dire di sì alla realtà è aprire e aprirsi ad «un’infinita fioritura del possibile»18, in cui però la virtù della coerenza – il decidersi ogni volta, ossia ad ogni nodo della trama relazionale in cui ci imbattiamo e che ci accade di abitare, per la relazionalità, assecondandone in tal Non, secondo Fabris, nell’unum argumentum del Proslogion, che lui interpreta come una «funzione di un’apertura, non della riaffermazione di una struttura» (EA, p. 58). In realtà, l’argumentum andrebbe contestualizzato: Anselmo non sta enunciando la legge suprema del pensare, tanto è vero che l’argumentum non si applica per ogni contenuto, ogni ente, ma soltanto a quell’ente che è Dio, il quale è anche la cagione della sua validità in virtù della sua iper-realtà. Pertanto, anche l’affermazione per cui Anselmo costruisce «una struttura aperta» capace di traghettarmi «oltre i limiti del mio stesso argomentare: rendendomi consapevole […] che non sto semplicemente elaborando pensieri, ma mi sto relazionando a qualcosa di reale» (ib.), diviene superflua: è appunto questa la stoltezza dell’insipiens, il considerare irreale ciò che invece è l’ens realissimum. Per Anselmo, si tratta, tra le altre cose, di mostrare come Dio sia assolutamente evidente anche alla ragione, ma seguendo un percorso molto complesso, che non può essere separato dal Monologion, l’opera di cui il Proslogion è, insieme, la prosecuzione e il completamento. Cfr. I. Sciuto, Le ragioni della fede. Il Monologion e il programma filosofico di Anselmo d’Aosta, Marietti, Genova 1991. 18 R, p. 137. 17 322 CARLO CHIURCO modo il potere infinitamente germinale in senso ulteriormente relazionale – è essa stessa ambigua: non, cioè, la maglia ferrea degli imperativi etici o dei principi che quella germinatività, specchio della molteplicità del reale, sussumono in sé in una reductio ad unum che in fondo quel reale rinsecchisce, privandolo della linfa della sua imprevedibilità, quanto piuttosto l’arte del nocchiero nel condurre la nave attraverso la mutevolezza del mondo marino. III. CONTRADDIZIONE E CONTRADDIRSI 1. È per questo che, nell’ottica di Fabris, ogni tipologia e ogni tentativo di fossilizzazione, e dunque la logica apofantica del logos occidentale, è da rigettare, incluso il tentativo neo-idealistico gentiliano di pensare la vita activa del pensiero, ossia definirla (dunque cristallizzandola) nel suo farsi in atto, in un modo in cui tale cristallizzarsi sia originariamente tolto nella propria valenza aporetica, e in fondo anche paradossale19. La paradossalità del rapporto tra vita e pensiero, invece, non si risolve nell’etica, ma al contrario seguita a vivere in essa, nel ripresentarsi costante della possibilità di scelta che a ogni istante viene innanzi a noi, esseri relazionali e in relazione, tra il fare in modo che la relazionalità si sviluppi ulteriormente, mantenendo il suo carattere generativo ed anzi sviluppandolo, o che rallenti, fino addirittura a bloccarsi. In questo modo, ad ogni istante – ad ogni scelta – l’etica finisce per riconfermare la propria necessità, e il proprio essere viva; e il pensiero stesso può finalmente dirsi vivo, e non contro la vita, né vivo, ma a spese di essa: l’ossessione definitoria del logos, infatti, si costituisce intorno a un’idea fissa di identità, il questo-e-non-quello, il sé-e-non-altro, combattendo l’aporeticità, l’ambiguità essenziale degli enti. L’identità fissa non muta, si fossilizza, è irreversibile: ma, essendo che solo la morte è irreversibile a questo mondo, ciò equivale a dire che il rigore teoretico del pensiero dell’identità – e Fabris nomina spesso, al riguardo, Severino20 – è il rigore di ciò che è mummificato, un rigore di morte. Tuttavia, la difesa dell’ambiguità operata da Fabris è essa stessa ambigua, e dà origine a tre obiezioni che cercherò di articolare in questo saggio – rispettivamente logica (cap. III), storico-teoretica (cap. IV-V), ed etica (cap. VI). Il pensiero del Novecento, sulla scorta di Nietzsche, ha infatti cercato in ogni modo di riconoscere il carattere assolutamente fluido, mutevole, reversibile della realtà. Anche le scienze, dopo Heisenberg, hanno definitivamente abbandonato la progettualità a carattere epistemico di Newton e Leibniz per assumere l’attuale carattere ipoteticoprobabilistico. Le conseguenze di questo gigantesco movimento, che Severino Simile è il destino di tanta riflessione sulla Lebenswelt, la quale, tormentata dalla separazione tra pensiero e vita, tra pensiero e azione, proprio in tale tormento seguita tuttavia a tenerla ferma. 20 Cfr. R, pp. 174-175; EA, p. 48: «Eternità imbalsamata, che assomiglia molto a quella delle mummie». 19 323 L’esistere preso sul serio. Riflessioni su Etica e ambiguità di Adriano Fabris chiamava «distruzione degli immutabili», sono però note: non avendo gli enti un’identità stabile, allora perché non sarebbe non solo possibile, ma giusto modificarli in modo radicale? E perché una tale manipolazione dovrebbe essere definita violenta? Anzi, essa sarebbe assolutamente lecita, proprio perché ogni ente, essendo fluido, aperto, equivoco, è essenzialmente predisposto alla propria trasformazione nel suo opposto, ad un radicale mutamento di sé21. È questa la domanda – la chiamerò la “domanda fondamentale” – che innerva il nostro tempo, l’età della tecnica, da cima a fondo. Certo: il pensiero, da Nietzsche in poi, giustifica il riconoscimento di tale carattere assolutamente fluido del reale attraverso la sconfessione del carattere veritativo del logos fondazionistico, nel senso che esso non già è verità, ma solo volontà di verità – la volontà di definire, di mettere un limite al mutamento, quindi niente di più e niente di meno che una forma simbolica tra le altre, una struttura di senso internamente (ossia secondo la propria logica, anch’essa una tra le molte possibili) coerente, esattamente come il mito22. Oggi viviamo infatti in un’epoca neo-mitica, giacché la razionalità puramente strumentale e funzionalistica della tecnoscienza non spiega il “perché” né tantomeno il “che cosa” del mondo, ma soltanto il suo “come”23: perciò essa, dagli ansiolitici agli impianti neurali, è il rimedio (o quantomeno la sua promessa) alle angosce e ai bisogni dell’uomo, e sempre più ai suoi stessi limiti fisiologici, un rimedio così potente che ha potuto sbarazzarsi del bisogno del vecchio Dio, proponendo un nuovo paradiso totalmente immanente. Al di fuori del regno del “come”, però, la domanda di senso resta totalmente inevasa: nonostante i ripetuti tentativi di stampo riduzionistico, il big bang o la teoria delle stringhe spiegano un solo livello – che in realtà sarebbe più corretto chiamare prospettiva – di una realtà che, pur enormemente impoverita nel generale ottundimento della sensibilità e delle coscienze, resta pur sempre non del tutto afferrabile, e dunque sovrastanteci, trascendente, in altre parole un surplus di senso non traducibile nei linguaggi tecnoscientifici. Il problema è che nessuno, oggi – nessuno fuori dall’accademia, ma anche molti al suo interno –, pensa a codificare quel surplus in termini filosofici, bensì mitici. Non si spiegherebbe altrimenti il proliferare dei settarismi, dei millenarismi, degli gnosticismi, tra i quali principe è la stessa fede gnostica nella Cfr. E. Severino, Violenza e salvezza, in Oltre il linguaggio, Adelphi, Milano 1992, pp. 15-34, p. 15: «La violenza oltrepassa i limiti che non devono essere oltrepassati. Tali limiti non devono e tuttavia possono essere oltrepassati. In genere si stenta a comprendere che se un limite può essere “veramente e realmente” oltrepassato, viene meno ogni fondamento perché esso non debba esserlo» 22 Cfr. ad es. F. Nietzsche, La gaia scienza, n. 344, in Opere, vol. V, tomo II, Adelphi, Milano 1991, pp. 240-243. 23 Ivi, n. 112, pp. 142-143: «Lo chiamiamo “spiegazione”, ma è “descrizione”, quel che ci contraddistingue dai gradi più antichi della conoscenza e della scienza. Noi descriviamo meglio, ma spieghiamo tanto poco quanto tutti i nostri predecessori». 21 324 CARLO CHIURCO tecnoscienza come l’ultimo Dio24. Oggi quindi viviamo un mondo neo-mitico, ma senza Dei, senza cioè quella piramide gerarchica della potenza che strutturava il mondo mitico: al di sopra di tutto il Fato, poi gli Dei ultra-potenti, sotto, passivi rispetto a loro, gli umani, infine gli animali, le vittime sacrificali per eccellenza dei due livelli ontici immediatamente superiori. Siamo giunti al punto speculare ma rovesciato rispetto all’inizio aurorale del pensiero dell’Occidente: allora, un contenuto razionale avvolto nel linguaggio del mito – è una Dea che rivela a Parmenide la verità dell’essere –, oggi un contenuto mitico avvolto nel linguaggio della razionalità procedurale. 2. Tutto questo, come si è detto, origina dal riconoscimento di Nietzsche, per cui la pretesa verità del logos sarebbe solo volontà di verità. Fabris rifiuta fermamente questa impostazione, tanto è vero che si dà gran pena nel riformulare in termini nuovi – aperti cioè all’idea di realtà come possibilità essenziale – le due strutture concettuali più importanti del pensiero fondativo, vale a dire il principio e l’᾽ἔλεγχος. Ma, come dicevo, la sua proposta di ripensare la verità in termini originariamente aperti all’aporia e all’ambiguità è essa stessa ambigua, giacché, pur non accettando l’eziologia della diagnosi nicciana, ne condivide però la sintomatologia: il mondo è divenire, il divenire è ambiguità, ossia impossibilità di determinare, fissare, identificare una volta per tutte una qualsiasi cosa25. In questo senso, la proposta filosofica di Fabris è una peculiare forma di realismo tanto quanto quella di Nietzsche e della sua lunga coorte di novecenteschi seguaci: quest’ultima di stampo prettamente naturalistico, nella sua accettazione della crudeltà come legge fondamentale del reale, quella di Fabris, di tipo mediativorelazionale, è invece un realismo della possibilità. Anche per Fabris, che pure ne critica la versione metafisica, si tratta di partire da un senso, seppure assai peculiare, per così dire riveduto e corretto, dell’adequatio (che in questo caso tradurrei con “aderenza”), che di ogni realismo è l’imprescindibile cardine: siccome la realtà si dispone in un certo modo (è ambigua, ossia diveniente in senso fluido, indeterminabile, imprevedibile ecc.), allora il “corretto” modo di vedere le cose deve tenerne conto, fluendo con essa, aporeticamente itinerando con essa, in essa, Cfr. E. Severino, Essenza del nichilismo, Adelphi, Milano 19822, pp. 149 e 197. Anche Heidegger, naturalmente, parla di «intreccio essenziale della metafisica con le scienze»: M. Heidegger, Sentieri interrotti, La Nuova Italia, Firenze 1968, p. 193. 25 Si cfr. il modo in cui Fabris imposta l’analisi della relazione tra eternità e temporalità: «O il rapporto tra temporale ed eterno risulta già da sempre dato (vale a dire, è a sua volta già da sempre fissato, “eterno”: nel senso di “immobile”), oppure esso, dal canto suo, diviene, si fa, si realizza processualmente. In altre parole: risulta, a sua volta, temporale» (R, p. 86). Si può obiettare come, nel testo, si faccia uso di una certa interpretazione dei termini «divenire» o «temporale», in alternativa alla quale se ne possono proporre altre: ad es., la relazione tra tempo ed eterno come il darsi di un’identità-differenza (ciò che l’essere stesso è: cfr. infra, IV), sia nel senso del loro reciproco rispecchiarsi, in cui il tempo è «l’immagine mobile dell’eternità» (Pl. Tim. 37d5), o il divenire come apparire e scomparire dell’eterno in Severino (cfr. infra, V.1). 24 325 L’esistere preso sul serio. Riflessioni su Etica e ambiguità di Adriano Fabris per essa, e come essa. Chi, da tale adaequatio, inferisse una certa chiusura, ossia, di nuovo, intravedesse in essa dei binari in qualche modo prefigurati entro i quali la realtà – la vita – sarebbe chiamata a scorrere, sarebbe presto rassicurato: la realtà di cui qui si parla è la pura possibilità, e la scelta, che costantemente ci si para innanzi, è per definizione aperta, mai preventivamente determinata o determinabile. 3. Resta però, come detto, un diverso punto di partenza: Fabris, al contrario di Nietzsche, non nega l’“idea” di verità, non ne nega cioè la possibilità, a patto che venga per l’appunto concepita – ossia praticata26 – come tale. Niente a che spartire col pensiero contemporaneo, quindi – se non fosse che la “domanda fondamentale” di prima, sulle conseguenze etiche di un divenire concepito come infinita mutevolezza, resta inevasa: perché, se tutto è ambiguo, inafferrabile, proteiforme, non si dovrebbe manipolarlo? E soprattutto, perché si dovrebbe chiamare tutto questo violenza? La risposta di Fabris è di tipo elenchico: perché, così facendo, si nega in modo autocontraddittorio la relazionalità essenziale del mondo. Chi fa violenza non è niente altro che relazione – una certa relazione, o meglio, un certo nodo relazionale, giacché ogni agente nel mondo è tale, intesse cioè più relazioni, ed è da queste tessuto – che prova a bloccare la relazionalità generale del mondo, o addirittura distruggerla: è relazionalità che prova a togliere se stessa, «un facitore di insensatezza» che «finisce per rigettare la propria umanità: quella che un atteggiamento relazionale manifesta nel senso più pieno»27. A chi obbiettasse che tale ἔλεγχος sembra inefficace, in quanto, rispetto all’ἔλεγχος aristotelico – in cui il contenuto della negazione del principio di non-contraddizione (PNC) viene posto come l’impossibile, l’assolutamente nulla –, gli effetti del male e della violenza sono invece drammaticamente reali, Fabris ribatterebbe che questo è appunto dovuto alla novità della concezione qui proposta, il cui valore non risulta inficiato. Il negatore della relazionalità, infatti, per formulare la sua negazione è pur sempre costretto a relazionarsi: dove ciò che fa scattare l’ἔλεγχος è proprio l’agire, cioè il relazionarsi alla relazionalità da parte del suo negatore, e non, come in Aristotele, il suo contenuto concettuale, cioè appunto la relazione (come oggetto, “cosa” del pensiero) cui il relazionarsi si relaziona. In altre parole, l’azione di questo Nein-sagen nei confronti della relazionalità non può essere negata essa stessa in quanto azione, appunto perché è relazione, anzi relAzione. È per questo che il negatore della relazionalità – che è poi colui che, non decidendosi per essa, compie con ciò stesso il male – si contraddice, come del resto molti esempi tratti dalla vita reale sembrano confermare (ad esempio, odiare qualcuno è il miglior modo per Cfr. EA, p. 60: «In tal modo faccio la verità. Più in generale, sono e mi confermo vero, verace. E posso fare un discorso vero – che in quanto tale risulta credibile e può indurre gli altri alla fiducia sia nei miei confronti, sia nei confronti dell’argomentazione che sto usando –, solo se il mio dire e il mio pensare esprimono il mio essere, e il mio essere si riconferma coerentemente nell’agire che promuovo». Cfr. R, p. 31: «Verità è senso in atto». 27 Ivi, p. 184. 26 326 CARLO CHIURCO riconoscerne incondizionatamente il valore). Se però la relAzione che è la negazione della relazionalità non può essere posta come l’impossibile o il nulla (giacché è per questo suo essere-azione che essa fa scattare l’ἔλεγχος), altrettanto si dovrà allora dire del suo esecutore (cioè il negatore), al quale pertanto non tocca in sorte la disumanizzazione che Aristotele riserva al negatore del PNC, quando afferma che egli è «simile a un tronco» (ὅμοιος φυτῶι: Met. IV 3 1006a14-15; e poco sopra, a13, usa il termine γελοῖον)28. Se la relAzione, che sempre e comunque la negazione della relazionalità è, non può essere annientata, allora neppure possono esserlo i suoi effetti, cioè il male: lo strappo nella trama relazionale pertanto c’è, è reale. Del resto, è proprio perché, seppure mantenuto come tale nella sua originarietà, il principio della relazionalità non è più posto come un idolo di onnipotenza che esso così conferma la sua natura vulnerabile, cioè dinamica, viva; e tale vulnerabilità, a sua volta, costituisce per noi ulteriore ragione per essere etici, coerenti nel dire sì alla relazionalità generale di tutte le cose. 4. Per quanto affascinante, l’argomento si presta all’obiezione di non distinguere tra contraddizione e contraddirsi, che pure Fabris richiama, ma che giudica insufficiente, giacché «ci fa illudere di poter risolvere l’ambiguità semplicemente mediante un’analisi teorica»29. Ma sembra che, di tale distinzione, gli sfugga un aspetto che va a toccare proprio il cuore del suo discorso: la centralità della prassi, dell’agire. Come noto, uno può benissimo dire che PNC non è valido, è assurdo, è contraddittorio (o, restando al caso di Anselmo, che Dio non esiste): l’importante è che anche non lo pensi30. Il dire, infatti, è porre la cosa, laddove il pensarla significa saperla: io posso allegramente civettare, alludendo, dicendo e non dicendo, pensando una cosa, dicendone un’altra, e facendone una terza – posso, cioè, fare questo, in assenza di coerenza, senza che con ciò scatti l’ἔλεγχος. Solo se io penso che il significato x è, nello stesso tempo e sotto il medesimo rispetto, non-x, allora cado in autocontraddizione. Pertanto, non ogni agire gode della proprietà elenchica, ma solo quell’agire determinato che è il pensare: è solo quando pensano, quindi, che le civette debbono allarmarsi, proprio perché solo nel pensare ogni differenza – ogni ente – è saputa come tale, come la differenza che essa effettivamente è. In questo senso, allora, non solo la distinzione tra «espediente teorico» e «obiezione pratica»31 è già nota ed anzi utilizzata da Aristotele, ma sembra che l’ἔλεγχος, nella versione riveduta proposta da Fabris, non abbia quel valore universale che invece, nelle intenzioni dell’Autore, gli appartiene. La proposizione Per la critica di Fabris a tale disumanizzazione, cfr. ivi, p. 182; EA, p. 55. Cfr. infra, III.5. EA, p. 100. Il richiamo alla distinzione si trova ib., nota 1: «Sappiamo bene come da un punto di vista logico l’aporia è evitata: distinguendo il livello di ciò che si sta pensando da quello, ulteriore, del discorso attraverso cui lo si pensa». 30 Cfr. Aristotele, Met. IV 3 1005b25-26; IV 4 1005b35-1006a3. 31 R, p. 184. 28 29 327 L’esistere preso sul serio. Riflessioni su Etica e ambiguità di Adriano Fabris “Quell’agire relazionale – quella relAzione – che è la negazione della sfera dell’agire relazionale è negazione di sé” sembra quindi valere solo se l’agire relazionale in questione è il pensare; e, se questo è vero, non sembra possibile affermare che «solo l’etica può essere in grado di fare i conti con l’ambiguità»32. Per il resto, l’unica proprietà elenchica a carattere universale di cui gode l’agire in quanto tale è relativa alla sua trascendentalità, come se cioè si cercasse di porre un “al di fuori”, una qualsiasi dimensione semantica e pratica esistente esterna all’agire – ciò che ovviamente è impossibile, dal momento che, nell’immaginare o pensare qualcosa al di fuori dell’agire, sto per l’appunto agendo. 5. Per concludere, un’osservazione dal sapore riabilitativo nei confronti di Aristotele (almeno per quanto concerne la sua potentissima riflessione sul PNC in Metafisica IV) rispetto alle critiche mosse da Fabris, per il quale, nel trattamento riservato da Aristotele al negatore del PNC, il logos epistemico manifesterebbe in modo icastico il proprio carattere impositivo – termine, questo, che l’Autore sembra accostare a “violento”, sebbene non lo faccia mai esplicitamente; in coerenza, si potrebbe dire scherzando, con l’ambiguità che forma il nucleo del suo argomento. In realtà, questa accusa non pare fedele al significato del passaggio in questione di Metafisica IV. Fabris parla di riduzione al silenzio e di disumanizzazione, ma Aristotele in realtà, si è visto, non afferma che il negatore del PNC non stia dicendo alcunché, o che sia, in quanto autocontraddizione in atto, «simile a un tronco», ossia contraddizione vivente, cioè un impossibile, un nulla. Ciò avverrebbe solo se l’autocontraddizione effettivamente si desse, se il nulla – che l’autocontraddizione è – fosse: ma essendo che essa non è, allora il negatore del PNC non è «un tronco», né può esserlo mai, neppure nel suo contraddirsi, proprio perché ciò che vuole, e che manifesta nel suo dire – ossia che il PNC non sia il PNC –, è volere l’impossibile; né il suo dire – il suo contraddirsi – può essere identificato con il proprio contenuto contraddittorio, sì che è inesatto anche affermare che egli venga ridotto al silenzio, o che il suo dire sia niente. Al contrario, è proprio perché il dire del negatore del PNC non è niente, non è la contraddizione – sebbene tale appunto sia il suo contenuto – che rilevarne la natura erronea non può essere in alcun modo posto come un “zittirlo” o un’imposizione33: se così fosse, allora EA, p. 101 nota 1. In aggiunta a quanto detto, si può osservare che, proprio in Metafisica IV, Aristotele compie un grande atto di democratizzazione della teoresi. Contrariamente al suo maestro Platone, infatti, in cui il primato conoscitivo del filosofo tende per natura a traslarsi anche sul piano politico, Aristotele afferma che il PNC è il principio più noto, e proprio per questo «intorno ad esso è impossibile essere in errore» (Met. IV 3 1005b11-12): vale a dire, esso è noto a tutti, è il bonum communissimum, come esplicitamente affermato ivi, 1004b22-25, non un possesso speciale del filosofo. Il quale, propriamente, neppure è colui che sa pensarlo – tutti, infatti, se pensano e quando pensano, lo pensano e se ne servono: ivi, 1005b13-17–, ma solo colui che sa dire correttamente intorno ad esso, portandolo alla riflessione (ad es., sapendo di alcune cose non si dà dimostrazione). È intorno a 32 33 328 CARLO CHIURCO nessuna correzione sarebbe più possibile, o sarebbe per ciò stesso, e necessariamente, violenza. IV. RITORNARE A PLATONE / 1: IDENTITÀ E DIFFERENZA 1. In realtà, questo tipo di critiche è divenuto consueto dopo che Heidegger (e, da noi, Severino) ha reso popolare, da un lato, il considerare “l’Occidente” a volo d’uccello e in senso monolitico, irrigidendo l’invenzione della storia filosofica della filosofia che Hegel aveva evocato per scopi ben precisi; e, dall’altro, quella sottocategoria, non meno monolitica, che risponde al nome di “metafisica”, il cui carattere è invariabilmente oppressivo e impositivo, senza sfumature al proprio interno. Senza dubbio esiste una lunga fase, che è legittimo chiamare fondazionistica, del pensiero occidentale, che va da Parmenide a Hegel, accomunata dal richiamo alla nozione di principio, ampiamente discussa da Fabris34, e da una logica che lui definisce «apofantica», di cui si è già detto. Occorrerebbe però – e introduco in questo modo la seconda obiezione, quella a carattere storico-filosofico – distinguere chiaramente il periodo antico (e, seppur in minor misura, medievale) di questa storia, da quello moderno, perché è solo nel caso del secondo che si può parlare esplicitamente di una logica dell’imposizione, in cui l’avversario (o, più semplicemente, l’altro) è effettivamente zittito, o finanche annientato, magari nell’indifferenza in cui lo confina il solipsismo della soggettività moderna. Non si può, insomma, tacere che per i Greci, compresi quelli più simpatizzanti del fondazionismo come Aristotele, vige sempre in realtà un senso di apertura, di moderazione se vogliamo, di cui occorre tener conto, e che li rende refrattari a qualsiasi tipo di assolutizzazione. Nessuno di loro, come noto, adopera il termine “metafisica”: certo, se con questo termine intendiamo il tentativo teoretico di spiegare il mondo sensibile ricorrendo a un mondo ultrasensibile, è innegabile che anche per Platone e Aristotele le cose stiano così; ma, di nuovo, in un modo infinitamente più flessibile, prudente, aperto e – perché no – ambiguo rispetto al pensiero europeo, quale si avrà nel suo sviluppo da Cartesio in poi. I “metafisici” Greci, infatti, non conoscono l’Assoluto; se chiamiamo in causa la nozione di principio, Platone oscilla tra l’affermarne uno solo (l’idea del Bene nella Repubblica) a cinque (i generi sommi del Sofista) a due (nelle Leggi); e, per quanto riguarda il campo etico, non vi si trovano formulazioni paragonabili all’imperativo categorico. Restano, in poche parole, pur sempre dei Greci: ai loro occhi il mondo presenta un certo livello di caoticità, che non va assolutamente estirpata, e neppure combattuta, ma solo regolata. Tale è appunto il compito del logos filosofico, che mai si impone (nel Timeo, ad esempio, la materia è soltanto persuasa dal demiurgo questa possibilità o alla sua assenza che si costituisce, da un lato, l’ἀπαῖδευσία (ivi, IV 4 1006a6), dall’altro la posizione della scienza dell’«essere in quanto essere» al vertice delle conoscenze umane. 34 Cfr. EA, pp. 30 sgg. 329 L’esistere preso sul serio. Riflessioni su Etica e ambiguità di Adriano Fabris ad accogliere l’elemento eidetico ordinatore). L’ideale regolativo del logos va applicato in ogni campo, alla ragione come alle scienze empiriche, all’arte come alla politica, ma senza che vi sia alcuna idea o esigenza di controllo: il panopticon è davvero cosa affatto moderna; né si può rintracciare un solo luogo testuale in cui teoria e prassi viaggino disgiunte. I Greci, insomma, sono i maestri dell’incertezza, la virtù perfetta per l’ambiguità di un mondo che assomiglia al mare, così come la vita è una «navigazione», metafora usata assai spesso da Platone – né, in precedenza, si era usata a caso l’immagine, anch’essa platonica, del timoniere. Tutto è commisurato al Dio: egli solo davvero sa, egli solo è perfettamente felice; l’umano, compreso quell’umano che è il filosofo, va pensato sempre e interamente a partire da questa relazione che lo fonda e gli dà senso. Perciò, ogni giudizio assolutizzante – “Aristotele, nel PNC, ci dà una definizione della verità assoluta”; “Platone costituisce il suo stato secondo verità”; “Platone cerca di teorizzare lo stato perfetto”; e si potrebbe purtroppo continuare all’infinito – sugli Antichi è semplicemente una distorsione essenziale di un mondo che trovava il suo senso nella misura, e non in pretese assolutizzazioni che, invece, sono caratteristiche dell’evo moderno, e il cui veleno in realtà stiamo ancora cercando di espellere, come ben sapeva il figlio di pastore protestante Nietzsche, che per di più visse immerso nel soffocante moralismo ottocentesco. Gli Antichi, perciò, conoscono certamente la dimensione della principialità e quella dell’apofasi, ma le considerano e applicano sempre in modo misurato: quando parliamo di “metafisica” e pensiero fondativo, retroapplicando a loro la tendenza tutta moderna alle assolutizzazioni, dovremmo invece ricordare che, per quel mondo, la condizione umana e la filosofia si identificassero con le immagini del navigare (la zattera, la navigazione, il timoniere…)35 e soprattutto della medicina. Il medico antico sa, come dice Gadamer in Dove si nasconde la salute, che la sua è un’arte, e non una tecnica, perché nulla egli produce, ma solo aiuta la a ristabilire quel precario equilibrio che era la salute: precario e dinamico, sì che non è, né può essere, il ritorno di ciò ch’è stato, ma un equilibrio nuovo, non meno precario del precedente36: non dissimilmente il filosofo (e lo stesso Aristotele era figlio di un medico). Ancora una volta, l’esempio degli Antichi sembra da un lato anticipare le tesi di Fabris, e dall’altro svicolarsi dalla sua critica al pensiero occidentale (che resta condivisibile sotto molti altri aspetti). 2. L’ambiguità è dunque già greca: ma questo “ritorno all’Ellade” può assumere un respiro ancora più ampio. L’intera riflessione di Fabris, infatti, poggia, come si è visto, su una certa interpretazione del logos filosofico occidentale, i cui tratti salienti possono riassumersi come segue: univocità dei significati, rifiuto dell’aporia, Anche Fabris, del resto, vede l’etica come l’unica forma umana capace di «governare l’ambiguità» (EA, p. 119). 36 H.-G. Gadamer, Dove si nasconde la salute, Cortina, Milano 1994, pp. 39-42 e spec. le pp. 4446. 35 330 CARLO CHIURCO carattere impositivo che, all’occorrenza, può farsi apertamente violento, privilegio del linguaggio apofantico e del senso causalistico dell’agire, tendenza alla reificazione e all’oggettivazione. È per questo che Fabris deve ripensare in termini nuovi elementi fondamentali del pensiero filosofico, come le caratteristiche del principio – unicità, unitarietà, ultimità37 –, nonché la sua aporeticità, e poi l’ἔλεγχος. Questo fa sì che, lungo il percorso, avvengano delle forzature: il logos greco reso molto più dissimile dal pensiero dell’Autore dell’etica relAzionale della coerenza nell’ambiguità, lo schiacciamento del pensiero di Severino sulla vulgata neoparmenidea38, e soprattutto – ciò di cui cercherò di occuparmi ora – il soprassedere su quello che, pure, è il cuore dell’ontologia: il «parricidio» compiuto da Platone nel Sofista. Fabris menziona39 la celebre affermazione aristotelica secondo cui «l’essere si dice in molti modi» (Met. IV 2 1003a33): tuttavia, il πολλακῶς aristotelico è successivo all’affermazione dell’essere come ἕτερον (Soph. 241d sgg.)40. Il senso profondo di tale diversità, presente anche nella Metafisica aristotelica, è da Platone analizzato in molti luoghi (oltre al Sofista, citiamo il Parmenide, e Repubblica V), giungendo sempre allo stesso risultato: l’essere è diverso da sé. Ogni identità x non è che il proprio differenziarsi da tutto ciò che è altro da sé – vale cioè l’equivalenza tra “x è x” e “x non è [tutto ciò che è] non-x” –, così determinandosi: ma tale differenziarsi non è la semplice proprietà dell’identità, il suo effetto: se così fosse, l’identità non si differenzierebbe, non sarebbe neppure posta. L’identità si differenzia, ponendosi così come identità, proprio perché essa è in se stessa differenza: è identità dell’identità e della nonidentità, dell’identità e della differenza, dove non è decidibile dove finisca l’una e inizi l’altra. Come afferma Platone in Repubblica V, l’ente «né è, né non è, né è entrambe le cose, né nessuna delle due» (Civ. V 479c4-5): contrariamente a quanto tendiamo a pensare a causa della nostra sfiducia nella “metafisica”, qui la differenza non è addomesticata, surrettiziamente ricondotta all’identità come una sua funzione, né deve esserlo, se vogliamo salvaguardare la concretezza del significato dell’essere come ἕτερον; in altri termini, se la differenza identica, o l’identità differente, che ogni ente è, va posta e saputa come tale, allora la differenza va presa sul serio. È per questo motivo che Platone può porre l’ente così “definito”, cioè come quell’esser-sé-come-altro (ἕτερον) che è indecidibilità di identitàdifferenza, come l’ente diveniente, che è poi l’unico tipo di ente di cui concretamente facciamo esperienza; ma è appunto un’indecidibilità tra identità e differenza che viene poi tradotta in termini fisicistici, ossia in termini di differenza – attestata appunto dall’esperienza, in cui sembra andarne degli enti, Cfr. EA, pp. 29 sgg. Cfr. R, p. 175. 39 Ivi, p. 145. 40 Citata da Fabris in EA, p. 109. 37 38 331 L’esistere preso sul serio. Riflessioni su Etica e ambiguità di Adriano Fabris che vanno e vengono, si generano e si corrompono, e continuamente mutano, instabili – tra l’essere eterno e quello diveniente41. Sembra, pertanto, che già per la metafisica e l’ontologia greche anche il rapporto con “l’ambiguità” risulti indispensabile42, né (ciò che qui più conta) sembra che si costruiscano intorno alla sua negazione, o occultamento, o depotenziamento: quanto meno, il parricidio platonico ne è totalmente imbevuto. Ciò che Fabris chiama «l’ambiguità di ciò che è – e più in generale la sua molteplicità ed equivocità di aspetti»43 non sembra diverso dall’essenziale indecidibilità, che secondo Platone è propria all’ente diveniente44, col che una ragione non secondaria della proposta filosofica avanzata in Etica e ambiguità sembra perdere di urgenza e di intensità. Già, ma che cos’è, esattamente, l’ambiguità? V. RITORNARE A PLATONE / 2: L’APORETICITÀ DEL PRINCIPIO 1. Chiedendo preventivamente scusa al lettore per il gioco di parole, si può infatti affermare che l’ambiguità, così come la intende Fabris, si presta a sua volta ad una lettura ambigua. Il testo la legge, infatti, in chiave ontologica: le cose divengono, di un mutare imprevedibile: «l’ambiguità di ciò che è … la sua equivocità e molteplicità di aspetti» sono infatti legate all’incontrollabile «insorgenza di qualcosa di nuovo»45; ma, come già detto per Platone, ci si può chiedere se una tale prospettiva sia realmente ontologica, o non potrebbe invece dirsi essenzialmente fenomenologica. Ci soccorre qui l’analisi di Severino, che non già alla negazione del divenire – come erroneamente interpreta Fabris –, bensì alla negazione dell’interpretazione nichilistica del divenire ha dedicato gran parte della sua opera. Si chiede Severino: quanto attestato dall’esperienza (il piano fenomenologico) è davvero l’annientamento dell’ente nel suo divenire, o il suo cessare di apparire in una certa forma per iniziare ad apparire in un’altra? Quando muoio, cosa testimonia la mia esperienza: il mio cessare di apparire come vivente (e il mio incominciare ad apparire come morto, come cadavere), o l’annientarsi di tale apparire? E quando il mio cadavere diviene cenere, e il ricordo di me svanisce nella polvere dell’universo, 41 È appunto dalla contestazione di tale mossa platonica che prende avvio la critica severiniana. Ambiguità che, in Platone, si estende anche a toccare il senso dell’aporia, che si intreccia al tema del καῖρὸς («signore di tutto», per Esiodo: καῖρὸς δ᾽ ἐπὶ πᾶσῖν ἄρῖστος, Hes. Erga 694), oltre al costante ritornare, da parte dei dialoghi platonici, sulle stesse questioni, proponendo ogni volta soluzioni diverse. Vi è, infine, il tema del senso della dialettica come posizione aporetica del principio: cfr. infra, V. 2. 42 EA, p. 25. Ivi, p. 50, la definizione dell’aporeticità del principio raggiunge il suo punto di vicinanza massima al senso platonico dello ἕτερον: «Il principio che si autoafferma è quello che ricomprende, in quanto relazione, l’identità e la diversità dell’identità e della diversità». Cfr. anche ivi, p. 52: «L’aporia di una differenza che nel contempo è legame». 45 Cfr. infra, nota 55. Cfr. anche R, p. 145: «L’ambiguità è nelle cose, e non semplicemente nella nostra interpretazione di esse». 43 44 332 CARLO CHIURCO cosa appare all’esperienza: il loro cessare di apparire, o che il loro apparire (l’apparire che essi sono) è divenuto nulla, è nulla46? Al di là di ciò che Severino teorizza ponendo il divenire come l’apparire e lo scomparire dell’eterno, la sua osservazione è decisiva per smascherare quell’ambiguità, così caratteristica di Heidegger e che parimenti si ritrova in Fabris, per il quale “apparire” ed “essere” sono invece interscambiabili47. L’ambiguità di cui parla Fabris, il cui significato è, come si è visto, ontologico, è infatti in realtà solo fenomenologica: io vedo, io sperimento che il mondo, e gli enti in esso, sono “ambigui”, cioè divengono, mutano, in modo imprevedibile, ma questo loro mutare non mi dice alcunché intorno al loro essere: inferire che, dal loro apparire imprevedibilmente mutante, nel loro incessante iniziare e cessare di apparire, essi siano anche ontologicamente tali, è un’interpretazione, che indebitamente scambia, confondendoli, i due piani in gioco – a meno di presupporre, come fa Heidegger, che l’essere sia la «presenza del presente», l’Anwesenheit. Nel divenire vi è certamente ambiguità, ma solo nel senso che non posso mai decidere o conoscere in merito all’apparire degli enti, al come e al quando essi cesseranno o inizieranno ad apparire, sia in generale, che in questo o quel modo determinato in cui il loro apparire appare. Ecco un bastone, che ora si muta in serpente (cfr. Es 7,8-12): ma non posso in alcun modo né interpretare tale ambiguità dell’apparire estendendola in senso ontologico – a meno, per l’appunto, di non confondere i due piani, ciò che però non è un’evidenza, neppure sul piano fenomenologico. Cfr. E. Severino, Essenza del nichilismo, cit., pp. 85-87: «Questo pezzo di carta sta bruciando rapidamente, ed ora è ridotto a poca cenere. Diciamo allora che è andato distrutto e che il risultato di questa distruzione è il suo essere ormai un niente. Ma – ecco il problema – questo essere niente appare, oppure di quell’oggetto non appare più niente (niente del modo di essere che gli conveniva prima di andare bruciato)? Appare che l’oggetto è niente, o l’oggetto non appare più? […] Ma che ciò, che più non appare, non sia nemmeno più, questo l’apparire non lo rivela. Questo lo si interpreta sulla base del modo in cui qualcosa compare e scompare… La comprensione veritativa del divenire, che è contenuto dell’apparire, rileva invece il silenzio dell’apparire circa le sorti di ciò che non appare. […] L’apparire non attesta l’opposto di quanto è esigito dal logo [cioè che l’essere è eterno]». 47 La «differenza ontologica» fa sì che l’essere, come noto, appaia ritraendosi nell’ente. Il rifiuto heideggeriano della metafisica, tuttavia, si costituisce come impossibilità di una spiegazione del sensibile ad opera dell’ultrasensibile: pertanto, l’essere, cioè il senso (il fondamento, in termini heideggeriani) del sensibile (dell’ontico), non può possedere alcuno dei caratteri tradizionalmente attribuiti dalla metafisica a Dio (eternità, immutabilità, trascendenza ecc.). Come noto, l’essere, in Heidegger, si costituisce come una «trascendenza immanente»: ma l’impossibilità che esso sia eterno e immutabile fa sì che, per diverso che sia dall’ente, gli sia accomunato in questo, nel suo essere radicalmente instabile dal punto di vista ontologico. Il giorno in cui l’umanità dovesse estinguersi, e con essa la possibilità di apertura all’essere che solo l’Esserci è, anche dell’essere si dovrebbe dire che è niente, così come già accade per ogni ente. L’instabilità ontologica è predicata dell’ente sulla base dell’interpretazione nichilistica del suo divenire (del suo apparire e scomparire) come uscire dal nulla e rientrare in esso: si dovrà pertanto dire che essa vale anche per l’essere, che, almeno riguardo questo tratto, non differisce dall’ente. 46 333 L’esistere preso sul serio. Riflessioni su Etica e ambiguità di Adriano Fabris 2. Fabris utilizza la categoria di ambiguità (intesa essa stessa in tal senso ambiguo) per perorare la necessità di ripensare il principio, questa metafisicissima tra tutte le nozioni della metafisica, in chiave aporetica – e non, nuovamente, in quel senso mezzo vivo dell’aporeticità del principio che è caro all’idealismo, dove la necessità della sintesi chiude di fatto i giochi prima ancora che essi siano incominciati. Anche qui, però, può soccorrerci Platone, il cui senso del dinamismo essenziale della realtà – il πολεμος – non soffre della pretesa assolutistica tutta moderna, e perciò ossessionata dalla necessità del controllo, che affligge quello straordinario pensatore che è Hegel. Lo dimostra per l’appunto la dialettica platonica, il cui indiscusso capolavoro – e forse, assieme al Sofista, il punto più alto toccato dal pensiero occidentale – è il Parmenide, il quale, tra i suoi guadagni teoretici, dimostra proprio questo: una sintesi necessaria contraddice la natura viva – nel linguaggio di Fabris: di azione, di relAzione – del pensiero. La giusta polemica di Fabris contro la tendenza reificatoria insita nel sostanzialismo aristotelico non valorizza, a mio giudizio, l’intuizione fondamentale di Platone, per cui la realtà è appunto pensiero – non la cosa pensiero, ma l’atto del pensare, come la rettificazione della stessa teoria delle idee all’inizio del dialogo (Pl. Parm. 127d6 – 135c7) sembra indicare. Anche per Platone, dunque, il principio deve essere aporetico: è l’atto del pensiero che, come nel Parmenide divora, a guisa di Crono, le sue elaborate ipotesi, ma pur sempre secondo necessità. Dobbiamo però chiederci se tale aporeticità sia da intendersi allo stesso modo che in Fabris: se infatti distinguiamo il piano fenomenologico da quello ontologico-teoretico, allora, venendo meno il senso fabrisiano dell’ambiguità, anche l’aporeticità del principio dovrà essere intesa in un altro modo. Ancora una volta, Platone offre una possibile alternativa, cui in realtà si è già accennato nella sezione precedente, quando si è mostrata l’indecidibilità circa la composizione, da parte di identità e differenza, del nesso che costituisce l’identità-differenza; nesso che è, anzitutto, il senso stesso dell’essere come ἕτερον, e, secondariamente, dell’ente. Se di nesso si tratta, occorrerà allora dire che esso si dà solo nella mediazione, nel πολεμος del pensiero. Si tratta ovviamente di un guadagno noto anche a Hegel, e di cui anche Fabris si serve quando elabora la propria versione dell’originarietà della relazione: proprio perché siamo da sempre nella mediazione, come medianti e come mediati, tale mediazione è viva, è per l’appunto un agire, è una relAzione, sì che la realtà coerentemente, è una totalità relazionale, un «nesso di tutto con tutto»48, una totalità di relazioni viventi, di relAzioni. È in questo modo che il principio, che altro non è che la relAzione stessa – la sfera della relazionalità, la trama infinita e sempre accrescentesi e aggrovigliantesi delle relazioni – riesce, secondo Fabris, ad essere aporetico/ambiguo, a porsi come principio (dunque qualcosa che, per il gioco della 48 R, p. 138. 334 CARLO CHIURCO semantica, è statico) pur mantenendo il proprio intrinseco dinamismo49, e, soprattutto, a superare la piaga che affligge i due possibili modi di concepirlo: o come qualcosa di scisso dal principiato – il reale esperito, il mondo delle differenze –, ciò che a sua volta lo renderebbe morto e senza valore (è appunto l’accusa che Fabris rivolge a Platone e alla nozione di universale), o qualcosa di confuso con esso, da esso indistinguibile, sì che a perdere valore finirebbero, come in Deleuze e nell’immanentismo contemporaneo, proprio quelle differenze che pure si pretenderebbe di valorizzare50. 3. Ma l’originarietà della mediazione, tale quale è posta in Platone, sembra aprire scenari differenti. È davvero possibile pensare qualcosa come la scissione? Il senso dell’essere come ἕτερον – e quindi dell’identità-differenza – sembrerebbe escluderlo. Il guadagno teoretico del Parmenide consiste infatti nel vedere come, senza intendere la loro relazione come viva (Hegel parlerebbe qui di «concetto astratto»), né l’Uno né il Molteplice riescano ad accedere alla pensabilità. L’essere originariamente nella mediazione va preso sul serio: significa che, fuori da essa, nulla riesce realmente a costituirsi, e la dialettica, da πολεμος, diviene στασῖς, in cui l’Uno e il Molteplice (ma poi, ogni altra differenza abitatrice del Tutto) reciprocamente si annientano prima ancora che l’altro sorga, impedendogli (e impedendo però anche a se stessi) di venire al pensiero. L’alternativa, esplicitata nel Sofista, è appunto pensare fino in fondo il senso dell’essere come ἕτερον: “separazione”, “scissione” sono appunto la non-relazione, l’Uno puro o i Molti puri; ma, essendo che la relazione/mediazione è l’originario – e lo dimostra proprio nel suo potere di portare al tramonto tutte le ipotesi fondate sull’irrelatezza, riconoscendone l’originaria impossibilità – non si può mai dare separazione, ma solo distinzione; solo πολεμος, non στασῖς; identità-differenza (o differenzaidentità), non Identità o Differenza, e neppure Identità e Differenza. Anche quella tra distinzione e separazione è una distinzione e non una separazione, perché perfino il contenuto della separazione, dell’irrelatezza, cioè il nulla – insegna sempre Severino, il più grande discepolo di Platone dei nostri tempi – in qualche modo è51. 4. Se l’irrelatezza pura non esiste52, l’Uno è solo l’elemento di identità in ciascuna differenza che, in quanto differenza, è identica (sé-e-non-altro) a tutte le altre 49 EA, p. 49: «La relazione come principio […] è stasi e dinamica di stasi e dinamica». Cfr. anche supra, la nota 25. 50 Cfr. ivi, pp. 41-42. 51 Cfr. E. Severino, La struttura originaria, Adelphi, Milano 19812, pp. 209-233. Una buona parte del capitolo finale di EA è dedicato alla discussione del tema del nichilismo, che Fabris, giustamente, definisce come la «disintermediazione. È il tentativo di eliminare o di nascondere ogni atto di mediazione» (EA, p. 116). Anche qui, la suggestione platonica (e severiniana) è in realtà vicinissima al pensiero dell’Autore. 52 335 L’esistere preso sul serio. Riflessioni su Etica e ambiguità di Adriano Fabris differenze proprio in questo, nel suo essere differenza; e, proprio per questo, senza i Molti – la totalità delle differenze – l’Uno non sarebbe l’identità sottesa a ciascuna di tali differenze in quanto differenza. Questa formulazione, formalmente corretta, è però necessaria ma non sufficiente: ad essa, seguendo il giustissimo richiamo di Fabris, occorre infatti aggiungere la precisazione che sola è in grado di darne il senso concreto, e cioè vero (dunque anche incontraddittorio, ed elenchicamente mostrabile in quanto tale). Avremo allora che l’Uno è la relazione di identità (sé-enon-altro) che ciascuna differenza, in quanto si pone come tale, è in rapporto a tutte le altre differenze in cui si pone (relazione di identità, che consiste proprio in questo, nel loro comune essere-una-differenza); la totalità delle differenze – i Molti –, a sua volta, è appunto la relazione che ciascuna differenza è con ogni altra come l’identità (l’Uno) sottesa a ciascuna di esse in quanto differenza. Infine, se l’originario è la mediazione/relazione, ne consegue che l’originario è il molteplice, non nel senso dei Molti senza l’Uno, ma della relazione tra essi (che non è, quindi, il darsi di un “due”): in quanto originarietà della relazione, il principio è anche originaria impossibilità della separazione, e l’affermarsi, altrettanto originario, della distinzione. Il Tutto, come totalità delle differenze, è anche la totalità dei nessi (o relazioni) intesa come totalità delle distinzioni, che, come detto, esclude la separazione (che è appunto la negazione della mediazione) come ciò che è originariamente impossibile; ma – a differenza di quanto affermato da Fabris – esso è anche principio “ambiguo”, non nel senso dell’ambiguità ontologica, predicata di esso sulla base dell’interpretazione nichilistica di quanto sembra attestare l’esperienza, dove l’iniziare e il cessare di apparire delle cose del mondo vengono senz’altro posti come il loro uscire dal nulla e rientrare in esso53, bensì dell’indecidibilità intorno alla qualitas dell’identità-differenza (della quale si può appunto affermare solo che ciascuna è impensabile senza la sua relazione all’altra). VI. NESSO E RELAZIONE 1. Questa lunga parentesi storico-teoretica, oltre a costituire la seconda obiezione nei confronti della posizione di Fabris (in sintesi, la storia della filosofia e dell’ontologia, segnatamente Platone, sembra, da un lato, proporre delle soluzioni che già tengono conto delle giuste osservazioni presenti in R e EA, e, dall’altro, mostrare dei loro lati quanto meno problematici) ci permette ora di giungere all’ultimo nucleo di osservazioni, a carattere etico. Si è visto come, per Fabris, la Osservo, di sfuggita, come vi sia un altro senso dell’ambiguità, nel significato che ne dà Fabris: egli afferma esplicitamente la temporalità del principio relazionale (cfr. supra, la nota 25), ma non la sua finitezza, ossia il suo essere esso stesso soggetto alla legge, propria a ogni ente, per cui prima o poi esso si annienta, diviene nulla – giacché mutare, nella prospettiva di Fabris, vuol dire questo, essere radicalmente esposto all’instabilità ontologica –, anche se questa pare essere una conseguenza inevitabile di tutto il suo ragionamento. 53 336 CARLO CHIURCO realtà sia una totalità relazionale, una trama, perennemente auto-accrescentesi su se medesima, di relazioni che, ad ogni suo nodo, aprono o chiudono sempre nuove possibilità. Rimane tuttavia costante, nel testo, l’impiego del termine “relazione” come sinonimo di “nesso”: dobbiamo quindi interrogarci intorno alla legittimità di tale uso. Ogni nesso è cioè anche una relazione? O, volendo rimanere all’interno della sinonimia utilizzata da Fabris, ogni relazione è anche e sempre (la possibilità di) una relazione etica? Certo: essere è agire, e in questo senso «l’agire umano, quello naturale e quello artificiale»54 possono essere legittimamente considerati accomunati. Ma come generi diversi? O, come sembrerebbe suggerire Fabris, come specie diverse all’interno dello stesso genere, sì che, dal momento che ogni ente è un agire relazionale, per ogni ente si dovrà dunque dire, di tale agire che esso è, che è etico nel senso della possibilità descritta da Fabris? Esiste poi anche una comunanza negli effetti dell’agire, giacché in «tutte» le sue forme «vi è una struttura che tutte le contraddistingue e le collega», ossia «il fatto che vi è, nell’agire, l’insorgenza di qualcosa di nuovo»55. Ma basta, per differenziare tali forme dell’agire, affermare che esse «si esplicano all’interno della rispettiva dimensione – umana, naturale, oppure artificiale – che specificamente li riguarda»56? Una tale posizione è naturalmente richiesta dall’impostazione generale della tesi di Fabris; resto però dell’opinione che occorra introdurre un livello ulteriore di differenziazione e di caratterizzazione delle relazioni (e in esse) – un criterio, se vogliamo – e che, sebbene tutte le relazioni etiche siano sempre anche ontologiche (dei nessi, nella terminologia che qui ho scelto di adoperare), non sia vero il contrario. Personalmente, ritengo che, al posto di porre ogni relazione (ogni nesso) come (la possibilità di) una relazione etica, occorrerebbe invece considerare il valore etico della relazione intesa come puro nesso ontologico. È quanto affermavano i medievali nel celeberrimo adagio ens et bonum convertuntur, senza però, giustappunto, intenderlo simpliciter. Vediamo perché. Se davvero la struttura di ciò che accomuna gli agEnti fosse la possibilità di determinare «l’insorgenza di qualcosa di nuovo», allora come si definirebbe l’agire di una catena montuosa? La risposta alla domanda sul valore da dare allo strutturarsi della totalità in forma di trama infinita di nessi deve perciò essere differente, e cioè: tale strutturarsi – ossia l’essere, da parte della totalità, nesso infinito di nessi – è un valore, perché esso si libra per l’appunto sopra ciò che cerca di negarlo, scalzarlo: è, e non è nulla: si oppone vittoriosamente al nulla. È in ciò che l’essere è qualcosa di ben vivo, e di agente; e vedrei semmai proprio in ciò il suo valore etico, perché ci aiuta ad opporci all’angoscia che l’imprevedibilità del divenire, in cui sembra andarne dell’essere, fa sorgere in noi. R, p. 127. Ivi, p. 129. 56 Ivi, p. 127. 54 55 337 L’esistere preso sul serio. Riflessioni su Etica e ambiguità di Adriano Fabris 2. Ricapitolando: l’essere è un valore perché vince – da sempre e per sempre – sul nulla, e lo fa essendo ciò che è: trama, mediazione, molteplice, identitàdifferenza, relazione; in ciò – in tale senso della relazione, la relazione come nesso – vi è un valore etico (il bonum dei medievali); ma un conto è affermare il valore etico della relazione come nesso, un altro parlare di relazione etica. Si dovrà dire che, all’interno della trama relazionale (nel senso dei nessi ontologici) che è il Tutto, vi è un ulteriore senso del nesso, della relazione, che è per l’appunto la relazione etica. Certo, in questo quadro la posizione umana resta peculiare (posizione non facile da sostenere in tempi di ecologia profonda e di critica dell’antropocene), tuttavia – anche sospendendo il giudizio per le forme di vita non umane – si può senz’altro affermare che, per quanto ci riguarda, l’agire che noi siamo è relazionale nel senso posto da Fabris, giacché ad ogni istante ci si prospetta la possibilità della scelta etica, di scegliere cioè, nella relazione/mediazione che siamo e in cui siamo, per la relazione stessa, assecondando «il suo carattere di espansione»57 e rendendola germinativa, «apertura costante di mondi possibili»58. A differenza che in Fabris, però, distinguerei, in questa relazionalità, diversi livelli di intensità, senza dover per forza ricorrere a classificazioni rigide, nel senso che è sempre possibile dal livello inferiore passare a quello superiore, aumentando cioè l’intensità della relazione – e viceversa, affievolendola, o anche negandola. Noi certamente viviamo nella relazionalità, ma la massima parte delle nostre relazioni sono relazioni d’uso, o di scambio, in cui l’altro non è posto per la differenza che è: vado dal panettiere, magari scambio con lui delle battute scherzose e mi informo di come stia sua madre, ma in definitiva il nostro rapporto è uno scambio: ciò che lui è per me, è il suo pane; analogamente, io sono per lui i soldi che gli lascio in cambio di quello. Il denaro non solo suggella questo contratto, ma è, nella sua equivalenza simbolica, l’espressione di ciò che la nostra relazione è. Non ho accolto in me il panettiere come l’altro che egli è, e lui ha fatto lo stesso: vi è certamente reciprocità in questa relazione, che possiamo senz’altro definire come originariamente aperta alla possibilità che essa divenga qualcosa d’altro e di più – ma, per l’appunto, vi può essere di più. Che vi sia, tra noi due, una relazione, di per sé, non basta; né basta che essa sia una relazione di reciprocità: occorre un ulteriore elemento: il riconoscimento, in cui l’altro sia appunto accolto per colui o colei che è, e in cui, accogliendolo, gli faccia dono di me. Tale riconoscimento dev’essere reciproco, giacché, se io accolgo l’altro per colui o colei che è, donandomi a lui, ma l’altro non fa altrettanto, il sogno d’amore diviene un incubo, dove uno manipola l’altro a piacimento59. Certo, accogliere l’altro è impresa difficilissima, quasi impossibile, 57 58 Ivi, p. 167. Ivi, p. 163. Riporto qui, per sommi capi, la teoria dell’etica della relazione di riconoscimento reciproco come costituente originario della soggettività, intesa come apertura trascendentale, di C. Vigna, con cui mi trovo sostanzialmente in accordo. Si veda C. Vigna, Sul trascendentale come intersoggettività 59 338 CARLO CHIURCO forse, in un’epoca frammentata come la nostra: ciò non ostante, relazioni d’amicizia e d’amore (per fortuna) continuano ad esistere, e le persone si attraggono, si cercano, si piacciono, si amano, si prendono vicendevolmente cura le une delle altre – e viceversa, si allontanano, si lasciano, si fanno del male, si combattono. Si uccidono. Si tratta, negli ultimi casi, di relazioni non già negate, ma finite male, o sbagliate: solo là dove c’era o ci sarebbe potuta essere una relazione troviamo infatti il male – una postuma, ma meritata vittoria per l’Agostino teorico del male come privatio boni60. 3. Tutte le relazioni etiche, dunque, sono effettivamente quell’apertura, quella possibilità di cui parla Fabris: e senz’altro ciò significa che esse, essenzialmente, siano un minimum bonitatis, siano cioè, semplicemente in quanto relazioni, buone in sé. Esse essenzialmente (in sé, per l’appunto) sono la possibilità del bene, e niente e nessuno può cancellare questo stato di cose, neppure la malvagità criminale di Hitler e dei suoi troppi emuli, o la perfidia, la vigliaccheria e l’indifferenza di cui l’uomo è capace. Qui Fabris echeggia moltissimo il luminoso Anselmo del De libertate arbitrii: ma per l’appunto, il fatto che noi conserviamo la potestas di scegliere il bene anche dopo il peccato originale61, non significa che tale potestas venga effettivamente attualizzata62. A quel bene in sé, che è la relazione in quanto tale, io devo aderire, scegliendolo consapevolmente, e cioè: relazionalmente, relazionandomi, ma non in qualunque tipo di relazione. Il minimum bonitatis può assumere ben altra intensità, e divenire perciò relazione di riconoscimento reciproco, ossia di amore e di amicizia; e, sempre perché di scelta si tratta, legata ad una potestas che non è atto, può ridiscendere a un livello di intensità inferiore, ritornare relazione di scambio, o giungere anche più in basso, distruggendo quella relazionalità che c’era prima, o lasciandola morire, in una relazionalità che divora se stessa, ma senza – e qui effettivamente si può parlare di ἔλεγχος – poter mai annientare quella presenza di possibilità – di possibilità del bene – che ogni relazione, in quanto tale, è. Esiste quindi anche un bene per sé, che non può essere qualunque relazione, ma solo una certa relazione – la relazione buona, per l’appunto – in cui i soggetti in relazione si riconoscono reciprocamente per coloro che sono, facendo reciproco dono di sé all’altro. Certo, queste relazioni non originaria, in Etica del desiderio come etica del riconoscimento, tomo I, Orthotes, Napoli-Salerno 2015, pp. 37-63. 60 Cfr. Agostino, Natura del bene, 4, tr. it. di G. Reale, Bompiani, Milano 2001, pp. 121. 61 Cfr. Anselmo d’Aosta, Libertà e arbitrio, II-III, tr. it. di I. Sciuto, Nardini, Firenze 1993, pp. 5054. 62 Ivi, III, p. 56: «Noi non possediamo alcuna capacità potenziale [potestas], mi sembra, che da sola sia sufficiente a tradursi in atto; e tuttavia, quando mancano le condizioni senza le quali le nostre potenzialità non possono affatto passare in atto, noi non diciamo, per quel che dipende da noi, che le possediamo in misura minore». 339 L’esistere preso sul serio. Riflessioni su Etica e ambiguità di Adriano Fabris esisterebbero senza la relazionalità qua talis che noi siamo, e tuttavia sono le sole che possano essere legittimamente considerate il maximum bonitatis63. 4. Una possibile riprova della difficoltà nell’identificare senz’altro relazione e bontà si può avere nel caso del rapporto sadomasochista. Per Fabris, la bontà consiste nello scegliere di stare sempre dalla parte della relazione, replicandone e aumentandone la germinatività; il male è appunto scegliere – seppur relazionalmente, giacché è impossibile uscire dalla dimensione relazionale – contro la relazione, non solo questa o quella relazione determinata, ma in generale (da qui, come detto, l’elenchicità del male). Perché, però, in quest’ottica, una relazione come quella sadomasochista non dovrebbe essere considerata germinativa di altre relazioni? Forse perché è distruttiva? Ma questo non è vero: anzi, il sadico e il masochista si augurano ciascuno che l’altro (o l’altra) viva il più a lungo possibile. Forse perché tale relazione è fondata sulla dipendenza? Ma nel momento in cui tale dipendenza è reciproca, perché essa dovrebbe costituire un problema? Forse perché non si apre al mondo, non essendo germinativa in questo senso circoscritto? Anche qui, si tratta di una mera presupposizione: una relazione sadomasochista che funzioni, infatti, potrebbe attirare (come di fatto succede in determinati circuiti off) le persone con quel tipo di tendenze, fornendo un modello capace di spronarle a uscire allo scoperto, vivendo finalmente la vita che hanno sempre desiderato, e che sentono come la più adatta a loro stessi. Come si vede, servendoci della sola germinatività come criterio per giudicare dell’eticità (cioè della bontà) delle relAzioni64 che noi, agenti relazionali, costantemente intraprendiamo, possiamo giungere a risultati paradossali come quello appena descritto, in cui una relazione che necessariamente, per essere, prevede umiliazioni e dominio deve esser detta buona. Sembra quindi che vi debbano essere dei criteri ulteriori, qual è per l’appunto quello, qui certo sommariamente descritto, del riconoscimento reciproco: a conferma che la relazione, in sé, deve certamente essere considerata buona, ma in quanto potestas di divenire buona per sé. VII. CONCLUSIONI La proposta filosofica di Fabris è, in fondo, incentrata sul superamento dell’impossibilità, per la riflessione, di pensare il mondo della vita (Lebenswelt), e Quanto qui affermato mostra un percorso diverso rispetto a quello indagato da Fabris, della critica all’agire etico interpretato alla luce della causalità (cfr. R, pp. 116-125), ma tutt’altro che incompatibile con esso: infatti la relazione di dono è evidentemente al di fuori di una logica come quella criticata dall’Autore. 64 Di ciò, invece, è convinto Fabris. Cfr. EA, p. 134: «Per scegliere eticamente lo spazio dell’etica […] ci vuole un criterio. Ci vuole che questo criterio sia riconosciuto e definito come “buono”. Il criterio è appunto il criterio della relazione, del suo sviluppo e della sua riconferma». 63 340 CARLO CHIURCO si concentra su due punti fondamentali: da un lato, eliminare le cause che, dal punto di vista del pensiero, possano portare a tale impossibilità (dottrine “erronee”, fissazioni teoretiche plurisecolari, ecc.); dall’altro, permettere al pensiero di superare la propria invalicabile differenza dalla vita riportandolo alla sua natura di realtà viva, agente – anzi, di «quell’ulteriore elemento fondamentale della performatività dell’agire» che è l’«auto-implicazione»65. La relAzione, così come la teorEtica, sono appunto questo: non un “ponte”, ciò che sarebbe ancora intrappolato nella logica del rimedio, ma il tentativo di mostrare come quell’esistente che è il pensiero si ricomprende, grazie alla natura performativa dell’agire, all’interno della vasta trama agente e relazionale del mondo66. In questo senso, tale proposta si inserisce a pieno titolo nell’illustre tradizione di pensiero dell’antropologia filosofica che, da von Uexküll fino ad Adorno, ha cercato di riconciliare pensiero e “natura”. Ma mentre quella tradizione si è concentrata sul presentare il pensiero come ciò che emerge dalla natura, fino a divenire la coscienza di essa e del vivente, Fabris ha buon gioco nell’evitare le due fatali debolezze di tale impostazione: da un lato, il suo approccio “biologistico” – una biologia trascendentale, se così si può dire – che la rende comunque succube del metodo scientifico, il quale, più o meno esplicitamente, essa considera il proprio modello; dall’altro, il suo seguitare a trattare comunque il pensiero come una “cosa”, e per giunta una res naturalis, soggiacendo così al paradigma sostanzialistico e reificatorio che Fabris, giustamente, condanna. Dall’altro lato, Fabris rigetta la linea alternativa venuta affermandosi dagli anni 1960 in poi, quella genealogistica, e che al giorno d’oggi vede nei gender studies i suoi ultimi e maggiormente rumorosi epigoni. Un’osservazione (che non ha proprio il valore di un’obiezione, né vuole esserlo) sorge spontanea: e se provassimo ad allentare la presa su tale ossessione intorno alla “concretezza” del pensiero? La storia, in fondo, insegna che le idee – le utopie – hanno avuto tanto più successo, quanto più sono state esplicite nell’affermare il loro carattere di irrealizzabilità e inutilità. Nessuno, finora, è tornato dal regno dei cieli, eppure la fabula resiste: una «buona favola», come forse dovrebbe essere tradotto il termine evangelium, la cui negazione porta alla rabbia o alla pazzia: perché di irrealizzabilità e inutilità – e non di etica, tanto meno di teoria – è fatta la gioia. Purtroppo, come paradigmaticamente dimostra l’epoca dei complotti e delle fake news, questo principio vale anche in negativo: l’irrealizzabile astratto può anche sedurre l’umano fino alla sua disgregazione. Il R, p. 133. Ivi, p. 127: «L’agire è in quanto tale performativo, è in grado cioè di mettere in opera gli stessi scenari all’interno dei quali si esprime», compresi, evidentemente, gli scenari riflessivo e autoriflessivo. 65 66 341 L’esistere preso sul serio. Riflessioni su Etica e ambiguità di Adriano Fabris suggerimento però rimane, e, in quest’ottica, il problema della relazione andrebbe semmai capovolto: non si tratterebbe di mostrare come la relazione sia la realtà in cui tutto si risolve (o cui si ricorre) per inchiodare la filosofia, passata e presente, alla sua astrattezza e richiamarla alla sua ineliminabile aporeticità – ciò che ripropone, in fondo, una pretesa totalizzante, in cui l’istanza etica si fa radicale, col rischio di andare fuori controllo. Né sembra bastare, a scongiurare quest’ultimo pericolo, l’appello alla relazione e al suo potere di mostrarsi come la sintesi vivente di vita e pensiero, giacché proprio tale aspetto potrebbe scatenare una sete inesausta di relazione con l’assoluto, la verità – la verità della relazione, e in essa – finendo per generare l’olocausto di sé: è, in fondo, il modo di Michaelstaedter. Ancora, la trama relazionale del mondo è infinita: in essa il soggetto, lui pure relazionale, si sa, seppure indirettamente, connesso a tutto, al Tutto. Ma possiamo davvero sopportare il peso della Totalità, senza finirne annientati? Non è, questo, così come il raddrizzamento realmente efficace dell’ingiustizia, propriamente il compito di un Dio, come lo è l’accettazione infinita dell’Altro, di tutta l’alterità possibile, facendosi appunto carico dei suoi peccati? Di fronte a tale tendenza totalizzante dell’etica – della teorEtica o della relAzione – si può forse, come alternativa, indagare in che senso e in che modo la relazione si declini proprio in senso “astratto”, nella dimensione affabulatoria e immaginifica. Si tratta di capire perché questa dimensione rimanga pur sempre, per noi, non già un reale più reale, ma un reale che vale di più. Senza contare che è proprio questa l’attività più antica dell’uomo, creare storie, narrazioni, e rappresentarle in effigie: e se fosse anche la più importante, come il ricordo dell’infanzia, che fino alla morte ci accompagna, sembra suggerire? In quali altre occasioni, nel corso della vita, sperimentiamo un senso di unità col Tutto più intenso che nel gioco?67 Sembra quindi che il compito dell’etica, forse più modesto, ma non per questo meno importante possa essere un altro. Senza dubbio essa è, come afferma Fabris, la messa in opera dell’universale68, il che comporta necessariamente uno sforzo conoscitivo (anzitutto, sapere cosa sia l’universale), il lavoro della teoria; ma per conoscere devo desiderare: ed è qui che l’etica può legittimamente aspirare ad essere il terreno su cui si edificano edifici forse più fascinosi nella loro rarefatta astrattezza, ma di un fascino che può facilmente cedere all’allucinatorio. D’altro canto, in loro assenza quel desiderio resterebbe vuoto, il terreno che è l’etica una fertilità inutile, l’offerta di un dono che nessuna mano si leverà a cogliere. Non a caso, il tema della felicità è assente nella proposta etica di Fabris, che è una forma molto originale di etica del dovere dell’agire relazionale. Provocazione: e se la felicità consistesse proprio nel non agire (non, semplicemente, nell’accettazione, ossia nell’agire passivo), come da millenni testimonia l’Oriente? 68 EA, p. 124: «Qui l’universale viene messo in opera». 67 342 CARLO CHIURCO Il grandissimo merito di questo testo sta nell’aver dato nuova linfa ad un tema antico, giacché l’etica ha sempre saputo di essere ambigua, sin da quando Aristotele afferma che non vi è in essa alcuna necessità69. Ambiguità confermata, indirettamente, dalle “etiche provvisorie” della modernità, e, direttamente, dalla scoperta abelardiana dell’ambiguità dell’intenzione: il cacciatore di Abelardo che uccide il suo compagno anziché l’animale diviene, attualizzandolo, l’ONG che, col nobile intento di salvare vite, finisce per aiutare i trafficanti di esseri umani a compiere il loro scopo, far giungere in Europa i clandestini. Ma in tutte queste figure del pensiero l’ambiguità dell’etica è riconosciuta sempre e solo a valle: il discorso di Fabris ha invece il pregio di riportarla alla sua natura di categoria a monte, svelandone la condizione originaria, trascendentale, principiale. Lo fa con una duplice strategia: da un lato, attraverso un riconoscimento di tipo “ontologico”, l’affermazione dell’ambiguità del reale come possibilità dell’essere di non essere, ciò che comporta il primato della dimensione del tempo/evento; dall’altro, attraverso il riconoscimento dell’intrascendibilità dell’agire, vale a dire – essendo che l’agire comporta appunto sempre il tempo – estendendo la trascendentalità al tempo stesso (o riconoscendogli tale valore). Tale è, appunto, il principio ambiguo, aporetico, dinamico sebbene anche strutturale di Fabris, erede riveduto e corretto della dottrina kantiana per la quale il tempo permane e non muta70. Etica e ontologia non solo si saldano, ma la seconda è sussunta nella prima; in qualche modo, ne dipende. Di contro a questa impostazione, si è qui cercato di mostrare come l’ontologia possa ugualmente porsi come un modo di prendere l’esistere sul serio, purché la si riconduca alla sua essenza più profonda: il senso dell’essere come ἕτερον così come è formulato in Platone fino alle sue estreme conseguenze. Anche in questa prospettiva la mediazione/relazione è l’originario, e la realtà (il Tutto) è una trama infinita di nessi relazionali: tuttavia, ai suoi occhi l’ambiguità non si declina come instabilità ontologica, ma come indecidibilità, richiesta dal senso stesso dell’essere come identità dell’identità e della non-identità, intorno alla qualitas dell’identitàdifferenza. Al posto di una sintesi concreta dell’esistente incarnata in una teorEtica fondata sulla relAzione – una Lebenswelt autocosciente della propria ambiguità, e proprio per questo capace di tematizzarsi concretamente (o più concretamente che negli altri modelli di pensiero) nel momento stesso in cui agisce –, la quale può Cfr. Eth. Nic. I 1 1094b19-22: l’etica, come noto, fa parte delle «cose che sono per lo più [τὰ ἐπὶ τὸ πολὺ]». 70 I. Kant, Critica della ragion pura, I, parte II, I, lib. II, cap. I, Laterza, Bari 1971, vol. 1, p. 167: «Non è il tempo che scorre, ma in esso scorre l’esistenza del mutevole. Al tempo dunque, che è immobile e permanente, corrisponde nel fenomeno ciò che non muta nell’esistenza, cioè la sostanza, e soltanto in essa può essere determinata la successione e la simultaneità dei fenomeni nel tempo». Si sostituisca, qui, “sostanza” con “relazione”, e si volga di conseguenza l’immutabilità in dinamismo perenne, e si avrà, mutatis mutandis, il principio relazionale di Fabris. 69 343 L’esistere preso sul serio. Riflessioni su Etica e ambiguità di Adriano Fabris apparire sbilanciata verso una tentazione totalizzante71, l’originaria molteplicità del reale, che implica evidentemente diversi livelli dell’essere, lascia a quella totalità microcosmica che è il vivente il compito di fungere da sintesi in atto, orientandosi piuttosto, per quanto riguarda la dimensione del sapere, alla coimplicazione originaria, ma sempre diacronica, di prospettive e ambiti diversi, confortata in ciò dalla distinzione tra distinzione e separazione e dall’impossibilità di quest’ultima. La teorEtica torna perciò a distinguersi in teoria, con la formalizzazione che le è propria e che non necessariamente deve essere accusata di astrattezza separatoria72, ed etica. Conoscere e desiderare, intelligenza e coscienza, indissolubilmente coimplicati – in relazione tra loro. Insieme (ma non come unità) non a formare la sintesi in atto, ma a concorrere alla formazione della totalità vivente, che ognuno di noi è, e della quale, pure, siamo in grado di dare a noi stessi (cioè, in definitiva, ad essa stessa) solo un’immagine, ossia qualcosa che, insieme, è e non è detta totalità, essendo l’immagine insieme identica a, e diversa da, ciò di cui è detta essere immagine. La vivente totalità microcosmica, che ognuno di noi è, sempre in parte ci sfugge, quando vogliamo – con l’eccezione forse dell’arte – renderla in parole o concetti, saperla, pur essendo essa null’altro che noi stessi, e lo stesso può dirsi per il Tutto universale . A questo scarto non vi è rimedio, proprio perché, l’originarietà del molteplice essendo incondizionata, è anche infinita: ma in ciò dovremmo vedere piuttosto un’opera provvidenziale, perché non siamo in grado di reggere la 73 Questo si vede bene nell’argomentazione per cui, anche quando scegliamo il bene adeguandoci alla relazionalità, noi comunque scegliamo il male, che dunque è inevitabile (R, pp. 155-157), giacché «non si sceglie il tutto della relazione, ma se ne ritaglia solo un aspetto» ( ivi, p. 156). In realtà ciò è inevitabile solo in un’ottica totalizzante come quella della relAzione, che si configura come un vero e proprio “dovere del Tutto e dell’infinito”. Se però relazione e relazione buona sono distinte, come nel caso dell’etica del riconoscimento reciproco, tale problema non si pone, perché in questo caso la totalità vivente che io sono, donandosi all’altro, intenziona quell’altra totalità vivente che lui o lei è. Vi è anche un risvolto ontologico, dovuto alle diverse premesse di partenza: nel caso di Fabris, in cui la relazione tra essere e ciò che appare è ambigua, quel dovere scaturisce come conseguenza inevitabile; nel caso di un’ontologia che li distingua, porre il dovere di intenzionare la Totalità in atto è come pretendere che l’apparire finito dell’infinito (quella parte della totalità dell’essere che è la totalità di ciò che appare) diventi apparire infinito dell’Infinito. Ma appunto, in questo caso l’aporeticità del principio consiste proprio in questo, che appare la «struttura originaria» dell’essere (la sua verità astratta), ma non la Totalità delle infinite relazioni tra gli enti, cioè la verità concreta dell’essere. Cfr. E. Severino, Essenza del nichilismo, cit., pp. 173-175. 72 Come noto, l’antropologia filosofica, da Gehlen in poi, ha fornito dei validi motivi per spiegare la tendenza dell’uomo all’astrazione, ciò che gli consente il distacco e la distanza. Li richiama anche Gadamer, in Dove si nasconde la salute, cit., pp. 22, 95. 73 J.-L. Borges, La trama, in La cifra, Mondadori, 19832, pp. 74-75: «Es el gran árbol de las causas / y de los ramificados efectos; / en sus hojas están Roma y Caldea / y lo que ven las caras de Jano. / El universo es uno de sus nombres. / Nadie lo ha visto nunca, / y ningún hombre puede ver otra cosa [È il grande albero delle cause / e dei ramificati effetti; / ha nelle foglie Roma e la Caldea / e ciò che vedono i volti di Giano. / L’universo è uno dei suoi nomi. / Nessuno lo ha mai visto / e nessun uomo può vedere altro]». 71 344 CARLO CHIURCO consapevolezza riflessiva in atto della totalità infinita dei nessi, in qualunque guisa essa si manifesti – sia essa il Tutto, oppure il microcosmo che siamo. 345 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 345-348 ISSN: 1825-5167 L'AMBIGUITÀ COME RESISTENZA ALLA TOTALIZZAZIONE FABIO CIARAMELLI Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza Università degli studi di Napoli "Federico II" fabio.ciaramelli@gmail.com ABSTRACT In his book on ethics and ambiguity Adriano Fabris suggests a positive conception of ambiguity, whose fecondity is based on an ethical resistence to totalization. K EY WORDS Ambiguity, totalization, coherence, action, possibility. Etica e ambiguità. Una filosofia della coerenza (Morcelliana, Brescia 2020) – il libro di Adriano Fabris che discuto in queste brevi note, senza però avere il tempo e lo spazio per metterlo in relazione con i suoi precedenti volumi, a parecchi dei quali egli spesso e volentieri rimanda – ha il merito di mettere in discussione una visione solo negativa della nozione di ambiguità e ha il merito di farlo attraverso un discorso filosofico molto ben articolato. Devo dire subito che non riuscirò a render conto della sistematicità che lo struttura e che perciò mi limiterò a presentarne e discuterne solo alcuni aspetti tematici, mettendone in luce, dal mio punto di vista, la fecondità e le prospettive di sviluppo. I Se consultiamo il Vocabolario online della Treccani, vediamo subito che la nozione di ambiguità significa anzitutto “la possibilità di essere variamente interpretato” e che ciò costituisce essenzialmente un segno di doppiezza e irresolutezza. Ebbene, partendo esattamente da qui, il libro di Fabris invita a scavare più a fondo. Proprio alla base dell’ambiguità come “possibilità di essere variamente interpretato” bisogna riconoscere una capacità o un poter-essere su cui vale la pena di fermarsi a riflettere. Balza subito agli occhi che il senso positivo 346 FABIO CIARAMELLI dell’ambiguità di qualcosa è la sua resistenza alla totalizzazione, cioè l’irriducibilità ad una ed una sola forma di autorealizzazione. L’ambiguità (d’un contenuto di senso) ne impedisce l’appiattimento, evita di inchiodarlo ad un’unica attuazione o ad una sola forma di esecuzione e in tal modo sfugge alla presa o al sequestro o al dominio dell’episteme (cioè della modalità più alta del sapere, che si presume incontrovertibile e perciò indiscutibile e insindacabile). Una simile messa in discussione del significato solo negativo della nozione di ambiguità emerge, nel libro di Adriano Fabris, fin dall’inizio, cioè fin dal primo capitolo dedicato esattamente all’ambiguità della filosofia. Con un gesto di pensiero che per certi versi ricorda alcune belle pagine di Hannah Arendt (contenute nell’opera postuma sulla “vita della mente”, ma per la verità già anticipate in uno scritto degli anni Cinquanta sul rapporto tra politica e filosofia), Fabris riconduce la nascita della filosofia alla reazione di Platone all’ingiustizia, rappresentata dalla condanna a morte del suo maestro Socrate da parte del tribunale ateniese. Per Platone, la vera responsabile della morte di Socrate è l’ignoranza da parte degli ateniesi del significato oggettivo e universale della giustizia (cfr. p. 122), ossia la riduzione di quest’ultima all’opinione soggettiva di ciascuno. E allora, allo scopo di evitare che una cosa del genere si ripeta, Platone sostiene che sia indispensabile affidare ai filosofi il governo della città, in modo da non far prevalere le opinioni soggettive, la cui instabilità e infondatezza può avere soltanto esiti nefasti. Sennonché, la via indicata da Platone si rivela in qualche modo un rimedio peggiore del male. Infatti, come osserva Fabris, la via platonica fa “correre alla filosofia un rischio esiziale”, dal momento che il predominio anche politico del sapere incontrovertibile e indiscutibile “può condurre agli stessi esiti violenti che caratterizzavano e continuano a caratterizzare la lotta fra le opinioni. Peggio ancora. Può addirittura legittimare tale violenza facendo ricorso alla forma di retorica peggiore: alla retorica di chi usa la violenza dicendo di farlo perché lui (o lei) hanno ragione, vale a dire perché lui (o lei) conoscono la verità” (p. 17, corsivo nel testo). II Tuttavia, queste osservazioni non esauriscono il discorso sull’ambiguità della filosofia. È certamente vero che da Platone in poi quest'ultima comporta la tentazione della hybris teoretico-speculativa cui si riferiscono le assai eloquenti parole di Fabris appena citate: ma questa specie di sindrome di donna Prassede (l’assai pia consorte di don Ferrante che la pungente ironia del Manzoni mostra sempre intenta a “secondare i voleri del cielo”, a patto però di “prender per cielo il suo cervello”) non è l’unica e fatale conseguenza della postura filosofica. Quest’ultima, infatti, proprio in virtù della sua ambiguità, comporta anche un’altra possibilità, alla delucidazione della quale la lettura del libro di Fabris apporta un contributo utile e suggestivo. Ed è esattamente questa ulteriore possibilità che 347 L’ambiguità come resistenza alla totalizzazione conduce alla scoperta della “ambiguità feconda di tutto ciò che è”, ossia alla scoperta dell’ambiguità “tenuta assieme dalla dinamica relazionale, quella per cui ci possono essere sempre nuovi scenari” (parole tratte dall’ultima pagina del libro, che ne costituiscono qualcosa come un bilancio teorico: p. 138). Questa accentuazione dello statuto fecondo dell’ambiguità – soprattutto se applicata, come nel primo capitolo, alla stessa filosofia – è alla base dell’insistenza con cui la proposta filosofica avanzata da Fabris si inserisce nel contesto della tradizione filosofica e si propone di “tornare alle domande degli antichi”. Ovviamente, non si tratta di ripeterne pedissequamente le risposte. Ma con altrettanta decisione, Fabris prende le distanze da affrettati tentativi di superarle o liquidarle. Al contrario, proprio perché la filosofia è intrinsecamente ambigua, continuare a praticarla significa resistere a questa o quella interpretazione che presume di metterla a tacere o totalizzarla. Al riguardo, il libro di Fabris ha il pregio di mettere a fuoco l’attualità teorica di alcuni momenti salienti della storia del pensiero filosofico, rileggendone criticamente le poste in gioco. III Finora, in questa prima parte della mia presentazione del libro di Fabris, non ho chiamato in causa né l’etica né la coerenza: due nozioni che in esso svolgono un ruolo centrale, tanto da comparire finanche nel suo titolo e nel suo sottotitolo. Preciso subito, dunque, che all’etica Fabris attribuisce il compito di governare l’ambiguità, contrastandone il senso negativo di doppiezza e irresolutezza cui, almeno in prima battuta, questa nozione fa riferimento. E l’etica adempie questo suo compito attraverso il ricorso alla coerenza. Il richiamo alla coerenza, nella prospettiva fondamentalmente etica e non speculativa or ora richiamata, comporta una dimensione riflessiva, cioè un ritorno su di sé dell’agire che non può sottrarsi alla responsabilità della valutazione. Qui Fabris si riferisce al “ruolo critico che la filosofia ha sempre rivestito, fin dai tempi di Socrate” (p. 121) e si rifiuta di seguire Platone e tutta una tradizione teoretica che ha “risposto a un’esigenza etica con il ricorso alla teoria” (ivi). Il compito di ridurre o governare l’ambibuità, dunque, non spetta alla teoria, che potrebbe adempierlo unicamente ricorrendo all’applicazione del sapere incontrovertibile, ma alla coerenza etica che s’assume la responsabilità ineludibile di valutare ed eventualmente legittimare ciò che accade. Non mi sembra che Fabris dedichi un'attenzione esplicita a questo punto, ma ho l'impressione che il suo discorso presupponga anche un’ambiguità della stessa nozione di coerenza. Egli la intende come un atteggiamento dell’esistenza. Ma, com'è noto, in un'ottica speculativa, la coerenza viene considerata un principio logico universale al servizio della verità (cioè di quella verità che si presume disvelata dalla teoria e che perciò l’agire dovrebbe limitarsi a mettere-in-opera). Solo nel 348 FABIO CIARAMELLI primo caso la coerenza può “assumere l’ambiguità nelle sue varie forme e governarla eticamente” (p. 74), mentre nel secondo caso, la coerenza come principio logico-ontologico avrebbe solo il compito di eliminarla o neutralizzarla. IV In questo contesto, Fabris si richiama alla nozione classica di elenchos, cioè all’argomentazione che si basa sulla coerenza del pensiero con sé stesso. Com'è noto, in Aristotele l'elenchos dimostra l’impossibilità di negare il principio di non contraddizione, poiché la negazione di quest'ultimo, a rigore, può essere solo verbale, ma – non potendo essere davvero pensata – non può non presupporlo. Dopo averne puntualmente discusso il ruolo in Aristotele e in Anselmo (pp. 5358), Fabris propone un “allargamento dell’elenchos”, cioè la sua apertura alla dimensione esistenziale, attraverso cui esso viene a trasformarsi in un “dispositivo relazionale” (p. 61). In tal modo, l’argomentazione finisce con l’offrire “la possibilità di un’universalizzazione che ci fa andare oltre noi stessi” (p. 62). Qui la relazionalità viene a legittimarsi come principio sprovvisto di necessità teorica. Ciò significa che siamo sempre già inseriti nella dimensione della relazionalità, ma non siamo in condizione di subordinarla alla fissità d’un modello ideale, d’un eidos che ne costituisca l’essenza o il fondamento necessario e necessitante. La relazionalità dell’umano è e resta ambigua. Ciò che la caratterizza è la struttura della possibilità, intesa come radicale poter-essere-altrimenti. Emerge qui ciò che Fabris chiama felicemente “l’elenchos della libertà”: anche chi volesse negare la libertà (delle relazioni) come struttura della relazionalità, non potrebbe che presupporla. Non si tratta, però, d’un presupposto speculativo, ma d’una ineliminabile condizione esistenziale dell’agire come unico luogo di produzione dei significati che fanno umana la vita. In questo senso, vedrei nell’elenchos della libertà ciò che fa emergere in tutta la sua irriducibilità il poter-essere-altrimenti che caratterizza l’agire umano e che lo rende irriducibile a qualunque messa-in-opera d’una verità universale, preliminarmente affermata o posseduta dalla teoria. È a questa dimensione originaria ma intrinsecamente relazionale dell’agire umano che, perlomeno dal mio punto di vista, invita a pensare la riflessione filosofica di Adriano Fabris sulla relazione tra etica e ambiguità. Una riflessione radicale e innovativa, che argomenta, a mio avviso in modo assai persuasivo, l'impossibilità di sfuggire alla responsabilità etica cui ci "condannano" la finitezza della condizione umana e la dimensione esistenziale della coerenza che le è relativa. 349 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 349-354 ISSN: 1825-5167 PER AVVIARE UN DIALOGO ROBERTO DIODATO Dipartimento di Filosofia Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore roberto.diodato@unicatt.it ABSTRACT : The paper examines three ideas present in Adriano Fabris' book: the link between the theoretical and practical dimensions of philosophy; the relation as a space of ambiguity; the question of the correlation between the idea of relation and the idea of substance. K EYWORD: Relation, substance, ambiguity Ringrazio Adriano Fabris per questo invito a pensare insieme, molto importante per me. Mi limito a tre osservazioni, per avviare un dialogo. Prima osservazione semplice, quasi banale - La tesi del libro è espressa da Fabris all’inizio della Premessa con grande chiarezza: «Fare filosofia […] è un agire sempre a rischio di ambiguità […] conduce il pensiero a specifiche aporie: porta, letteralmente, a strade senza uscita. Il libro mostra che questa uscita non c’è, e che non può esserci, se viene cercata con un approccio solamente teorico […] La teoria […] non è in grado di governare le ambiguità in cui l’agire in generale, e l’agire filosofico in particolare, s’involgono. La storia della filosofia ne è testimonianza. Può farlo invece l’etica» (p. 5). Fabris elabora quindi una TeorEtica, un FilosoFare, per ovviare alle difficoltà di una indagine puramente “teoretica” o “speculativa”. Ora, sono d’accordo con quanto scrive Fabris sulla dimensione aporetica del pensiero filosofico, anche perché non credo che il compito della filosofia sia dare risposte, anche se ovviamente i filosofi nel corso della storia non hanno fatto altro, ma sia quello di mostrare la complessità delle domande essenziali: dal senso comune, che queste domande elabora ma alle quali rischia di dare risposte troppo semplici e spesso dogmatiche, alla filosofia, cioè alla stessa domanda resa più complessa, più profonda in se stessa, tale da provocare inquietudine e ricerca. Da questo punto di vista le differenti “risposte della filosofia”, aporetiche se confrontate tra loro e per la loro logica interna, possono essere intese come più o meno interessanti inviti al 350 ROBERTO DIODATO viaggio e inaugurare pratiche. Ma si deve avvertire, e questa è la prima questione che sottopongo a Adriano Fabris, che ciò che il filosofo produce è sempre e solo teoria: un pensiero che si esprime in un linguaggio, in una scrittura, in uno stile (stile che nei filosofi maggiori raggiunge l’inconfondibilità di una firma). Il filosofo per esempio scrive dell’etica, sull’etica, sul senso dell’abitare umano su questa terra, ed elabora una teoria che chiamiamo etica (per esempio un’etica delle relazioni); può quindi provocare un agire, eccome, ma non lo compie: la filosofia è teoria e non performance (così almeno a me pare), e se è performativa (e può esserlo in modo anche devastante) lo è in quanto teoria. Mi rendo conto di dire un’ovvietà, ma non si tratta soltanto di voler evitare una facile confusione, si tratta di un’ovvietà che può essere elaborata perché implica una difficoltà propria del filosofico, costretto, per dir così, a produrre uno sguardo (la “teoria”, appunto) su “oggetti” o sfere dell’essere che devono essere tradotti in linguaggio, anzi in scrittura. Questo è a mio avviso interessante perché il sistema di traduzione tipicamente filosofico, almeno nella tradizione occidentale, opera inevitabili astrazioni che si concludono in scritture differenti (all’interno di un range che ha evidenti polarità: la scrittura di Pascal non è quella di Spinoza, la scrittura di Carnap non è quella di Heidegger) che accadono nelle lingue positive, storiche, le quali conservano nella loro strutturale polivocità semantica una densità sensibile insuperabile. In altri termini: se la biblioteca filosofica non è composta da manuali di logica formale è perché la filosofia apre uno spazio di mediazione che traduce nell’ordine del concetto una concretezza materiale e storica insuperabile e una contingenza eventuale inalienabile. Tra l’altro all’interno di questa contingenza sta anche il soggetto filosofico, colui che scrive, che in quanto scrive è inevitabilmente immerso nel e quindi condizionato dal “linguaggio” che usa (dalla sua lingua madre e dai complessi dispositivi, intrecci di saperi e poteri a cui partecipa e appartiene). Sta qui, o almeno anche qui, la difficoltà che conduce all’aporia, che non è soltanto logica ma anche storica, delle “soluzioni” filosofiche, proprio perché una “soluzione”, cioè il compimento dell’analisi di un concreto, non è possibile, mentre ne è certamente possibile la pretesa, come la storia della filosofia ci insegna. Date queste precisazioni, ripeto quasi ovvie, ben venga la proposta di Fabris di una TeorEtica o di un FilosoFare, la quale, per la sua qualità di teoria, non sfugge essa stessa all’aporeticità. Seconda osservazione – Fabris ci mette in guardia nei confronti di una tendenza totalitaria del filosofico, o più propriamente del filosofo, anche quando la sua filosofia si generi da un’esigenza di giustizia. Il filosofo per sfuggire alla potenziale violenza della mera opinione e anche a quella forma della “verità” che si impone quale decisione della maggioranza (quella maggioranza che ha deciso la condanna di Socrate, per esempio), cercherebbe di giustificare un principio oggettivo e fondante, diventandone l’apologeta e il controllore qualora confonda il suo proprio 351 Per avviare un dialogo pensiero, che di quel principio garantirebbe la conoscenza, con la forza di verità del principio stesso. Questa sarebbe “l’ambiguità fondamentale della filosofia”, e gli autori convocati per esemplificarla sono davvero grandi: da Platone a Kant, da Aristotele a Cartesio, da Hegel a Heidegger… Antidoto a questa esiziale ambiguità è l’articolarsi dell’ambiguità stessa, la sua presa in carico, per dir così, da parte della filosofia stessa qualora questa sia ricondotta «alla sua struttura di fondo: a ciò che il FilosoFare mette in opera. Si tratta di relazioni […] La relazione è lo spazio dell’ambiguità […] la relazione stessa è un’ambigua messa in opera di ambiguità». Questo punto è determinante per la strategia di Fabris, è insomma la sua proposta, a mio avviso condivisibile, e sarà da approfondire (si veda la Terza osservazione), per ora mi importa notare che la scrittura dei grandi filosofi evocati, diversamente in ciascuno, permetta forse una lettura differente da quella prospettata nel primo capitolo del libro. Mi limito al caso di Platone, di cui innanzitutto tratta Fabris: come notava Cassirer (Eidos und Eidolon, 1924) anche la prima grande macchina filosofica che compie l’esorcismo dell’ombra, dell’opacità della visione corporea, quella platonica, incide il suo desiderio di superare i limiti della corporeità diveniente e corruttibile nella luce stabile del vero in una scrittura che fa uso del mito, racconto dell’immaginario, in modo determinante per il suo stesso senso. Apre insomma continuamente zone d’ombra, anfratti e talvolta abissi difficili da tradurre nella luce dispiegata della ragione. E la mimesis impossibile eppure tentata in scrittura del dialogo socratico, se la pensiamo per quanto possibile onesta e sincera (insomma dipendente in qualità di scopo ma non di fine dalle strategie testuali di formattazione del lettore), implica un pensiero della verità non statico e prefissato, letteralmente dipendente dal dialogo, e soprattutto un sapere che non è proprietà della mente del filosofo, ma che emerge dallo stesso dialogare. È forse il caso di pensare l’idea platonica come una forma dinamica e interrogante, aperta profondamente aprente. E penso che questo sia vero anche per gli altri filosofi evocati da Fabris, e anche per quelli per dir così iper-razionalisti, come Spinoza, Leibniz o Hegel, ma certo avrei l’onere di mostrarlo. Terza osservazione – Avvicinando la questione cruciale della relazione trovo un passaggio, nel secondo capitolo, che mi convince completamente; si sta discutendo l’elaborazione concettuale della figura del Deus Trinitas: «In quest’ottica fu l’identità delle ipostasi a venir pensata in funzione della loro relazione, e non fu, viceversa, la relazione a risultare un attributo della sostanza (come appunto veniva stabilito da Aristotele nella tavola delle categorie)» (p. 35), segue il riferimento al vii libro del De Trinitate di Agostino. Fabris individua quindi «una sinergia fra la dottrina delle cause e l’ontologia della sostanza, il discorso apofantico e la concezione corrispondentista della verità» (ibidem), che sarebbe andata in crisi tra Ottocento e Novecento, epoca in cui vengono elaborate «nuove concezioni del linguaggio, dell’identità, della verità» così che «l’idea tradizionale del Dio 352 ROBERTO DIODATO monoteistico finì per venire contestata» (p. 36). Ciò complessivamente avrebbe avuto conseguenze drammatiche: «su un piano teorico, l’emergere di posizioni radicalmente nichilistiche e, su di un piano pratico, l’insorgere dei fondamentalismi, vissuti come immediata reazione a tale nichilismo diffuso. È la situazione che stiamo vivendo oggi» (ibidem). Ora credo che i motivi di tali emergenze contemporanee siano complessi, coinvolgano processi politici, tecnologici, economici di ampia scala, e che non siano determinate soltanto da questioni filosofiche e religiose, ma su questo penso che anche Fabris sia d’accordo. Quello che ora mi importa è l’accento posto da Fabris, e non solo in questo suo libro, sulla relazione, su un’idea di relazione da intendersi non subordinata a quella di sostanza. È un punto questo che condivido, che ritengo davvero importante e meritevole di discussione. A questo proposito mi pare importante un’altra affermazione di Fabris, quando nella sua discussione dell’idea di “principio” distingue unicità e unitarietà e riprendendo l’idea di Trinità e coniugandola con l’altra capitale per il pensiero cristiano, di Incarnazione, scrive: «se la relazione è anzitutto interna a Dio stesso […] allora è qualcosa di Dio […] a essere posto sullo stesso piano dell’essere umano, a diventare essere umano, a incarnarsi. Il problema è allora di tenere assieme questa condizione di relazionalità mimetica con l’unitarietà che è propria dello stesso Dio. La struttura del discorso apofantico […] non riesce a farlo» (p. 41). Sono d’accordo, si tratta di un problema notevole, che la teologia trinitaria nel corso dei secoli ha affrontato e affronta, ma che, come Fabris mette in luce, deve essere pensato ulteriormente dall’antropologia e dall’etica. Sono anche d’accordo sulla strategia di ri-pensare l’idea stessa di “principio” sulla base di una concezione della relazione derivante dal pensiero della Trinità divina, in modo da evitare sia l’immanentizzazione dell’idea di principio sia la posizione di una sua diversità assoluta: «La relazione come principio aporetico è quel principio che si autoafferma anche quando mette in questione se stesso e che, nel contempo, si mette in questione nel suo autoaffermarsi. È quel principio che può essere fissato nel suo sviluppo e che, nel contempo, si sviluppa nelle varie forme in cui può essere fissato. È quel principio che è aperto ad altro proprio in quanto assoluto e che, insieme, è tale nella sua apertura ad altro e in se stesso» (pp. 49-50). Sono tutte affermazioni queste che, mi pare, intendono pensare la relazione come principio senza ipostatizzarla, senza cioè pensarla surrettiziamente come sostanza che entra in relazione. Ora qui sta la difficoltà del gioco, con conseguenze notevoli che Fabris sviluppa facendo risaltare e discutendo alcune aporie che derivano dalla considerazione del principio quale relazione: «un principio che sta nel mezzo, non solo all’inizio, e che proprio […] facendo opera di collegamento e di mediazione, agisce come principio […] un principio che è sempre già in atto, vele a dire che non sta semplicemente all’origine, che non è totalmente separato da ciò che giustifica [… un principio] unico, unitario e ultimo […] nella misura in cui, grazie alla sua struttura relazionale, già da sempre si espande, è aperto a relazioni sempre nuove e si diffonde universalmente [e infine 353 Per avviare un dialogo un principio che] è nel contempo reale e possibile, condizione di possibilità, perché sempre già in atto, e insieme in costante realizzazione: è una possibilità possibilitante , insomma» (pp. 52-53). È ovvio che ciascuna di queste caratterizzazioni del principio-relazione andrebbe discussa, seguendo l’itinerario proposto da Fabris nel terzo capitolo del suo libro; in particolare andrebbe discusso il rapporto relazioneelenchos, dove si propone l’idea di un “elenchos esistenziale” nella dimensione del quale «non è all’opera il riferimento a un’esistenza solo scoperta dal pensiero» (p. 63) e anzi «si realizza un oltrepassamento della semplice sfera del pensare» (ibidem): si tratta piuttosto di “un’esperienza di vita” che «si esprime attraverso il pensiero, certo, ma sporgendo al di là di esso: nella misura in cui il pensare è una forma di agire, e dunque di relazionarsi e di sperimentare relazioni» (ibidem). Da questo punto di vista è molto rilevante, perché fa da riscontro ontologico alla prospettiva logica, quanto Fabris scrive nella nota sottostante della stessa pagina: evitiamo di “feticizzare” la “realtà” perché «questa “realtà” non sussiste se non all’interno di un approccio relazionale» (p. 63, nota 17). Ora da questi guadagni Fabris fa seguire nei due capitoli seguenti una ricca fenomenologia, sia per quanto concerne l’idea di spazio sia per la costruzione di una “etica dell’ambiguità”, giungendo a conclusioni importanti. Non intervengo su questa raffinata costruzione (in particolare ho trovato molto interessante la rielaborazione dell’idea di spazio), mi fermo invece un attimo sulla premessa appena descritta per formulare, attraverso due rapidi rilievi, una sorta invito. Il primo lo inoltro quasi per deformazione professionale: il pensiero non si sporge soltanto nell’agire, ma è anche e intrinsecamente un sentire: aisthesis, logos estetico. È il pensiero, il logos, a essere innanzitutto e strutturalmente incarnato. Certo dire in cosa consiste il “sentire” proprio del logos non è semplice, ma tale sentire espone ed esplica l’umano, le sue potenzialità conoscitive, espressive, relazionali. Il secondo rilievo riguarda forse più da vicino la posizione e la strategia di Fabris; condividendone l’assunto di fondo, la svolgo verso una dimensione problematica un poco diversa. Si tratta certamente, come scrive Fabris, di «intendere il principio non solo come separato, ma anche come in relazione» (p. 44). Molto segue da questa affermazione, che mette in luce molto efficacemente cosa significhi essere in relazione, appunto concentrandosi sull’ “in” della relazione. In altri termini, stabilito che il principio è intrinsecamente relazione (seguendo come si è visto il vii libro De Trinitate di Agostino), Fabris non si concentra innanzitutto su cosa questo ci dica delle cose del mondo per loro stesse, ma su cosa ci insegni sulle relazioni tra le cose, e in particolare sulla relazione tra le persone e tra le persone e il mondo. A Fabris interessa lo svolgimento della questione sul piano etico, poiché, come si è visto, ritiene che questo piano possa dare un senso costruttivo alle aporie del pensiero speculativo, eppure io credo che quello che con un termine del tutto impreciso chiamiamo piano ontologico o metafisico debba essere comunque e innanzitutto investito dalla posizione del principio-relazione, almeno per quanto tale principio è creativo e almeno per 354 ROBERTO DIODATO quanto le cose create sono “immagine” del loro creatore (del tutto tra parentesi: circolarmente il senso metafisico della parola “immagine” si intende proprio a partire dal principio-relazione). Questo per evitare di pensare la relazione soltanto come relazione-tra, cioè tra polarità comunque costituite, rischiando di rinnovare una metafisica della sostanza, o una concezione della sostanza quale categoria principe. Non si tratta insomma, io credo, di pensare il principio e le cose del mondo in relazione, bensì di pensare le cose del mondo come relazioni. Quindi la prospettiva etica magistralmente approfondita da Fabris potrebbe ampliarsi a quella che un tempo si chiamava dimensione metafisica come indagine sulla relazione costitutiva, il cui modello ideale e insieme storico e concreto è quello, tratto dalla speculazione teologica, di “relazione sussistente”. Non si tratta di dismettere la dimensione aporetica, anzi, si tratta piuttosto di mostrarla come potenza di creazione e di far emergere la sua immagine in noi e nel mondo. Su questo spero, caro Adriano, che il dialogo che abbiamo avviato possa continuare. 355 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 355-371 ISSN: 1825-5167 L’EQUIVOCO DELLA “FILOSOFIA” E LE AMBIGUITÀ DELLA “COERENZA” FLAVIA MONCERI Dipartimento di Scienze Umanistiche, Sociali e della Formazione Università del Molise flavia.monceri@unimol.it ABSTRACT In this work I move from a precise critical review of Adriano Fabris’ work Etica e ambiguità. Una filosofia della coerenza (Morcelliana, Brescia 2020), with special reference to the notion of ambiguity as he introduces and discusses it. I particularly concentrate on the definition of “philosophy” given in the work and the reconstruction of its fundamental difficulties. My aim is to show that in order to overcome such difficulties, an alternative picture of philosophy should be finally given, moving from a clear awareness of the fundamental misunderstanding from which its usual definition originates. I also give some hints as to the ethnocentric character of (Western modern) philosophy, also concealed in its pretension to universality. KEYWORDS Adriano Fabris; philosophy, ambiguity and equivocity; consistency and awareness; universality; ethnocentrism. 1. FILOSOFIA E AMBIGUITÀ Lo scopo di questo lavoro è offrire un contributo alla discussione di uno solo fra i molteplici temi affrontati in Etica e ambiguità. Una filosofia della coerenza (2020), un libro denso, stimolante e ricco di spunti di riflessione con il quale, per come io lo interpreto, Adriano Fabris si propone il meritorio e difficile compito di ripensare la filosofia e il suo ruolo attuale a partire dalle categorie centrali di TeorEtica, FilosoFare e RelAzione, già proposte in precedenti lavori (cfr. Fabris 2010; 2016). Tale tema, che funziona come una sorta di basso continuo, per così dire, è l’ambiguità. Quel che intendo fare, dunque, è accompagnare tale basso continuo e una fra le melodie che esso sostiene – quella della “filosofia” – con una sorta di contrappunto alla mente in cui a qualche limitata consonanza, più imperfetta che perfetta, si accompagneranno numerose dissonanze, dovute principalmente al fatto che dal mio punto di vista l’ambiguità e le ambiguità rintracciabili nella storia della filosofia occidentale dipendono da un vero e proprio equivoco di fondo, come cercherò di mostrare nel seguito. 356 FLAVIA MONCERI Più in particolare, il mio dialogo con l’autore è qui mediato da un libro che sottopongo all’esercizio di un contradditorio o di una controversia dai quali soltanto, per come personalmente intendo e pratico la filosofia, può emergere il “sapere”. Esso infatti può essere definito tale solo se aggiunge un “rumore” creativo alla “ridondanza” di ciò che già “si sa”, introducendo una “differenza che fa la differenza” (Bateson 1970/2015) prima di tutto per il filosofo e poi anche, forse, per altri che vorranno accettare quel rumore come (una parte della) verità, ma solo se così decideranno. Proprio il contraddittorio e la controversia, che presuppongono l’incontro, lo scontro, l’interazione, le interpolazioni e le collisioni fra visioni del mondo, valori, presupposti ed esperienze sono ciò che non vorrei mai veder venire meno in nome di un qualsiasi valore condiviso, perché è in essi che ritrovo anche il fascino della figura del filosofo come amante del sapere, per il quale il coraggio della consapevolezza per andare incontro a ciò che è e sarà deve prevalere sul vincolo costituito dalla coerenza con quanto è già stato. Ora, fin dalla prima frase della Premessa, Fabris mostra come proprio l’ambiguità costituisca il basso continuo che sostiene tutte le altre melodie, compresa quella dell’etica, quando scrive che «fare filosofia – FilosoFare, come dico con espressione sintetica – è un agire sempre a rischio di ambiguità», perché «la filosofia nasce di volta in volta per risolvere specifiche ambiguità e, nel farlo, finisce per crearne di nuove» (Fabris 2020: 5). E fin da subito viene chiarito lo sviluppo e l’esito della “composizione” nel suo complesso, stabilendo che per come si configura il rapporto fra teoria ed etica, le quali non possono essere separate (13) ma devono anzi essere tenute insieme in una TeorEtica (cfr. Fabris 2010), visto che anche il FilosoFare è un agire, la teoria «non è in grado di governare le ambiguità in cui l’agire in generale, e l’agire filosofico in particolare s’involgono», cosa che può fare invece una specifica forma di etica, ossia l’etica della relazione (Fabris 2020: 5). Anzi, secondo Fabris questo spostamento d’accento dalla teoria all’etica come rimedio all’ambiguità costitutiva della filosofia «è inevitabile se vogliamo che il far filosofia abbia un futuro», tenuto conto che il FilosoFare è agire di qualcuno, vale a dire dei filosofi e delle filosofe che la praticano, e che si trovano di fronte a una situazione nella quale «la filosofia apre ancora oggi uno spazio di pensieri ambigui e produce sempre nuove ambiguità» da loro stessi e da loro stesse causata perché dipende dal «modo in cui proprio loro, i filosofi e le filosofe, continuano a farla» (5). Ciò determina anche la necessità di «capire perché l’ambiguità si ritrova in un pensatore o in un’autrice, nei concetti di cui fanno uso e nell’intera tradizione da cui li ereditano», un compito che figura fra quelli del libro espressamente citati (6) e che certamente si annovera fra quelli più rilevanti per la filosofia del presente. Come si può dunque definire l’ambiguità? Essa viene ampiamente intesa «come una caratteristica inevitabile della riflessione filosofica: una caratteristica da comprendere e da affrontare», ricorrendo ai presupposti e ai metodi dell’etica la quale «non solo ci aiuta a farlo, ma motiva la nostra scelta di farlo» (6), tornando a 357 L’equivoco della “filosofia” e le ambiguità della “coerenza” riconsiderare le “domande degli antichi”, «perché sono queste le domande che hanno dato l’avvio al modo di pensare proprio della filosofia», ma evitando il rischio di dare le loro stesse risposte (7). Insomma, «le domande della filosofia […] sono sempre le loro» e se s’intende «fare filosofia, non si può che rilanciarle», ma riproponendole «in modo da comprendere il processo che può generare, nel loro caso, ambiguità e aporie, e così indicare nuove strade» (7). Fabris ne conclude, a questo stadio, che l’etica, cui è affidato tale difficile compito, «per governare tali ambiguità, dovrà insomma muoversi in maniera altrettanto ambigua», «dovrà andare oltre la tradizione» ma rimanendo disponibile a «riconfermarla» (7). Alla conclusione di questo processo, che si configura anche come un processo di auto-superamento, all’interno dell’etica della relazione «finalmente, si potrà andare oltre le ambiguità del passato: in uno spazio ulteriore, nel quale l’ambiguità verrà ricompresa e poi, quando necessario, sarà governata o eliminata» (7). Come si vede, nello spazio di una breve Premessa la linea melodica fondamentale, che sostiene tutte le altre che si sviluppano all’interno del libro, è già chiaramente ed esaustivamente tracciata, attraverso la determinazione dei presupposti di partenza, del punto di arrivo e degli strumenti da utilizzare per arrivarci. E tuttavia, si apre fin da qui una prima possibilità di interpolare alcune dissonanze all’armoniosa ed elegante costruzione di Fabris. Infatti, il riferimento centrale è qui a un’originaria ambiguità della riflessione filosofica tout court, «una debolezza di fondo della filosofia, che emerge fin dall’inizio della sua vicenda», consistente nel fatto che «gli argomenti svolti in ambito filosofico, di per se stessi, non sono in grado di coinvolgere», nel senso che «la stessa ragione che sta alla loro base, apparentemente condivisa da tutti, in realtà non lo è affatto, quantomeno nel suo esercizio e forse nella sua struttura» (Fabris 2020: 10). Il caso di partenza di Fabris, infatti, consiste nell’idea che l’origine della filosofia intesa in senso proprio, del suo «modo di pensare» e della sua «motivazione di fondo» siano «determinati dall’esperienza di un’ingiustizia» particolare, ossia «quella della morte di Socrate», un’ingiustizia per la quale «un uomo giusto viene accusato di colpe che non ha commesso ed è condannato a morte» (9). Per coloro per i quali questa particolare ingiustizia dev’essere considerata uno «scandalo», la filosofia diventa un dunque un modo per «rispondere» (9), ponendosi la domanda, per formularla nei miei termini che non necessariamente sono quelli di Fabris, relativa alle condizioni di possibilità di un sapere che permetta di evitarla in futuro. Questi individui sono pensati come una “minoranza”, se è vero che mentre per loro si tratta di uno scandalo esso non è invece tale «per la maggior parte dei cittadini ateniesi», ossia la minoranza di coloro che «non considerano l’acquisizione del sapere qualcosa che serve a far prevalere una posizione sulle altre, non la intendono come funzionale e subordinata a rapporti di potere» (9). Essi piuttosto, proprio in virtù dell’esperienza dello scandalo, intendono «svincolarsi dall’infinito confronto fra opinioni diverse e individuare ciò che, al di là di esse, vale come punto di 358 FLAVIA MONCERI riferimento per tutti stabile e da tutti condiviso», rivendicando così «l’autonomia del sapere, delle sue finalità e delle sue regole», allo stesso tempo «legittiman[do] la figura del filosofo come quella di colui che si muove in uno scenario alternativo, migliore e più giusto, rispetto alla mentalità comune» (9). Così, Fabris situa l’origine della filosofia propriamente detta, non diversamente da quanto si fa di solito, nella figura di Platone, che dallo scandalo della condanna di Socrate, ingiusta perché egli diceva la verità a differenza dei suoi accusatori, trae l’ispirazione per interrogarsi su un particolare modo di intendere il “sapere” come capace di condurre a una verità incontrovertibile che eviti l’ingiustizia. Ciò di cui si accorge Platone, per come Fabris ce lo restituisce, è che nonostante la sua apparente auto-evidenza, anche «la verità sembra aver bisogno della retorica, mentre non vale il contrario» (10), perché in definitiva quel che la condanna di Socrate rende evidente è che la “verità” può essere considerata un’opinione fra le altre al punto da non essere creduta se non si riesce a trovare una strategia comunicativa in grado di convincere che proprio quell’opinione sia da scegliere e da accettare come l’unica vera. Tuttavia, è proprio questo che “i filosofi” a partire da Platone non riescono ad accettare, perché «non possono certo ritenere che la loro sia un’ennesima opinione accanto alle altre: un’opinione che risulta minoritaria, debole, espressa da chi non ha potere o non è in grado di conquistarselo, con la forza o con la persuasione, e che perciò alla fine è destinato a perdere» (11). «Benvenuti nel mondo reale», potrebbe venire in mente di dire a chi come chi scrive definisce diversamente la filosofia, accettando quella «logica del conflitto» che spinge Fabris a menzionare Friedrich Nietzsche, in qualche modo accusandolo anche di ignoranza, visto che non ha «capito lo scopo per cui nasce la filosofia» (11). E tuttavia, non è ancora il tempo di esplicitare più a lungo questa fondamentale dissonanza. Ma se non è questo il punto, allora quale? Secondo Fabris, lo scandalo «sta proprio nel fatto che la decisione che condanna Socrate è propriamente ingiusta. Lo è di per sé. Lo è in quanto tale» (11), ciò che a suo avviso è ben chiaro a Platone, tanto da spingerlo a percorrere una via alternativa che permetta a lui, e a chi la pensa come lui, di trovare una forma alternativa per il pensare. Lo scandalo della condanna di Socrate, infatti, può essere spiegato in un modo che sembra (apparentemente) incontrovertibile: esso «dipende dal fatto che certi eventi non sono allineati, potremmo dire, all’ordine delle cose: non si uniformano a ciò che è giusto, a ciò che è vero, a ciò che è buono», mentre «giusto, vero, buono sono qualcosa che ha una sua consistenza, che sta già lì prima delle nostre decisioni in merito, che non è creato da noi, che possiede una sua realtà» (11-12). Si tratta dunque di argomentare a favore dell’esistenza «di punti di riferimento, di principi che precedono le concrete azioni, le orientano, garantiscono la possibilità di una reciproca comprensione fra i soggetti e, soprattutto, offrono validità oggettiva a ciò che da essi viene compiuto» (12). 359 L’equivoco della “filosofia” e le ambiguità della “coerenza” In definitiva, dunque, «il punto decisivo di quest’impostazione consiste nel fatto che l’accordo viene anticipato, viene considerato qualcosa che è in principio e che vale appunto come principio» (12). Tuttavia, come Fabris ben coglie, questa risposta non risolve affatto il problema, perché non riesce a escludere l’ambiguità, anzi proprio da questa risposta platonica «emerge un primo esempio di quell’ambiguità da cui l’approccio della filosofia è attraversato e dei problemi che hanno afflitto la storia di questa disciplina» (14). Detto brevemente, infatti, «proprio il bisogno di assumere preventivamente un livello che sia condizione dell’accordo, se si vuole che accordo vi sia, può condurre agli stessi esiti violenti che caratterizzavano e continuano a caratterizzare la lotta fra le opinioni» (17). Anzi, come lo stesso Fabris riconosce, si può persino arrivare a «legittimare tale violenza facendo ricorso alla forma di retorica peggiore: alla retorica di chi usa violenza dicendo di farlo perché lui (o lei) hanno ragione, vale a dire perché lui (o lei) conoscono la verità» (17). Ne consegue che «l’ambiguità fondamentale della filosofia» emerge dal «riferimento a un’universalità anticipata, da tutti preliminarmente condivisa» che certo «può giustificare l’accordo ma, se poi tale universalità risulta fissata come qualcosa di oggettivo ed eterno, essa si trasforma in qualcosa d’insensato, che s’impone con violenza e che può richiedere, per essere indicata, sostenuta e difesa, altrettanta violenza» (19). In questo contesto, peraltro, anche il ruolo del filosofo finisce per cambiare, nel senso che «il testimone onesto di un mondo diverso si trasforma nel suo supponente controllore», trasformandosi «in apologeta di quello stato di cose che lui stesso (o lei stessa) hanno scoperto e intuito. Diventa apologeta del principio», mentre «la sua filosofia si trasforma in un’ideologia accanto ad altre» (18-19). Testimonianza e controllo, peraltro, contribuiscono all’ambiguità della filosofia perché «entrambi questi approcci sono insiti nel suo procedere, fin dall’inizio della sua vicenda, ed entrambi risultano praticabili – e sono stati praticati – nella storia del pensiero» (20). Naturalmente, per Fabris questa situazione dev’essere portata allo scoperto e superata proprio attraverso un’operazione di approfondimento dell’ambiguità costitutiva della filosofia, cioè «elaborando una filosofia dell’ambiguità» (25) che parta dalla struttura di fondo del FilosoFare, intendendo quest’ultimo come «un agire relazionale» (24) che necessita dell’elaborazione di una specifica etica della relazione, la quale sola «può permettere alla ricerca filosofica sia di rifiutare atteggiamenti tanto astratti quanto irrilevanti, sia di legittimare, con il ricorso all’universalità dei suoi concetti, l’esercizio della violenza da parte del potente di turno», a partire dal presupposto che «l’etica costituisce l’antidoto alle ambiguità della filosofia» (26). Infatti, l’etica «rigetta l’ambiguità come qualcosa di negativo e, al tempo stesso, l’assume e la governa come spazio di vita»: essa «non solo rileva le ambiguità e le affronta attraverso ben precise strategie di decisione», e «non solo motiva alla necessità di compiere le scelte che permettono di disambiguare certe 360 FLAVIA MONCERI situazioni», ma è anche «il luogo in cui tali ambiguità vengono trasfigurate, mediate abitate». (27). A questo punto, tuttavia, si trascorre, e sia pure senza soluzione di continuità, alla parte -Etica del termine TeorEtica, che avrebbe senz’altro bisogno di un approfondimento specifico, perché chiama direttamente in causa la nozione di relazione e per questa via la “discesa”, per così dire, sul piano concreto dell’agire individuale e collettivo, che implica anche quel “rientro nella caverna” che costituisce il compito del filosofo per come Platone lo intende, se il filosofo è da intendersi come colui (e molto meno spesso come colei) che si assume il compito di “insegnare la verità” agli altri, per averla già individuata, compresa e sperimentata personalmente. Tuttavia, come già suggerivo all’inizio, sarebbe qui impossibile per me considerare anche questo tema e preferisco dunque limitarmi a indugiare sui problemi che mi pare di rintracciare nella ricostruzione della storia della filosofia occidentale operata da Fabris sulla scorta dell’ambiguità come filo conduttore, cercando di mostrare il motivo per il quale essa risulta per me assolutamente non convincente. 2. L’ORIGINE “EQUIVOCA” DELLA FILOSOFIA Nonostante non condivida la sua pars construens, per me molto poco radicale, c’è una frase che Leo Strauss inserisce nel suo Che cos’è la filosofia politica? (1959), che mi pare la più adeguata a introdurre il mio contrappunto critico. Scrive infatti Strauss: «La filosofia politica classica è antitradizionale perché appartiene a quel fertile momento in cui ogni tradizione politica venne scossa e in cui non esisteva ancora una tradizione della filosofia politica» (Strauss 1959/1977: 55). Benché qui Strauss si riferisca specificamente alla filosofia politica si può senza dubbio estendere la sua notazione all’intera filosofia, che nasce in quello stesso momento, e con gli stessi protagonisti (Socrate e poi Platone). L’approccio e la visione del mondo “filosofici” sono infatti in generale caratterizzati, alle loro origini, da un lato dalla critica alla tradizione e dall’altro dal fatto che essi sono “nuovi”, si presentano come un’innovazione rispetto quanto già “si sa”. Anzi, proprio la considerazione in chiave critica dell’ovvio, di ciò che è “tenuto per vero” semplicemente in quanto tramandato come vero, costituisce il carattere proprio di una filosofia, che “ama il sapere” nel senso che non si accontenta di “credere” senza prima aver messo radicalmente in discussione ciò che si dovrebbe credere. Soltanto molto più tardi, e compiutamente solo con la modernità occidentale, la visione filosofica del mondo, la filosofia come proposta di una disciplina scientifica capace di offrire uno sguardo sul “mondo” dotato dell’autoreferenzialità tipica di un sistema chiuso, si trasformò, normalizzandosi e istituzionalizzandosi al punto che si cominciò a pensare che per poter fare filosofia – per FilosoFare – si dovesse prima di tutto ancorarsi a una “tradizione” della filosofia, intendendo la ri- 361 L’equivoco della “filosofia” e le ambiguità della “coerenza” discussione delle posizioni dei filosofi precedenti, la loro ri-considerazione e magari anche il loro superamento come un’operazione tesa a dare stabilità alla “filosofia” riproducendo e confermando di continuo l’idea dell’esistenza di una sua specifica tradizione, persino quando quest’ultima veniva messa in crisi dalle “scoperte” o “invenzioni” intellettuali successive. In questo modo, si finì però per conferire alla filosofia una fisionomia stabile e dai confini chiaramente delimitati e insuperabili, per la quale la soggettività del filosofo come testimone e soprattutto attore critico del proprio tempo rilevava molto meno del suo ruolo di controllore e censore del “pensiero dissonante”. Esistono infatti almeno due “racconti” della filosofia come disciplina individuale tesa alla ricerca della “verità”, il primo dei quali la intende come sempre antitradizionale, critica, innovatrice, iconoclasta, e sempre in qualche misura anarchica (perché non può riconoscere alcun principio, dovendo piuttosto sempre metterlo alla prova), mentre il secondo la intende come una progressiva impresa di accumulazione del sapere attraverso la revisione, il raffinamento e in definitiva il perfezionamento di quanto già detto da chi ci precede, un’impresa senz’altro cauta nei confronti dell’innovazione, quando non proprio conservatrice e persino “reazionaria”. L’effetto paradossale di questo sviluppo, sia detto di passaggio, è che l’ingiustizia nei confronti della verità – o meglio delle possibili altre verità – rischia in continuazione di diventare, e in molti casi ha dimostrato di essere, la pratica tipica di questo tipo di filosofia, più tesa a “sorvegliare e punire”, per riecheggiare Michel Foucault, che a trasgredire le regole del pensiero dominante (la “tradizione”) per rifondarne di sempre nuove. Ecco, questa è la prima differenza – e una differenza non da poco – fra l’immagine della filosofia che Fabris dipinge nel suo libro e che emerge in ogni sua parte, e quella cui aderisce chi scrive. Fabris sceglie esplicitamente, infatti, di aderire a quella versione del racconto che è sicura di poter individuare non solo uno e un solo punto di origine della filosofia (l’Atene classica), uno e un solo fondatore (Socrate), una e una sola sua definizione possibile, e una e una sola linea di sviluppo (che passa per Platone, poi Aristotele e così via), ma anche una e una sola indicazione della via da percorrere per chiunque voglia essere riconosciuto come filosofo. Scrive infatti Fabris che in questo libro «intende mostrare la necessità di un dialogo con la filosofia precedente» (Fabris 2020: 27n.8). E certamente non si può che concordare sulla “necessità” di un tale confronto, anche perché esso è davvero inevitabile, visto che le posizioni “tradizionali” sono quelle che ogni filosofo nato dopo si trova di fronte perché espresse e diffuse da chi è nato prima. Il FilosoFare, infatti, non avviene nel vuoto, ma entro un contesto già sempre dato che determina almeno le condizioni di partenza del pensare e dell’agire, spingendo il singolo filosofo a una loro continua rinegoziazione. Le posizioni tradizionali, in altri termini, sono quelle già presenti nel contesto e che ognuno di noi si trova già a disposizione, dovendo di necessità “farci i conti” 362 FLAVIA MONCERI per così dire. La “storia della filosofia”, da questo punto di vista, non è nulla di diverso dalla “storia” di qualsiasi altra cosa, se la si intende per quel che è, vale a dire il racconto di fatti e opinioni selezionati e resi coerenti, che lo sono stati perché si ritiene che debbano in qualche modo essere tramandati ai nuovi nati in quanto ritenuti più significativi di altri e dunque da proporre per l’accettazione. E del resto, credo che nessuno sosterrebbe che Socrate stesso non abbia fatto i conti con la storia e la filosofia precedenti la sua comparsa. Esse anzi costituiscono il bersaglio polemico della sua particolare costruzione, su cui peraltro non sappiamo proprio nulla, se non per bocca di Platone, particolare che sarebbe sempre il caso di non dimenticare, quando s’intenda definire la “filosofia” come ciò che ha origine con Socrate, ma che guarda caso impiega il medium della “parola scritta” che Socrate, al pari di altri filosofi prima e dopo di lui, dentro e fuori dalla Grecia, non pare aver prediletto. Ora, Fabris aggiunge che quel dialogo con la tradizione filosofica va considerato come «inevitabile, se non si vogliono sfondare porte aperte e ripetere errori già commessi» e che esso «comporta anche l’accettazione, in qualche modo, delle vecchie categorie: perché è sul loro terreno che va attuato il confronto», al fine di «riprendere il linguaggio tramandato, riutilizzarlo, riattivarne l’ambiguità, confrontarsi con essa, fare scelte eticamente giuste» (Fabris 2020: 27 n.8)). Stando così le cose, non pare scorretto dedurne che Fabris aderisca senz’altro a quel racconto della filosofia che la dipinge, dopo il momento fondativo in cui si sono gettate le basi per la costruzione di una tradizione, come quell’impresa che continua di generazione in generazione ad ampliare, restaurare, conservare e persino abbellire “la cattedrale del vero sapere” – la filosofia appunto. Resta tuttavia non del tutto chiaro quali potrebbero essere i risultati intellettuali propriamente innovativi di una filosofia così concepita. Del resto, lo stesso Fabris, introducendo la “relazione come principio” come un diverso approccio, e in ciò anche “nuovo”, conferma che «seguendo quest’approccio, la tradizione filosofica non viene affatto lasciata cadere ma, al contrario, si trova ulteriormente sviluppata: mettendo vino nuovo in botti forse un po’ vecchie, certo, ma in grado comunque di affinarlo e di farlo maturare» (51). Anzi, nella nota relativa a questo passaggio, egli aggiunge, ancora una volta, che «il confronto con la tradizione del pensiero e la sua ripresa è condizione indispensabile per fare filosofia in maniera produttiva, visto che il filosofare, anche per liberarsi dal passato, ha bisogno di assumerne l’eredità», e che questo costituirebbe «un altro degli aspetti caratteristici dell’ambiguità di questa disciplina» (51 n.1). Lasciando qui da parte la questione se si tratti davvero di qualcosa di caratteristico della “filosofia”, e non piuttosto della dinamica tipica di ogni tentativo di andare oltre il passato confrontandosi con esso come con qualcosa di inevitabile in quanto è già stato e non può dunque essere semplicemente ignorato avendo instaurato con il suo stesso emergere nel contesto una “differenza che fa la differenza”, queste e simili 363 L’equivoco della “filosofia” e le ambiguità della “coerenza” affermazioni sembrano confermare che lo scopo di Fabris non sia davvero superare la tradizione filosofica, quanto piuttosto migliorarla, contribuendo così al suo progresso. Tutto il pregevole lavoro che Fabris compie in questo libro, i numerosi spunti di riflessione che fornisce, la meritoria decisione di portare radicalmente allo scoperto l’ambiguità della tradizione filosofica occidentale e il tentativo di fornire una via d’uscita dallo stallo in cui essa si trova si reggono o cadono proprio a partire dall’accettazione di un particolare racconto della filosofia come una coerente tradizione. Questo racconto, peraltro, non è quello dei suoi presunti inventori, ma quello articolato in seguito, per giustificarne la correttezza (e la coerenza), da parte di coloro che l’hanno praticata così e non altrimenti e che sono riusciti a marginalizzare, invisibilizzandoli, silenziandoli e persino denigrandoli o espungendone le posizioni, coloro che hanno deciso di aderire a un altro modo (o ad altri modi) d’intendere l’amore per il sapere e la ricerca delle verità. E tuttavia, non è chiaro in che modo tutto ciò potrebbe convincere coloro, fra i quali personalmente mi annovero, che continuano ad aderire a quell’altro racconto per il quale la filosofia è sempre anti-tradizionale, è sempre “critica della (propria) cultura”, è sempre ricerca di qualcosa di ulteriore rispetto all’ovvio che ognuno di noi, incluso il filosofo, si trova bell’e fatto nel proprio contesto. Purtroppo, questa la mia risposta, non c’è modo, se non quello dell’imposizione operata attraverso i metodi e le forme dell’epistemicidio (Santos 2007), tentando di far valere quel racconto come l’unica possibile verità. Perciò, almeno dal mio punto di vista, più che sull’ambiguità di una filosofia la cui definizione è data per scontata, si dovrebbe accettare la sfida di portare allo scoperto l’equivoco su cui si fonda l’intera storia della filosofia occidentale, ancora ritenuta l’unica forma di filosofia possibile e dunque accettabile e praticabile. Tale equivoco di fondo consiste, per anticipare qualcosa su cui mi soffermerò nel seguito, nel ritenere che si possa in effetti ricostruire la vicenda della filosofia in generale come se esistesse una correlazione di causa-effetto fra i vari passaggi attraverso i quali si sviluppa il suo processo storico, ma che al contrario sono stati semplicemente selezionati e ricostruiti in una narrazione la cui validazione non consiste in nient’altro che nella pretesa, da parte di coloro che la concepiscono e la praticano a partire da quel presupposto, che essa sia l’unica possibile e dunque anche l’unica “vera” e “legittima”. In questo senso, l’ambiguità di fondo da cui Fabris vorrebbe liberare la filosofia, ossia la trasformazione del principio in uno strumento di violenza tanto epistemica quanto politica, è destinata a permanere intoccabile se e finché non si affronterà radicalmente anche quell’equivoco, il quale peraltro, sia detto di passaggio, condiziona anche qualsiasi tentativo di superamento a partire dall’etica, visto che quest’ultima non è cosa “altra” rispetto alla filosofia occidentale, ma una sua costola, e sia pure quella più feconda, se è vero che ciò «che permette di fare i conti con 364 FLAVIA MONCERI l’ambiguità della filosofia e di uscire dalle aporie di cui essa è prigioniera è qualcosa che ugualmente è proprio della filosofia: è la sua dimensione etica» (Fabris 2020: 99). Se tuttavia l’etica è “propria” di questo tipo di filosofia caratterizzata da un’ambiguità di fondo da portare allo scoperto e da superare, non pare completamente convincente l’idea che una delle sue dimensioni sia in grado davvero di operare questo superamento, questo traghettamento oltre l’ambiguità, statuendo che l’etica della relazione consentirebbe di farlo «riconoscendo l’ambiguità che della filosofia in generale è propria e agendo in maniera diversa» (99). Agire in maniera diversa, infatti, è certo possibile e tuttavia se anche i presupposti dell’agire, i presupposti etici, rimangono dentro la tradizione filosofica, non sembra veramente possibile pensare all’etica (della relazione) come una soluzione definitiva. Infatti, citando Audre Lorde, pare possibile affermare che anche in questo caso «gli strumenti del padrone non smantelleranno mai la casa del padrone» (Lorde 1979/2002: 108). Per tornare alla filosofia rappresentata in questo libro, essa non solo non è l’unica sua immagine possibile, ma è anche un’immagine parziale e culturalmente condizionata: è l’immagine della filosofia come scienza, della filosofia sistematica e sistematizzata, della filosofia privata del suo potere immaginativo e creativo (e perciò anche critico e dissacratore), insomma della filosofia passata attraverso il processo della modernità occidentale, che l’ha trasformata in un’innocua “disciplina scientifica” fra le altre. Non riesco infatti a concordare con Fabris quando afferma che «la nostra epoca è del pari post-moderna e iper-moderna» e che «ciò comporta un’inedita declinazione del tema dell’ambiguità del filosofare» (Fabris 2020: 21). Al contrario, a mio avviso il tentativo di uscire dalla modernità semplicemente specificandola attraverso prefissi come “post-“ o “iper-“, o aggettivazioni come “tarda” o “liquida”, è destinato a naufragare in continuazione perché non mette in discussione radicalmente la categoria di “modernità” e anzi continua a segnalare il fatto che siamo ancora e sempre al suo interno – e che vogliamo rimanerci, seppur inconsapevolmente. Da questo punto di vista, dunque, la nostra epoca è semplicemente ancora moderna. Inoltre, se anche si volesse accettare che l’unica filosofia degna di questo nome, insomma che l’unico “amore per il sapere” sia nato ad Atene (cosa che personalmente non credo), non si potrebbe comunque ragionevolmente e convincentemente rintracciare alcun di causalità che conduca direttamente e necessariamente da quell’antico modo di praticarla alla specifica tradizione filosofica che si è in seguito stabilizzata e normalizzata in Occidente, imponendosi violentemente su ogni altra opzione minoritaria, in particolare su quella che continuava a considerare l’altro racconto come il più degno di essere praticato (lasciando qui da parte altri racconti possibili). Perciò, non c’è modo di dirimere, tramite un’unica argomentazione razionale conclusiva, la questione della scelta di 365 L’equivoco della “filosofia” e le ambiguità della “coerenza” quale racconto accettare, che spetta all’individuo, e la lascerò dunque da parte. Tuttavia, per dare almeno una parvenza di conclusione provvisoria a un discorso che meriterebbe ben altro spazio, rimangono aperte almeno due altre questioni che non vengono di solito affrontate, quanto piuttosto date per scontate – anche in questo libro, sulle quali mi soffermerò brevemente nel seguito. 3. LA FILOSOFIA OGGI: CHE FARE? La prima delle due questioni cui ho appena fatto riferimento s’incentra sulla possibilità di costruire una linea che connetta in modo coerente la filosofia classica a quella medievale, moderna e contemporanea occidentale, senza interrogarsi radicalmente sulle implicazioni che il mutamento di paradigma cosmologico ha avuto per la costruzione di tale linea. Infatti, non pare che la filosofia classica greca intesa come fondamento della tradizione filosofica “occidentale” possa davvero essere considerata come la sua origine senza tenere in considerazione la differenza cosmologica. La seconda questione, comunque connessa alla precedente, riguarda invece la possibilità di stabilire che la filosofia sia una e una sola, nata in un luogo particolare ma avente la portata universale della forma del pensare più adeguata alla “natura” della mente umana, senza averla mai messa, e continuando a non metterla, seriamente alla prova di altri e differenti sistemi di sapere. Per quanto riguarda la prima questione, Fabris l’affronta nel lavoro specialmente nel capitolo L’ambiguità del principio, nel quale ricorda che «i caratteri del principio che voglio indagare – unicità, unitarietà, ultimità – sono stati elaborati, soprattutto, nell’ambito dell’interpretazione e del confronto che la filosofia ha sviluppato rispetto ai monoteismi principali» (Fabris 2020: 31). Naturalmente, questo confronto fra l’approccio filosofico e quello religioso monoteistico, in particolare ebraico-cristiano, può essere caratterizzato come un «incontro, influente, problematico e carico d’implicazioni» (33). E tuttavia, almeno dal mio punto di vista, più che di un incontro si è trattato di un vero e proprio processo di assimilazione dell’altro, nel senso che la “filosofia greca” è stata recepita ristrutturandone i presupposti dalle fondamenta, al fine di giustificarne una lettura “religiosa” che certo non era assente da quel pensiero, ma che altrettanto certamente non aveva i caratteri tipici di un monoteismo. Quel che di fatto è accaduto, che lo si voglia ammettere oppure no, è una progressiva e invasiva cristianizzazione della filosofia greca originaria, la quale si era sviluppata all’interno di un contesto in cui la cosmogonia e la cosmologia erano del tutto diverse, e inaccettabili dal punto di vista del cristianesimo, o almeno per quel cristianesimo che è riuscito a diventare dominante e che ha per così dire “fagocitato” le tradizioni precedenti cercando di farle corrispondere alla propria visione del mondo, evitando accuratamente, per quanto possibile, la tentazione del sincretismo, semplicemente perché lo riteneva (e lo ritiene) pericoloso per la 366 FLAVIA MONCERI propria stessa esistenza (cfr., fra gli altri, Kamstra 1989). Al di là di qualsiasi intento polemico, quel che mi preme sottolineare è che questo processo di assimilazione rende piuttosto singolare la diffusa idea – peraltro all’origine anche della possibilità di pensare la composizione di “manuali” della storia del pensiero filosofico “dall’origine ai nostri giorni” – che la filosofia possa essere considerata come qualcosa che si sviluppa in modo lineare, al punto che quella greca sarebbe quasi di necessità il presupposto della filosofia successiva e viceversa che la filosofia successiva sarebbe quasi di necessità lo sviluppo più adeguato di essa. In ciò, in fondo, consiste anche la sua coerenza. Al contrario, se davvero si volesse discutere dell’ambiguità tipica della filosofia, forse sarebbe proprio questa “invenzione” di una linea continua, necessaria e coerente a dover essere messa in discussione come un vero e proprio equivoco, perché in realtà sulla filosofia greca per come essa “fu” i filosofi successivi non possono dir nulla di definitivo, proprio perché il loro orizzonte di riferimento non è più lo stesso e la loro visione del mondo è ormai influenzata per sempre da un mutamento cosmologico irreversibile. Semmai, ciò che è strano è che nonostante questo i filosofi successivi abbiano potuto sentirsi eredi di una visione filosofica del mondo che non poteva essere la loro e che continuino ancora oggi a sentirsi tali. Infatti, è ormai del tutto chiaro che la cosiddetta “tradizione” filosofica non è altro che un’invenzione dalla quale l’ambiguità non può essere espunta da un lato perché costitutiva dell’operazione di assimilazione cui è stato sottoposto il pensiero greco, senza alcun riguardo per la sua particolare visione del mondo, benché essa non si sia potuta condurre senza alcun “residuo”, per così dire. Dall’altro lato, tale espunzione è impossibile perché persino nei casi in cui si dà una consapevolezza del problema (per fare un solo nome su tutti, in Nietzsche), non si riesce a trarne la conseguenza definitiva, ossia che la cosiddetta tradizione filosofica è fondata su un banale equivoco, seppur denso di conseguenze. Tale equivoco, fra l’altro, ha condotto e conduce alla scorretta idea che sarebbe possibile pensare filosoficamente senza alcun riferimento a una visione cosmologica, a una particolare visione dell’ordine del mondo basato su principi altrettanto particolari. Insomma, che sarebbe possibile rendere la filosofia qualcosa di universale, mentre, per restare al “nostro” caso, la tradizione filosofica occidentale è e rimane legata al cristianesimo e alla sua visione del mondo, anche quando viene rifiutata. Ciò implica che per superare l’ambiguità che Fabris ritiene tipica della filosofia occidentale sarebbe necessario svincolarla dal suo legame esclusivo con una certa cosmologia e mettere alla prova il suo ordine attraverso l’esercizio radicale, la disciplina dell’amore per il sapere, provando a minimizzarne, se non a superarne, i condizionamenti. È per questo motivo, peraltro, che la filosofia moderna e poi contemporanea non ha una capacità veramente innovativa: perché non vuole e non riesce a uscire dalla visione del mondo cristiana. Del resto, se lo facesse, sarebbe costretta a dichiarare la propria morte nella forma attuale, 367 L’equivoco della “filosofia” e le ambiguità della “coerenza” visto che la filosofia moderna occidentale è vissuta in simbiosi con la visione religiosa dominante che ha forgiato la sua identità. Si può infatti condividere l’affermazione di Karl Löwith secondo cui «il percorso della storia della filosofia porta dalla cosmo-teologia greca all’emancipazione dell’uomo, passando per l’antropo-teologia cristiana», per cui «la filosofia diventa antropologica nella stessa misura in cui l’uomo si emancipa dal cosmo divino dei Greci e dal Dio sovrannaturale della Bibbia e, infine, assume su di sé la creazione del mondo umano» (Löwith 1967/2018: 5-6). E tuttavia, rimane il fatto che questa sorta di “liberazione” dell’uomo dal mondo – e da Dio – non implica affatto il superamento delle ambiguità che in tale processo sono destinate a rimanere insite, perché non implicano l’invenzione di una “nuova” cosmologia, ma derivano da una progressiva opera di assimilazione di fondamenti cosmologici diversi mai radicalmente presi in considerazione nella loro differenza. In definitiva, se come afferma di nuovo Leo Strauss, «precisare il problema della cosmologia significa rispondere alla domanda che cos’è la filosofia e che cos’è il filosofo» (Strauss 1959/1977: 69), si può concluderne che l’intera “tradizione” della filosofia occidentale, avendo evitato e continuando a evitare di farlo in modo consapevole e radicale, non potrà mai risolvere le proprie ambiguità. Sfortunatamente, quindi, rimanere all’interno di tali ambiguità non è d’aiuto neppure a chi voglia presentare una filosofia (e soprattutto un’etica) dell’ambiguità. Infatti, nonostante tutte le sue cautele, quando considera l’attacco e la (presunta) disfatta del Dio monoteistico e di conseguenza della metafisica, a partire dalla fine dell’Ottocento, neppure Fabris manca di sottolineare che «le sue conseguenze sono comunque state, su di un piano teorico, l’emergere di posizioni radicalmente nichilistiche e, su di un piano pratico, l’insorgere dei fondamentalismi, vissuti come immediata reazione a tale nichilismo diffuso. È la situazione che stiamo vivendo oggi» (Fabris 2020: 36). A parte l’involontaria evocazione di un qualche sotterraneo legame fra nichilismo e fondamentalismo che data la mia posizione filosofica personale non può farmi piacere, anche nel caso di Fabris pare che la filosofia occidentale, con tutta la sua emancipazione, stia o cada allo stare o al cadere della propria cosmologia – vale a dire che continua a dipendere dal proprio Dio (cristiano). In definitiva, di nuovo e per assurdo, se la filosofia occidentale si ponesse oggi il compito di prendere sul serio la propria dipendenza dal cristianesimo (o se lo si preferisce dai monoteismi), dovrebbe essere pronta a veder crollare le fondamenta del proprio magnifico edificio. Per quanto mi riguarda, tuttavia, tale prima questione non mi appassiona quanto la seconda, perché per me essa non è altrettanto problematica del fatto che l’invenzione e la costruzione di quell’edificio sono state operate facendone pagare il prezzo a tutte le altre opzioni possibili, dentro e fuori dal cosiddetto “Occidente”. È infatti la seconda questione aperta, quella dell’etnocentrismo della filosofia per come è stata immaginata e ricostruita in un’unica tradizione, quella che ritengo 368 FLAVIA MONCERI molto più rilevante e più urgente da considerare. Se infatti la filosofia tradizionale che Fabris mette in discussione fosse considerata soltanto una opzione fra molte possibili, lo svelarne le ambiguità sarebbe un problema soltanto per coloro che hanno deciso di abbracciare tale opzione. Purtroppo, però, il vero problema sta nel fatto che tale immagine della filosofia continua a essere considerata come l’unica possibile e legittima – l’unica cui possa essere attribuito il venerabile nome di “filosofia”. Da questo punto di vista, ciò che colpisce nel lavoro di Fabris esattamente come nella stragrande maggioranza dei lavori che potrebbero essere ricondotti a una discussione sulla “crisi” della filosofia e sulle vie per rivitalizzarla, è che non c’è alcun confronto con modi altri di FilosoFare. Pur avendola cercata, non ho trovato alcuna discussione, e su un piano di parità, delle posizioni di filosofi e filosofe altre, minoritarie, escluse o “non-occidentali” nel libro che sto considerando. Di nuovo, nel caso in esame ciò non sarebbe un problema se Fabris esplicitamente affermasse che la filosofia (e di conseguenza, l’etica) di cui parla è soltanto una delle forme che l’amore per il sapere (o se lo si preferisce, della ricerca della verità) può assumere, una forma particolare, culturalmente condizionata e parziale, da mettere alla prova di altre forme e da considerare come sempre provvisoria. Ma le cose non stanno così, come sembra potersi desumere dalla già menzionata esplicita adesione alla tradizione della filosofia occidentale e a quella soltanto. Uno dei risultati di tale posizione sta nel fatto che la soluzione ai problemi dell’universalismo indotto dall’accettazione dogmatica del principio come condizione di possibilità dell’accordo sulla verità viene rintracciata nell’idea che si possa trasformare l’universale in «una possibilità» che «riconosciamo nei nostri concetti, nel nostro linguaggio, nelle forme secondo cui l’essere umano si comporta», ma che opera soltanto «come una tendenza, una promessa, un impegno» (Fabris 2020: 122-123). In altri termini, secondo Fabris «per ottenere una condivisione universale sia dei criteri del nostro conoscere che dei principi del nostro agire, non è detto che questa condivisione sia da assumere come qualcosa di previamente già garantito e indipendente da noi», visto che «si può vivere tale condizione come una possibilità di cui ci accorgiamo, riconoscerla come caratteristica fondamentale dell’essere umano – quella per cui l’essere umano è quello che è –, indicare come attivarla e motivare a farlo concretamente» (123). Non abbiamo dunque bisogno, come pare di capire, di un’universalità astratta e già definita a priori come la cornice di riferimento del pensare e dell’agire, e anzi «l’universalità di trasforma in universalizzabilità» (123). Se si opera questo spostamento, attraverso alcuni passaggi che Fabris delinea nel seguito, il risultato è che non si ha più «un universale dogmaticamente presupposto, ma c’è la scelta di attuare l’universalizzabilità», che però, come immediatamente aggiunge «è uno spazio di sintesi, non un esercizio di sincretismo», così come «non accoglie il “Politeismo dei valori” come quieto spazio in cui tutti hanno ragione (e 369 L’equivoco della “filosofia” e le ambiguità della “coerenza” insieme torto), ma promuove l’impegno per una verità condivisa», rifiutando allo stesso tempo «posizioni ambigue» per basarsi invece qsu precise alternative, perché solo da esse possono svilupparsi quelle scelte coerenti da cui partire per intraprendere il percorso di condivisione» (125). Ne emergerebbe così una situazione nella quale «la condivisione può crescere ed estendersi: estendersi tendenzialmente a ogni pensiero, a ogni azione, a ogni cosa», in modo da far sì che alla fine «l’universale, invece di essere un’assunzione astratta, un ideale regolativo o un’utopia irraggiungibile, si trasforma, grazie alle mediazioni operate dall’universalizzabilità, in qualcosa di reale» (125). Pare dunque chiaro prima di tutto cosa questa universalizzabilità non è: non è sincretismo e non è riconoscimento del “politeismo dei valori” e dunque, aggiungo io, non ha granché da imparare da altre opzioni, a meno che esse non riconoscano il valore dell’universalizzabilità. E tuttavia, mi viene da chiedere, quest’ultima in cosa sarebbe davvero differente da un processo attraverso il quale far rientrare dalla finestra, per così dire, quell’universalità che si è cacciata dalla porta? Se infatti l’universalità della filosofia (occidentale moderna) non può più essere accettata dal punto di vista teorico, viene tuttavia mantenuto lo strumento attraverso il quale fin da sempre essa ha tentato di farsi valere, d’imporsi a livello globale estirpando le opzioni altre all’interno e all’esterno dell’Occidente, bollate, fra l’altro, come “sincretismo” e “nichilismo” (politeismo dei valori). Dunque il passaggio dalla filosofia teoretica (universalità) all’etica (universalizzabilità), implica nient’altro che il mantenimento di un processo attraverso il quale ancora una volta si presuppone la liceità di una visione universalistica, la quale viene solo dislocata spaziotemporalmente, dandola come una possibilità – e tuttavia come l’unica possibilità per superare i “mali del presente”. Detto altrimenti, l’universalizzabilità porta all’universalità come suo “fine naturale”, riducendo progressivamente la pluralità del mondo alle alternative di un dualismo che è ancora una volta tipico di un certo modo d’intendere il “sapere” e non qualcosa di quasi-inscritto nel codice genetico dell’essere umano, come invece pare di desumere anche dalla formulazione di Fabris. Il vero problema, infatti, anche e soprattutto per chi voglia sostenere il primato dell’etica, è quello relativo al dove situare e al come comportarsi con quegli esseri umani – e non sono pochi – che rifiutano e continueranno a rifiutare tanto l’universalità, quanto l’universalizzabilità. Se infatti quest’ultima fosse davvero una possibilità fra tante e non l’unica possibilità, rimarrebbe aperto uno spazio anche per il sincretismo e per il nichilismo, che invece vengono esplicitamente esclusi. Quindi, dove situare e come comportarsi con coloro che non accetteranno mai questa visione totalizzante per la quale l’universalità dovrà trasformarsi «in qualcosa di reale»? Forse, come pare, si dovrebbe presumere che lo faranno, sfruttando una tipica mossa di quella stessa tradizione filosofia di cui si denuncia proprio questa ambiguità, perché si renderanno (prima o poi) conto che la «condivisione 370 FLAVIA MONCERI universale» è una «caratteristica fondamentale dell’essere umano – quella per cui l’essere umano è quello che è». Ma resterebbe comunque il problema di dove situare e come comportarsi con coloro che per ora non lo fanno. In definitiva, siamo qui giunti alla vera difficoltà che affligge anche la ricostruzione di Fabris, perché rimane intrappolata nelle stesse ambiguità che denuncia: il rifiuto di accettare che se il filosofare è un Fare, allora contano anche, e prima di tutto, le infinite posizioni individuali di valore, gli infiniti conflitti inevitabili che da esse scaturiscono e le infinite relazioni di potere attraverso le quali tali conflitti vengono negoziati, superati e risolti (in modo a sua volta più o meno conflittuale), al di là di un astratto ideale di giustizia. A mio avviso, il filosofo che non scrive libri, come fu Socrate, questo lo sapeva perché, fra le molte cose che sapeva di non sapere, forse, e senza voler qui fare il processo alle sue intenzioni, sapeva anche di non sapere che cosa propriamente fosse una coerenza astrattamente intesa, senza per questo doversi ritenere meno coerente come filosofo. Forse Socrate sapeva che l’ingiustizia è parte dell’esperienza proprio come lo è la giustizia, e mi piace pensare che abbia scelto di accettarla proprio come ultimo segno della sua superiore conoscenza e non come l’inevitabile rassegnazione all’ignoranza dei più, ancora non illuminati dalla verità. In conclusione, ciò sancisce il primato non della coerenza, ma della consapevolezza, qualcosa cui la filosofia occidentale ha rinunciato quando, a un certo punto della sua storia, ha intrapreso la via dell’autoreferenzialità, una via che ha condannato all’impotenza anche l’etica. Infatti, essa è stata considerata non (più) un terreno di disciplina del sé individuale immersa nelle solo apparenti contraddizioni dell’ambiente complesso in cui l’essere umano è (fortunatamente) obbligato a vivere, ma come una “scienza dei valori comuni” che pur con la lodevole intenzione d’indirizzare per il meglio le interazioni fra l’umano e il suo ambiente (umano e non-umano) e le relazioni che ne emergono, purtroppo non poche volte ha ritenuto accettabile farlo sacrificando chi non ne riconosceva il primato. BIBLIOGRAFIA Bateson, Gregory (1970/2015). Form, Substance and Difference. ETC: A Review of General Semantics, 72 (1), pp. 90-104. Fabris, Adriano (2010). TeorEtica. Filosofia della relazione. Brescia: Morcelliana. Fabris, Adriano (2016). RelAzione. Una filosofia performativa. Brescia: Morcelliana. Fabris, Adriano (2020). Etica e ambiguità. Una filosofia della coerenza. Brescia: Morcelliana. Kamstra, Jacques H. (1989). The Religion of Japan: Syncretism or Religious Phenomenalism?, in Jerald D. Gort, Hendrik M. Vroom, Rein Fernhout and Anton Wessels (eds.), Dialogue and Syncretism: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Grand Rapids, MI- Amsterdam: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.-Editions Rodopi, pp. 134-145. 371 L’equivoco della “filosofia” e le ambiguità della “coerenza” Lorde, Audre (1979/2002). The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, in Cherríe L. Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa (eds.), This Bridge Called Me Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, 3rd edn. Berkeley: Third Woman Press, pp. 106-109. Löwith, Karl (1967/2018). Dio, uomo e mondo nella metafisica da Cartesio a Nietzsche. Roma: Donzelli. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2007). General introduction: Reinventing social emancipation: Toward New Manifestos, in B. de Sousa Santos (Ed.), Democratizing democracy: beyond the liberal democratic canon. London: Verso, pp. xvii–xxxiii. Strauss, Leo (1959/1977). Che cos’è la filosofia politica?, in Che cos’è la filosofia politica? Scritti su Hobbes e altri saggi, a cura di P.F. Taboni. Urbino: Argalia, pp. 3388. 373 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 373-386 ISSN: 1825-5167 LA CREAZIONE DI FRONTE AL NICHILISMO GIACOMO SAMEK LODOVICI Dipartimento di Filosofia Università Cattolica di Milano giacomo.sameklodovici@unicatt.it ABSTRACT In Etica e ambiguità, Fabris dedicates some pages to the theme of nihilism and the dismay it entails: the fear that everything can be annihilated and that everything tends to be nothing in itself, and has neither consistency nor value. This paper first distinguishes a dramatic nihilism and a ‘ludic’ one and argues about the possible ethical fruitfulness of the nihilism’s dismay. Then it reflects on the anti-nihilist consequences of the perspective of creatio ex nihilo, that does not presuppose anything. K EYWORDS Nihilism, creation, conservation, freedom Nel suo Etica e ambiguità. Una filosofia della coerenza (Morcelliana, Brescia 2020), oggetto del presente symposium di «Etica & politica», Fabris dedica alcune pagine al tema del nichilismo (cfr. specialmente le pp. 107-115; anche nel seguito del presente contributo i numeri di pagina nel corpo del testo saranno riferimenti al testo di Fabris). NICHILISMO DRAMMATICO E NICHILISMO LUDICO Ci sono svariate accezioni di questo termine1 e Fabris lo definisce e lo investiga quale «condizione in cui l’essere “è” nulla» e quale «idea che è in Per alcune accezioni del termine nichilismo e per alcune forme del nichilismo cfr. Forme del nichilismo contemporaneo, numero monografico di «Teoria», 40 (2020) 1, curato dallo stesso Fabris e da A. Roche de Torre. Gli stessi coordinano l’International Center of Studies on Contemporary Nihilism sul cui sito sono menzionate decine di titoli sul nichilismo, cfr. http://nihilismocontemporaneo.com.co/en/home-2/. Cfr. anche, per es., C. Esposito, Il 1 374 GIACOMO SAMEK LODOVICI grado di produrre nell’essere umano uno stato d’animo specifico», perché il nichilismo comporta un disorientamento, «una paura2 ben precisa: la paura che tutto ciò che è possa essere annullato e che dunque, tendenzialmente, di per sé sia nulla, non abbia né consistenza né valore». Parmenide, dice Fabris, è il primo pensatore che mette a fuoco questa paura e formula il principio di non contraddizione (che nella formulazione parmenidea, in buona sostanza, dice: «l’essere è non può non essere, il non essere non è e non può in alcun modo essere»3) per ‘mettere in sicurezza’ l’essere. Io aggiungo che Gorgia è probabilmente il primo autore ad affermare proprio che «l’essere non esiste»4. In tali pagine Fabris svolge una breve storia, inevitabilmente sintetica dato il contesto, del nichilismo e dei tentativi di debellarlo, partendo appunto da Parmenide, e poi passando a Platone, Cartesio, Jean Paul, Jacobi, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger e altri. In aggiunta ai riferimenti fatti da Fabris, credo che siano efficaci, per esempio, due citazioni. Se Nietzsche scrive in una pagina drammatica dei Frammenti postumi 1885 che il mondo è «un mostro di forza, senza principio e senza fine, una salda, bronzea massa di forza [«di energia»5], che non diviene né più grande né più piccola, che non si consuma ma soltanto si trasforma», è «attorniato dal “nulla”» è «un mare di forze tumultuanti e infurianti in se stesse, in perpetuo mutamento […] con un flusso e riflusso delle sue figure, passando dalle più semplici alle più complicate, da ciò che è più tranquillo, rigido, freddo a ciò che è più ardente, selvaggio e contraddittorio, e ritornando poi dal molteplice al semplice, dal giuoco delle contraddizioni fino al piacere dell’armonia […], benedicendo se stesso come ciò che ritorna in eterno, come un divenire che non conosce sazietà, disgusto, stanchezza»: è un «mondo dionisiaco del perpetuo creare se stesso, del perpetuo distruggere se stesso […] al di là del bene e del male, senza scopo […] – Questo mondo è la volontà di potenza – nichilismo del nostro tempo. Una cronaca, Carocci, Roma 2021, F. Volpi, Il nichilismo, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2004 (edizione riveduta e accresciuta) e, relativamente a Nietzsche, G. Fornero - S. Tassinari, Filosofie del Novecento, Bruno Mondadori, Milano 2002, pp. 40-43. Ma la letteratura è sterminata. 2 Che Fabris distingue dall’angoscia (Angst) di cui parla Heidegger. 3 Parmenide, frammenti 2, 4 e 6, in G. Giannantoni (a cura di), I presocratici. Testimonianze e frammenti, Laterza, Roma-Bari 1969, vol. I, pp. 271-272. 4 Gorgia, Del non essere, in G. Giannantoni (a cura di), I presocratici, cit., vol. II, pp. 91617. 5 Come dice il passo pressoché identico che si trova in F. Nietzsche, La volontà di potenza. Frammenti postumi ordinati da Peter Gast e Elisabeth Föster-Nietzsche, tr. it. Bompiani, Milano 20014, § 1067. 375 La creazione di fronte al nichilismo e nient’altro!»6, ebbene se dunque Nietzsche (in senso simile a Eraclito) in questo passo si esprime sul continuo flusso e riflusso delle figure transitorie dell’essere che scompaiono nel divenire, sulla continua distruzione dell’essere operata dalla volontà di potenza, il nichilismo che stiamo considerando reputa che anche ciò che produce e distrugge gli essenti transitori (per Nietzsche la volontà di potenza) sia esposto al rischio dell’annichilimento. E se Foucault scrive che la Vita sta «Dall’altro lato di tutte le cose che sono, ma al di qua di quelle che possono essere, sostenendole per farle apparire, e distruggendole senza posa attraverso la violenza della morte», cioè è «una forza fondamentale [...] è la radice di ogni esistenza», così «vi è essere solo perché vi è vita, e nel moto fondamentale che li destina alla morte, gli esseri dispersi e stabili si formano per un istante, si arrestano, la rapprendono [...] per essere a loro volta distrutti da tale forza inesauribile» e la Vita è «ciò che li porta un istante a una forma precaria e segretamente già li insidia dall’interno per distruggerli. Nei riguardi della vita, gli esseri sono soltanto figure transitorie» , ebbene se Foucault dice questo, il nichilismo che stiamo considerando assevera che anche la Vita potrebbe scomparire per sempre. Inoltre, il nichilismo ontologico inteso da Fabris nel modo sopra definito implica, facilmente, anche il nichilismo esistenziale ed etico-valoriale. Pertanto gli esseri umani sono considerati «miliardi di sonnambuli che vanno verso il caos»8 e verso il nulla. Dunque la questione di cui parla Fabris è di capitale importanza. Ma oggigiorno molti esseri umani non colgono il pathos e la drammaticità di una concezione nichilistica come questa. Infatti, oggi prevale sempre di più un nichilismo ludico, pacificato, privo di tensione, ironico (cioè che non prende sul serio la vita), che inoltre in certi casi considera tutto (o quasi tutto) fittizio , che ritiene virtuale la realtà, e pertanto si sente confermato dalla proliferazione di mondi virtuali informatici. C’è insomma un sempre più diffuso nichilismo che vuole ludicamente ed edonisticamente vivere senza pathos in un mondo dove Dio è morto, e che è «immune da stupore e 7 9 F. Nietzsche, Frammenti postumi 1884-1885, tr. it. Adelphi, Milano 1975, vol. VII, tomo III, 38 [12], pp. 292-293. Il passo si trova pressoché identico in F. Nietzsche, La volontà di potenza, cit., § 1067. Sull’attendibilità de La volontà di potenza come testo che esprime il vero pensiero di Nietzsche cfr. M. Ferraris, Storia della volontà di potenza, in ibi, pp. 563-688, specialmente pp. 675-677, 683-688, e D. Losurdo, Nietzsche, il ribelle aristocratico. Biografia intellettuale e bilancio critico, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2014 (nuova edizione ampliata), pp. 767-806. 7 M. Foucault, Le mots et le choses, Gallimard, Paris 1966, tr. it. Le parole e le cose. Un’archeologia delle scienze umane, Rizzoli, Milano 1967, p. 301. 8 A. Caraco, Breviario del caos, Adelphi, Milano 1998, p. 62. Non ci interessa qui soffermarci su Caraco, bensì solo riprendere questa citazione in senso letterale. 9 Vattimo definisce «estetico» questo nichilismo, per esempio in G. Vattimo, Dopo la cristianità, Garzanti, Milano 2002, p. 57. 6 376 GIACOMO SAMEK LODOVICI commozione», ed inserito in un «processo di “atarassia”», cosicché «L’ironia “post-moderna” […] non è percossa dalla realtà. Non conosce i tormenti del ‘dubbio’ […] non vive l’angoscia derivante dalla percezione del nulla» . Ecco allora una domanda che rivolgo a Fabris: come ridestare nel nichilista ‘gaio’ lo sgomento spesso salutare che egli dovrebbe esperire stando immerso in tale concezione? 10 UNO SGOMENTO SALUTARE Lo ritengo spesso salutare non solo nel caso in cui il nichilismo sia falso, ma anche nel caso in cui il nichilismo sia vero. Infatti, se il nichilismo è falso, esperire il senso della sua drammaticità può spronare a cercare una via d’uscita a livello sia teorico sia morale. Se il nichilismo è falso professarlo sul piano teorico significa essere preda dell’errore, e sul piano etico vivere nichilisticamente è una condizione di disperazione (per dirla, mutatis mutandis, con Kierkegaard), una condizione malata, di cui bisogna essere consapevoli per guarirne . E qualora invece il nichilismo fosse vero, sapere di poter sprofondare nel nulla può provocare due esiti principali, il secondo dei quali è prezioso. Da un lato può produrre l’edonismo del carpe diem, che però è già molto frequente nel nichilista gaio, cosicché una simile consapevolezza della minaccia del nulla non deteriora l’agire di questo soggetto, o lo deteriora poco. Dall’altro è vero che può paralizzare l’agire, ma può anche al contrario sollecitare a vivere in pienezza l’attimo presente, se non eternizzandolo in senso simil nietzscheano però valorizzandolo, sapendo che potrebbe essere l’ultimo. Può per esempio sollecitare a vivere le relazioni interpersonali (che giustamente stanno particolarmente a cuore a Fabris, cfr. pp. 51 e ss. e i suoi testi che citerò in nota) cercando almeno di non guastarle, di non rovinarle o di risanarle appena possibile. Esprime parzialmente questi concetti una poesia di Borges (che, pur difficilmente classificabile, era appunto vicino al nichilismo, o che almeno non aveva una prospettiva metafisica): 11 C’è un verso di Verlaine che non ricorderò mai più, c’è una strada vicina ormai vietata ai miei passi, c’è uno specchio che mi ha visto per l’ultima volta, c’è una porta che ho chiuso sino alla fine del mondo. Tra i libri della mia biblioteca (li sto vedendo) ce n’è qualcuno che non tornerò ad aprire. M. Borghesi, Secolarizzazione e nichilismo. Cristianesimo e cultura contemporanea, Cantagalli, Siena 2005, pp. 51-55. 11 S. Kierkegaard, La malattia mortale, tr. it. in Id., Opere, Sansoni, Firenze 1972, p. 641. 10 377 La creazione di fronte al nichilismo Questa estate compirò cinquanta anni; la morte, incessante, mi consuma12. Ciò che Borges dice della morte (e che in prospettiva religioso-escatologica comporta il monito «estote parati»13), nella versione di nichilismo che stiamo considerando può essere riferito in generale al nulla che tutto potrebbe divorare. Già Eraclito diceva che gli opposti si danno senso e che apprezziamo le cose quando ci mancano14: possiamo apprezzare di più le cose e vivere bene le relazioni interpersonali se sappiamo che potrebbero scomparire nel nulla, se sappiamo che quel verso di Verlaine potremmo non assaporarlo mai più, che quel libro lo stiamo leggendo per l’ultima volta, che quella relazione infranta potremmo non avere il tempo di restaurarla, che quell’alterco potrebbe essere l’ultima parola di un rapporto interpersonale. LA CREAZIONE Alle pp. 109-110 Fabris accenna ad alcune interpretazioni della nozione di creazione e ad alcune delle sue conseguenze anti-nichiliste: «Dio, creando, trae bensì l’essere dal nulla, ma in tal modo ne garantisce la consistenza e lo fa pur sempre trionfare sul nulla stesso, che ne risulta alla fine superato, ‘vinto’», fermo restando che «come la creatura viene salvata dal nulla grazie all’atto creatore di Dio, così può ricadere nello stesso abisso». Senza tematizzare le varie interpretazioni della nozione di creazione, io di seguito vorrei brevemente riflettere sulle conseguenze anti-nichiliste della prospettiva della creazione intesa come elargizione d’essere a ciò che prima non esisteva per niente, come elargizione d’essere che non presuppone niente15, nemmeno un caos precedente16. 12 J.L. Borges, Limiti, in Id., L’artefice, tr. it. Adelphi, Milano 1999. 13 Mt, 24,44. 14 Eraclito, frammento 111 [104 b], in G. Giannantoni (a cura di), I presocratici, cit., p. 218. Su questo tema, in chiave soprattutto teologica e in rapporto alla scienza e alla cosmologia contemporanea cfr., per esempio, G. Tanzella-Nitti, Creazione, in G. Tanzella-Nitti – A. Strumia (a cura di), Dizionario interdisciplinare di scienza e fede, Urbaniana University Press – Città Nuova 2002, pp. 300-321, reperibile su https://disf.org/creazione. 15 G. Scholem, menzionato anche da Fabris, in Über einige Grundbegriffe des Judentums, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1970, tr. it. Concetti fondamentali dell’ebraismo, Marietti, Genova 1986, pp. 49 e ss. riferisce che nella tradizione esegetica ebraica c’è controversia sull’interpretazione del temine barah (= creare) presente nell’Antico Testamento. Alcuni esegeti del mondo ebraico lo interpretano infatti come un intervento su qualcosa di preesistente (il tohu wa-bohu, che designa ciò che è caotico, oppure la luce). 16 378 GIACOMO SAMEK LODOVICI Intesa in questo senso, quello (per esempio) della metafisica di Agostino e Tommaso, la creazione è un inizio assoluto del mondo, distinto da Dio, che invece è eterno. Inteso in questo senso, il termine creazione non va compreso nel significato delle espressioni del linguaggio ordinario, con le quali diciamo per esempio che qualcuno ha creato un nuovo genere musicale, ha creato una nuova forma espressiva, un capolavoro, un nuovo strumento tecnologico, ecc. Infatti, in tutti questi casi, il ‘creatore’ di queste cose nuove utilizza qualcosa di preesistente (per esempio, il creatore di una nuova pietanza utilizza almeno alcuni alimenti preesistenti). Invece la creazione di cui stiamo ragionando non è la trasformazione di qualcosa di preesistente, non interviene su un X previo, non accade ex aliquo, bensì fa essere un’entità che prima non esisteva per nulla, fa essere la totalità del mondo e dei primi enti che lo compongono, che prima non esistevano assolutamente. Ora, la creazione intesa in questo senso dalla metafisica è un concetto inedito rispetto alla filosofia greca: i Greci non lo avevano raggiunto. Il filosofo che vi si avvicinato di più è stato Platone, che – com’è noto – parla17 di un Demiurgo divino che plasma la materia dando forma alle varie entità, e lo fa appunto intervenendo sulla materia preesistente, che per Platone è eterna. Ora, come dice giustamente Kant18, noi siamo abituati a pensare le cose collocandole in un certo tempo e dislocandole in un certo spazio, le immaginiamo conferendo loro nella nostra mente una qualche raffigurazione visiva, cosicché pensiamo al nulla immaginandoci, per esempio, uno sfondo nero e privo di luce. Ma la parola «nulla» della creatio ex nihilo (intesa come la stiamo esaminando) non designa il vuoto, bensì il non essere assoluto (più o meno come lo intendeva Parmenide), di cui c’è sì un concetto mentale, ma a cui non corrisponde qualcosa di reale: il nulla, così inteso, lo pensiamo e lo nominiamo, ma non esiste. Ora, mediante la creazione Dio fa essere totalmente delle cose e fa essere anche il tempo, che ‘prima’ della creazione non esisteva, perché non esisteva alcun prima. Come dice Agostino «non è nel tempo che tu [Dio] precedi i tempi»19. Platone, Timeo, 29E-30A. I. Kant, Critica della ragion pura, tr. it. Laterza, Roma-Bari 1969, pp. 67-83. 19 Agostino, Confessioni, 11, 13, 16. Sulla trattazione della creazione in Tommaso cfr., per es., Summa Theologiae, I, qq. 44-46, q. 104 e Summa Contra Gentiles, II, 15-21. Una ripresa di questi 17 18 testi (con la menzione di altri passi tommasiani) e una disamina del tema della creazione in A.L. Gonzalez, Teología natural, EUNSA, Pamplona 1982, tr. it. Filosofia di Dio, Le Monnier, Firenze 1988, pp. 228-255 e in F. Copleston, Storia della filosofia, tr. it. Paideia, Brescia 1971, vol. II, pp. 340-344, 461-472. 379 La creazione di fronte al nichilismo E mentre per il panteismo Dio coincide col mondo o almeno con alcune componenti del mondo, il concetto di creazione marca la distinzione e la differenza ontologica tra Dio e mondo: Dio è come un artista, per es. un pittore, che si esprime e in qualche modo si ‘riflette’ nel quadro dipinto, ma che è distinto dal quadro. D’altro canto, Dio non è il totalmente-altro dal mondo: tra Dio e le creature c’è una qualche analogia20, vale a dire c’è una molto grande dissomiglianza ma anche una qualche somiglianza, sebbene molto lieve, perlomeno perché Dio è l’Essere e tutte le creature hanno l’essere21. Infatti, l’analogia esprime una somiglianza, magari minima, ma non un’uguaglianza, designa una somiglianza ma anche una dissomiglianza. Inoltre la creazione differisce dalla generazione, in cui il generato proviene dal generante, da qualcosa che proviene dal generante (per esempio dai gameti, che a loro volta provengono dalla sostanza del generante, nel caso della generazione umana, che è sessuata; oppure, nel caso della generazione asessuata, tramite scissione di un vivente, tramite gemmazione, talea, ecc.) ed in cui il generato è dello stesso genere del generante, nella misura in cui «omne generans generat sibi simile»22. LA CONSERVAZIONE NELL’ESSERE E LA RELAZIONE Ora, secondo questa prospettiva la creazione è anche conservazione23. Per esempio, secondo Agostino «la potenza del Creatore e l’energia dell’Onnipotente e dell’Onnipresente24 è la causa per cui sussiste ogni creatura; se questa energia cessasse un sol momento di governare gli esseri creati, finirebbe allo stesso tempo anche la loro essenza, e ogni natura cadrebbe nel nulla. Poiché Dio non è come un costruttore che, dopo aver costruito un edificio, se ne va, ma la sua opera sussiste anche quando egli cessa di agire e se ne va; il mondo invece non potrebbe continuare a esistere neppure un batter d’occhio se Dio gli sottraesse la sua azione reggitrice»25. Cfr. per esempio A.L. Gonzalez, Filosofia di Dio, cit., pp. 137-159. Poi questa somiglianza può crescere, come avviene per l’uomo, che è anche imago Dei, sia in forza della sua ragione e della sua volontà-amore, sia perché egli può, se vuole, amare Dio, il quale ama se stesso: in questo modo l’uomo diventa sempre più imago Dei. 22 Tommaso, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 27, a. 4. Così, per la teologia cristiana l’unico Generato (e non creato) dal Padre è il Figlio, che è della stessa sostanza del Padre. 23 Tommaso, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 104 e Id., De potentia, q. 5, specialmente aa. 1, 3, 4 e 7. Cfr. anche K. Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. III, The Doctrine of Creation § 48-49, T&T Clark, New York 2009, pp. 56-88. 24 Per Agostino tale onnipresenza non va intesa nel senso immanentistico-panteistico, bensì come presenza di ogni cosa a Dio, che ogni cosa conosce, e appunto come conservazione degli enti. 25 Agostino, De Genesis ad Litteram, IV, 12, 22. 20 21 380 GIACOMO SAMEK LODOVICI L’analogia di Tommaso è la seguente: il sole comunica la luce all’aria, che altrimenti rimarrebbe buia, e «come per la conservazione della luce occorre che perduri l’illuminazione del sole, così, perché le cose siano conservate nel loro essere, bisogna che Dio mantenga il loro essere incessantemente»26 (in certi casi come unica causa della loro conservazione, in altri casi adoperando anche delle cause seconde e rimanendo quella primaria27). E la conservazione non è una nuova azione creatrice bensì è la continuazione della stessa azione creatrice che dà l’essere alle cose28. Dunque per questi due autori la creazione non è una mera ‘spinta’ iniziale (come la concepirà per esempio Cartesio, criticato per questo da Pascal29) in seguito alla quale il mondo va avanti da solo, bensì comporta una relazione tra la creatura e il creatore, tra il mondo e Dio: in forza di tale rapporto il mondo comincia assolutamente ad esistere ed inoltre perdura, permane nell’essere invece che terminare e annichilirsi. Per usare un’immagine30, Dio tiene ogni cosa ed ogni essere umano sul palmo della sua mano, sotto la quale c’è l’abisso del nulla. A partire da tale concezione della creazione e del Creatore si tratta – in parte andando oltre Tommaso31 e semmai rifacendosi, per esempio, ad Agostino – di provare a pensare che a tale Principio dell’essere, a tale Principio che è Persona, possono essere applicate – fatte le debite specificazioni – le considerazioni che Fabris svolge sulla questione del principio. Dice infatti Fabris che «dobbiamo intendere il principio non solo come separato, ma anche come in relazione»32 (p. 44) e «la relazione è un agire, è un qualcosa di dinamico, è un relazionarsi» (p. 45) e dunque si tratta – per dirla con le parole con cui Fabris sintetizza la posizione di Agostino – di sottolineare il «primato della relazione» (p. 35). Recepire il primato della relazione e pensare nel modo appena menzionato il Principio è possibile, forse, se si salvaguarda sì che la creazione non comporta l’accadere di un cambiamento in Dio33, ma se nel contempo si prova a pensare (e non solo nell’ambito teologico trinitario) Dio in senso 26 Tommaso, Compendium Theologiae, I, 130. Cfr. anche Summa Theologiae, I, q. 104, a. 1. Tommaso, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 104, a. 2. Tommaso, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 104, a. 1, ad 4 e Id., De potentia, q. 5, a. 1, ad 2. 29 Pascal, Pensieri, 194 [B. 77], Rusconi, Milano 1973, p. 469. 30 Cfr. già Gregorio, Moralia in Job, XVI, 37, 45. 31 Secondo cui è reale la relazione tra il mondo e Dio, ma solo mentale quella tra Dio e il mondo, cfr. Summa Theologiae, I, q. 13, a. 7. 32 Sul tema della relazione cfr. già A. Fabris, TeorEtica. Filosofia della relazione, Morcelliana, Brescia 2010 e Id., RelAzione. Una filosofia performativa, Morcelliana, Brescia 2016. 33 Tommaso, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 13, a. 7. 27 28 381 La creazione di fronte al nichilismo costitutivamente relazionale34. Ma qui è possibile solo accennare a questa ipotesi di lavoro e a questa pista di ricerca. PERCHÉ DIO CREA? Va precisato che l’analogia della luce sopra menzionata per parlare della conservazione dell’essere non va presa alla lettera, e ciò per varie ragioni: per esempio perché il sole non può non diffondere luce, non può non illuminare, mentre Dio poteva non creare. In effetti, perché Dio crea? Per il già citato Tommaso, Dio possiede (per motivi che qui non è possibile riferire35) una serie di attributi: per esempio è Persona, è perfettamente buono, perciò non crea per qualsivoglia motivo malvagio, è libero, dunque non crea per costrizione né da parte della sua natura, né da parte di altro (e del resto prima della creazione non esiste alcun altro), è già da sempre assolutamente perfetto, dunque non crea per guadagnarci qualcosa, bensì crea per amore36. L’Essere Perfettissimo è sommamente libero37 e la creazione non consegue da un desiderio di perfezione38, bensì è motivata solo dall’amore, e Dio la decide per assoluta liberalità e gratuità. Ora, la creazione intesa nel modo fin qui esposto mi sembra un potente antidoto al nichilismo e alle sue conseguenze psicologiche. Infatti, da un lato è vero che l’essere creato deve essere conservato, ma dall’altro il Dio che crea senza presupporre nulla è un Dio-Persona-Amore, che vuole il perdurare dell’essere in generale e dell’essere umano in modo speciale. In effetti, E. Samek Lodovici ha ricostruito in Agostino una nozione di «relazione sostanziale» e di «sostanza relativa [sostanza relazionale]», ragion per cui gli enti ed il mondo «non possono essere considerati isolatamente […] come a sé stanti, ma vanno sempre visti in relazione» e per «riassumere in una formula l’intera costruzione della teologia filosofica agostiniana, […] tutto è relazione». Così, «Dio è in sé relazionalità», ma «anche rispetto al mondo [è] una relazione che non è né la sostanza né la relazione aristoteliche», Dio è «relazionalità [...] non soltanto in sé, ma anche riguardo a noi», cioè «non solo Dio, ma anche il mondo e il rapporto di Dio col mondo appaiano come una relazione», E. Samek Lodovici, Dio e mondo. Relazione, causa e spazio in S. Agostino, Studium, Roma 1979, pp. 215, 254, 325-326. 35 Cfr., per esempio, Tommaso, Summa Theologiae, I, qq. 3-13, Id., Summa contra Gentiles, I, 37-102. 36 Per es. Tommaso, Summa contra Gentiles, III, 24. Anche il Demiurgo di Platone plasma la materia per amore di bene (Timeo, 29E), ma, come sopra anticipato, Platone non parla di creazione bensì di plasmazione. 37 Cfr., per esempio, Tommaso, De Veritate, q. 23, a. 4: «solius Dei actio est pure liberalis». 38 Tommaso, Summa contra Gentiles, II, 28 e Id., In De Divinis Nominibus Expositio, c. IV, l. I, n. 269. 34 382 GIACOMO SAMEK LODOVICI RAPPORTO OPPURE CONTRAPPOSIZIONE TRA DIO E LIBERTÀ UMANA Però la concezione della creazione sembra precludere la libertà umana. Per esempio, per Marx, «Un essere […] è padrone di sé soltanto quando è debitore a se stesso della propria esistenza. […]. Ma io vivo completamente della grazia altrui quando sono debitore verso l’altro non soltanto del sostentamento della mia vita, ma anche quando questi ha oltre a ciò creato la mia vita, è la fonte della mia vita; e la mia vita ha necessariamente un tale fondamento fuori di sé, quando non è la mia propria creazione»39. Similmente, per Nietzsche, «che cosa mai resterebbe da creare, se gli dei esistessero!», e «se vi fossero dei, come potrei sopportare di non essere dio! Dunque non ci sono dei»40. Il ragionamento di questa linea di pensiero è articolato (grossomodo) nel seguente modo: 1. se Dio esiste, Dio è onnipotente; 2. se Dio è onnipotente non è possibile che un altro essere sia libero, tutto ciò che è diverso da Dio non può essere libero; 3. dunque, affinché l’uomo sia libero, Dio non deve esistere. Invece un’altra concezione, una certa versione di panteismo, vuole salvaguardare sia la libertà umana sia l’esistenza di Dio, perciò afferma la coincidenza dell’uomo con Dio. Il ragionamento è simile a quello precedente, perché le due premesse sono identiche, ma diverge nella conclusione: 1. se Dio esiste, Dio è onnipotente; 2. se Dio è onnipotente non è possibile che un altro essere sia libero, tutto ciò che è diverso da Dio non può essere libero (per dirla con Schelling, che a sua volta usa la sopra citata metafora del sole, ma con altri esiti: «come il sole nel firmamento spegne tutti gli astri del cielo, così, e molto più, la potenza infinita annulla ogni potenza finita»41); 3. dunque, affinché l’uomo sia libero, egli deve coincidere con Dio. K. Marx, Manoscritti economico-filosofici del 1844, tr. it. Einaudi, Torino 1949, 2004, p. 118. 40 F. Nietzsche, Così parlò Zarathustra, Adelphi, Milano 1968, vol. VI, tomo I, pp. 101102. 41 F. Schelling, Ricerche filosofiche sull’essenza della libertà umana e gli oggetti ad essa connessi, tr. it. (leggermente modificata) Rusconi, Milano 1996, p. 82-83. Cfr. C. Fabro, Atto esistenziale e impegno della libertà, in «Divus Thomas», 86 (1983), 2-3, pp. 138-141. 39 383 La creazione di fronte al nichilismo Così, per questa versione di panteismo, l’unica possibile conciliazione tra l’esistenza nonché l’onnipotenza divina e la libertà umana risiede nell’identità tra Dio e l’uomo: Dio si attua in ciascun uomo. C’è però anche una terza concezione ed è proprio quella della creazione, e Kierkegaard, in un passo del Diario, contesta la premessa 2, comune ad entrambi i precedenti ragionamenti. Per Kierkegaard, infatti, «soltanto l’Onnipotente può rendere veramente liberi»42: apparentemente – rileva Kierkegaard – questo sembra strano, perché l’onnipotenza di Dio dovrebbe comportare la dipendenza da Dio di tutto ciò che è altro da Dio. Ma soltanto l’Onnipotente è assolutamente perfetto e quindi non può guadagnare né acquisire nulla dal rapporto con ciò che è altro da sé; e proprio perché non può guadagnare nulla, può lasciargli la libertà. Di più, «soltanto l’Onnipotente può essere puro dono»: l’Onnipotente è colui che non ha bisogno di altro, quindi può lasciare libero l’uomo, senza farne un servo, senza realizzarsi nell’uomo, senza coincidere con lui, bensì creandolo distinto da sé ed amandolo, donandogli quanto l’uomo ha di buono. Così, la libertà di quell’essere finito che è l’uomo è reale e vera, ancorché non sia assoluta, ancorché sia una libertà finita. Per analogia un padre che vuole che il figlio cresca nella liberà lo ha generato (non creato, ma l’analogia che stiamo proponendo vale lo stesso) e senza la generazione il figlio non esisterebbe, ma tale generazione non preclude di per sé la libertà del figlio, che anzi è precisamente l’obiettivo di tale padre. LA POSITIVITÀ DELLA ANNICHILIMENTO MATERIA E IL SUO NON Nella prospettiva della creazione persino la materia è voluta da Dio, e a Dio preme che persino questa non scompaia nel nulla. Potremmo dire che, se Nietzsche ha perorato un «sì alla terra» (in un senso che qui non possiamo prendere in esame), la dottrina della creazione comporta un «sì alla terra» da parte di Dio, e richiede un corrispondente «sì alla terra» da parte dell’uomo (senza però rimanere «fedeli [solo] alla terra», come esorta Nietzsche43), un «sì» perfino alla materia: mentre la maggior parte dei greci disprezzava la materia, il concetto di creazione ha comportato un 42 43 S. Kierkegaard, Diario, VII A 181, tr. it. Morcelliana, Brescia 1980, n. 1017. F. Nietzsche, Così parlò Zarathustra, cit., p. 6. 384 GIACOMO SAMEK LODOVICI ribaltamento radicale e una valorizzazione anche della materia44: anche la materia è creata da Dio, dunque è positiva45. Viene così superata anche la svalutazione del corpo tipica dei filosofi Greci (l’unica eccezione significativa è Aristotele), che disdegnavano il corpo anzitutto perché è appunto costituito di materia, perché è vulnerabile e si ammala, ecc. Per esempio, per Platone il corpo è una sorta di carcere da cui cercare di evadere, una mera zavorra, e, ancora nel III secolo d.C., Plotino «si vergognava di essere in un corpo»46. E Tommaso da un lato dice sì che Dio potrebbe non conservare nell’essere le cose47, ma d’altro canto aggiunge (in un passo48 di cui non ci interessano tutte le affermazioni: alcune, almeno prese in senso letterale, non sembrano convincenti) che gli eventi accadono secondo la natura delle cose, tranne quando Dio interviene miracolosamente per manifestare la sua grazia. Ora, a suo giudizio, per la loro natura sono incorruttibili (per varie ragioni49) le entità spirituali (per es. lo spirito umano), ma non solo esse: per sua natura «è incorruttibile» anche la materia50, intesa quale «sostrato della generazione e della corruzione» dei corpi (mutatis mutandis, la scienza moderna dirà – cfr. il principio di Lavoisier – che la materia non si crea e non si distrugge, nemmeno con una conflagrazione nucleare, bensì cambia stato, configurazione, ecc.). Così, le entità spirituali e la materia potrebbero sì cessare di esistere per volere divino, ma non la distruzione delle cose bensì «la conservazione delle cose costituisce la prova più grande della potenza di Dio»: come dire (se non interpreto in modo errato) che è più facile distruggere che conservare nell’essere il mondo e che l’annichilazione del mondo «non serve alla Alla valorizzazione della materia ha contributo enormemente anche la dottrina dell’Incarnazione: Dio stesso assume la materia. 44 Sul piano teologico la materia viene considerata dai teologi cristiani possibile veicolo del sacro. Per esempio, quando il protocatarismo, per attaccare la dottrina della Chiesa sui sacramenti – che adoperano pane e vino per l’eucaristia, acqua per il battesimo, olii consacrati per la cresima, ecc. – asseriva che la materia, essendo malvagia, non poteva essere veicolo di comunicazione della grazia, Giovanni Damasceno rispose: «venero il creatore della materia, che [incarnandosi] è divenuto materia per amore mio e ha accettato di dimorare nella materia e attraverso la materia ha operato la mia salvezza […]. Non è materia il legno della croce tre volte prezioso e tre volte benedetto? Non sono materia la sacra e augusta montagna e la roccia [nella quale Gesù fu sepolto] che porta la vita, la santa tomba, la fonte della resurrezione [di Cristo]? Non sono materia l’inchiostro e il libro sacrosanto dei vangeli? Il tavolo [dell’altare su cui si celebra la messa] che porta la luce, che ci offre il pane [eucaristico] della vita, non è materia? […]. E, prima di tutto, il corpo e sangue del Signore non è materia?», Giovanni Damasceno, Contra imaginum calumniatores, I, 16. 45 Porfirio, Vita di Plotino, I, 1. Tommaso, De potentia, q. 5, a. 3, e Summa Theologiae, I, q. 104, a. 3. 48 Summa Theologiae, I, q. 104, a. 4 e ad 1. 49 Cfr. Tommaso, De anima, q. 14 e Summa contra Gentiles, II, 55. 50 Un cenno anche in Tommaso, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 65, a. 1, ad 1. 46 47 385 La creazione di fronte al nichilismo manifestazione della grazia»51 e della potenza divina, pertanto «nihil omnino [del tutto] in nihilum redigetur», nessuna cosa sarà del tutto annichilita: permarranno le entità spirituali e quanto alle cose materiali permarrà perlomeno la materia di cui sono state costituite, cioè il mondo perdurerà52, non in tutti i suoi componenti ma comunque in qualche suo aspetto53, e «l’universo non sarà mai ridotto al nulla»54. Chiaramente il discorso sulla creazione fin qui svolto e particolarmente le ultime considerazioni sulla permanenza dell’essere sottintendono un’intera ontologia, talvolta anche una fisica in parte superata e anche alcune premesse teologiche, e sia questa ontologia sia queste premesse andrebbero esaminate e, ove necessario, precisate o rigorizzate o corrette, ecc. Ma, almeno in parte, esso indica una pista di ricerca verso l’elaborazione di un motivo di rassicurazione rispetto allo sgomento del nulla, in senso antinichilista55. Fabris parlando della creazione dice che essa è stata intesa in epoca pre moderna come «unica via per esorcizzare la paura [ingenerata dal nichilismo]. Solo che ora [in tale epoca] l’antidoto [al nichilismo] non è rappresentato dalla filosofia, ma dalla religione». Ora, la creazione, intesa come elargizione totale dell’essere, è solo una concezione religiosa o può essere raggiunta anche filosoficamente? È possibile circa la creazione una filosofia metafisica? Io penso di sì56, ma concludo con un invito a Fabris, cioè l’invito a tematizzare, da par suo, il tema della creazione (intesa nel senso trattato) e le sue conseguenze ontologiche, antropologiche ed etiche, che io ho qui solo accennato. Un suo contributo, Tommaso, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 104, a. 4 e ad 1. Un breve cenno a questo passo tommasiano in K. Barth, Church Dogmatics, cit., pp. 69-70. Più estesamente cfr. A. Zimmermann, Remarques sur le soi-disant nihilisme de la conception chrétienne de la réalité, in «Doctor Communis», (2004), pp. 120-121. 52 L’escatologia cristiana parla di una «nuova creazione» (cfr. Is, 65,17 e 66,22, Rm, 8,2123), di «un nuovo cielo ed una nuova terra» (Ap, 21,1, 2Pt, 3,13), cioè di un rinnovamento, che senza annullare l’universo materiale, ne rappresenterà una trasfigurazione spirituale. 53 Tommaso, De potentia, q. 5, a. 7: «sembra che si debba affermare che gli elementi nella loro sostanza rimarranno, come pure nelle loro qualità naturali, mentre cesseranno le generazioni, le corruzioni, le mutazioni». 54 Tommaso, De potentia, q. 5, aa. 4 e 7. 55 Qualche riflessione al riguardo in A. Zimmermann, Remarques sur le soi-disant nihilisme de la conception chrétienne de la réalité, cit., pp. 114-123. 51 Alcune argomentazioni metafisiche recenti per esempio in M. Carrara – C. De Florio – G. Lando – V. Morato, Introduzione alla metafisica contemporanea, il Mulino, Bologna 2021 e in M. Micheletti, Tomismo analitico, Morcelliana, Brescia 2007. In senso più classico cfr. per esempio: C. Vigna, Su Dio e Nota sulla trascendenza, in Id., Il frammento e l’intero, Indagini sul senso dell’essere e sulla stabilità del sapere, Vita e Pensiero, Milano 2000, pp. 135-182; S. Vanni Rovighi, Elementi di filosofia, La Scuola, Brescia 2003 , vol. II; A.L. Gonzalez, Filosofia di Dio, cit.; D. Sacchi, Lineamenti di una metafisica di trascendenza, Studium 2007, per es. pp. 101-106, M. Pérez de Laborda, La ricerca di Dio. Trattato di teologia filosofica, Edusc, Roma 2011. 56 12 386 GIACOMO SAMEK LODOVICI saggio o (meglio ancora) libro, che riprendesse, adeguasse, aggiornasse, questa concezione sarebbe sicuramente prezioso. , 387 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 387-400 ISSN: 1825-5167 RISPOSTE AI MIEI CRITICI ADRIANO FABRIS Dipartimento di civiltà e forme del sapere Università di Pisa adriano.fabris@unipi.it ABSTRACT The paper attempts to respond to a number of objections that have been formulated in the book Ethics and Ambiguity (Morcelliana, Brescia 2020). The objections are overall analysed in their underlying strategies. The answers are addressed to the individual authors who formulated them. K EYWORDS Ethics, Ambiguity, Violence, Elenchos, Language, History of Philosophy 1. La prima cosa da dire ai colleghi e alla collega, agli amici e all’amica che hanno voluto leggere, riflettere e discutere seriamente il mio libro è, naturalmente, un grazie. Non è scontato, oggi, che si ponga attenzione a un testo o a una proposta filosofica. I motivi possono essere molti: o questo testo e questa proposta non sono ritenuti validi, o per qualche motivo non interessano, o non c’è tempo per dedicarvisi, presi dalle mille incombenze della vita, o non rientrano nel novero dei testi e delle proposte di cui si parla nel dibattito pubblico, e con cui dunque, per essere aggiornati, bisogna fare i conti. Sono tutti motivi legittimi e applicabili anche a Etica e ambiguità. Ecco perché il ringraziamento per l’attenzione prestata al libro da parte di Carlo Chiurco, Fabio Ciaramelli, Roberto Diodato, Flavia Monceri e Giacomo Samek Lodovici è ancora più sentito: visto che – ripeto – non era scontato che dedicassero parte loro tempo e delle loro energie alla sua lettura. La seconda cosa che va preliminarmente tenuta di conto è il fatto che, come sempre capita nell’approfondimento e nella discussione a più voci di un testo, può capitare che alcuni giudizi, formulati allo stesso proposito, risultino discordanti fra loro. È accaduto anche in questo caso. Per un verso, tanto per fare un esempio, il tentativo del libro, secondo alcune letture, sembra essere quello di una critica a quei processi di totalizzazione che caratterizzerebbero, almeno secondo quanto sostengo, un filone importante 388 ADRIANO FABRIS della storia del pensiero. Per altro verso invece, cioè secondo un’altra lettura, è proprio il mio approccio a essere totalizzante, o quanto meno sinergico quell’atteggiamento tendenzialmente egemone che è proprio della tradizione occidentale. Da un lato poi, in alcuni interventi, l’interpretazione che propongo di certi autori – ad esempio di Platone – viene considerata unilaterale e ingiusta. Dall’altro lato, invece, mi viene chiesto di approfondire ulteriormente la riflessione su questi autori, allo scopo di mettere ancor più in evidenza la problematicità dei loro assunti. Tali letture divergenti, in verità, non sorprendono. Si verificano spesso, anzi, quando da punti di vista diversi viene intenzionato un medesimo testo. Si potrebbe forse suggerire che questo esito è dovuto, più che alla pluralità dei punti di vista assunti, all’ambiguità della “cosa stessa”, cioè delle questioni che il libro affronta. Sarebbe però una conferma fin troppo facile, e magari un po’ forzata, dell’importanza del tema di fondo su cui il libro si concentra, vale a dire il tema dell’ambiguità del reale: un’ambiguità che giustificherebbe appunto interpretazioni molteplici. Quale che sia la causa di tali letture diverse, e in parte anche divergenti, del mio testo, ne viene un risultato, almeno per me, davvero molto utile. Permette infatti di mettere in luce, attraverso il conflitto (vero o apparente) delle interpretazioni, aspetti certo presenti in ciò che ho inteso dire, ma ancora da precisare ed esplicitare. E il fatto che i colleghi e la collega, gli amici e l’amica che hanno discusso il libro mi solleciti a farlo, non può che aumentare la mia gratitudine nei loro confronti. Proprio perché la maggior parte dei temi affrontati negli interventi ritornano – seppure, come abbiamo visto, in modi diversi e con diverse accentuazioni – ho pensato di raggruppare le mie risposte secondo alcuni nuclei tematici, quelli su cui tali interventi si concentrano maggiormente. Mi scuso in anticipo se, così facendo, non risponderò sempre, nei dettagli, a ogni rilievo: ci potrà essere ancora, mi auguro, l’opportunità di riprendere la discussione, magari individualmente. C’è però un vantaggio in quest’approccio, un vantaggio che, a ben vedere, è tutto mio. Procedendo così, infatti, sarò maggiormente libero di sviluppare ulteriormente il mio discorso proprio facendo tesoro delle sollecitazioni che mi sono rivolte. Ecco perché mi concentrerò e cercherò di riprendere soprattutto i temi della violenza, del linguaggio, dell’uso delle immagini, dell’elenchos, dell’etica. E dato che è bene essere coerenti, cioè far corrispondere anche in filosofia forma e contenuto, questa ripresa non vuol essere altro se non un esempio della possibilità di far filosofia in relazione, cioè di discutere lo stesso tema filosofico della relazione in maniera relazionale. È questa, infatti, una possibilità a cui tutto il libro apre e che chiede, volta a volta, di essere realizzata. 389 Risposte ai miei critici 2. Il primo tema di fondo che viene toccato da tutti, o quasi tutti, gli interventi è quello che riguarda, in generale, la questione del rapporto tra filosofia e violenza. Il mio tentativo nel libro è infatti quello di mostrare che l’approccio filosofico nasce proprio come rimedio alla gestione violenta delle differenze – la differenza, scandalosa per l’ethos della città, costituita dall’attività di Socrate – e che, tuttavia, porta a una soluzione ambigua, che finisce anch’essa, in molti casi, per imporsi con la violenza e per comportare esiti ancora violenti. In altre parole, la lettura della vicenda di Socrate, vittima di un’ingiustizia, e il farsi carico, con Platone, di un rimedio filosofico che chiarisca il perché l’ingiustizia sia avvenuta e ripristini le condizioni affinché una giustizia sia nuovamente ristabilita, lo stanno a mostrare: visto che l’approccio platonico, incaricando il filosofo di essere il garante dell’accesso alla verità, non riesce a evitare la legittimazione di comportamenti analogamente violenti da parte di chi questa verità, visto che ne ha ottenuto il possesso, si sente chiamato a imporla: magari per il bene degli altri. Nella mia intenzione l’analisi di quest’ambiguità era una diagnosi che motivava alla ricerca di una terapia. La terapia proposta è quella che fa riferimento all’esperienza della relazione, e al porre la relazione al principio e come principio. L’attuarsi della relazione, di una relazione intesa in modo corretto, è infatti considerato nel libro antidoto alla violenza. Più precisamente si tratta, di nuovo in maniera ambigua, di pensare la diagnosi proposta sia come la descrizione di un dato di fatto, sia come la motivazione a tentare un cambio di rotta: sia come un’espressione di “realismo”, di «realismo della possibilità» (Chiurco), o di ritorno alla “realtà” (Monceri), sia come l’esperienza di un’utopia. È proprio questo punto ambiguo, forse, ciò che provoca una serie di reazioni divergenti in chi è intervenuto. Il legame tra filosofia e violenza, nonché la sottolineatura della violenza che è propria della filosofia e di cui la filosofia, per il suo stile e la sua struttura, può farsi carico è un tema centrale del pensiero del Novecento. Rientra, potremmo dire, in quel processo di riconoscimento delle proprie responsabilità nei confronti di tradizioni e culture diverse che da qualche tempo l’Occidente ha giustamente attivato, e che spesso ha portato a una richiesta unilaterale di perdono. A essa, d’altronde, il più delle volte non corrisponde un analogo riconoscimento e un’analoga richiesta, da parte di chi, pure, ha le sue colpe per i comportamenti adottati. Nessun discendente del popolo inca chiede perdono per la ferocia dimostrata dai suoi antenati nei confronti delle popolazioni pacifiche da essi sterminate. Nel caso degli eredi delle vittime, poi, spesso accade che alla richiesta di perdono non venga data risposta, preferendo mantenere una situazione di sospensione e di 390 ADRIANO FABRIS colpevolizzazione unilaterale, piuttosto che iniziare un effettivo cammino di riconciliazione da parte di entrambi. In ogni caso, il riconoscimento della violenza della filosofia, che in Etica e ambiguità costituisce il punto di partenza, emerge come tema centrale sia nell’intervento di Fabio Ciaramelli che in quello di Flavia Monceri. Ciaramelli vede con chiarezza la funzione positiva dell’ambiguità: quella di offrire, da parte di ciò che risulta ambiguo, una «resistenza alla totalizzazione», dal momento che proprio l’ambiguità impedisce l’appiattimento di un contenuto di senso, «evita di inchiodarlo ad un’unica attuazione o ad una sola forma di esecuzione, e in tal modo sfugge alla presa o al sequestro o al dominio dell’episteme». La totalizzazione non è dunque il destino della filosofia. L’assorbimento violento delle differenze in un regime unico e unilaterale di verità può essere evitato senza perciò rinunciare all’attività filosofica. C’è la possibilità di farlo proprio attraverso la consapevolezza dell’ambiguità del reale, delle azioni, dei concetti. Tutto questo Ciaramelli lo vede molto bene. Egli colloca una possibilità alternativa alla violenza in filosofia, che comunque si giustifica attraverso una strategia tradizionale del discorso filosofico, in ciò che ho chiamato «l’elenchos della libertà». E giustamente sottolinea che in tale situazione, inaggirabile, si mostra «in tutta la sua irriducibilità il poter-essere-altrimenti che caratterizza l’agire umano e che lo rende irriducibile a qualunque messa-inopera d’una verità universale, preliminarmente affermata o posseduta dalla teoria». Ciaramelli coglie cioè la duplicità del nostro rapporto sia con le strutture del pensare – che da un lato sono quelle a cui siamo consegnati, dall’altro quelle che attiviamo, critichiamo, modifichiamo –, sia con l’iniziativa dell’agire, vista nel rapporto con i suoi criteri etici di fondo: la quale, per un verso, comporta l’impossibilità di sfuggire alla nostra responsabilità e, per altro verso, ci pone di fronte, costantemente, alle scelte che la possono o smentire oppure comprovare. 3. Il legame tra violenza e filosofia è ispiratore, come dicevo, anche dell’intervento di Flavia Monceri. Per Monceri questo legame è un dato di fatto, un presupposto. Ma non nel senso di quell’ambiguità che emergeva poc’anzi: non nel senso, cioè, del fatto che il filosofare può essere sia violento, sia anche antidoto alla violenza, ad esempio nella sua forma critica e utopica. Secondo Monceri l’esercizio della violenza è inevitabile, in quanto ogni attività è un esercizio di potere (nel senso nietzscheano di potenza che qualcuno esercita e che altri subiscono). Questo è l’unico «mondo reale» di cui va preso atto, come dice Monceri. Si capisce dunque perché, in questa situazione, non c’è spazio per quell’ambiguità delle cose, dei pensieri e delle azioni che ci 391 Risposte ai miei critici pone di fronte a specifiche scelte e può legittimare comportamenti diversi da quelli della guerra di tutti contro tutti. O forse questo spazio c’è. Ci si aspetterebbe infatti, a partire dall’assunto di Monceri che tutto è esercizio di potere, la conclusione che chi lo esercita è giustificato a farlo, dato che non c’è altro senso nel mondo se non quello dovuto al soddisfacimento della propria volontà di autoaffermazione. Perché stupirsi allora se c’è chi cerca di ricostruire una storia della filosofia sulla base dei propri personali criteri? Perché rilevarlo, e stigmatizzare il fatto che poi la impone agli altri? Sarebbe un esito inevitabile della tesi iniziale: la tesi, ripeto, per cui ogni filosofare è per natura un atto violento, perché è un’attività, e ogni attività è un esercizio di potere. Questo potere, come accennavo, si riproporrebbe anche nel modo in cui la riflessione filosofica pensa se stessa e la propria storia. Sono d’accordo con Monceri, certamente, sul fatto che ogni riflessione parte, si sviluppa ed è circoscritta dalla propria collocazione (culturale, storica, personale). E dato che tale riflessione a sua volta riflette sulle proprie origini e sul proprio sviluppo, allora essa è costretta, in qualche modo, a ricostruire questo sviluppo stesso a ritroso. Ma non è detto che, così facendo, imponga ad altri la propria ricostruzione. Magari semplicemente la propone. Magari la inserisce in una proposta più ampia e articolata: quella attraverso la quale, filosoficamente, cerca di decodificare certe situazioni reali e il modo in cui è bene comportarsi in esse. Ma – direbbe Monceri – tale atteggiamento altro non sarebbe che il frutto di un equivoco: «l’equivoco su cui si fonda l’intera storia della filosofia occidentale, ancora ritenuta l’unica forma di filosofia possibile e dunque accettabile e praticabile». Si tratterebbe, in sintesi, dell’equivoco a partire dal quale si ritiene di poter costruire una storia della filosofia, unica e compatta, magari espressione di una specifica logica interna al pensiero che può essere fatta emergere. Nei confronti di ogni proposta così articolata anche l’eventuale messa in questione di tale logica – quale quella, ad esempio, che può essere criticamente sviluppata da un versante etico – risulterebbe comunque collusa con essa. Anche qui, come direbbe Lorde «gli strumenti del padrone non smantelleranno mai la casa del padrone». Siamo sempre in una strada senza uscita. Ma – attenzione – lo siamo tutti: chi è colluso con il potere dominante, chi crede di smantellarlo e anche chi vuole smantellarne il tentativo di smantellamento. Se accettiamo la tesi di Monceri, infatti, tutti quanti usiamo gli stessi strumenti dello stesso potere padronale. Ma allora si ripropone il discorso che ho appena fatto. Se tutto è esercizio di potere non dovremmo stupirci dell’esistenza di questi meccanismi, ma dovremmo semmai cercare di metterci per tempo dalla parte 392 ADRIANO FABRIS del padrone: con quell’opportunismo ben poco coerente di cui molti filosofi hanno dato prova in passato. La questione di fondo, però, che solleva Monceri riguarda davvero le potenzialità che possono essere proprie, oggi, della filosofia. Non parlo della sua potenza o del suo potere (a cui forse credono, ancora, solo alcuni filosofi preda delle loro illusioni), ma appunto del suo agire presente e futuro. Qui la posizione di Monceri è più complessa di quello che pare a prima vista. Per un verso, come dicevo, sembra che non ci sia scampo. Afferma Monceri: «la filosofia moderna e poi contemporanea non ha una capacità veramente innovativa: perché non vuole e non riesce a uscire dalla visione del mondo cristiana. Del resto, se lo facesse, sarebbe costretta a dichiarare la propria morte nella forma attuale, visto che la filosofia moderna occidentale è vissuta in simbiosi con la visione religiosa dominante che ha forgiato la sua identità». Per altro verso poi, sempre per Monceri, vi sono altre tradizioni, altre forme di pensiero, la cui presenza mette in crisi il presunto «etnocentrismo» del pensiero occidentale, il quale è portatore di un’universalità sempre imposta in forme violente. Queste tradizioni “altre” sviluppano a loro volta «altre globalizzazioni», manifestano altre forme di espansione universale: magari diversamente violente. Dunque la situazione senza scampo è duplice. È quella dell’Occidente cristiano, che non è in grado di liberarsi dalla sua eredità cristiana; è quella delle altre culture, soggette anch’essere alla legge dell’imposizione violenta. O forse una via d’uscita c’è. Essa consisterebbe proprio nell’imporsi, più o meno ideologicamente giustificato, di questa o di quella cultura del mondo sulle altre: con buona pace di quelle minoranze a cui Monceri dice di tenere. Nello scenario da lei delineato, infatti, le minoranze, appunto perché tali, non potrebbero fare altro che soccombere al potere della maggioranza. Com’è accaduto appunto a Socrate. Proprio per cercar di evitare tale esito in Etica e ambiguità introduco e cerco di giustificare due assunti, che riguardano la filosofia occidentale. Essa infatti, pur con tutti i suoi limiti ed errori, e pur essendo certamente portatrice di una visione parziale, è tuttavia quella che si è fatta carico del tentativo di andare oltre questa parzialità e di argomentare, attraverso i propri concetti, nell’interesse di tutti. Il problema, qui, è se è possibile prendere sul serio questo tentativo, senza immediatamente ridurre l’universalità a qualcosa di parziale. Per prenderlo sul serio, però, è necessario intendere l’universalità in modo corretto: cioè come una proposta, certo, fatta solo da una parte, ma comunque condivisibile da tutti. In questo senso ho parlato di “universalizzabilità”. Infatti, come ciò che è relazionale non è relativo, così ciò che è universalizzabile non è il risultato di un’imposizione e non serve, a sua volta, per imporsi. 393 Risposte ai miei critici Ma vediamo appunto quali sono questi assunti. Il primo è che accanto alla realtà c’è l’utopia, e il filosofare – fin da Platone – è anche apertura di mondi, di mondi possibili, alternativi a quello reale. L’occasione di vivere in tutti questi mondi, di mettere in crisi quello reale attraverso l’indicazione di possibilità alternative, e di richiamare comunque queste possibilità al confronto duro con le cose, è quanto ha trovato espressione anche nel cristianesimo, fin dalla Lettera a Diogneto. Ma soprattutto è ciò che caratterizza, nella sua specificità, l’intero pensiero occidentale (posto che si possa usare ancora una volta questa generica etichetta), e che serve al pensiero occidentale per porsi a confronto con le altre forme di pensiero nel mondo. Si tratta insomma di una particolarità che, proprio nel suo universalizzarsi, può imporsi agli altri oppure porsi al servizio di tutti. Ecco di nuovo un’ambiguità ed ecco di nuovo una scelta etica che va propriamente fatta emergere e posta in atto. Il secondo assunto si ricollega al precedente. Il filosofo, come colui che mette in opera tale universalità, è infatti un traduttore. Traduce, o cerca di farlo, categorie e posizioni differenti. Cerca di gettare ponti fra strutture e modi di pensare (e di vivere) anche incommensurabili fra loro, ma che, se pure lo sono di fatto, allo stesso modo spingono nei fatti a far sì che tale incommensurabilità venga affrontata: con fatica, più o meno disperatamente, con possibilità di successo o anche senza che una relazione effettiva, alla fine, si realizzi. È comunque indubbio che la filosofia – proprio usando lo strumento dell’universale e scontandone tutta l’ambiguità – ha cercato nella sua storia di farlo. 4. Un altro punto chiave del libro che è stato intercettato da vari interventi è quello che riguarda, in generale, il tema del linguaggio: il tema della forma del linguaggio, adeguata a esprimere la motivazione e la prassi etica; il tema delle metafore e delle immagini che sono in grado di evitare la fissazione mortificante dell’apofansi. Si tratta di una questione centrale, visto che implica la necessità di elaborare, in filosofia, un’espressione che non tradisca il contenuto da esprimere. Ma la questione è ancora più importante nella misura in cui questo tradimento ha a che fare con l’approccio nichilistico che è proprio della nostra epoca. Ha a che fare con esso in quanto proprio la fissazione, la mortificazione delle cose, dovuta all’uso di un linguaggio che ha come scopo principale appunto quello di fissarle, le priva della possibilità di coinvolgerci, di meravigliarci, d’interessarci a esse in una vera relazione. Su questi temi si soffermano soprattutto i testi di Giacomo Samek Lodovici e di Roberto Diodato. Samek Lodovici si concentra appunto sulla questione del nichilismo e fa vedere come il tema della creazione, in quanto creazione dal nulla e conservazione delle creature rispetto alla minaccia del nulla, è in 394 ADRIANO FABRIS grado di salvare il mondo dalla ricaduta in questo «vuoto abisso» (Hegel). Anzitutto, facendo leva appunto sull’atto di creazione, egli critica gli aspetti «ludici» del nichilismo, mostrando come questi aspetti derivino dall’affermazione di un’indifferenza nei confronti di ogni cosa. Si tratta di un’indifferenza di fondo, che comporta certamente l’adozione di atteggiamenti poco impegnativi, e che quindi è capace di supportare azioni liberatorie e disimpegnate. Al tempo stesso, però, il prezzo da pagare per il raggiungimento di questa presunta libertà si rivela molto alto, dal momento che la sua adozione finisce per favorire l’insorgere di un vero e proprio disinteresse nei confronti di ogni cosa. C’è invece, al contrario, un interesse ben preciso che è alla base dell’atto di creazione. L’idea della creazione è appunto quella che prevede la “scommessa”, che Dio fa propria, di trarre qualcosa dal nulla e di sostenerla nel suo essere. La motivazione di tale atto non può che essere l’interesse – un interesse gratuito – nei confronti di questo qualcosa: un qualcosa che viene inteso non solo come ciò che può essere, ma anche come ciò che, una volta realizzato, richiede cura e sollecitudine. Ecco in che modo, forse, la tematica della creazione può essere ripresa oggi. Ecco perché il riferimento a essa può configurarsi come un antidoto al nichilismo. Ma perché lo possa essere pienamente, è necessario mostrare come l’indifferenza, che del nichilismo è alla base, viene messa in crisi solo dall’esperienza della relazione: una relazione attiva, una relazione coinvolgente. È questa la proposta che cerco di articolare nel mio libro. 5. Il tema del linguaggio è pure affrontato da Roberto Diodato, questa volta in maniera più diretta. Diodato ha certamente ragione a segnalare l’inadeguatezza del linguaggio filosofico usato in Etica e ambiguità. Si tratta infatti di un linguaggio pur sempre sinergico all’ambito della teoria. Ciò che si sviluppa nel libro, inevitabilmente, è infatti una teoria dell’ambiguità. Il libro infatti elabora una teoria relativamente a quell’etica che cerca al tempo stesso di riflettere, di prendersi in carico e di affrontare le ambiguità insite sia nel nostro pensare che nel nostro agire. Tutto ciò, dicevo, è inevitabile. In particolare – va detto – ciò in questo libro è stato anche voluto. La sua intenzione di fondo era infatti di «tornare alle domande degli antichi» e di cercare, a partire dall’approfondimento di tali domande, di trovare risposte diverse da quelle che gli antichi hanno formulato per esse. Ho cercato di farlo, nel libro, per la nozione di “principio”, per il procedimento dell’elenchos, per il tema dello spazio, per la stessa elaborazione di un’esperienza etica. Dovendomi confrontare con alcuni autori della storia del pensiero, e soprattutto con l’impostazione che alla filosofia è stata data nel mondo greco, non ho potuto che collocarmi sul loro 395 Risposte ai miei critici stesso terreno: quello teorico, appunto. Ma l’intenzione era quella di far emergere proprio l’ambiguità di tale approccio attraverso l’analisi delle ambiguità di alcuni concetti e argomenti da essi usati (come ad esempio quelli che ho appena menzionato). Certo: in questo modo la forma non corrisponde al contenuto. O forse in parte sì, visto che, per confrontarsi con alcuni autori del passato, bisognava – ripeto – scegliere il loro terreno. Diverso è stato invece l’approccio del mio precedente testo, RelAzione. Qui ho tentato, pur con tutti i rischi e i limiti del caso, di realizzare una «filosofia performativa», come recita il sottotitolo. Il problema di fondo che cercano di affrontare questi libri, comunque, è sempre lo stesso. Bisogna cercar di pensare e di esprimere adeguatamente quello che potremmo chiamare «il sovrappiù» dell’etica rispetto alla mera teoria dei comportamenti, e alla descrizione dei valori, degli usi e dei costumi che sono propri dell’essere umano (individualmente o collettivamente inteso). Questo sovrappiù, d’altronde, non consiste semplicemente nell’elaborazione di specifici doveri che l’essere umano sarebbe chiamato ad assumere e che, per lo più, l’etica ha enunciato e, di nuovo, descritto. La questione, qui, è piuttosto quella di mostrare come i criteri e i principî dell’agire, una volta che sono stati giustificati come condivisibili universalmente, sono appunto in grado di guidare davvero le nostre azioni: senza che la loro adozione sia il risultato né di una cieca obbedienza, né di argomenti puramente razionali. Nel primo caso, infatti, il desiderio di emancipazione non tarderebbe ad annunciarsi, rendendo precario l’accoglimento di tali doveri. Nel secondo caso l’efficacia delle giustificazioni razionali sarebbe messa in questione da desideri, emozioni, sentimenti: da tutto ciò che caratterizza, al pari della ragione, la vita degli esseri umani. Entra in gioco qui ciò che chiamo “coinvolgimento”. Ma entra in gioco, soprattutto, il tentativo di risemantizzare in modi appunto dinamici, attivi, coinvolgenti, l’esperienza della relazione: quella relazione con tutti gli altri esseri (umani e non) nella quale si mostra, e risulta impegnativa, anche la relazione con determinati criteri e principî del nostro agire. Non mi soffermo su questo punto. Ma – dopo aver cercato di rispondere alla prima osservazione di Diodato – non posso che manifestare, a partire da qui, il mio pieno accordo con ciò che egli segnala con la sua seconda e con la terza osservazione. Un modo fondamentale di coinvolgere in sempre nuove relazioni è appunto quello che viene offerto dalle immagini. Mi riferisco specificamente a tre aspetti, che possono essere distinti: quello dell’immagine che abbiamo del pensiero, quello dell’immagine che si pone in relazione al pensiero, e quello delle immagini di cui il pensiero fa uso nel suo proprio esercizio. 396 ADRIANO FABRIS Riguardo al primo aspetto, all’idea cioè che abbiamo del pensare e a come il pensare stesso può essere messo in opera, il riferimento a Platone, che appunto fa Diodato, è particolarmente opportuno. Platone è campione nell’uso di livelli diversi di discorso: da quello del mito, all’argomentazione logica, al «racconto dell’immaginario». Platone, anzi, gioca con questi vari livelli e li fa interagire in maniera ironica l’uno con l’altro. Basti pensare alla critica della scrittura svolta alla fine del Fedro: la quale non solo viene espressa mediante un dialogo, all’interno di un mito e – guarda caso – in una forma scritta, ma soprattutto è condotta giocando con tutti questi registri. Tenendo conto di ciò potremmo dire che Platone è un vero maestro di ambiguità, ovviamente nel senso positivo dell’espressione. Quanto a quell’immagine che si pone in relazione al pensiero, essa è appunto ciò che l’aisthesis, il logos estetico, chiama in causa, sperimenta e tratta. Questo fa sì che il pensiero, come giustamente rileva Diodato, sia anche un sentire: un sentire e un sentirsi in questo suo sentire. Ma soprattutto comporta il fatto che il pensare, così concepito, è in grado di porsi davvero come un evento relazionale. Per questo, fra l’altro, la relazione non è subordinata alla sostanza: perché pensare è anche immaginare; perché pensare – come viene detto – è un atto creativo. Ecco dunque perché nel proprio esercizio, appunto a causa di questo carattere, il pensare fa uso anche di immagini. Sono le metafore proprie della filosofia, quelle che l’accompagnano nella sua storia: che rimandano all’atto dell’edificazione, ad esempio, o alla messa in ordine, o al gesto del camminare. Forse davvero sarebbe bene elaborare a una vera e propria “metaforologia” filosofica che studi e delimiti, anche nei rischi connessi al loro potere evocativo, queste immagini. Wittgenstein lo consiglierebbe. Tutto questo vale però, come ben sottolinea Diodato, proprio in quanto le cose del mondo non sono semplici “cose”. E neppure, in quanto fenomeni, sono puramente in relazione fra loro. Ciò invece si verifica perché quello che pensiamo lo pensiamo anzitutto come relazione, non unicamente in relazione. Ma – e qui mi spingo a dire più di ciò che afferma Diodato – quello che pensiamo lo possiamo pensare come tale perché esso non già è, bensì in primo luogo si relaziona, e ci coinvolge relazionandosi: in tutti i modi – sensibili, logici, immaginari – secondo cui possiamo fruire della meraviglia del mondo. 6. Sullo sfondo di quanto è stato detto fin qui, si può comprendere in ultimo la strategia adottata per le risposte che tenterò di fornire ai puntuali e argomentati rilievi svolti da Carlo Chiurco. Desidero ringraziare in particolar modo Chiurco per l’ampia attenzione dedicatami e per le precise obiezioni rivoltemi. Soprattutto gli sono grato per la ricostruzione che ha fatto del mio 397 Risposte ai miei critici tentativo filosofico: spesso ha espresso più lucidamente di me certe cose che mi stanno a cuore. Ecco perché, anche, voglio scusarmi in anticipo se non riuscirò a rispondere nel dettaglio a tutte le sue osservazioni. Anche la riflessione di Chiurco si pone sulla linea di alcuni macroargomenti affrontati negli altri interventi. Tornano nel suo testo, infatti, la questione della violenza, quella di un’interpretazione unilaterale della storia della filosofia (soprattutto ingiusta nei confronti di certi autori), quella relativa a una particolare concezione dell’etica. E tali questioni portano a tre obiezioni di fondo, che cercherò di discutere nell’essenziale. La prima obiezione riguarda l’uso che faccio dell’elenchos e l’allargamento dell’elenchos da me tentato. In realtà, secondo Chiurco, questo allargamento non funziona, se si considera l’elenchos nella sua formulazione aristotelica e nell’uso che di esso è stato fatto nella riflessione più recente. Infatti l’estensione che tento, quella che porta a ciò che ho chiamato «l’elenchos della libertà», si basa sull’applicazione del procedimento dell’elenchos stesso – il procedimento cioè che conduce alla riaffermazione di un assunto nonostante e attraverso l’incidenza dell’assunto opposto – all’agire in quanto tale e, più ampiamente, alla stessa possibilità di agire. Chi vi si oppone, appunto, agisce. Chi nega questa possibilità, può o meno decidere di farlo, o di riconoscere o meno tale possibilità, e dunque la sta precisamente esercitando. L’obiezione di Chiurco consiste nel distinguere agire e pensare. Per lui, infatti, «non ogni agire gode della proprietà elenchica, ma solo quell’agire determinato che è il pensare». In altre parole, «solo nel pensare ogni differenza – ogni ente – è saputa come tale, come la differenza che essa effettivamente è». Perché ciò accade? Perché, forse, solo il pensare è in grado di pensare se stesso, vale a dire di «pensar di pensare», cioè di mettersi in opera performativamente in quanto pensare e di cogliersi proprio in questo atto. Assumere ciò ricondurrebbe fra l’altro a riaffermare il primato della teoria sull’etica: che verrebbe intesa non come pratica coinvolgente (e coinvolta) delle (e nelle) relazioni buone, ma come riflessione sui criteri e principî dell’agire. Ma è proprio questo il punto, proprio questa è la tesi che cerco di argomentare: nello stesso agire, nel suo performarsi, vi è sia estroflessione che riflessione, sia apertura ad altro che retroazione su di sé. Non, magari, nel senso di una consapevolezza teorica. Ma comunque in modo che il processo dell’elenchos possa ugualmente determinarsi. Ciò accade perché l’agire va pensato non già come una causazione, non già nel senso di una produzione di effetti, bensì anzitutto come attività relazionale. Se comunque c’è qualcosa che viene prodotto, in quest’attività, ciò è un rimando ad altro, è la possibilità di un incontro, e insieme, attraverso questo 398 ADRIANO FABRIS rimando ad altro, avviene pure l’attuazione di un ritorno a sé. Ecco perché l’elenchos può scattare anche al di là del pensiero: perché ciò che permette tale procedimento è proprio l’autocontraddizione performativa, e questa può verificarsi non solo in quell’agire che è il pensare, ma anzitutto nell’agire in generale. La seconda obiezione di Chiurco riguarda il modo ingeneroso in cui, anche secondo lui, ho trattato il pensiero greco, e soprattutto Platone. Posso essere d’accordo con lui che «l’ambiguità è già greca». E posso anche concordare sul fatto che il punto in cui propriamente si manifesta quest’ambiguità è il parricidio di Parmenide: dove è espressa l’idea che «l’essere è diverso da sé». In altre parole, non posso che sottolineare anch’io, come ben dice Chiurco, il fatto che «l’identità si differenzia, ponendosi così come identità, proprio perché essa è in se stessa differenza: è identità dell’identità e della non-identità, dell’identità e della differenza, dove non è decidibile dove finisca l’una e inizi l’altra». Ma la questione è, appunto, come pensiamo questo intimo legame di identità e differenza: nella loro unione, senza però che tale unione venga intesa come confusione (come indifferenza). Se per farlo dobbiamo reintrodurre le fissazioni proprie della teoria, cioè di quella teoria che è sinergica con il discorso apofantico e con l’idea di verità che ne consegue, allora rischiamo di perdere proprio il guadagno del parricidio platonico. Di nuovo, cioè, dobbiamo tornare alle domande degli antichi, ma per cercare altre risposte. Infatti bisogna aver chiaro se ciò che viene espresso con i termini “identità” e “differenza”, e che abbiamo visto unito (ma non confuso) nel loro legame è qualcosa che prima viene distinto e poi collegato, oppure se – come appunto dice Chiurco – l’identità dell’identità e della differenza è tale per cui «non è decidibile dove finisca l’una e inizi l’altra». Ma se quest’ultima è la risposta, come suggerisce Chiurco, allora bisogna davvero ripartire dalla relazione tra identità e differenza, e non dai termini che essa collega. È quella relazione che, come abbiamo detto, è anche un relazionarsi, un ritornare su di sé pur nell’apertura ad altro. È quella relazione che produce, insieme, identità e differenza, proprio per configurarsi come relazione. Si tratta di quell’identità relazionale senza la quale i termini differenti non potrebbero essere riconosciuti come tali. Si tratta di quella differenza che può essere colta, approfondita e sviluppata solo se i termini coinvolti relazionalmente si pongono in sé nella loro identità. Si tratta di quella relazione che, proprio in quanto relazionarsi, non si limita al nesso fra due termini, ma si apre ad altre, molteplici, sempre possibili relazioni. Questo ci porta a riflettere sulla terza obiezione di Chiurco, che riguarda di nuovo l’approccio etico del mio discorso, il primato dell’etica sulla teoria, la centralità di un certo modo d’intendere il relazionarsi come ragione di tale 399 Risposte ai miei critici primato. Chiurco distingue una relazione ontologica, che chiama “nesso”, e una relazione etica. Ogni nesso è condizione possibilitante di una relazione etica, ma non può e non deve essere confusa con essa. Anche questo rilievo corrisponde a ciò che cerco di dire. Ma non sono d’accordo invece con Chiurco nel momento in cui egli sostiene che il nesso, cioè la relazione ontologica, è qualcosa che ha valore anzitutto di per sé. E che vale anzitutto di per sé in quanto si oppone al nulla. Per usare le parole di Chiurco: «l’essere, […] nesso infinito di nessi, è un valore, perché esso si libra per l’appunto sopra ciò che cerca di negarlo, scalzarlo: è, e non è nulla, si oppone vittoriosamente al nulla […] l’essere è un valore perché vince – da sempre e per sempre – sul nulla, e lo fa essendo ciò che è: trama, mediazione, molteplice, identità-differenza, relazione». Ecco, questo è il punto decisivo per lo sviluppo di un’etica della relazione: la relazione va vista all’opera, attivamente e in maniera coinvolgente, proprio nel rapporto tra ontologia ed etica. È questo il senso della “TeorEtica” di cui parlo. È questo, fra l’altro, il motivo per cui non posso condividere l’impostazione di Emanuele Severino: un vero maestro del pensiero, peraltro, a cui giustamente anche Chiurco rende omaggio. Voglio dire che non è semplicemente perché l’essere è trama di relazioni che noi siamo indotti e motivati ad agire relazionalmente, se vogliamo agire bene. Non è solo perché l’ens (in quanto bonum) è diffusivum sui che ci troviamo spinti ad agire conformemente a ciò. Noi possiamo scegliere. Possiamo farlo perché – come attesta l’esperienza – anche il male è diffusivum sui. Possiamo scegliere perché altrimenti ricadremmo in quell’imposizione dell’essere sull’agire che spesso si esercita senza un perché, e che prima o poi suscita ribellione. Invece il relazionarsi di ontologia ed etica va davvero inteso come un processo di reciproca costruzione, va concepito nella formazione dell’identità e nell’individuazione delle differenze che sussistono fra i due livelli. Abbiamo buone ragioni per scegliere di seguire e d’implementare l’agire relazionale che è proprio del tutto. E queste buone ragioni derivano proprio dalla consapevolezza della struttura del tutto: che è una struttura olistica, come viene mostrato sia dalla fisica contemporanea, sia dalle conseguenze emergenziali – a livello climatico, geopolitico, sociale – che il trascurarlo comporta. Ma tutto ciò non vale eticamente, e non è davvero motivante per il nostro agire, se non scegliamo di comportarci in questo modo. E lo facciamo non con un gesto arbitrario, ma attraverso un’adesione a ciò che è. Ma proprio ciò che è, è anzitutto qualcosa di possibile: perché è sempre coinvolto in scelte, perché è strutturalmente ambiguo. Per questo ha bisogno della nostra scelta per essere tale. 400 ADRIANO FABRIS Si tratta di una relazione, appunto. Si tratta di una collaborazione fra teoria ed etica. Se vogliamo, è qui all’opera un circolo. Nessuno dei termini ha il primato, ma ognuno si rafforza grazie all’altro: come accade a chi, nell’arrampicata libera, può ascendere facendo leva, certo, sugli appigli disponibili già dati, ma senza potersi mai fermare troppo a lungo su nessuno di essi. 7. Mi accorgo che a molti altri rilievi, più di sfondo oppure puntuali, che sono stati espressi sul mio libro nei vari interventi di Carlo Chiurco, Fabio Ciaramelli, Roberto Diodato, Flavia Monceri e Giacomo Samek Lodovici, non sono riuscito a rispondere. Me ne scuso. Una cosa però, oltre a esprimere una rinnovata gratitudine, voglio ancora dire. E con ciò concludo le mie riflessioni. Il Novecento è il secolo in cui, in filosofia, si ritiene di poter fare i conti con “la” metafisica in generale, magari cercando rispetto a essa un «oltrepassamento» o un «nuovo inizio». Heidegger inaugura questo tentativo e altri lo seguono, seppure con intenzione e stili diversi: da Levinas a Derrida. Il risultato è spesso quello di una dissoluzione della tradizione filosofica, senza che a ciò corrisponda un’alternativa adeguata. Non intendo muovermi in questa direzione. Voglio piuttosto, come ho detto più volte, tornare alle domande degli antichi. Ma non credo che sia produttivo ripetere le loro risposte. Molte delle scelte compiute nella storia del pensiero hanno portato a conseguenze disastrose, la riproposizione di altre, oggi, si rivela inadeguata alle sfide del presente. Quello che ho cercato di fare, allora, è stato di tornare ad alcuni bivi in cui i filosofi del passato si sono trovati e hanno compiuto determinate scelte, riprendendo poi il loro cammino in una certa direzione. Ho cercato di far capire che si trattava, appunto, di bivi, non di percorsi inevitabili, proprio perché le questioni di cui si occupa il pensiero sono ambigue e producono, comunque affrontate, ulteriori ambiguità. Ho provato a intraprendere, tornando a quei bivi, strade diverse, o almeno d’indicarle. Già il fatto che ci rendiamo conto che ve ne è la possibilità lo considero un guadagno. 401 Varia 402 403 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 403-423 ISSN: 1825-5167 FUORI SCALA LA FLAT ECOLOGY DI BRUNO LATOUR CHRISTIAN FRIGERIO Università degli Studi di Milano Dipartimento di filosofia Piero Martinetti chris.frigerio4@gmail.com ABSTRACT This paper aims at showing the consequences of Bruno Latour’s endorsement of the anti-holist, “flat” ontology (an ontology that denies that difference in scale is an ontological difference) shared by many speculative realists. While this assumption presents notorious problems on the political side, it will be shown to have explicative and pragmatic potential when it comes to political ecology. After exploring his treatment of the concept of scale, which draws on Gabriel Tarde’s monadological sociology, Latour’s radical democraticism, for which scale depends only on the number of connections and “alliances” an actor is able to put into existence, will be compared to Timothy Morton’s hyperobjects hypotheses, another ecology based on a peculiar treatment of the notion of scale, in order to show the advantages and the potential of Latour’s ecology of fragility. The aim of Latour’s politics is the composition of a common world, but this composition has no superior guarantor, and even Gaia, the holistic entity par excellence, cannot be brought into existence without an assembly of allies that Latour compares to a war declaration. KEYWORDS Political ecology, Latour, speculative realism, deep ecology, Timothy Morton. 1. INTRODUZIONE: PER UNA DEMOCRAZIA DELLA SCALA Quando condotto in campo politico, il concetto di scala pare riunire le due diverse accezioni che presenta nel linguaggio comune: quella che sta per la ratio tra la dimensione degli oggetti e la loro resa su una mappa, e quella che indica l’estensione di un’unità spaziale o la portata di un processo. La posta etico-politica in gioco attorno al concetto di scala è il rapporto ontologico tra l’intero e la parte. Il timore che, quando la differenza tra Grande e Piccolo sia assunta – come nel caso della fisica1 – in senso forte, come una vera differenza ontologica, sia quasi La realtà della differenza di scala è per le scienze un principio indubitabile. Fu probabilmente Galileo – che, secondo Richard Feynman (The character of physical law, The MIT Press, Cambridge 1985, p. 95), considerava questa scoperta tanto importante quanto lo stabilimento delle leggi del moto – il primo a mostrare come, per sostenere un cane grande il doppio mantenendone la robustezza, un osso otto volte più grande sia richiesto: cfr. G. Galilei, Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze, Impression Anastaltique, Bruxelles 1966, pp. 122-9. 1 404 CHRISTIAN FRIGERIO impossibile frenare la teoresi dal farla degenerare in una differenza assiologica, può rendere desiderabile l’elaborazione di un’alternativa: politicamente, l’assunzione che quella tra grande e piccolo sia una differenza ontologica conduce facilmente a una visione olistica, ad assegnare al tutto o all’intero una realtà maggiore rispetto a quella dell’individuale. Il vero è l’intero – la dissoluzione hegeliana del singolare in una tappa per raggiungere lo spirito assoluto riassume bene il fuoco delle paure dei pensatori che rifiutano la totalità come referente primo del discorso politico. Negli ultimi anni, questa alternativa è stata ricercata da molti attorno a una rielaborazione del concetto stesso di scala. Tra gli altri, Deleuze è stato una fase importante per la posizione del problema in questi termini. Il “virtuale” è una modalità introdotta proprio per minare lo scarto tra Grande e Piccolo: il modello di composizione del virtuale è una sorta di mereologia differenziale nella quale la differenza di scala non indica una differenza ontologica.2 Il noto concetto di molteplicità va definito precisamente come “una somma che non riunisce mai le sue parti in un tutto… Non crediamo più in una totalità originaria né in una totalità di destinazione… Non crediamo in totalità se non accanto. E se ci imbattiamo in una tale totalità accanto a parti, è un tutto di queste parti, ma che non le totalizza, una unità di tutte queste parti, ma che non le unifica e che si aggiunge ad esse come una nuova parte composta a parte”.3 La pragmatica delle totalità deleuziana verrà combinata con la terminologia nata nell’ambito dello scale debate in geografia umana4 per generare quella che, dopo Manuel DeLanda, viene chiamata flat ontology: è piatta quell’ontologia “fatta esclusivamente di individui unici e singolari, differenti in scala spazio-temporale ma non in statuto ontologico”.5 La vera definizione si ottiene però rovesciando quella Il virtuale definisce la potenza degli enti, la loro capacità massimale di affettare ed essere affetti, al di là delle limitazioni attuali; allora, la differenza non passa tra grande e piccolo, quanto piuttosto “tra le forme medie e le forme estreme” (Differenza e ripetizione, tr. G. Guglielmini, Cortina, Milano 1997, p. 55) – vale a dire, tra gli enti che attualizzano la propria potenza e quelli che non vi riescono. Si potrebbe dire che ogni Piccolo deve attingere alla Grandezza che gli è propria, e, una volta che vi riesce e non è separato da ciò che può, “il più piccolo diviene l’uguale del più grande” (Differenza e ripetizione, cit., p. 55). Nell’etica spinoziana-nietzschiana di Deleuze, insomma, la relazione tra grande e piccolo è sempre una differenza interna, un rapporto di sé con sé e mai una comparazione con una scala generale condivisa con altri enti. 3 G. Deleuze & F. Guattari, L’anti-Edipo. Capitalismo e schizofrenia, tr. A. Fontana, Einaudi, Torino 1975, pp. 44-5. 4 Cfr. A. Herod, Scale, Londra: Routledge, 2010. A partire soprattutto dagli anni 2000, l’actor-network theory e la flat ontology retroagiranno sulla geografia umana generando diversi effetti interessanti: cfr. R. G. Smith, “World city topologies”, Progress in Human Geography, vol. 27, n. 5, 2003, pp. 561–582; S. Marston, J. P. Jones & K. Woodward, K., “Human geography without scale”, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, vol. 30, 2005, pp. 416-32; C. Collinge, “Flat ontology and the deconstruction of scale: a response to Marston, Jones and Woodward”, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2 vol. 31, 2006, pp. 244-51. M. DeLanda, Intensive science and virtual philosophy, Continuum, Londra 2002, p. 47. L’espressione flat ontology è stata in realtà introdotta dal filosofo della scienza Roy Bhaskar, per indicare (negativamente) l’ontologia risultante dalla “fallacia epistemica” che, dopo Hume, riduce la 5 405 Fuori scala. La Flat Ecology di Bruno Latour esplicitamente data da DeLanda: è piatta l’ontologia in cui la differenza di scala spazio-temporale non implica una differenza di statuto ontologico, in cui la scala è relativizzata. Da questo punto di vista, le prospettive che riconoscono solo la totalità come punto di riferimento sono marcatamente gonfie, perché a una scala superiore è riconosciuto un gradiente maggiore di realtà. Invece, per DeLanda il senso dell’espressione individuo va reso univoco: esso deve denotare lo stesso tipo di realtà, a qualunque scala sia applicato, così che si possa parlare nello stesso senso di individui organici, di comunità individuali e di stati individuali. Ciò che si ottiene è un unico piano ontologico costituito da una molteplicità di scale: in un’ontologia piatta “non c’è spazio per entità come ‘la società’ o ‘la cultura’ in generale. Le organizzazioni istituzionali, i centri urbani o gli stati nazione sono, in questa ontologia, non totalità astratte ma individui sociali concreti, con lo stesso statuto ontologico degli esseri umani individuali ma operanti su scale spazio-temporali più vaste”.6 L’approccio deleuziano di DeLanda sarà il catalizzatore principale per la nascita dell’assemblage theory, un metodo che si propone di affrontare lo studio degli ambiti più diversi – dalla società all’economia, dalla politica all’archeologia – secondo una “democrazia della scala”.7 La deriva più famosa della flat ontology (d’ora in avanti, FO) segue tuttavia il suo recupero, per gli stessi motivi sia metafisici che etico-politici, da parte degli esponenti della Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), in particolare Graham Harman e Levi Bryant. Ma il suo intento egalitario viene presto curvato in una direzione differente. Levi Bryant la trasforma in un principio fondamentale della OOO, riassumendola in due tesi chiave: “Primo, gli umani non sono al centro dell’essere, ma sono tra gli esseri. Secondo, gli oggetti non sono un polo opposto a un soggetto, ma esistono di proprio diritto, che un altro oggetto o umano si relazioni a essi o meno”.8 Similmente, Graham Harman scrive che è piatta l’ontologia che “inizialmente tratta tutti gli oggetti nello stesso modo, piuttosto che assumere in anticipo che diversi tipi di oggetti richiedano ontologie completamente differenti”.9 Nata per negare la realtà della scala, la FO finisce per coincidere con realtà degli oggetti scientifici alla determinazione di patterns di regolarità da parte della comunità scientifica: R. Bhaskar, A realist theory of science, Routledge, Londra 2008, p. 57. DeLanda, grande ammiratore di Bhaskar, conserverà l’espressione pur modificandone il senso e invertendone il valore. 6 M. DeLanda, Intensive science, cit., p. 117. 7 G. Harman, “Conclusion: Assemblage theory and its future”, in M. Acuto & S. Curtis (2014), Reassembling international theory: Assemblage thinking and international relations, Palgrave Macmillan, Londra 2014, pp. 118-30: 120. Per degli esempi di approccio all’assemblage theory, cfr. J. Dittmer, Diplomatic material. Affect, assemblage, and foreign policy, Duke University Press, Durham 2017; I. Buchanan, Assemblage theory and method, Bloomsbury, Londra 2020. Per un confronto tra l’assemblage theory e l’actor-network theory, cui appartiene Latour, cfr. M. Müller, “Assemblages and actor-networks: Rethinking socio-material power, politics and space”, in Geography Compass, vol. 9, n. 1, 2015, 27-41. 8 L. Bryant, The democracy of objects, Open Humanities, Londra 2011, p. 249. 9 G. Harman, Object-Oriented Ontology: A new theory of everything, Pelican Books, New York 2017, p. 54. 406 CHRISTIAN FRIGERIO l’affermazione della non-differenza ontologica tra umani e non-umani, una “taxonomical flatness”10 opposta al “pregiudizio tassonomico”, prescrivente uno sguardo vergine che, se vuole dividere il mondo in categorie ontologiche, lo faccia solo dopo un attento esame. Bruno Latour è, secondo Harman, un campione della FO intesa in questo senso. Il conseguimento più importante di Latour è stato di fatto quello di indicare la via d’uscita dalla modernità: se moderno era chi voleva purificare natura e società, distinguendo nettamente umani e non umani, Latour mostra come in realtà non siano mai esistiti altro che ibridi di natura e cultura, e come il progetto dei moderni, oltre che non corrispondente alla loro reale pratica, fosse impossibile di principio.11 Umani e non umani vengono riuniti sotto la comune natura di attori, enti capaci di creare effetti e apportare differenze nel mondo. Non meno importante è tuttavia, per Latour, quello che era il senso originario della FO. Il suo è un mondo fatto di individui, dove la differenza di scala è sempre il risultato di uno scontro tra forze. Riassumendo l’anticipazione da parte del sociologo Gabriel Tarde (di cui avremo modo di parlare) dell’actor-network theory (ANT), di cui egli è stato tra i maggiori esponenti insieme a Michel Callon e John Law, Latour sottolinea due punti: “a) la divisione tra natura e società è irrilevante per la comprensione del mondo delle interazioni umane; b) la distinzione micromacro soffoca ogni tentativo di capire come la società si possa generare”.12 Abolizione della distinzione umano e non, ma anche negazione della realtà ontologica della scala, dal momento che “le totalità non esistono che all’interno di strette reti”,13 che sono sempre il risultato del numero di alleanze che un attore è capace di stringere. Latour, che rifiuta le ontologie della scala già dagli anni ’80, inizierà in seguito al lavoro dei realisti speculativi a ricorrere alla terminologia flat per designare la propria prospettiva, al punto che si potrebbe dire che sia questo versante della sua ontologia piatta a fondare l’abolizione della differenza tra umani e non: “Ci sono differenze di taglia. Non esistono differenze di natura, e ancora meno di cultura”.14 M. DeLanda & G. Harman, The rise of realism, Polity, Cambridge 2017, p. 75. Cfr. B. Latour, Non siamo mai stati moderni, tr. G. Logomarsino, Elèuthera, Milano 2009. 12 Id., “Gabriel Tarde and the end of the social”, in P. Joyce (ed.), The social in question: New Bearings in history and the social sciences, Routledge, Londra 2014, pp. 117-32: 118. 13 Id., I microbi: Trattato scientifico-politico, tr. A. Notarianni, Editori Riuniti, Roma 1991, p. 254. 14 Id., Non siamo mai stati moderni, cit., p. 142. Per questo, se può essere corretto affermare con Harman (Bruno Latour. Reassembling the political, Pluto Press, Londra 2014, p. 81) che con la pubblicazione dell’Enquête (B. Latour, Enquête sur les modes d’existence: Une anthropologie des modernes, La Découverte, Parigi 2012) Latour abbandoni in parte la flat ontology intesa in senso tassonomico, la piattezza intesa come relativizzazione della scala è non solo preservata ma persino ribadita nella stessa Enquête. Se anzi non ci sarà lo spazio per approfondire la questione, vale la pena ricordare come in quest’opera fondamentale Latour ascriva l’impressione della realtà ontologica della scala alla confusione tra due modi d’esistenza: quello della riproduzione, e quello dell’organizzazione, 10 11 407 Fuori scala. La Flat Ecology di Bruno Latour L’interesse di questo testo si rivolgerà proprio al modo in cui tale tesi viene posta a base del suo progetto di ecologia politica. Ciò che è più significativo è che, mentre la superiorità del tutto sulla parte è spesso considerato un saldo principio ecologico,15 Latour mostra come sia concretamente possibile sottoscrivere la realtà ontologica dell’individuo, la non-differenza tra Grande e Piccolo, e allo stesso tempo sostenere la causa ecologica. Gaia, il nome ripreso da James Lovelock per indicare una Terra vista con consapevolezza ecologica, non è una totalità, ma un individuo tra gli altri, che proprio per questo richiede di essere tutelato, chiede che, con un’azione che Latour non esita a paragonare a una dichiarazione di guerra, gli altri attori che si dispiegano sulla Terra le si alleino: il “popolo di Gaia” è un popolo piatto che, cosciente della fragilità della propria dea, non pretende di abbandonare il piano dell’individuale alla ricerca di una garanzia ontologicamente superiore. 2. IL TUTTO È MENO DELLA SOMMA DELLE SUE PARTI DeLanda e gli esponenti della OOO ricorrono, per sottrarsi alle ontologie della scala, a un modello mereologico non troppo lontano da quello di Deleuze – una “strana mereologia”, come la definiscono spesso, che mantiene l’esteriorità delle relazioni (gli individui esistono di proprio diritto, autonomamente rispetto alle relazioni in cui possono entrare con altri individui) ma accettando l’importanza delle proprietà emergenti che si presentano salendo i livelli della scala. Come scrive DeLanda, “un’ontologia piatta degli individui assume che, a ogni scala spaziotemporale, ci siano proprietà di un intero che non possono essere spiegate come una mera somma delle proprietà delle sue parti componenti, ma che emergono dalle loro interazioni causali”.16 A nessun livello di scala si passa a uno statuto ontologico diverso, ma proprietà nuove sono generate di continuo. La piattezza invocata da Latour è d’altro tipo. Come scrive, “Non c’è cambiamento di taglia nel senso dell’apparizione di un livello superiore, e nonostante ciò ci sono cambiamenti maggiori di dimensionamento. Due definizioni interamente differenti del rapporto tra il piccolo e il grande: una attraverso incastro e inscatolamento, l’altra per connessioni e collezioni”.17 Se la strana mereologia di DeLanda e della OOO si attiene al primo modello, definibile topografico, Latour si vota al secondo, un modello topologico che traccia la strutturazione delle reti. confusione a causa della quale l’organizzazione viene scambiata per un organismo, “il Grande Animale che starebbe ‘dietro’ l’organizzazione” (ivi, p. 421). 15 Cfr. ad esempio J. Baird Callicott, “Animal liberation: a triangular affair”, Environmental ethics, vol. 2, n. 4, 1980, pp. 311-38. 16 M. DeLanda, Intensive science, cit., p. 137. 17 B. Latour, Enquête, cit., p. 410. A dimostrazione di come le metafore impiegate influiscano fortemente sulla nostra concezione della scala, cfr. A. Herod, Scale, cit., pp. 46-54. 408 CHRISTIAN FRIGERIO Tutti gli attori godono, nel mondo di Latour, di una “mini-trascendenza”, di una trascendenza senza contrario, per la quale la separazione tra gli attori è reale, e la loro messa in relazione è sempre possibile, ma solo pagando il giusto prezzo per la traduzione. Per questo, più che la mereologia, il suo modello sono le nuove monadologie, come quella di Whitehead,18 tra i filosofi più stimati da Latour, ma soprattutto quella di Gabriel Tarde, il sociologo delle associazioni che Latour valorizza sopra la “sociologia del sociale” derivante da Durkheim. Negli anni in cui Latour forma il proprio pensiero, la distinzione tra micro e macro-sociologia era di fatto una delle poste in gioco più alte della disciplina.19 Se il Latour sociologo punta anzitutto a sostituire l’asylum ignorantiae del “sociale” con la molteplicità delle associazioni tra attori, neanche prospettive come quelle di Simmel o Goffman, che derivano la struttura sociale dalle interazioni micrologiche, sono per lui l’opzione migliore da seguire, dal momento che lo scarto ontologico tra livelli di scala è mantenuto: invece, “Tarde mantiene lo stesso metodo per tutti i livelli – non ci sono livelli ad ogni modo”.20 Era stato proprio Tarde a notare la “forma completamente superficiale, niente affatto voluminosa, quasi senza spessore” della società umana,21 e a stupirsi di come gli stessi scienziati che negano la creazione ex nihilo possano sostenere la formazione, da semplici rapporti tra esseri, di nuovi enti aggiunti numericamente ai primi, quasi che a ogni livello superiore di scala si creasse qualcosa di nuovo.22 La metafora si ferma però all’altezza della società umana, nella quale non emerge mai un reale Io collettivo: la constatazione che “vediamo gli agenti, gli uomini, molto più differenziati, più caratterizzati individualmente, più ricchi di variazioni continue, di quanto non lo siano il meccanismo governativo, i sistemi di leggi o di credenze, gli stessi dizionari o le grammatiche, che si producono con il loro concorso”,23 smonta il “pregiudizio tanto diffuso secondo cui il risultato è sempre più complesso delle sue condizioni, l’azione più differenziata degli Come scrive la compagna di viaggio di Latour, Isabelle Stengers, “Per Whitehead, le parti non costituiscono il tutto senza che il tutto infetti le parti. In altre parole, l’identità, o il pattern durevole, del tutto e delle parti sono strettamente contemporanei” (I. Stengers, Thinking with Whitehead. A free and wild creation of concepts, tr. M. Chase, Harvard University Press, Cambridge 2011, p. 174). La concezione whiteheadiana del potere è in qualche modo affine a quella di Foucault: si tratta di un potere che incita, e che, a partire da una singola entità attuale – il nome delle monadi che compongono il suo cosmo processuale – si diffonde ad altre entità, per definire eventualmente una società – termine con cui Whitehead indica le aggregazioni di entità definite, come gli atomi o gli organismi, da un telos comune e unificato. Qualcosa di non troppo lontano dal concetto leibniziano di “monade dominante”. Per questo, Steven Shaviro (Without criteria: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and aesthetics, The MIT Press, Cambridge 2012, p. 26) ha potuto attribuire a Whitehead la stessa flat ontology che stiamo delineando in Latour. 19 Cfr. K. Knorr-Cetina & A. V. Cicourel (eds.), Advances in social theory and methodology. Toward an integration of micro and macro-sociologies, Routledge, Londra 1981. 20 B. Latour, “Gabriel Tarde and the end of the social”, cit., p. 126. 21 G. Tarde, Monadologia e sociologia, tr. F. Domenicali, Ombre Corte, Verona 2013, p. 75. 22 Ivi, pp. 78-9. 23 Ivi, p. 80. 18 409 Fuori scala. La Flat Ecology di Bruno Latour agenti”.24 La metafisica tardiana della possessione permette di pensare un mondo di attori aventi tutti la stessa dignità ontologica, che vengono talvolta “posseduti” da altri attori, andando così a costruire qualcosa di più “grande”. È sempre Tarde a notare come il prezzo della messa in relazione delle monadi sia un’omogeneizzazione, una semplificazione: conformare pesi e misure, smussare gli accenti, conversare, sono tutti fenomeni che testimoniano della perdita di “pittoresco sociale” che è condizione per la messa in relazione.25 Dallo stesso principio vengono le affermazioni apparentemente paradossali di Latour: “il grande non è mai più che una semplificazione di un elemento del piccolo”;26 “un macroattore è semplice almeno quanto un micro-attore, poiché altrimenti non avrebbe potuto diventare più grande”.27 La crescita in scala consiste nella diffusione di un elemento caratteristico di un unico attore a molti altri, elemento che dev’essere sufficientemente semplice perché questi lo trovino appetibile. Latour trae da Tarde la visione di “un ordine sociale costantemente minacciato dalla decomposizione immediata perché nessun componente ne è pienamente parte. Ogni monade fuoriesce l’essere artificiale di ogni ordine ‘superiore’, avendo prestato alla sua esistenza solo una piccola parte, una facciata di sé […] Il sociale non è l’intero, ma una parte, e una parte fragile per giunta”.28 Va detto però che, mentre dichiara di voler abolire la distinzione tra livelli, Latour sembra mantenere un certo favore verso il micro: frasi come “il piccolo è sempre anche il più complesso”,29 “il più piccolo è sempre l’entità più grande che ci sia”,30 “Il grande è più piccolo del piccolo, il quale non è piccolo ma distribuito”,31 paiono riflettere una propensione ad assegnare al piccolo, all’individuale, un coefficiente di realtà superiore. Come scrive Harman, “non c’è un reale ‘macro-livello’ per Latour, solo micro-livelli più o meno grandi”.32 Questa è forse la più grande ambiguità del suo trattamento del concetto di scala: mentre Whitehead definisce l’entità attuale come l’unità minima dotata di una certa unitarietà di telos o di condotta, e mentre Tarde definisce le sue monadi grazie al Ibid. Cfr. D. Debaise, “Une métaphysique des possessions: Puissances et sociétés chez Gabriel Tarde”, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, vol. 60, n. 4, 2008, pp. 447-460. Questo è ciò che Tarde definisce anche conversione, “la trasformazione interna di un elemento posseduto, non dal suo quasi-disegno personale, ma da quello di un altro”; G. Tarde, Monadologia e sociologia, cit., p. 112. 25 Ivi, p. 82. 26 B. Latour, “Gabriel Tarde and the end of the social”, cit., p. 127. 27 M. Callon & B. Latour, “Unscrewing the big Leviathan: How actors macro-structure reality and how sociologists help them to do so”, in K. Knorr-Cetina & A. V. Cicourel (eds.), Advances in social theory and methodology, cit., pp. 277-304: 299. 28 B. Latour, “Gabriel Tarde and the end of the social”, cit., p. 127. 29 Ivi, p. 119. 30 Ivi, p. 123. 31 Id., Enquête, cit., p. 418. 32 G. Harman, Bruno Latour: Reassembling the political, cit., p. 119. 24 410 CHRISTIAN FRIGERIO dispositivo matematico dell’infinitesimale, Latour pare invece mancare di un criterio stabile per l’unitarietà di un attore, che si definisce solo attraverso il risultato di scontri tra forze. La sua è una monadologia nella quale l’armonia più che prestabilita è poststabilita,33 creata a forza di conflitti: che gli attori siano isomorfi “non significa che tutti gli attori hanno la stessa dimensione ma che a priori non c’è modo di decidere la taglia, dato che questa è la conseguenza di una lunga lotta”.34 Non c’è modo di sapere in anticipo quale sarà il risultato della lotta. Latour fa risuonare il grido spinoziano-deleuziano che non sappiamo cosa può un corpo35: la scala arriva solo alla fine, su essa non dobbiamo dire nulla in anticipo. È per questo che l’unico criterio cui può appellarsi Latour è l’“interdefinizione degli attori” in un conflitto tra forze.36 Latour sostiene un “principio pragmatista” secondo il quale l’essenza è esistenza, l’esistenza è azione, e un attore è completamente definito dai suoi effetti sul resto del mondo. Harman scrive: “Proprio come David Hume sostiene che gli ‘oggetti’ non siano che fasci di qualità, Latour pare pensare che essi siano semplicemente fasci di azioni”.37 La definizione di attore è non a caso quella, semiotica, data da Greimas: è un attore qualunque unità di discorso sia investita di un ruolo.38 Gli effetti esistono indipendentemente dalla loro ascrizione a un attore; per usare uno degli esempi più controversi di Latour, la gente moriva anche prima che Koch isolasse il bacillo della tubercolosi nel 1882. Ma sarebbe un anacronismo affermare che Ramses II sia morto di tubercolosi, proprio perché quel bacillo non era ancora stato scoperto, nessun ruolo gli era ancora ascritto, dunque non esisteva in quanto attore.39 Il plasma – il nome B. Latour, I microbi, cit., p. 211. Lo stesso agonismo monadologico si trovava già in G. Tarde, Monadologia e sociologia, cit., p. 66. 34 M. Callon & B Latour, “Unscrewing the big Leviathan”, cit., p. 280. 35 B. Latour, Enquête, cit., p. 421 36 Id., I microbi, cit., p. 16. 37 G. Harman, Bruno Latour: Reassembling the political, cit., p. 49. 38 M. Callon & B. Latour, “Unscrewing the big Leviathan”, cit., pp. 301-2n. 39 B. Latour, “On the partial existence of existing and nonexisting objects”, In L. Daston (ed.), Biographies of scientific objects, Chicago University Press, Chicago 1999, pp. 248-9. Questa tesi, tra altre, ha portato a Latour accuse di “impostura intellettuale” (A. Sokal & J. Bricmont, Imposture intellettuali. Quale deve essere il rapporto tra filosofia e scienza? , tr. F. Acerbi, Garzanti, Milano 1999), e l’ha reso uno dei simboli del postmodernismo più sfrenato (M. Ferraris, Manifesto del nuovo realismo, Laterza, Bari 2012, pp. 44-5), prima che i realisti speculativi lo erigessero a bandiera di un ritrovato realismo (G. Harman, Prince of networks: Bruno Latour and metaphysics, Re-press, Melbourne 2009). La controversa posizione di Latour è sostenuta da una complessa metafisica del tempo; a quella “lineare”, Latour aggiunge una dimensione “sedimentaria” del tempo: se il tempo moderno è una freccia unidirezionale, il tempo amoderno di Latour è una spirale, nella quale il presente ha la capacità di retroagire attivamente sul passato, modificandolo (cfr. B. Latour, Pandora’s hope. Essays on the reality of science studies, Harvard University Press, Harvard 1999, p. 171; id., Non siamo mai stati moderni, cit., p. 99). A chi chiede se i germi fossero lì anche prima che Pasteur li scoprisse, serve dare la risposta, paradossale solo dal punto di vista di una causalità lineare, che “Dopo il 1864 i germi erano sempre stati lì” (id., Pandora’s hope, cit., p. 173): come riassume Gérard De Vries (Bruno Latour, Polity, Cambridge 2016, p. 134), “qualunque cosa rendesse acido il latte 33 411 Fuori scala. La Flat Ecology di Bruno Latour del “reale” latouriano, lo sciame di azioni ed effetti sul cui sfondo degli oggetti definiti si stagliano – procede indipendentemente dalla nostra copertura concettuale; questo però, a differenza del sensibile passivo e atomistico di Hume che attende i “principi della natura umana” per darsi forma, mostra una certa tendenza a organizzarsi da sé: è questo che Latour intende con interdefinizione degli attori. Non è una questione arbitraria che, una volta conseguiti gli strumenti tecnici e teorici adeguati, chi attribuisce certe morti all’azione dei germi debba infine averla vinta. Non è un caso che le teorie di Pasteur siano state in breve tempo accettate dall’ambiente scientifico francese e poi europeo. Pasteur aveva degli alleati ben più potenti dei suoi avversari: i microbi stessi che cercava di identificare, e la cui realtà egli contribuisce a corroborare. Come scrive Latour, “realtà, come suggerisce la parola latina res, è ciò che resiste. A cosa resiste? Alle prove di forza. Se, in una certa situazione, nessuno scettico può modificare la forma di un nuovo oggetto, allora esso è realtà, almeno fino a che le prove di forza non vengano modificate”.40 Non è del tutto corretto dire che i microbi esistessero prima della loro scoperta; eppure, alla luce di una certa strumentazione, di certi esperimenti e anche di certi interessi dell’Accademia, della società francese e del movimento igienista, il microbo, quell’attore i cui contorni furono definiti da Pasteur per primo, resistette a tutte le prove di forza, divenendo pienamente reale. Colpisce il liberalismo della concezione latouriana di attore: contano come attori a pieno titolo gli atomi, gli scienziati, i microbi, i fiumi, la CO2, i biotopi, Topolino, Aramis e Cristo – qualunque cosa, purché abbia effetti che gli siano ascritti. Lontano da ogni fondamentalismo – il suo principio di irriducibilità stabilisce proprio che niente sia riducibile a nient’altro, salvo che con il dovuto lavoro41: niente è riducibile neanche a supposti atomi o monadi – l’unità degli attori dipende solo dalla loro interdefinizione, dalla capacità di obbligare gli altri ad assegnargli un ruolo, ad ascrivergli una serie di quegli effetti che compongono il plasma. Ne consegue anche che il criterio d’unità non può essere una certa dimensione.42 Ma più che risolvere prima di Pasteur diventò ‘acido lattico’ – un essere con nuove caratteristiche, ovvero un essere visibile all’occhio umano e che può essere isolato, cosparso e trasportato – solo dopo esser stato tradotto negli esperimenti di Pasteur”. 40 B. Latour, La scienza in azione. Introduzione alla sociologia della scienza , tr. S. Ferraresi, Edizioni di Comunità, Milano 1998, p. 124. 41 Id., I microbi, cit., p. 203. 42 Neppure quella infinitesimale di Tarde. Più che al calcolo infinitesimale, Latour pare avere a modello la matematica frattale di Mandelbrot, che definendo gli oggetti frattali parla di “omotetia interna”: un certo uso della matematica permette di modellizzare fenomeni come una cascata o un fuoco d’artificio, eventi a stadi successivi in cui ogni stadio genera dettagli più piccoli ma della stessa forma del precedente. Studiando le coste, secondo Mandelbrot, si notano gradi di irregolarità che corrispondono alle diverse scale ma mantengono le stesse proprietà topologiche: aumentando l’ingrandimento, da baie e penisole si notano sotto-baie e sotto-penisole (B. Mandelbrot, Gli oggetti frattali: forma, caso e dimensione, tr. R. Pignoni, Einaudi, Torino 1987, pp. 26-7). L’omotetia interna toglie senso alla distinzione tra scale: ad esempio, mentre secondo Mandelbrot la termodinamica e la fisica quantistica tendono a sottovalutare la potenza del caso facendolo intervenire solo a livello 412 CHRISTIAN FRIGERIO il problema, questa idea lo complica. Visto il liberalismo con cui lascia che siano gli attori stessi a definirsi tra di loro, non si capisce perché egli insista tanto sull’assenza di unitarietà del capitalismo, di Dio, del sociale o di Gaia, attori pretesi globali ma che, sostiene Latour, restano locali in ogni punto.43 Si potrebbe certo pensare che esistano totalità di diverso tipo: lo stesso DeLanda, mentre rifiuta i discorsi riguardanti ‘il Mercato’ come imperniati attorno a una mera generalità reificata, accetta la possibilità di comunità, organizzazioni e stati individuali dotati di proprietà emergenti.44 Ma sembra difficile negare al capitalismo o a Dio quella specificità di funzionamento che dovrebbe definire un attore a pieno titolo. Questa aporia potrebbe essere letta come il riflesso di un’altra, che si colloca a livello della metodologia stessa: la sociologia laissez-faire di Latour mantiene che “Il compito di definire e ordinare il sociale dovrebbe essere lasciato agli attori stessi”45; egli arriva a proporre di rovesciare il famoso grido di Marx: “Gli scienziati sociali hanno trasformato il mondo in vari modi; il punto, tuttavia, è interpretarlo”.46 Eppure, se non siamo mai stati moderni, è perché l’immagine che i moderni si davano di sé e del proprio operato era solo una metà della loro pratica effettiva: svelare l’altra metà di questa immagine – quella che, prima di “purificare” delimitando natura e società, “mescola” creando incessantemente ibridi – è il modo in cui Latour spera di favorire il passaggio dalla modernità all’ecologia. Questa oscillazione etica tra una vocazione liberalista e descrittiva, che mira a lasciare esistere più che giudicare, e una pienamente performativa, che acceleri la creazione del “popolo di Gaia”, spiega forse perché Latour, che di principio dovrebbe garantire piena realtà ad attori come il capitalismo o Gaia, sia riluttante a farlo. Latour non risolve mai davvero questa aporia. Anziché disinnescarla, possiamo suggerire di limitarne la portata. Sosterremo che la negazione dell’unità attoriale sia controproducente quando applicata, ad esempio, al capitalismo: con le parole di Benjamin Noys, ciò che Latour non coglie è che “essere immanenti al capitale non significa essere completamente determinati da esso; ciò detta invece il bisogno di lottare su quel terreno se lo si vuole rovesciare”;47 così, “la dissoluzione meramente microscopico, l’omotetia dei frattali permette di pensare l’intervento del caso a qualsiasi scala (ivi, pp. 46-7). Per questo Latour definisce frattale il diritto, caratterizzato dalla superficialità, capacità di mobilitare il corpus della legge come una totalità all’interno di casi che sono sempre particolari, di passare dal particolare alla totalità senza riguardo per la scala considerata: (B. Latour, La fabrique du droit. Une etnographie du Conseil d’État, La Découverte, Parigi 2002, p. 275). Latour arriva a impiegare la terminologia flat per definire il diritto: “la verità giuridica è talmente leggera e piatta [plate] che non può essere afferrata da chi intende andare al fondo delle cose” (ivi, p. 285). 43 Cfr. B. Latour, Non siamo mai stati moderni, cit., p. 159. 44 M. DeLanda, Deleuze: History and science, Atropos Press, New York 2010, p. 7. 45 B. Latour, Reassembling the social. An introduction to actor-network theory, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2005, p. 23. 46 Ivi, p. 42. 47 B. Noys, The persistence of the negative. A critique of contemporary continental theory, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2010, p. 86. 413 Fuori scala. La Flat Ecology di Bruno Latour verbale del capitalismo da parte di Latour ci lascia ancora più vulnerabili al capitalismo”.48 Sostenere che “il capitalismo non esiste”49 non aiuta certo né a interpretare una serie di effetti negativi che, ascrittigli o meno, sono pienamente operanti, né ad elaborare strategie alternative. Al contrario, quando questo rifiuto viene applicato all’ecologia, esso può assumere un potenziale, sia esplicativo che pragmatico, che giustifica il discrimine di Latour. Rifiutare di vedere Gaia come un super-organismo o un iperoggetto spiega da una parte come la sua realtà possa essere ignorata da molti, offrendo un’interpretazione efficace, ad esempio, dell’uscita degli Stati Uniti dagli accordi di Parigi nel 2017; dall’altra, associare il “grande” non alla robustezza ma alla fragilità e alla necessità di tutela, trasforma Gaia in qualcosa come una minaccia fragile che chiede il nostro aiuto per rendersi ancora più incombente. Gaia abbisogna di alleati per convincere anche i più scettici: la sua è una guerra che non è detto sia destinata a vincere, e questa convinzione ontologica potrebbe agire da incentivo ad abbandonare il quietismo climatico in favore di un’attitudine attiva. Dopo aver illustrato più a fondo il trattamento latouriano del concetto di scala, verificheremo questa ipotesi, sondando il confronto di Latour con l’ipotesi di Gaia. 3. AL DI LÀ DEL GRANDE E DEL PICCOLO “Tutte le differenze di livello, dimensione e portata sono il risultato di una battaglia o di una negoziazione”.50 La via maestra per la vittoria di tale battaglia è la chiusura di una scatola nera: la fissazione di un concetto scientifico che, da quel momento, sarà quasi impossibile mettere in discussione.51 Nessuno ha più seriamente dubitato dell’esistenza dei germi dopo il lavoro di Pasteur, e la chiusura della scatola diventa tanto più ermetica quanti più alleati Pasteur riesce a radunare. Tentare di aprirla resta una possibilità; ma a costo di quale mobilitazione di forze? La Francia, l’Europa e poi il mondo vengono pasteurizzati. Quel singolo attore che è Pasteur diventa una monade dominante, si estende all’interno della rete, ne tocca, grazie alla mediazione dei suoi alleati, sempre più punti. Pasteurizzazione significa che, in un senso molto concreto, la dimensione di Pasteur aumenta, egli diventa grande, si trasforma letteralmente in un gigante da attore tra gli altri che era, perché i microbi sono alleati così potenti che forzano tutta la rete a chiudere la loro scatola e tutta la Francia a pasteurizzarsi: “Un attore cresce con il numero di relazioni che può, come diciamo noi, mettere in scatole nere… i macro-attori sono micro-attori seduti su una pila di molte scatole nere”.52 Ivi, p. 87. B. Latour, I microbi, cit., p. 222. 50 M. Callon & B. Latour, “Unscrewing the big Leviathan”, cit., p. 278. 51 Cfr. B. Latour, La scienza in azione, cit., p. 7. 52 M. Callon & B. Latour, “Unscrewing the big Leviathan”, cit., pp. 284-5. 48 49 414 CHRISTIAN FRIGERIO Una volta chiusa, la scatola nera funge da “punto di appoggio” perché i suoi alleati possano estendere la propria rete di alleanze. In laboratorio, fenomeni che fuori sembrano enormi e incontrollabili vengono resi piccoli e dominabili, come accade ai microbi al microscopio di Roux. L’efficacia delle scienze segue il principio della leva: “Come per la leva di Archimede, il punto di appoggio del laboratorio sui microbi addomesticati consente uno spostamento reale del mondo”.53 Nel racconto di Plutarco, la leva permette ad Archimede di riorganizzare l’esercito siracusano dimensionando le macchine a sua difesa; con un esempio ancora più forte, è un salto di scala enorme quello che permette a una manciata di uomini armati di taglierini di causare il crollo delle torri gemelle.54 Così, “la metafora della leva, del rapporto tra piccolo e grande che la leva permette di calcolare, definisce l’efficacia del laboratorio e la relazione che esso istituisce con le cose modificandole in modo così radicale”.55 È un impressionante cambiamento di scala quello che segue la chiusura di una scatola nera. Un fenomeno viene prelevato dal mondo a scala uno, per essere tradotto in laboratorio, dove è lavorato grazie alle apparecchiature, ritradotto in scala uno per verificare i risultati di questa manipolazione, condotto di nuovo in laboratorio per ulteriori modifiche, e così via. Come Latour scrive alla sua corrispondente immaginaria, “Quando le diranno che il piccolo contiene il gande, che il locale contiene il globale, che un minuscolo cambiamento in un calcolo o in una teoria permette di modificare forze immense e di ottenere enormi effetti, non dimentichi mai di ripercorrere questo movimento incredibilmente astuto che spiega attraverso deviazioni e composizioni i continui sconvolgimenti introdotti dai laboratori nel corso usuale delle nostre pratiche”.56 Lo stesso principio si applica alla politica: concretamente, un macro-attore è un attore che acquisisce il diritto di parlare a nome di altri. Il leviatano è un attore come Ivi, p. 117. Cfr. ivi, p. 97: “Questo gioco fra minimo e massimo colpisce i contemporanei: un microparassita può uccidere un bue o un uomo milioni di volte più grande di lui; pochi uomini, nel chiuso dei loro laboratori, possono acquisire, in una generazione, maggiori conoscenze sui microbi di tutta l’umanità nell’alba dei secoli… doppia sproporzione. L’infinitamente piccolo ci ha ucciso per migliaia d’anni e l’impegno di pochi uomini è stato sufficiente per capirne i meccanismi”. 54 Id., Reassembling the social, cit., p. 203. Lo stesso principio di leva si applica alle innovazioni tecniche. Se i risultati ottenuti in laboratorio possono affettare l’intera società, è grazie alle “catene di traduzione che trasformano un problema globale (la città, il secolo) in un problema locale (la cinematica, i trasporti continui) attraverso una serie di intermediari che… obbligano quelli… che sono interessati nel problema globale a interessarsi, attraverso degli spostamenti quasi impercettibili, alla soluzione locale” (id., Aramis, or the love of technology, tr. C. Porter, Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1996, p. 32). Il problema locale si stabilisce come “il punto di passaggio obbligato che risolverà i grandi problema dell’epoca” (ibid.). Per questo a un progetto tecnico è fondamentale la creazione di interessi: un problema globale può essere risolto solo se un numero sufficiente di attori viene attratto da una situazione locale, che – come la leva in laboratorio rispetto alle macchine difensive – modellizza il problema. 55 Id., Cogitamus. Sei lettere sull’umanesimo scientifico, tr. R. Ferrara, Il Mulino, Bologna 2013, p. 121. 56 Ivi, p. 124-5. 53 415 Fuori scala. La Flat Ecology di Bruno Latour gli altri, ma cui, attraverso contratto, gli attori hanno ceduto il potere di parlare in loro vece. Il leviatano è chi ha avuto la forza di tradurre gli altri attori nella propria lingua, estendendo la propria rete. Questo fragile prestito di forza è ciò che, in Irriduzioni, Latour definisce potenza. Il leviatano conterrebbe ‘in potenza’ tutte quelle forze che ha soggiogato. Con la potenza comincia non solo l’ingiustizia, ma la confusione descrittiva, perché “nessuno arriva più a distinguere un attore dagli alleati che lo rendono forte”.57 L’efficacia di Pasteur ha del miracoloso perché l’enorme rete che ha saputo formare viene scambiata per l’“oggettività” della batteriologia. Allo stesso tempo, scomparso il grande, scompare in prospettiva anche il piccolo. Il “sentimento di piccolezza” deriva solo dal mancato accesso ai luoghi d’inscrizione – tipicamente, gli uffici – dove si riscrivono e si ridistribuiscono i ruoli.58 Questa è la differenza reale da cui nascono i discorsi su una differenza di scala che è solo una risultante. È sulla – talvolta vertiginosa – differenza tra chi ha accesso a questi luoghi e chi non lo ha che si giocano le critiche alla “dominazione”: come scrive Latour, “tutto è piatto, ma ci son pure, in fin dei conti, un alto e un basso”.59 Ma, così come il capitalismo pur estendendo la propria rete resta locale in ogni punto, l’acquisita dimensione del leviatano resta assolutamente precaria e dipendente dal volere del resto della rete. La potenza è sempre meno di una conquista; piuttosto, è un fragile prestito: “Una forza non può farsi dare le forze che allinea e convince. Non può per definizione, che farsi prestare la loro collaborazione”.60 La potenza viene sempre meno da una singola forza che da molte debolezze che si uniscono sotto lo stesso segno. Con un’esclamazione degna di La Boétie, il Latour politicamente più ardito afferma che potenti sono quelli che “si credono universali [ma] che non hanno altra forza se non quella che noi stessi vogliamo dar loro”.61 La potenza è effetto, illusione ottica, ed è sufficiente mostrarla come risultante da un’alleanza di debolezze per disperderla. In questo senso non è scorretto definire Latour “il democratico massimo in filosofia”.62 Un attore non ha Id., I microbi, p. 223. Id., Enquête, p. 424. 59 Ivi, p. 424. 60 Id., I microbi, cit., p. 223. 61 Ivi, p. 224. 62 G. Harman, Prince of networks, cit., p. 91. Può essere d’interesse un esempio di come porre il concetto di scala al centro di un progetto di prassi non sia qualcosa di astruso quanto potrebbe sembrare. Nella nostra esperienza quotidiana, la relatività della scala è stata ampiamente concretizzata dalla digitalizzazione. In un articolo collaborativo che Latour scrisse nel 2012, la pratica del profiling si basava proprio sulla corrispondenza di un attore con una rete: un dottorando è un attore che inviluppa un insieme di attributi – ricerche, pubblicazioni, trascrizioni di convegni – il cui contenuto viene riassunto in una notazione abbreviata. Internet in qualche modo appiattisce il mondo, permettendo salti di scala istantanei, senza che scale diverse corrispondano più a livelli ontologici diversi: “è proprio questo che l’incredibile estensione degli strumenti digitali sta facendo alle stesse nozioni di ‘individuo’ e ‘intero’… Anziché dover scegliere e dunque saltare dagli individui agli interi, 57 58 416 CHRISTIAN FRIGERIO potenza – vale a dire, non ha grandezza – che quella che gli abbiamo prestato noi. Quella che il primo Latour chiama giustizia è la dispersione della potenza, la restituzione di ogni forza a se stessa, il ristabilimento della democrazia. La giustizia è l’abolizione della differenza di scala – o almeno, della differenza ontologica che questa è spesso assunta comportare. Come già detto, la constatazione che la servitù sia volontaria non porta a molto se non accompagnata da una prassi politica effettiva. Ma l’imponenza dello spirito democratico di Latour non si capisce che quando la democrazia viene, come egli auspica, estesa alle cose stesse: è in ambito ecologico che il democraticismo di Latour si mostra più fruttuoso. 4. ECOLOGIA DELLA FRAGILITÀ Il concetto di scala riassume, per Latour, gran parte delle poste in gioco della politica odierna. L’antropocene è l’era in cui, per la prima volta, non è assurdo porre l’influenza dell’azione umana “sulla stessa scala” di quella di inondazioni, tornado e terremoti.63 Allo stesso tempo, l’antropocene rende obsoleta l’opposizione tra Locale e Globale; mentre la modernità restava intrappolata nella tensione tra un movimento mondializzante che vede la terra come un Globo, come un intero, e una risposta Locale che resuscita tribalismi e rinsalda le frontiere, oggi “dobbiamo confrontarci con quello che è letteralmente un problema di dimensioni, di scala e di insediamento: il pianeta è troppo piccolo e limitato per il globo della globalizzazione; ed è troppo grande, infinitamente troppo grande, troppo dinamico e complesso per essere contenuto nelle frontiere ristrette e limitate di una dal micro al macro, si occupa ogni tipo di altra posizione, riarrangiando costantemente il modo in cui i profili sono interconnessi e sovrapposti” (B. Latour, P. Jensen, T. Venturini, S. Grauwin & D. Boullier, “‘The whole is always smaller than its parts’: a digital test of Gabriel Tarde’s monads”, The British Journal of Sociology, vol. 63, n. 4, 2012, pp. 590-615: 595). Si potrebbe aggiungere che, anche in campo informatico, è grazie all’opera di una monade dominante che l’aumento di scala ha luogo. Un influencer è letteralmente un gigante dei social, che presta le proprie dimensioni, ad esempio, a delle marche di abbigliamento. Ma si potrebbe dire che anche il recente assalto a Capitol Hill sia dovuto all’operato di una monade dominante, dalla quale molte altre sono state, per usare il termine di Tarde, possedute. Qui si vede anche, però, l’intrinseca fragilità della dimensione acquisita con un prestito di potenza. Trump viene ridotto a una formica sociale dopo il suo ban da parte di colossi come Twitter, Facebook e Snapchat: il legame della monade dominante con quelle che le prestavano la propria potenza viene reciso di netto, con lo stesso semplice click che aveva causato una vera sommossa. Mentre è evidente la pericolosità di un precedente del genere, che spinge oltretutto a chiedersi chi siano i veri giganti della rete, questo caso non solo mostra come le esclamazioni politiche di Latour non siano del tutto infondate, ma permette anche di pensare a vari modelli di prassi virtuale, di una lotta contro la scala (nei termini latouriani, una lotta per la giustizia) che passi attraverso i nuovi strumenti digitali. 63 B. Latour, La sfida di Gaia. Il nuovo regime climatico, tr. D. Caristina, Meltemi, Milano 2020, p. 172; id., Essere di questa terra. Guerra e pace al tempo dei conflitti ecologici, tr. N. Manghi, Rosenberg & Sellier, Torino 2019, p. 124. 417 Fuori scala. La Flat Ecology di Bruno Latour qualsivoglia località. Siamo tutti doppiamente travalicati: dal troppo grande come dal troppo piccolo”.64 Come superare l’opposizione tra Grande e Piccolo, tra Globale e Locale? Un diverso “attrattore”, oltre ai due che definivano il fronte di modernizzazione, deve essere istituito. Il suo nome è quello che Latour ricava da James Lovelock: Gaia, la dea-terra. È vero che Gaia tende a essere associata ad un punto di vista olistico, che riconosca la realtà ontologica della scala: lo stesso Lovelock considera Gaia “la più grossa creatura vivente sulla terra”, della quale noi siamo solo una “piccola parte”,65 e più in generale, rispetto all’etica tradizionale, “Dal momento che l’ecologia si focalizza sulle relazioni tra e in mezzo alle cose, essa inclina i suoi studiosi verso una visione più olistica del mondo”.66 Eppure, nella lettura di Latour, il problema dell’ecologia è: “come seguire le connessioni senza essere per questo olista?”.67 L’olismo diventa il bersaglio di Latour quando egli confronta il progetto dell’ecologia politica con il robusto monismo della deep ecology: come scrive il suo alfiere, “L’interconnessione intrinseca, nel senso di relazioni interne anziché esterne, caratterizza l’ontologia ecologica”.68 L’errore di questa prospettiva risiede per Latour nel decidere a priori che tout se tient, che tutto è connesso. Invece, la sua “ignoranza della totalità” è ciò che salva l’ecologia politica, “in quanto non le permette di ordinare all’interno di un’unica gerarchia i piccoli umani e i grandi strati di ozono, o i piccoli elefanti e gli struzzi di taglia media. ‘Grandezza’ e ‘piccolezza’ sono rinegoziate”.69 Nella “città ecologica”, che non demarca più umani e nonumani, la scala è rinegoziata anche dal punto di vista etico: laddove la petitesse etica starebbe nel “sapere che una cosa ha o, al contrario, non ha legami con un’altra”, e nel saperlo assolutamente – come la deep ecology, che in questo senso è non solo superficiale ma marcatamente petite70 – lo stato di grandeur “richiede un’incertezza profonda sulla natura degli attaccamenti, sulla loro solidità e la loro ripartizione, in quanto non prende in considerazione altro che mediatori che devono essere trattati ciascuno secondo la propria legge”.71 L’appello etico di Latour si risolve in un’ecologizzazione del grido deleuziano: “Non sappiamo cosa può un ambiente”.72 Tutto lo sforzo dell’ecologia politica latouriana consiste nello scollare Gaia da una concezione olistica, che dia la totalità per predefinita, in favore di un’attitudine Id., Tracciare la rotta. Come orientarsi in politica, tr. R. Prezzo, Cortina, Milano 2018, pp. 256. In questo libro, senza cambiare il contenuto del concetto, Latour preferirà il nome di Terrestre per l’attrattore che nelle opere precedenti chiamava Gaia. 65 J. Lovelock, Gaia. Nuove idee sull’ecologia, tr. V. Bassan Landucci, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2011, pp. 50, 56. 66 J. Baird Callicott, “Animal liberation”, cit., p. 321. 67 B. Latour, La sfida di Gaia, cit., p. 147. 68 A. Naess, “Spinoza and Ecology”, Philosophia, vol. 7, n. 1, 1977, pp. 45-54: 47. 69 B. Latour, Essere di questa terra, cit., p. 52. 70 Ivi, p. 57. 71 B. Latour, Essere di questa terra, cit., p. 57. 72 Ivi, pp. 56-7. 64 418 CHRISTIAN FRIGERIO che lasci che gli attori stessi dispieghino i propri legami: “Più generalizzate la nozione di intenzionalità a tutti gli attori, meno scoprirete intenzionalità nella totalità […] Con Gaia, Lovelock non ci chiede di credere a una sola Provvidenza, ma a tante Provvidenze quanti sono gli organismi sulla Terra”.73 La concezione lovelockiana della terra è anti-sistemica: esistono certamente degli effetti di controllo e feedback, ma questi non sono riassumibili in un attore unico – salvo, ovviamente, che a costo di una dispendiosa traduzione degli attori in un linguaggio unificato – poiché ogni essere piega l’ambiente intorno a sé secondo i propri interessi: “è in questo senso che non ci possono essere, a rigor di termini, parti. Nessun agente sulla Terra è semplicemente sovrapposto a un altro come un mattone giustapposto a un altro. Su un pianeta morto, i pezzi sarebbero posti partes extra partes, non così sulla Terra. Ogni agency modifica le sue vicine, seppure molto leggermente, per rendere la propria sopravvivenza un po’ meno improbabile”.74 Mentre la concezione classica della Natura la vedeva composta di livelli e strati, e credeva possibile muoversi tra questi secondo un ordinato processo di zoom, Gaia “sovverte i livelli”.75 In questo senso, Latour arriva a reclamare la “fine della ‘natura’ intesa come concetto che ci consentirebbe di riassumere i nostri rapporti con il mondo e di pacificarli”.76 L’ecologia stessa si definisce “non come la politica che prende in considerazione la Natura, ma piuttosto come la fine della Natura che fungeva da consorte della politica”.77 Latour è di fatto uno dei più noti ecologisti ad aver posto l’esclusione del concetto di natura come prerequisito di una fondazione seria dell’ecologia. Insieme a lui andrebbe citato Timothy Morton,78 per il quale la natura non esiste come ente indipendente e durevole: essa funge al massimo da punto focale di certe attitudini ideologiche prodotte dall’agrilogistica, quella “macchinazione” durata 12000 anni con la quale l’uomo si sarebbe creato un ambiente ciclico e prevedibile, un’unità Id., La sfida di Gaia, cit., p. 151. Ivi, p. 148-9. 75 Ivi, p. 158. 76 Ivi, p. 66. 77 Ivi, p. 80. 78 Confronti tra Latour e Morton (ai quali viene talvolta aggiunto Žižek) come ecologi “senza natura” sono già stati tentati, per quanto non concentrandosi sul concetto di scala. Ad esempio, Anthony Paul Smith (A non-philosophical theory of nature. Ecologies of thought, Palgrave Macmillan, Londra 2013, cap. 10), oltre a sostenere che il concetto di natura abbia ancora un ruolo da giocare in ecologia, ritiene la critica di Morton più stringente di quella di Latour, perché, primo, Latour rifiuta di considerare il ruolo giocato dal capitalismo, e così anche avesse successo nel creare un’ecologia senza natura si tratterebbe di un’ecologia politica ancora interna al sistema capitalistico; secondo, Latour toglierebbe alle scienze tutta l’autorità della Scienza, privandole così di ogni potere di mettere in discussione la filosofia, e in particolare il parlamentarismo che resta per Latour un principio inattaccabile (ivi, p. 160). Cfr. anche S. McGrath, “Why political ecology cannot let go of nature”, Analecta Hermeneutica, vol. 10, 2018, pp. 1-15; J. H. Sherman, “Reading the book of nature after nature”, Religions, n. 11, 2020. 73 74 419 Fuori scala. La Flat Ecology di Bruno Latour armonizzata, perfetta per sostenere il capitalismo.79 Non è forse un caso che, anche per Morton, il concetto di scala stia al cuore della questione. L’olismo dell’ecologia classica dipenderebbe dalla falsa concezione di uno spazio smooth e omogeneo, caratterizzato da una (fin troppo antropocentrica) geometria euclidea.80 Esclusa questa illusione, lo “spazio” collassa, lasciando emergere dei places perturbanti, e con essi diverse scale temporali.81 Questa eterogeneità di scale è ciò che permette l’avvento degli iperoggetti: “cose che sono massivamente distribuite nel tempo e nello spazio relativamente agli umani”.82 Non-locali – poiché, in una tesi speculare a quella di Latour, per Morton la località è sempre un’astrazione83 – e transdimensionali – dal momento che occupano uno spazio di fase che impedisce all’uomo di catturarli come interi secondo il suo modello tridimensionale84 – gli iperoggetti, il cui paradigma più immediato è il riscaldamento globale, ci confrontano a “una strana mereologia in cui le parti non scompaiono in interi”.85 Non esistono top objects che assegnano agli altri oggetti valore e significato, né bottom objects cui siano tutti riducibili. Se, per rifondare il pensiero ecologico, Latour sbriciola la natura facendo della scala il prodotto di una serie di negoziazioni mai definitive, Morton, né olista come l’ecologia classica né occasionalista come Latour, cerca invece di disfare l’olismo rendendo iperbolica e assoluta quella differenza di scala sulla quale lo stesso concetto di natura si basava: il pensiero ecologico inizia quando si è capaci di elevare (scale up) il nostro pensiero a Earth magnitude,86 calcolando gli effetti iper-scopici delle nostre azioni. Latour appiattisce e leviga; Morton allarga e gonfia. Non è solo una differenza nell’uso di metafore. Per Morton, gli iperoggetti ci conducono nell’“Età dell’Asimmetria”: la conoscenza umana diventa self-defeating, perché più arriviamo a conoscere gli iperoggetti, più capiamo di non aver potere su di essi. La categoria estetica sotto cui, secondo Morton, si pongono gli iperoggetti è quella freudiana del perturbante. Di fronte agli iperoggetti, ci manca la velocità per fuggire dalla terra, per sottrarci alle conseguenze delle nostre azioni.87 Quella che Cfr. T. Morton, Ecology without nature. Rethinking environmental aesthetics, Harvard University Press, Harvard 2009, p. 20; id., Dark ecology. For a logic of future coexistence, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2016, p. 55; id., Hyperobjects. Philosophy and ecology after the end of the world, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2013, p. 113. 80 Id., Dark ecology, cit., p. 12. 81 Ivi, p. 10. 82 Id., Hyperobjects, cit., p. 1. 83 Ivi, p. 47. 84 Ivi, p. 70. 85 Ivi, pp. 77-8. Questa “strana mereologia” è la stessa invocata dalla OOO. Morton ascrive di fatto gli iperoggetti a una flat ontology, intesa però, con Harman, come abolizione della distinzione tra umani e non (ivi, p. 14), mentre la sua proposta pare opposta a qualsiasi abolizione della realtà della scala. 86 Id., Dark ecology, p. 24. 87 Id., Hyperobjects, p. 160. 79 420 CHRISTIAN FRIGERIO deriva dal loro avvento è un’ecologia politica che non può fare a meno di confrontarsi col reale, con le conseguenze planetarie delle iniziative umane: è questo che significa elevare il pensiero a scala terrestre. Per Latour, al contrario, “è perché il carattere lampante della minaccia non ci farà cambiare che dobbiamo prepararci a rifondare la politica”.88 Non esiste oggetto così grande da obbligarci al confronto col reale: l’uscita di Trump dagli accordi sul clima sarebbe la prova lampante di quanto la realtà di Gaia sia ancora tutt’altro che innegabile, di come attrattori ben diversi siano possibili. Gaia non è il Globo, non è un agente unificato che raggruppi tutti gli altri: Gaia “altro non è che un nome per tutte le conseguenze interrelate e imprevedibili di una serie di agency ciascuna delle quali persegue il proprio interesse manipolando il proprio ambiente per il proprio comfort”.89 Essa corrisponde a “Una potenza che agisce dappertutto contemporaneamente, ma che non ha un’unità. Politica, ma non statuale. Essa è, letteralmente, atmosferica”.90 Gaia è il presentimento dell’interdipendenza di una miriade di attori che, senza formare un sistema unificato, non possono prescindere gli uni dagli altri né ignorare l’azione reciproca. Come riassume Latour, “c’è solo una gaia ma gaia non è una”.91 Per questo la categoria del perturbante non può esserle applicata; per questo Gaia non impedisce di ignorare il reale. Gaia acquisirà corpo solo se sarà capace di attrarre in alleanza un gran numero di attori: lontano dall’ecologia del perturbante di Morton, quella di Latour è piuttosto un’ecologia della fragilità, nella quale l’unica garanzia del progetto ecologico richiede di essere rafforzata dall’azione di quella moltitudine di enti che a lungo si è preteso regolasse come un’imperatrice. Nel 2017, uscendo dagli accordi sul clima, Trump dichiara guerra. Un’invasione condotta non con carri armati ma con la CO2 che gli Stati Uniti decidono così di continuare a produrre, salvo lavarsi le mani delle conseguenze di questo fatto.92 Alla ricerca di un nuovo Lebensraum, Trump dichiara che non abitiamo lo stesso mondo. Il grande “attrattore” del trumpismo, al di là del Locale e del Globale, è quello che Latour chiama il Fuori-Suolo, “l’orizzonte di chi non appartiene più alla realtà di una terra che reagirebbe alle sue azioni”.93 Il Fuori-Suolo non corrisponde alla realtà dell’interdipendenza degli attori, ma ciò non impedisce che esso venga investito del ruolo di attore, che sotto il suo nome si radunino delle agencies reali, che dunque esso, in quanto produttore d’effetti, abbia un’esistenza autentica. Lo stesso era accaduto per la modernità, la cui azione era effettuale nel dirigere le operazioni dei molti attori che si riconoscevano nella sua immagine senza che essa B. Latour, La sfida di Gaia, cit., p. 115. Id., Essere di questa terra, cit., p. 128. 90 Id., Tracciare la rotta, cit., p. 121. 91 Id., La sfida di Gaia, cit., p. 147. 92 Id., Tracciare la rotta, cit., pp. 9-10, 110. 93 Ivi, p. 48. 88 89 421 Fuori scala. La Flat Ecology di Bruno Latour corrispondesse alla loro pratica reale.94 Questo radunarsi nel nome di qualcosa è proprio la soluzione che Latour offre in un’epoca postepistemologica – nella quale gli “esperti” non son più capaci di mettersi d’accordo, così che non abbiamo alcuna garanzia esterna che la disciplina cui sceglieremo di affidarci sia dalla parte del giusto.95 Latour riprende qui una distinzione cara a un autore dal quale è ampiamente affascinato, Carl Schmitt, tra operazione di polizia e operazione di guerra. Il gesto con cui confrontiamo i seguaci del Fuori-Suolo non può essere uno di polizia, perché Gaia non offre le garanzie di uno stato preesistente e unificato – come avrebbe invece potuto fare la Scienza, versione politicizzata delle scienze che sole sono reali. Piuttosto, la geostoria ci fa entrare in uno “stato di guerra generalizzato”,96 obbligando alla scelta di una parte, a una discriminazione netta tra amici e nemici. Quella tra i seguaci di Gaia e del Fuori-Suolo è una vera guerra, il cui esito non può essere determinato in anticipo. Gaia “non è ancora un’istituzione, ma è già un attore”.97 Che diventi un’istituzione, che si renda abbastanza grande e si chiuda in scatola nera, dipende dall’esito di questa guerra, da quanti vorranno scendere in battaglia nel nome di Gaia. 5. CONCLUSIONE: PRASSI DELLA DIPENDENZA La flat ontology nasce in gran parte dalla speranza che sia possibile delineare una prospettiva metafisica coerente che salvaguardi l’autonomia del piccolo anche quando viene sussunto in un intero più grande. DeLanda ammette il proprio bias nei confronti delle gerarchie ampie e centralizzate, e lo giustifica come reazione all’eccessiva omogeneizzazione conosciuta dagli ultimi tre secoli, che ha portato a vedere l’eterogeneità quasi come un problema da eliminare.98 Levi Bryant è ben meno equilibrato: mentre la strana mereologia della OOO, nella quale “gli oggetti possono essere inseriti in altri oggetti rimanendo ciononostante indipendenti o autonomi da quegli oggetti in cui sono inseriti […] distrugge le concezioni organiche sia della società che dell’universo”,99 Bryant arriva a definire Gaia come “una Id., Non siamo mai stati moderni, cit., p. 61: “molto di più di una illusione e molto di meno di una essenza […] [la modernità è] una forza aggiunta ad altre che essa ha per molto tempo avuto la capacità di rappresentare, di accelerare o di ridurre, mentre d'ora in avanti ha perso questa capacità”. Si potrebbe aggiungere che fantasie come quella dell’ex CEO di Amazon, Jeff Bezos, di colonizzare Marte mostrano come il Fuori-Suolo, la fine di un mondo comune, possa rappresentare un attrattore anche economico: cfr. I. Buchanan, Assemblage theory and method, cit., p. 94. 95 B. Latour, La sfida di Gaia, cit., p. 206. 96 Ivi, p. 115. 97 Id., Tracciare la rotta, cit., p. 116. 98 M. DeLanda, A thousand years, cit., p. 269. 99 L. Bryant, The democracy of objects, cit., p. 152. 94 422 CHRISTIAN FRIGERIO fascista o una totalitaria”,100 un intero dispotico all’interno del quale l’essere della parte è praticamente annullato, ridotto a mero elemento funzionale con ben poca potenzialità di affettare il tutto. Ma, se il desideratum che un’ontologia consenta almeno di concepire una relativa autonomia dei termini rispetto all’intero va senz’altro preservato, sarebbe frivolo sperare che una diversa descrizione del mondo sia sufficiente a rimediare ai suoi mali, e anzi, elaborando una descrizione di come il mondo è sulla base di come vorremmo che fosse si rischia solo di peccare di ideologia e inefficacia, nascondendo le reali fonti di agency e autonomia che possono essere rintracciate in questo mondo.101 La stessa tendenza di alcuni realisti speculativi a confondere un cambiamento di descrizione con una reale emancipazione si è vista in Latour: “Il mondo sociale è piatto. La libertà ha questo prezzo, e forse anche il liberalismo – da non confondere con il suo antonimo ottenuto con il piccolo prefisso ‘neo’”.102 È possibile fornire un’interpretazione del divenire del mondo che faccia a meno del concetto di capitalismo, o che ne fornisca un’interpretazione anti-olistica in cui il suo modo d’operare è locale in ogni punto. Ma i problemi evidenziati dai critici di questa misteriosa entità chiamata capitalismo non sono certo dispersi semplicemente negando l’esistenza di una fonte unificata dei mali. Per questo, ci sembra difficile dare torto a chi vede in Latour un pensatore poco efficace riguardo certe questioni politico-sociali. Eppure, dietro a questa ingenuità, si intravvede qualcosa che distingue Latour dagli altri realisti speculativi. Secondo la OOO, “tutti gli oggetti sono mutualmente esterni”.103 La OOO afferma l’esteriorità delle relazioni sia in senso verticale – ci sono oggetti emergenti, ma che non eliminano mai l’autonomia delle parti – che orizzontale – gli oggetti sono sempre esterni gli uni agli altri anche sullo stesso livello di scala: possono intralciare le rispettive manifestazioni, ma mai l’essere degli oggetti stessi. Negando l’esistenza di livelli, l’approccio di Latour alla dipendenza verticale è forse anche più radicale di quello della OOO, con tutti i già indicati problemi che ne conseguono. L’attitudine di Latour è tuttavia inversa quando si tratta di considerare le relazioni orizzontali tra attori: contro le chiacchiere sulla “libertà” dell’uomo al centro di una natura passiva, l’ecologia politica deve rivitalizzare la “virtù della dipendenza. Dipendere in primo luogo limita, poi complica e infine obbliga a riprendere il concetto di emancipazione per ampliarlo”.104 Come prosegue: “Dire ‘Siamo dei terrestri in mezzo a terrestri’ non porta alla stessa Ivi, p. 277. Per una critica di questo stampo a Harman e Bryant (oltre che a Quentin Meillassoux) mi permetto di rimandare a C. Frigerio, “Power, Possibility, and Agency: Speculative Realism and Whitehead’s Theory of Relations”, Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture, vol. 4, no. 3, 2020, pp. 5-22. 102 B. Latour, Enquête, cit., p. 430. 103 G. Harman, Prince of networks, cit., p. 135. 104 B. Latour, Tracciare la rotta, cit., p. 108. 100 101 423 Fuori scala. La Flat Ecology di Bruno Latour politica del dire ‘Siamo degli umani nella natura’”.105 Ancora una volta, le mancanze del Latour critico del capitalismo si rovesciano nel potenziale del Latour pensatore ecologico. La virtù della dipendenza, della dipendenza dell’umano dal non-umano e di ogni attore dagli altri, è quanto richiesto per combattere gli alleati del FuoriSuolo. Se siamo dipendenti, è perché il mondo esiste, eppure è da comporre. Esiste già, se con ciò si intende che gli effetti di ogni azione si ripercuotono sul resto degli attori. Ma è da comporre perché non è ancora un’istituzione unitaria, perché della sua realtà si può dubitare, perché vincere questa guerra è l’unico modo per avere la meglio sui seguaci del Fuori-Suolo. L’avvio delle procedure, a meno di ventiquattro ore dall’insediamento di Biden, per il rientro degli Stati Uniti negli accordi sul clima segna una svolta importante per le sorti del conflitto: Gaia si estende, senza abdicare alla propria fragilità. La virtù della dipendenza cui si appella Latour servirà a ricordare quanto difficile sia il compito dell’emancipazione, della lotta comune, della vera democrazia, anche quando non esiste più un minaccioso intero che osserva rapace dall’alto – e anzi proprio perché questo intero non c’è ancora. Riconoscere la dipendenza radicale degli attori è forse il primo passo per trasformare Gaia in istituzione, per comporre un mondo comune. 105 Ivi, p. 112. 425 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 425-442 ISSN: 1825-5167 PLEASURE AND PAIN AND THE PENAL THEORY IN PLATO’S LAWS JAKUB JINEK Faculty of Arts University of Pardubice (Czech Republic) jakub.jinek@upce.cz ABSTRACT The paper searches for the systematic link between the psychological doctrine of Plato’s Laws and its theory of punishment. This link can be seen in the ability of emotions (i.e., pleasure and pain) to be harmonized in an individual soul; this ability forms the precondition for the soul’s compliance with education and punishment. The penal law contributes to the proper individualization of the soul by unifying emotions of pleasure and pain; in the case of the rare philosophical nature, however, there is no need of punishment at all since it already presents a well-ordered unity. K EYWORDS Plato; Pleasure and pain; Moral psychology; Punishment; Law INTRODUCTION Pleasure and pain play a central role in the project of the second best constitution in Plato’s Laws. As dominant determinants of human conduct, they represent the chief source of motivation for human beings and thus also the main focus of any discussion of lawgiving (Leg. I,636d). To be more specific, pleasure and pain serve as an instrument for the educational purposes of the lawgiver of the new colony of Magnesia (Leg. I,647c–d), and this idea also seems to underline the penal code of the second best city: The Athenian presupposes that pleasure and pain should be imposed on wrongdoers in order to cure their wicked character, which is conceived of as an illness (Leg. V,735d; IX,860b, 862d). It belongs to the nature of Plato’s philosophical writings, however, that many central concepts are not directly discussed here and this is also the case with our topic; the nature of the link between emotions or, more generally, the soul, and punishment is never made fully explicit in the Laws. This fact has provoked criticism in a part of the scholarly literature.1 Among several problems cited in this 1 See Stalley (1983), pp. 145–146; Gagarin (1993), p. 83; Stalley (1995), pp. 473; Lewis (2011), p. 26, 29. Authors usually point out the discontinuity or tension between Plato’s penal theory based on 426 JAKUB JINEK regard, one deserves our special attention: since pleasure and pain are supraindividual principles in Plato2 it is obscure how the lawgiver could effectively direct such a power by a positive law in order to meet the needs of an individual soul. Another issue that evoked much attention in the literature is how the link between emotions and penalties could be the source of a legitimate penal theory. Such a formulation of the question implies that the theory of punishment should be understood as the legitimation of a certain problematic practice, namely causing pain and harm to the individual, which then implies certain legitimization strategies corresponding to particular functions of punishment: retributive, deterrent or reformative.3 Plato’s efforts are often associated with the last mentioned function, because his theoretical aim is directed to the future, whether his theory is conceived as curative or educational.4 However, as some critical responses have already pointed out, the attempt to separate one of the functions in Plato’s theory and focus on it is quite misleading both from a systematic and from a historical point of view.5 The key to understanding Plato on this point is to avoid reductionism and to include all the necessary context, both epistemological and metaphysical,6 or political and institutional.7 In what follows, I would like to build on this intuition and reconsider the relationship between the psychology of Books I and II and the penology of Book IX from this expanded perspective, including not only Plato’s cosmology and metaphysics, but also his doctrine of metempsychosis. I hope then to be able to reconstruct the possible link between the two realms that will be able to answer both the problem of the effectiveness, and also the problem of the legitimacy, of Plato’s penal theory. 1. PLEASURE AND PAIN That pleasure and pain are conceived as primarily supra-individual factors in the Laws emerges from two famous passages of Book I, which compare pleasure and pain either to “two fountains which gush out by nature’s impulse”8 or to his innovative psychology (and radical presuppositions such as that no one does wrong willingly or that punishment provides a cure for the soul) and actual punishments prescribed by the laws of Magnesia that are basically retributive and thus rather traditional. Special criticism has been addressed to the assumption that punishment should cure the crime. 2 Besides the passages of the Laws (I,636d, 644d–e) discussed below, see Philb. 26b, 61c, 62d, 65d; Tim. 86b–e. 3 Mackenzie (1981); see esp. pp. 2, 205–206; Adams (2019), pp. 3–8. 4 See Saunders (1991), pp. 164–195, for the former, and Mackenzie (1981), pp. 202–204, for the latter. 5 See Taylor (1982), pp. 198–199, and works in two following notes. 6 Rousseau (1983), p. 942. 7 Rosen (1995), pp. 477, 484–487. 8 δύο γὰρ αὗται πηγαὶ μεθεῖνται φύσει ῥεῖν, Leg. 636d8; cf. Phil. 61c5, 62d4, 7. 427 Pleasure and Pain and the Penal Theory in Plato’s Laws “some sinews or cords” in “each of us living creatures who are puppets of the gods”.9 Both metaphors depict a structurally similar relation between the emotional aspects of the soul and their rational control10 that subordinates emotions to a norm.11 Puppets: Autonomous dynamism of emotions In the latter metaphor, the soul is conceived as a complex plurality of parts:12 besides pleasure and pain, it also includes fears and confidences that form a counterpart to reason (λογισμός, 644d2)13 which – when expressed as a common teaching of the city (δόγμα πόλεως) – receives the title nomos. The relation of the parts is described by the Athenian as follows: these inward affections of ours, like sinews or cords, drag us along and, being opposed to each other (enantiai), pull one against the other to opposing actions (ep’ enantias praxeis); and herein lies the dividing line between goodness and badness. For, as our argument declares, there is one of these pulling forces which every man should always follow and nohow leave hold of, counteracting thereby the pull of the other sinews: it is the leading-string, golden and holy, of calculation (logismos).14 (644e1–645a1, transl. Bury15) θαῦμα μὲν ἕκαστον ἡμῶν ἡγησώμεθα τῶν ζῴων θεῖον, Leg. 644d7–8; ἐν ἡμῖν οἷον νεῦρα ἢ σμήρινθοί τινες, 644e1–3; cf. νεύρων ἐπιτόνους, XII,945c5. The fact that the dynamism of emotions is of supra-individual, probably cosmological origin can lead to some misunderstandings concerning their nature and their relation to the rational part. A widespread interpretation claims that their relation is that between a physical substrate and its rational organization, which is imposed on it subsequently: Jaeger (1989), p. 1180; Krämer (1959), p. 148; Sandvoss (1971), p. 25; Bravo (2003), p. 104. This picture only underlines doubts as to whether such a scheme with two fundamentally distinct elements can inform any penal theory at all. Nevertheless, a closer look at the moral psychology of Books I and II reveals a more subtle picture that, on the one hand, allows for influence of the hedonic-emotional elements on the soul and, on the other hand, assumes a specific notion of their individualization (see below). 10 For the first passage, see negatively: ἀνεπιστημόνως, 636e2; for the second: λογισμός, 645a5. 11 For the formulation of the norm in the first passage, see ὅθεν τε δεῖ καὶ ὁπότε καὶ ὁπόσον, 636d8 f., cf. Lisi (1985), p. 111. For the latter passage see νόμον, 645b7. This model is closely connected to the legislative context of the dialogue, where one of the main tasks of the lawgiver is to assume control over the emotions (I,636d, 645b, 648b–c; cf. II,653b–c, 659c–660a). 12 It is important for the overall understanding of the aim of the dialogue that this plurality is observed against the background of the oneness of every person (ἕνα μὲν ἡμῶν ἕκαστον αὐτὸν τιθῶμεν, 644c4). See below, footnotes 29 and 30. 13 The structure of the soul is thus threefold (cf. 632c5–6, 644c9, 653a7, 689b, 864a), similarly as in the Republic or Phaedrus. For more details to this point, see Hentschke (1971), p. 208, note 91; cf. 199–200; Morrow (1960), pp. 557–558. Recent arguments against trichotomy: Görgermanns (1960), pp. 120–121; Stalley (1983), pp. 47–48; Schöpsdau (1994), pp. 228–230; Robinson (2001), p. 117; Bobonich (2002). 14 ταῦτα τὰ πάθη ἐν ἡμῖν οἷον νεῦρα ἢ σμήρινθοί τινες ἐνοῦσαι σπῶσίν τε ἡμᾶς καὶ ἀλλήλαις ἀνθέλκουσιν ἐναντίαι οὖσαι ἐπ᾽ ἐναντίας πράξεις, οὗ δὴ διωρισμένη ἀρετὴ καὶ κακία 9 428 JAKUB JINEK The key to this central passage lies – in my view – in two different meanings of the word “opposition” (enantion). The text does not imply that the opposing emotions drag us to correspondingly opposing actions:16 While the first opposition seems to refer to the contradictory relation of pleasure and pain mentioned a few lines earlier (644c6–7),17 the other opposition of actions related to the distinction between aretê and kakia might rather describe a subtler opposition between acts tending to extremes and actions seeking a moderated mean. This subtler opposition has been indicated in the previous discussion. The interlocutors have spoken about the variety of actions directed towards pleasure so far: about shunning pleasures (φεύγειν, 634a8, 636e6) or abstaining from them (ἀπέχεσθαι, 635b6), which has been contrasted to tasting them (γεύεσθαι, 634a7, 635b6) and bringing in the midst of them (ἄγοντα εἰς μέσας, 634a9); further, they mentioned falling into them (προσπίτνειν, 637a3). This catalogue of acts with respect to pleasure provides us with an entirely intelligible model of enantiai praxeis (see the figure below): abstaining from pleasures is naturally opposed to falling into them; at the same time, insofar tasting pleasures is explicitly opposed to shunning them, it forms an enantion to both parts of the previous opposition. All in all, there are three pairs of opposing actions: shunning and falling (636e f.), shunning and tasting (634a, 635b), and finally falling and tasting. And since the opposition in question should be formative for the distinction between virtue and vice, the only relevant contradiction here seems to be the “Aristotelian” one: that between the blamable extremes and the tempered middle action. Thus what we encounter here is a model of the mean between two contrasting extremes.18 This is perfectly in accord with the way the role of logismos is described in our passage. The formulation implies its parallel acting against two opposing emotions simultaneously (cf. τοῖς ἄλλοις)19 and thus against their contradictory tendency. As a result, logismos supports the mean between the emotions. κεῖται. μιᾷ γάρ φησιν ὁ λόγος δεῖν τῶν ἕλξεων συνεπόμενον ἀεὶ καὶ μηδαμῇ ἀπολειπόμενον ἐκείνης, ἀνθέλκειν τοῖς ἄλλοις νεύροις ἕκαστον, ταύτην δ᾽ εἶναι τὴν τοῦ λογισμοῦ ἀγωγὴν χρυσῆν καὶ ἱεράν. 15 I prefer using the older translation of Bury (1967–1968) for its superiority over Saunders (1970), Pangle (1980) and Schofield–Triffith (2016) in terms of the accuracy of the overall image; for the sake of unity, I also use the same translation in further cases bellow. 16 Despite Saunders’ mistranslation (1970, p. 74). 17 Δύο δὲ κεκτημένον ἐν αὑτῷ συμβούλω ἐναντίω τε καὶ ἄφρονε, ὣ προσαγορεύομεν ἡδονὴν καὶ λύπην. 18 Those interpreters, who reject this model for the Laws (Frede [2010], p. 120), entirely ignore this elaborate terminology. 19 Cf. the interpretation of the words ἐπί δὲ πᾶσι τούτοις as „zusätzlich zu/neben diesen [d. h. den vier genannten Kräfte: Lust/Schmerz, Furcht/Zuversicht]“ in Schöpsdau (1994), p. 236. 429 Pleasure and Pain and the Penal Theory in Plato’s Laws → λογισμός ← πάθη πραξεῖς ἕξεις ← ἥδονη προσπίπτειν κακία [ἐναντίω] γεύεσθαι/ἄγειν εἰς μέσας ἀρετή ἐναντίον λυπή → φεύγειν/ἀπέχεσθαι κακία ἐναντίον It is obvious that the relation between the rational and the emotional described here is not that of an external organization of chaotic material.20 Rather, virtue as a good state of the soul is produced by a complex interaction of the parts: emotions with their naturally oppositional dynamism limit each other while reason directs them towards a norm. In this model reason presents a necessary but not sufficient condition for virtue. As its guidance is mild and non-violent (πρᾴου δὲ καὶ οὐ βιαίου), it needs assistance (ὑπηρετῶν, 645a6) from another part. Given that at the same time our passage does not mention any further internal or external factor, this help might possibly be provided by the “middle” emotional faculty of the soul, namely fear and confidence – which are, however, closely connected to their respective emotions of pain and pleasure (644c10–d1). Maybe, we have to do with a model similar to that of the spirited part providing assistance to reason against desire in the Republic. Education: Emotional virtue without logos The picture of the relatively independent role which emotions play in the moral psychology of the Laws is further developed in the passage at the beginning of the second book that defines education (653a–c). The Athenian claims that aretê and kakia are firstly given to children by means of pleasure and pain before logos comes into the soul (653a6–7, b7, cf. 643e3–6). This state of the soul can be seen as a provisional virtue conceived as a good association of pleasure with love and of pain with hatred. This pre-virtue, called paideia by the Athenian (653c3), is responsible for the fact that children follow the right measure and mean (see VII,792d2) and therefore they can be said to be virtuous already as children. Though the active role in education falls to habituation which arises from proper customs (εἰθίσθαι ὑπὸ τῶν προσηκόντων ἐθῶν, 653b5–6), i.e. due to a form of nomos, which ensures that the coupling of pleasure with love and suffering with 20 Frede (2010), p. 116, stresses that according to this picture, the soul is not determined by any higher external factor but only by the working of its own “strings”. 430 JAKUB JINEK hate is in harmony (συμφωνία, b4, 6) with logismos (as soon as it is given to the soul), pleasure and pain themselves clearly play a significant role in this process and therefore cannot be conceived as mere disordered input, to be tamed by reason. In an individual soul, not only do they become receptive to a rational guidance, they in fact co-form the nature of the virtuous soul. The particular soul of a person seems to be a place21 where the supra-individual sources of pleasure and pain transform – with the assistance of nomos – into the form of an individual virtue.22 But what exactly is the type of cooperation between emotions and nomos qua education, i.e. between non-rational and rational elements, and what particular role do they play in the process of establishing an individual virtuous soul? It seems that in the Laws, a response to this question – a response which has especially intrigued scholars of Plato’s Republic23 – is indicated, which differentiates between types of persons under consideration. Testing by wine: artificial state of soul without logismos Shortly after the metaphor of puppets, the Athenian defends – surprisingly enough for his interlocutors – the educational role of wine (645b ff.). Wine can help with moral training since it provides a necessary test of the citizens (τῶν πολιτῶν βάσανον, 648b1)24 indicating whether or not they can cope with their natural inclinations. The mechanism of the test, based on a complete neutralization of reason (along with other cognitive faculties) such that it is no longer able to provide the controlling and tempering role, is achieved by means of wine, which brings the soul into a state comparable to that of a child (645e). Now, the Athenian presupposes that the virtue or wickedness of one’s character is recognizable in this artificially imposed state. What is to be investigated during the test is the disposition of the soul (cf. τὴν τῆς ψυχῆς ἕξιν, 645e5) deprived of its internal guidance, that is, in a situation of an absolute dominance of the natural pathê (pleasure, pain, love and hatred); if someone in this state succeeds in passing the test it must mean that his emotions taken for themselves are already wellorganized. For the metaphor of „spot“ see Frenzel (2000); for the „place“ of pleasure see Carone (2003). Therefore it is misleading to suggest that the emotions themselves “make every human being an individual, before he is a citizen” (Sassi 2008, p. 147). There is no true individuality without the law since emotions themselves are supra-individual, cosmological forces – with the exception of the philosophical natures, which are individual merely on the basis of their “virtuous” emotions alone (see below). 23 See Resp. 4;13b–c, 440e, 452c–d; Williams (1973); Annas (1981), pp. 129–131. 24 Along with another hypothetical drink that is employed – obviously not without comical intent – as a parallel instrument that can better explain the mechanism of the test that both wine and the hypothetical drink effect. 21 22 431 Pleasure and Pain and the Penal Theory in Plato’s Laws It is important to notice that now, differently from the previously discussed passage, the “individuality” of such a psychic scheme (see ἀσχημοσύνη, 648e1–2) by which the person knows how to ward off the evil, is not based on nomos; for the Athenian distinguishes clearly the test that focuses on individual nature (cf. ἑαυτῷ ... φύσει, 648d5) from education that must be legally promoted.25 It turns out that the lawgiver has in fact two contrasting tasks: while the goal of education is the unity of the state, the education itself presupposes the test which differentiates among the citizens since only a few can possibly pass it.26 It is this second perspective that the Athenian has in mind when he speaks about the physeis and hexeis of the souls that the lawgiver should know (650b7).27 Let us remind that the differentiation of citizens by testing them with temptations is a crucial part of the project of the best city of the Republic. At the end of the third book (412b ff.), Socrates claims that only those who successfully pass a series of periodically recurring tests can be raised as rulers; thereby the hitherto unified group of guardians is differentiated into two groups: real rulers and their auxiliaries. But the appearance of philosophically educated rulers turns out to be central also for the city of Magnesia (XII,962a–c); and in Book IV, in a direct connection to the question of who should actually rule in the new colony, the Athenian explicitly mentions the need for an incorruptible individual whose sophrosynê is that “which by natural instinct springs up (σύμφυτον ἐπανθεῖ) at birth (εύθύς) in children and animals, so that some are incontinent (ἀκρατῶς ἔχειν), others continent (ἐγκρατῶς), in respect of pleasures” (IV,710a5–8; transl. Bury). It is probably this particular human nature which can emerge from the tests of drinking parties and can be promoted to the rulers (XII,961b2).28 The philosophical soul When we ask how the stability of emotions is achieved by such individuals and what exactly such a state of the soul looks like, we can return to the image of πρῶτον μέν 648b1– δέ 648b8, πρῶτον μέν ... πεῖραν – εἶτα εἰς τὸ μελετᾶν, 649d8–9; cf. 648d5. 26 This drinking test in which a drinker should prove to be actually sober is – despite its comical meaning – a clear hint at the philosophical figure of Socrates as described in the Symposium. For Socratic traits of the Athenian in the Laws, see Pangle (1980), pp. 378–379. See also the “rarity principle” that holds for philosophers in the Republic (II,379c; IV,428e, 431c–d; X,605c). 27 For the recent interpretation that acknowledges the fundamental (and hierarchical) difference between various types of persons in the Laws, see Kraut (2010), p. 64–65; Prauscello (2014), pp. 57–101. 28 In the course of following discussion, a systematic significance is repeatedly given to this particular human nature in respect to pleasure: It forms the criterion of the good pleasures for the whole city (II,658e–659b) and demonstrates the unity of the pleasant, the just, the good and the beautiful in a happy human life (II,660b–664b); also, it presents the background on which the famous calculus of pleasure and pain can be made to show that a good life is at the same time the most pleasant one (V,732d–734e). 25 432 JAKUB JINEK puppets for an answer. Here we have been told that the basis of the virtuous state of the soul and the corresponding virtuous action is the ability to withstand the natural opposing dynamics of pleasure and pain and to balance them towards the middle. This role is usually played by logismos but, as we have seen and as is now confirmed, the emotional side of the soul itself can also do the job. The resulting emotional state, in which opposing pathê actually come to the middle, then takes the form of a unified duality corresponding to the status of being in Plato, which – as we learn from the indirect tradition and as a few hints in the dialogues also confirm – is generated out of the highest principles of the One and the Dyad.29 In other words, the soul of the philosopher – precisely as it is envisaged also in the Republic (Resp. VI,490b) – mirrors the highest level of Platonic metaphysics. This human type basically transcends the general context of education, in which the emotions representing super-individual sources become “individualized” at the spot of a concrete soul by nomos. This picture is pertinent for the majority of people who are to be educated by the laws of the city, but it is only secondary with respect to emotionally stable physis of the individual who is morally flawless from his very birth and thus, with respect to the legal code of the city, morally self-sufficient. For this prominent nature, pleasure and pain are no temptations that should be normatively limited, but phenomena which can themselves be employed moderately for the good of the soul. The dialogue never makes explicit the origin and the reason for the emergence of such stable – and exceptional – physeis. But in the context of metempsychosis, which is repeatedly mentioned in the last third of the dialogue (see IX,872d–873a, 881a–b; X,903d–e; XI,934a–b), it seems that the emotional stability of a person who is good since his/her very birth can be referred to the life that the person lived before the current incarnation. This metaphysical context, along with the fact that the whole conception presupposes two different types of hexeis of the emotional soul, a corruptible and an incorruptible one, is highly relevant for our next topic – punishment. 2. THE THEORY OF PUNISHMENT Dialectics of punishment Similarly as with education, where the lawgiver’s task comprises both unification and differentiation of people, legislation concerning punishment, too, must consider two principles that seem to stand in tension with each other. On the See Aristotle, Met. 987b18–21, 980a10 ff., 1080b6 ff., 1081a14 f., 25, 1081b18, 24 ff., 31 f., 1083b23, 1085b7, 1091a4 f., 9 ff.; Alexander of Aphrodisias, In Arist. Met. 987b33, 56,35 Hayduck; Simplicius, In Arist. Phys. 187a12, pp. 151,6–19 Diels; 202b36, pp. 453,22–30, 455,1–11 Diels; Sextus Empiricus, Adv. mat. X,277; Xenocrates fr. 68 Heinze, Speusippos, fr. 88 Isnardi Parente; see further Plato, Philb. 26d; cf. 54c; Polit. 283c; cf. Soph. 219c. 29 433 Pleasure and Pain and the Penal Theory in Plato’s Laws one hand, the penal code of Magnesia shows a tendency to unity (IX,856e5, 856e8–857a1; X,885a7, 909d; XI,934a; XII,941b–942a). An expression of this tendency is the Athenian’s suggestion that all thefts should be punished by “one law and one punishment for all” (εἷς αὖ νόμος κείσθω καὶ μία δίκης τιμωρία σύμπασιν, 857a3–4) which provokes Cleinias’ critical response and subsequently the whole theoretical discussion of punishment in Book IX (857b ff.). The principle that the Athenian seems to follow here can be called, for the purposes of our interpretation, the unity of law principle. On the other hand, any penal code seems to require a differentiation of punishments in proportion to the gravity of the crime. This opinion is widely shared, not only by ordinary people, represented here by Cleinias, or by “all lawgivers” in the cities (861b), but also – at least partly – by the present project of Magnesia itself (860e2 f.): The penal legislation proposed so far has in fact differentiated between punishments and the Athenian indicates that the lack of differentiation could be in conflict with his own logos. Let us call it the penal differentiation principle. The situation concerning punishment thus seems to be a dialectical one and the corresponding theory will have to combine unity with multiplicity. From the point of view of Plato’s metaphysics, it is noteworthy that the Athenian reformulates the multiplicity in terms of bipolarity: the necessary differentiation can follow a simple scheme of “bigger” or “lesser” penalties (μείζονες, 860e9, ἐλάττονες, 861a1).30 What is needed is to find out the systematic background for this binary distinction consisting in “two things” (ἐστον δύο, 861d5; cf. ταῦτα, 861b1, 2) which can justify appropriate differentiation (861c3–6).31 With reference to the Socratic principle that “all bad men are unwillingly bad” (860d ff.; cf. V,731c), the Athenian disproves the conception held by all lawgivers that there are “two kinds of wrongdoings” (δύο εἴδη τῶν ἀδικημάτων, 861b4), voluntary and involuntary (ἑκούσια – ἀκούσια). His own strategy is to find an alternative eidetic background for penal differentiation, i.e. the other “two things“. First of all, the Athenian points out an alternative bipolar distinction between injury and injustice, or, more precisely, between involuntary injury (ἀκούσια βλάβη) and voluntary injury (ἑκούσια βλάβη), which is injustice (ἀδίκια).32 This This surely can remind us of “more and less” (μᾶλλον καὶ ἧττον) as the “mark” of the Unlimited which in Plato’s Philebus (Phil. 24e) stands for Plato’s indefinite metaphysical principle of the Dyad of which the indirect Platonic tradition informs us (see above, n. 29). See Seyr (2006), pp. 149–159. 31 Cf. τό τε πρεπόντως τεθέν ... κρῖναι καῖ τὸ μή. 32 And injustice is in turn – on the Socratic principle – involuntary as injustice (ἄκων … ἀδικεῖν ὁ ἀδικῶν, 860d6–7). In the literature it has been correctly observed that we have to do with two different concepts of the involuntary here (Lisi 2008; Schütrumpf 2013). While in connection ἀκούσια βλάβη, “involuntary” denotes external action, in the case of ἄκων ἀδικεῖν it refers to the 30 434 JAKUB JINEK distinction is not the solution to the problem of penalty differentiation yet, but a preliminary step which shows that only adikia as a state of the soul (see ἤθος καὶ τρόπος, 862b3) can in fact be the subject of differentiation of penalties; in case of involuntary injury, on the other hand, the legislator should make use of laws “to make good the injury inflicted”,33 in other words, he has to compensate for injury by legal means and restore the initial state of affairs. Since this compensation logically corresponds to the amount of injury inflicted, it is probably the instantiation of “one law and one punishment” (857a3–4) envisaged at the very beginning of the whole discussion by the Athenian. The concept of injury therefore reveals the field in which the unity of law principle might find its application and represents the aspect of unity within Plato’s dialectical penology. Consequently, the distinction relevant for penal differentiation is to be sought in a subdivision of injustice, namely between its curable and incurable (ἰατή – ἀνίατη) forms. These are the “two kinds” that provide the conceptual background of punishment differentiation. In the former case, the soul should be healed by instruction and compulsion, i.e. by words or deeds, and also by both pleasure and pain (862d).34 In the latter case, however, the only reasonable response is the death penalty (which is a healing too, after all; see XII,958a1). The whole structure of Plato’s dialectical penology can be summarized as follows: ἑκούσια ἀδίκια δύο εἴδη ἀδίκια δύο ἐστόν wrong conception the Athenian’s alternative auxiliary distinction final distinction ἐλάττονες μείζονες Punishments ἀνίατη ἰατή ἀκούσια ἀδίκια ἀκούσια βλάβη inner state of the soul. In this difference, corresponding to the most basic distinction of Socrates’ ethics, the external involuntary abides to ordinary moral language (if we say, for example, that we didn’t mean to do something), while the inner kind presupposes a philosophical reformulation of common intuitions and the discovery of a central concept of true self-interest (see bellow). 33 On line 862b6, along with Bury (1967–1968), Saunders (1970) and Schoffield–Griffith (2016), and against Burnet (1907) and Pangle (1980), I accept Ritter’s (1896, p. 282) emendation of the text and read: καὶ τὸ μὲν βλαβὲν ἀβλαβές. 34 And further by a series of parallel pairs of instruments which correspond to the basic opposition of pleasure and pain: honors and disgraces, fines and gifts (ἢ μεθ’ ἡδονῶν ἢ λυπῶν, ἢ τιμῶν ἢ ἀτιμιῶν, καὶ χρημάτων ζημίας ἢ καὶ δώρων, 863d5–6). On atimia, see Hunter (2011). 435 Pleasure and Pain and the Penal Theory in Plato’s Laws The Athenian explains the matter in more detail to rather slow-whitted Cleinias (863a) by distinguishing various causes of wrong-doing (τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων αἰτίαν, 863c1 f.) that correspond – and this is especially interesting for our subject – to different psychic powers.35 These consist, according to the somewhat unusual Athenian systematics, which can be taken from two parallel passages of the dialogue (863b–d, 864b), of the following five kinds (see πέντε εἴδη, 864b8): 1. pain called anger and fear (λύπης…, ἣν θυμὸν καὶ φόβον ἐπονομάζομεν, 864b3, 863b3), 2. pleasure and desire (...δονῆς ... καὶ ἐπιθυμιῶν, 864b6), of an opposite kind of force (ἐξ ἐναντίας… ῥώμης); 3. ignorance (ἄγνοια, 863c1) or wrong opinion about the supreme good (δόξης τῆς ἀληθοῦς περὶ τὸ ἄριστον, 864b6–7) which is “easy”, i.e. the cause of trivial faults, and further “double” ignorance, connected with conviction of one’s own wisdom, which in turn can be a double kind, namely 4. backed up by strength and power, which is the source of serious and barbarous wrong-doing, or 5. lacking power which results in the peccadilloes of old man and children (863c–d). For these five εἴδη, the Athenian assumes that different laws (νόμους διαφέροντας ἀλλήλων, 864c1) must be enacted, and these eidê are further subject to another division into two γένη, namely crimes that are committed openly with violence and those committed under cover of darkness, involving secrecy and fraud. The proposed complex system of laws against curable injustice,36 corresponding to the variety and multiplicity of previously mentioned methods of punishment (862d),37 completes the task of penal differentiation, which complements the “one law and one punishment” for injuries; at this point the Athenian ends the debate and returns to giving laws (864c). The unity of universals and of the soul By incorporating the technical terminology of Platonic dialectics (εἴδη – γένη; ἐναντίον), psychological analysis strongly reminiscent of the trichotomy model from earlier discussion38 and of course by including pleasure and pain as two opposite (cf. ἐξ ἐναντίας, 863b6) causes of wrong-doing, a clear connection with the psychological doctrine of Books I and II is established. However, to fully understand this connection, one has to see the philosophical background of the given differentiations and how they have been arrived at. They are called feelings (πάθος, 863b3), parts (μέρος, ibid.) or kinds (εἴδη, 864b8). The terminology varies here and the Athenian indicates that he does not care much about it (863b2 f.). 36 While in the case of incurable injustice which deserves death, it is actually another case of “one law and punishment” and thus the unity of law principle. 37 See above, footnote 34. 38 See above, footnote 13. 35 436 JAKUB JINEK First of all, the resulting conceptual distinction between injury and injustice is anticipated by a rather longer passage (857c–859b) whose link to the main argument might seem rather obscure at first glance. This passage reintroduces the most crucial and innovative distinction of the whole dialogue (firstly in Leg. IV,722d), namely that between the prelude to the law and the law itself39 or, in another words, between persuasion and compulsion, which systematically corresponds to what is perhaps the most prominent distinction in Platonic philosophy, namely that between soul and body. This series of fundamental oppositions that prefigures the binary scheme of the resulting penal theory with its key distinctions (injury – injustice, curable – incurable) is transformed, in our present passage, to the difference between a) education and legislation (857e) or between b) “the best and the most necessary concerning the laws” (τὸ βέλτιστον … τὸ ἀναγκαιότατον περὶ νόμων, 858a4–5). The current legislative work in logos was incomplete according to the Athenian (857c, 859b–c), having omitted the first, educational or “best” aspect of the matter that corresponds to the prelude to the law (as opposed to the coercive law itself). Precisely this is to be supplemented now. And it is in the context of “the best” that the Athenian introduces the statement of identity of the just and the beautiful (859c–e, cf. 858d7). This statement is accompanied – similarly to Plato’s other works – by the main interlocutor’s call for agreement (homologia) concerning this question (859c7).40 The identity of the universals has already been referred to in the previous course of the dialogue, always in connection with pleasure and with the soul of a virtuous person: The Athenian claimed that it is the virtuous person whose pleasure forms the criterion of the rightness and beauty of musical art (II,658e–659b), whose soul displays the unity of the pleasant, just, beautiful and good (II,660b–664b), and who unifies virtue, pleasure and happiness (V,732d– 734e). We may assume that this state of the soul as such is an instantiation of the unity of the universals. However, this unity seems to be rendered questionable now by the fact that, as the Athenian puts it, some punishments, though being just, are far from being beautiful (859d–860b). At this very point, the discussion becomes strongly personalized. While “others”, i.e. the multitude of ordinary people (οἱ πολλοί), do not believe in this identity, “we”, i.e. the interlocutors, must insist on it. As a solution to this problem, the Athenian introduces, surprisingly, the Socratic principle that no one is willingly bad (860d).41 This principle, too, is submitted to agreement (860d8) and personalized: the interlocutors seem to 39 See the hint to two types of medical doctors at 857c5. Cf. e.g. Euhyphr. 10e2; Phil. 49e6; Lach. 198b2; Gorg. 496c3, 498e10; Hipp. Ma. 294c; Resp. III,392b; IV,485a. 41 This principle is further elaborated into a complex identification of four terms: bad character (κακός), injustice (ἄδικος), doing injustice (ἀδικεῖν) and unwillingness (ἄκων). The identity of these concepts can be seen as a negative counterpart of the identity of the universals. 40 437 Pleasure and Pain and the Penal Theory in Plato’s Laws generally agree on it (861a3); but a closer look reveals a slight disparity: while the Athenian fully embraces the Socratic principle and repeatedly stresses his personal consent to it (σύμφημι, 860d9, 860e2),42 Cleinias expresses his consent only formally, without really understanding the question (861a3 f.). He is even prepared to withdraw from the agreement, if the Socratic principle proves to contradict the penal differentiation principle (861c–d).43 The Athenian does not address the lack of true agreement with Cleinias concerning the identity of the unwilling and the unjust. But he keeps on personalizing his solution to the problem of punishment: He emphasizes with his personal authority44 the reform of ordinary moral language against the wrong moral terminology of hoi polloi (see 864a7–8) that presupposes the existence of voluntary injustice; at the same time, by the usage of the 1st person plural (φήσομεν, “we shall say”, 862a8), he might seek the agreement of Cleinias, who should drop the opinion of hoi polloi and join the Athenian as his ally against “them”. “We” include not only those who have been convinced of the systematic connection between the unity of the transcendentals and the absence of voluntary injustice in the soul but also those whose soul can be said to be a manifestation of this connection. This is the dramaturgical reason why the Athenian urged Cleinias so much to accept these insights. Given that this is an exclusive type of insight that is inaccessible to ordinary people, the question of Cleinias’ affiliation with a privileged group of moral champions, whose soul is, as we have seen, the embodiment of unity, is probably at stake here. It is a soul which, so to speak, does not accept into itself anything that is not in harmony with beauty, justice and goodness, e.g. the ugliness of diverse punishments (860b), which would disrupt its genuine aiming at the good. This is the ultimate philosophical reason for distinguishing between injury manifested by external action, which nevertheless is not injustice, and injustice, which is based on the intent to harm, but which is involuntary in the soul and might be accepted only as a certain epiphenomenon. From this point of view, the metaphor of disease (and thus also of healing) is perfectly appropriate.45 Merely from the point of view of such an afflicted soul is it necessary to differentiate and multiply punishments. Cf. the stress on his personal position is expressed by the plenitude of the use of “I” in the passage: 860e1, 2, 3, 861d2. 43 He even formulates conditions for this principle to be sound: δυοῖν γὰρ θάτερον ἡμᾶς χρεών, ἢ μὴ λέγειν ὡς πάντα ἀκούσια τὰ ἀδικήματα, ἢ τοῦτο ὡς ὀρθῶς εἴρηται πρῶτον διορίσαντας δηλῶσαι. By this dramaturgy, the author makes clear that the Socratic principle in fact constitutes no digression in the argument, but rather a systematically significant test for the interlocutor, since it challenges the general expectation that different wrongdoings are to be punished differently. 44 See “if my view prevails“, ἐὰν ἥ γ᾽ ἐμὴ νικᾷ (862a8 f.). 45 See above, footnote 1. 42 438 JAKUB JINEK The soul and its healing But what exactly is the state of such a soul and what is the status of the punishments inflicted on it? When the Athenian announces that he intends to define – “clearly and without complication” – injustice, he focuses on the inner state of the wrongdoer’s soul:46 injustice is a tyrannical rule of “anger, fear, pleasure, pain, envy and desires” in it (863e f.).47 These pathê (cf. 863b3) are an expression of some plurality inside the soul. But while on the refuted assumption of voluntary injustice they could possibly be seen as parts of a bad nature of a corrupted man, the Athenian’s present formulation reveals that they are conceived just as traits of the soul. In Aristotelian terminology, of which the present terminology is reminiscent, adikia as hexis is just poion, not ousia of the soul: Injustice in this sense would not express the substance of one’s soul, it is just an acquired quality. While injustice is a series of psychical affectations, justice is described as the situation in which “belief in the supreme good” (τοῦ ἀρίστου δόξα, 864a1; cf. δόγμα πόλεως, 644d3), imposed by “the state or some individuals” (πόλις εἴτε ἰδιῶταί τινες, 864a2 n.), rules the whole soul.48 In other words, justice and injustice are contrasted as unity to multiplicity. In the present context, the guarantee of this unifying belief producing justice (864a4–8) is the city and its legislation. Nomos is also necessary here, just as in the realm of education, since the multitude of ordinary citizens are not able to regulate themselves. And again, the penal law unifies the existing plurality and turns injustice into justice; it does so by imposing not only pain but also pleasure and other instruments (862d) on the soul momentarily overrun by an opposing element.49 It thus substitutes for the proper equilibrium present in a healthy soul where, as we have seen in the first section, pain or fear function as natural enantia to pleasure and hope and vice versa. By doing this, the law contributes to the uneasy process of the individuation of the particular soul. Yet there are again some individuals (cf. ἰδιῶταί τινες, Leg. 864a2 f.) who have this sort of unity already in their souls. As we have seen, it is the unity of the universals: kalon, agathon, dikaion and hedy. Consequently, we may assume that 46 Knoch (1960), p. 27, is right in claiming that the internal perspective has priority over the external one. 47 τὴν γὰρ τοῦ θυμοῦ καὶ φόβου καὶ ἡδονῆς καὶ λύπης καὶ φθόνων καὶ ἐπιθυμιῶν ἐν ψυχῇ τυραννίδα. 48 We agree with Lisi (2008), p. 94, that πάντα ἄνδρα should be read not as „each man“ but as „whole man“. 49 That the binary psychological logic we have observed in Leg. I–II is employed here again is further indicated by the fact that the Athenian enumerates four pairs of opposing instruments for healing the soul (862d4–6). 439 Pleasure and Pain and the Penal Theory in Plato’s Laws their view is based not on commonly held doxa (or dogma of the city) but on the true epistêmê50 that is – as the Athenian keeps stressing (e.g. 875d) – rare among humans and that is expressed in the description of the curriculum for the members of the Night Assembly (XII,965b–968b). Once again, we encounter the fundamental distinction between two different human types. What is important, however, is that even outside of this privileged group there is no true injustice of the soul, but, at most, injustice in a soul. People who are not able to follow the philosophical curriculum find their “external reason” in the nomos of the city. And even those who do not abide the law are not bad themselves. There is no such thing as a “bad man” in Plato. Justice is not contradictory (enantion) to injustice; their relation is asymmetrical: whereas justice forms the nature of a good soul, injustice is a mere series of character traits. From the perspective of the penal code reflecting the practical needs of the actually existing colony, a soul can either be curable or incurable; however, from a philosophical perspective, “incurable soul” is just a shorthand applicable to the limited period of the current incarnation. After the theological lesson given in Book X, the Athenian repeatedly admits that, besides this limited view, there is another perspective in which the soul is curable at any time – namely, the perspective of life after the body’s death (see XI,934a–b; XII,958a). This clarifies what the soul substantially is: an immortal being. This is the last reason why it – as such – does not accept injustice willingly. CONCLUSION Since punishment can work with both pleasure and pain, i.e. with both sides of emotional polarity, it is obvious that the operation of the penal law is much more complex than might be expected on modern presuppositions;51 it in fact resembles the way how the educational law works.52 From the point of view of philosophical psychology which has been shown to be pertinent for the whole legislation of Magnesia, both education and punishment aim at a common goal: the true belief that produces the harmony and unity of the soul. It is therefore evident that such a theory, which in fact does not systematically distinguish between different subject areas and methods, but seeks a kind of overall moral-psychological reform on the basis of the metaphysical priority of unity and oneness, is far from modern penal theories with their distinction of various “functions” of punishments and focus on their impact on the individual. On the systematic meaning of this distinction in the Laws see Scolnicov (2003), p. 124. See above, footnote 3. 52 That there is, strictly speaking, no substantial difference between education and punishment, since the proper punishment for an adult person in fact is an education, can be supported by an important passage in Plato’s Apology (26a). See Pangle (2009), p. 461. 50 51 440 JAKUB JINEK When the Athenian mentions pleasure and pain among the instruments for healing the curable soul (IX,862d5), he indicates that this theory of pleasure and pain from the initial books is relevant for the penal code of Magnesia. The link of the two topics can be seen in the underlying notion of the soul that comprises two models. On one hand, the soul is a plurality of parts limited by the external law that helps to shape the supra-individual sources of pleasure and pain on the particular soul, which thereby acquires its own form. As a synthesis of the two basically external elements, pathê and nomos, the particular soul presents a relatively unstable unity (cf. 653c). This stimulates the need for periodically repeated attempts at its re-shaping in the form of education and penalties, i.e. two basic instruments of legislation that correspond to the crucial division between persuasion and compulsion. In a situation of such relative instability, one can hardly speak about individuation of the soul in the true sense; for the ordinary soul, only an improper “individuation” is thinkable in the form of excessive “drawing off” of sources of pleasure and pain with their opposing dynamism. It is obvious that such “individuation” is quite unwelcome – it must be prevented by the lawgiver and punished by the judges.53 Through the cooperation of both (XI,934b–c), it is possible, first, to determine the distance of a wrongdoing soul from its healthy state and, secondly, also the appropriate amount of pleasure or pain needed for its healing. On the other hand, in the case of some exceptional natures, a true individuation takes place in the form of the permanent unity and identity of the soul in the course of repeating incarnations. On their way through various ages and bodies, the prominent souls do not take up much from outside. This is the reason why they have no trouble in abiding by any positive law, since even wrong external norms are not in a position to truly affect them. The philosopher is able to live legally in any city, insofar it is still a city with its own laws. But when it comes to his own attempt at legislation the purpose of which is to create souls with the same stability he himself has over the series of incarnations, then his project transcends any specific polis. Capital punishments are tricky not primarily because they seem ugly (860b) but because they reach into the realm of eschatology. By 53 From this point of view it is also clear why it is misleading to judge the legitimacy of Plato’s penal theory from the point of view of the individual (see above, footnote 3). This perspective is completely foreign to Plato, who lacks a modern awareness of the legal problems connected with causing pain to an individual and who does not accept the Hobbesian assumption that law and politics have their source in the individual, from which the questions of obligation, legitimacy and authority arise. Not that he didn’t know this type of thinking at all (see Tht. 153c). Rather, he deliberately turned against it. The metaphor of punishment as healing might be intended precisely to reject this assumption. If we look at punishment only from the perspective of the individual and his feelings, it is as wrong as looking at the doctor’s operations only in terms of causing us pain. This solipsistic perspective makes it impossible to see the true nature of healing. And exactly the same applies to punishment – if we look at it only from the point of view that it is unpleasant to us, we will not understand its meaning for ourselves and for the community. 441 Pleasure and Pain and the Penal Theory in Plato’s Laws embracing them, the legislator not only imitates God (IV,713e f.) but in fact adopts a godlike position. BIBLIOGRAPHY Annas, Julia (1981): An Introduction to Plato’s Republic. Oxford. Bobonich, Christopher (2002): Plato’s Utopia Recast. Oxford. Bravo, Francisco (2003): “Le Platon des Lois est-il hédoniste?”. In: Samuel Scolnicov and Luc Brisson (eds.), Plato’s Laws. From Theory into Practice. Sankt Augustin, pp. 103–115. Bury, Robert G. (1967–1968): Plato in Twelve Volumes, X–XI. Cambridge (Mass.) – London. Burnet, John (1907): Platonis Opera, V, Oxonii. Carone, Gabriela Roxana (2003): “The Place of Hedonism in Plato’s Laws”, Ancient Philosophy 23, pp. 283–300. Frede, Dorothea (2010): “Puppets on Strings: Moral Psychology in Laws Books 1 and 2”. In: Christopher Bobonich (ed.): Plato’s Laws. A Critical Guide. Cambridge, pp. 108–126. Frenzel, Matthias (2000): Die Moralpsychologie von Platons Nomoi. Dissertation, Hamburg. Gagarin, Michael (1993): “Review: T. J. Saunders, Plato’s Penal Code: Tradition, Controversy, and Reform in Greek Penology”, The Classical Review 43, pp. 82–84. Görgemanns, Hermann (1960): Beiträge zur Interpretation von Platons Nomoi (Zetemata, 25). München. Hentschke, Ada B. (1971): Politik und Philosophie bei Plato und Aristoteles. Frankfurt a. M. Hunter, Virginia (2011): “Institutionalizing Dishonour in Plato’s Laws”, The Classical Quarterly 61, pp. 134–142. Jaeger, Werner (1989): Paideia. Die Formung des griechischen Menschen, III. Berlin. Knoch, Winfried (1960): Die Strafbestimmungen in Platons Nomoi. Wiesbaden. Krämer, Hans Joachim (1959): Arete bei Platon und Aristoteles. Heidelberg. Kraut, Richard (2010): “Ordinary virtue from the Phaedo to the Laws“. In: Christopher Bobonich (ed.): Plato’s Laws. A Critical Guide. Cambridge, pp. 51–70. Lewis, V. Bradley (2011): “The Limits of Reform: Punishment and Reason in Plato’s Second-Best City”. In: Peter K. Koritansky (ed.), The Philosophy of Punishment and the History of Political Thought. Columbia, pp. 10–32. Lisi, Francisco L. (1985): Einheit und Vielheit des platonischen Nomosbegriffes. Königstein. Lisi, Francisco L. (2008): “Nemo sua sponte peccat. Platons Begründung des Strafrechtes (Nomoi IX 859d–864c)”. In: Barbara Zehnpfennig (ed.): Die Herrschaft des Gesetzes und die Herrschaft des Menschen – Platons ‘Nomoi’ (Politisches Denken Jahrbuch 2008). Berlin, pp. 87–107. 442 JAKUB JINEK Mackenzie, Mary Margaret (1981): Plato on Punishment. Berkeley – Los Angeles – London. Morrow, Glenn R. (1960): Plato’s Cretan City. Princeton. Pangle, Thomas L. (1980): Plato’s Laws. New York. Pangle, Thomas L. (2009): “Moral and Criminal Responsibility in Plato’s Laws”, The American Political Science Review 103, pp. 456–473. Prauscello, Lucia (2014): Performing Citizenship in Plato’s Laws. Cambridge. Ritter, Constantin (1896): Platos Gesetze. Kommentar zum griechischen Text. Leipzig. Robinson, Thomas M. (2001): “State and Individual in Plato’s Laws: the Platonic Legacy”. In: Francisco L. Lisi (ed.): Plato’s Laws and Ist Historical Significance. Sankt Augustin, pp. 115–124. Rousseau, Mary F. (1983): “Review: M. M. Mackenzie, Plato on Punishment”. The Review of Metaphysics 36, pp. 941–942. Sandvoss, Ernst (1971): Soteria. Philosophische Grundlage der platonischen Gesetzgebung. Göttingen. Sassi, Maria Michela (2008): „The Self, the Soul, and the Individual in the City of the Laws“, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 35, pp. 125–148. Saunders, Trevor J. (1970): Plato: The Laws, Translated with an introduction and notes. Harmondsworth. Saunders, Trevor J. (1991): Plato’s Penal Code. Oxford. Schofield, Malcolm – Griffith, Tom. Plato, The Laws. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Cambridge – New York. Scolnicov, Samuel (2003): “Pleasure and Responsibility in Plato’s Laws”. In: Samuel Scolnicov and Luc Brisson (eds.): Plato’s Laws. From Theory into Practice. Sankt Augustin, pp. 122–127. Schöpsdau, Klaus (1994): Platon. Nomoi I–III. Göttingen. Schütrumpf, Eckart (2013): “Gesetze und Strafrecht”. In: Christoph Horn (ed.): Platon: Gesetze/Nomoi. Berlin, pp. 189–208. Seyre, Kurt (2006): Metaphysics and Method in Plato’s Statesman. Cambridge. Stalley, Richard F. (1983): An Introduction to Plato’s Laws. Oxford. Stalley, Richard F. (1995): “Punishment in Plato’s Laws”, History of Political Thought 16, pp. 469–487. Taylor, C. C. W. (1982): “Review: M. M. Mackenzie, Plato on Punishment”, The Classical Review 32, pp. 198–200. Williams, Bernard (1973): “The Analogy of City and Soul in Plato’s Republic”. In: Edward N. Lee and Alexander P. D. Mourelatos and Richard M. Rorty (eds.): Exegesis and Argument. Assen, pp. 196–206. 443 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 443-459 ISSN: 1825-5167 APPLIED ETHICAL CRITICISM OF NARRATIVE ART IRIS VIDMAR JOVANOVIĆ Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences University of Rijeka (Croatia) ividmar@ffri.uniri.hr ABSTRACT My aim here is to provide a context within which we can develop an applied ethical criticism of narrative art – one which has a public relevance and is not limited to philosophical discussions characterized by value-interaction debate or conducted under the theoretical banner of aesthetic cognitivism. In the first part I reinforce the challenge of finding empirical evidence which either corroborates or denies the cognitivist’s claim regarding the causal impact of art on the audience, and I argue, in the second part, that such evidence is needed in order to determine the possibility of moral corruption and/or moral enhancement via art. Taking cues from Ted Nannicelli, I end by offering pointers on domains of research we should incorporate into our ethical criticism of art, so as to come up with an informed understanding of an artwork and of spectators’ engagements with it. K EYWORDS Aesthetic cognitivism, ethical criticism, causal challenge, perspectivism Ted Nannicelli (2020) has recently offered an impressive account of the applied ethical criticism of art, arguing in favor of what he calls Production-oriented approach (POA). According to this view, within our public space and legal context, a dominant form of ethical criticism of art focuses on the means of production of a certain work and evaluates it ethically according to how it came about. One aspect in particular that is relevant concerns the character of its maker: when it figures into a causal explanation of the form or content of the particular work, then the work’s artistic value can be marred by the ethically flawed character. Noting that representational and narrative art may not be as easily subject to this approach as performing art or animal/environmental art, Nannicelli builds a case for POA by first pointing to the limitations of what he takes to be the shortcomings of another, philosophically more dominant approach to ethical criticism of art, perspectivism (P). On this view, ethical criticism of art is directed at the 444 IRIS VIDMAR JOVANOVIĆ perspective presented and advocated for within an artwork: if such a perspective is for some reason morally blameworthy, the work itself is subject to ethical criticism1 (and, some would add, aesthetic criticism, since ethical flaw can mar the work’s overall value).2 Nannicelli is correct in claiming that P is dominant among philosophers but that it doesn’t carry greater force within the public domain or among those who regulate legal aspects of our art-engagements. What this means is that, for all the philosophical fingerpointing to immoral perspectives found in different artworks, those works are neither prohibited from the public space, nor are those who created them held legally accountable or sanctioned. Nannicelli takes this to show the practical infertility of P outside of philosophical departments. One reason for that infertility, he claims, is the following: for P to stand, “it needs to demonstrate that a particular artwork has had specific, concrete effects on someone or some people in virtue of which the work is morally evaluable. Most philosophers of art writing on this topic acknowledge this difficulty and attempt to distance their views from these sorts of specific causal claims” (Nannicelli 2020, 23). However, claims Nannicelli, such distancing is unjustified: those who defend P need to face this challenge, for otherwise it is not clear how to maintain P. Nannicelli’s second argument concerns the implications of P: claiming that a work W prescribes a perspective P implies that we can know for certain that P is the proper meaning of W. In other words, claiming that certain works are morally blameworthy because they advance morally problematic perspective depends on the possibility of showing that the work indeed prescribes that particular perspective. This is problematic because there is hardly ever an agreement with respect to any artwork’s exact meaning. Furthermore, identifying the artwork’s exact meaning depends on knowing the artist’s intentions, which raises complex issues concerning ‘the single right interpretation’ and those of knowing the author’s intentions. Bottom line, since the plurality of our interpretative strategies employed in our engagement with art rules out these One of the most avid defenders of perspectivism, Berys Gaut, argues: „I construe intrinsic ethical value in terms of the ethical features of the attitudes that the artwork manifests. The notion of an attitude should be understood ... to cover not just characteristically affective states, such as showing disgust towards or approval of the characters, but also to cover more purely cognitive states, such as presenting characters in such as a way as to imply judgments about their being evil, good, inspiring and so on. Thus in assessing the ethical value of art we are assessing the ethical quality of the point of view, cognitive and affective, that it takes towards certain situations.” (Gaut 2007, 9). See also Matthew Kieran: “... it is unsurprising that much art is aimed at prescribing and promoting, through the artistically manipulated conventions, particular ways of seeing the world” (Kieran 2005, 102). 2 Whether or not ethical and aesthetic value interact, and whether one influences the other is the crucial issue behind the Value-Interaction Debate; see Eaton (2016) and McGregor (2014) for an overview. 1 445 Applied Ethical Criticism of Narrative Art possibilities, we have no way of determining what any given work in fact means, and consequently, no way of determining the perspective advanced by the work. There is a considerable force in Nannicelli’s claims, and if one wants to defend P as a valid form of ethical criticism of art, one should address them. While I have my doubts regarding P, I agree with Nannicelli that it is the most dominant form of evaluation of the ethical character of narrative works of art; a practice that, I believe, has an immense educational and cultural value. In order to defend the validity of such a practice, we have to diminish the power of Nannicelli’s criticism. My plan thus is the following: I first situate P against a wider background in which it emerges, that of aesthetic cognitivism and the question of art’s causal impact on the audience. I reinforce Nannicelli’s concerns regarding the empirical evidence with the aim of showing that ethical criticism should not be confined solely to philosophical departments. I then turn to Nannicelli’s second worry, which I try to mitigate by providing an account of the applied ethical criticism of narrative art. PERSPECTIVISM, KNOWLEDGE AESTHETIC COGNITIVISM AND MORAL The question of art’s moral influence on the spectators originates with Plato and it has been reappearing in different forms throughout the human history and culture. In contemporary research, this discussion leads back to Berys Gaut’s “five big questions” regarding the relation between art and ethics. The first of this is the causal question: the one asking if “exposure to works of art tends to affect us morally – morally to improve or morally to corrupt us” (Gaut 2007, 6). Since Nannicelli dismisses P in part due to its incapacity to face this question (i.e. to either corroborate it or to refute it empirically), here I want to examine what precisely is at stake for those, like me, who defend P (or some of its variations)3 even if P may not be supported by conclusive empirical evidence. I will refer to this challenge as empirical challenge to causal claim regarding art’s impact on the audience (EC for short). I share Nannicelli’s skepticism regarding the plausibility of P if one fails to provide empirical evidence, and here I offer several reasons as to why we cannot ignore EC. As Nannicelli argues, P emerges from the tradition of aesthetic cognitivism (AC), the view, roughly, that art is a source of knowledge, truth and beliefs, and that we can learn from art. There are various sorts of things we can thus learn, but here we will focus on art’s capacity to instill moral knowledge. Thus, on this version of AC, art is a 3 I say variations because I am not entirely committed to P; I offer a slight modification below. 446 IRIS VIDMAR JOVANOVIĆ source of moral knowledge, and it has the capacity to influence our moral sensibility. Martha Nussbaum is one famous advocate: “For stories cultivate our ability to see and care for particulars; … to respond vigorously with senses and emotions before the new; to care deeply about chance happenings in the world, rather than to fortify ourselves against them…” (Nussbaum 2010, 255).4 Within the AC, P presupposes that an artwork defends a certain moral attitude, or moral perspective, and it is that attitude that the readers pick up and insert into their body of knowledge (or can be persuaded to consider as true, or as worthy of their endorsement, or use as a moto for their behavior). Ethical evaluation of artwork is thus a matter of ethical evaluation of that particular perspective. If the perspective is morally praiseworthy, we tend to praise the work. If the perspective is morally deficient, we tend to criticize it. This is why we think there is something morally problematic with Lolita, why we feel that our caring for Tony Soprano may not be the most ethical choice we can make, and why we praise works such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Traditionally, AC was postulated as a response to Plato’s unsympathetic views on art. Plato presented numerous reasons for censorship of art, but he mostly feared moral contamination and degradation that might follow from our art engagements.5 He explicitly saw art as closely related to our ethical agency, with the capacity to causally influence us. Such causal link is most dominant in the psychological account of our art engagements that he provides: we take pleasure in imitating fictional characters, and we thus identify with them. In light of such identification, it is easy for us to act in a morally blameworthy way we saw them acting. For Aristotle, who is considered the first cognitivist, the pleasure we take in mimesis is not morally corruptive, quite the contrary: art experiences are not only educational but they also trigger affective processes which purify our emotions.6 In centuries that followed, philosophers and poets echoed such optimism, assuming, rather than proving, that the causal claim holds: art impacts us, and for the most part, that impact is positive. It was only occasionally, with philosophers like Joshua Landy (2008) or Alan Goldman (2013), that more careful views started to emerge: art has a certain impact on us, but that impact can go both ways. Art can make us either morally better, or morally worse. A demand to make the causal claim more explicit was first raised by those who, for various reasons, opposed AC. Echoing many of the challenges originally raised by Plato, Peter Lamarque challenged the well-read to prove they are cognitively better (or better off), and his argument can extend to moral knowledge: is it so that the art-lovers 4 Other ACs who implicitly assume the causal claim and art's positive impact include Carroll (1998, 2001, 2002), Kieran (2005) and Baccarini (2018). 5 Plato’s dialogues Ion, Apologia and the Republic are the most relevant in this context. 6 Aristotle develops this view in his Poetics. 447 Applied Ethical Criticism of Narrative Art are in any way morally better or superior to those who do not read?7 Even some who were occasionally in favor of art’s cognitive value, such as Greg Currie, raised concerns regarding the empirical confirmation of causal claim within AC: “Everything depends in the end on whether we can find direct, causal evidence: we need to show that exposure to literature itself makes some sort of positive difference to the people we end up being”.8 Finding such direct causal evidence is what sociologists and psychologists have been trying to do. Primarily, they were considering whether forms of art intuitively considered morally problematic, such as pornography, violent movies and video games, have morally corruptive impact on people. Unfortunately, for all of their efforts, their research remains inconclusive.9 With philosophers, research into the causal impact of narrative art was mostly concerned with its capacity to make us morally better: some link this improvement to spectators’ developed sensitivity towards misfortunes of others, some believe art makes us more empathic and still others argue that literary fiction cultivates virtues and helps us understand others and social interactions better.10 Sadly however, such research has not been unequivocally corroborated and there are many who remain on the fence when it comes to causal claim. Thus, nothing much is settled if we turn to empirical evidence for answers regarding art’s causal impact on people and the EC is still an open issue. On Nannicelli’s view, such inconclusiveness is a serious problem for AC. “I am skeptical”, he argues, “that there is a principled distinction to be made between the kind of specific causal claims philosophers tend to avoid and the broader causal claims some of them endorse, such that our engagement with certain artworks inculcates moral knowledge or clarifies moral understanding” (Nannicelli 2020, 23). Unfortunately, troubles with EC are not exhausted by the inconclusive research. There are all sorts of problems one encounters when one decides to conduct experiments to either confirm or deny the causal claim. For one, it is not easy to decide which works should be used in the experiment, who are the subjects to be tested and how should the results be verified. How is one to prove that one has developed/deteriorated morally, and did so due to the artistic experience? Questions also relate to issues concerning the longevity of the alleged changes in moral character: if one abolishes one’s racist attitudes in light of engaging with works such as A Raisin in the Sun, as Carroll suggests one might (2001), is it so that one will remain anti-racist or 7 Lamarque (2007). For Plato's demand for empirical evidence of art's positive inpact, see the Republic, 10, 599, d, 600. 8 Currie (2013, 2020, ch. 6). 9 See McGregor (2018). 10 In this part I mostly rely on a critical study by Young (2019); see also McGregor (2018). 448 IRIS VIDMAR JOVANOVIĆ could it be that one will return to one’s original views, perhaps under the influence of some pro-slavery piece? Similar skeptical arguments regarding the research into the causal claim are voiced by McGregor (2018). Having examined a considerable amount of research, he remains pessimistic with respect to conducting empirical research and opts for dismissing the empirical evidence from AC debate altogether.11 Gaut is on the same path. Convinced that there is no way for empirical research to be included in the general philosophical theory, he continues the debate on the relation between art and morality by focusing on the conceptual link between ethical and aesthetic value of a work. The theory he develops, ethicism, “holds that an artwork is aesthetically flawed in so far as it possesses an ethical flaw that is aesthetically relevant, and conversely, that an artwork has an aesthetic merit in so far as it possesses an ethical merit that is aesthetically relevant” (Gaut 2007, 10). Gaut does not find it necessary to settle the causal claim in order to defend ethicism. Rather, he claims, “there is no entailment from the claim that ethicism is true to the claim that one ought to censor morally bad work. For all that ethicism shows is that an artwork with certain moral defects thereby has an aesthetic defect, yet having an aesthetic defect is no ground for censoring art.” (Gaut 2007, 12). Gaut may have a point in claiming that aesthetic flaw is not a reason for censorship. And certainly, we can discuss the relation between work’s ethical character and its artistic value without implying that work’s ethical character will impact the spectators. However, I doubt such philosophical discussions would matter for the wider context in which art matters for us, and in which ethical criticism is relevant. Let me elaborate on the trouble with such a narrow approach to ethical criticism. REINFORCING THE EMPIRICAL CHALLENGE To begin with, I share Nannicelli’s concerns regarding the force of AC in the absence of empirical evidence. Can we really theoretically defend AC, if we cannot prove its main claim about art’s cognitive or ethical impact on people? It seems that, if we decide to do so, we can at best provide convincing theoretical accounts of art’s impact. It is to expect that such accounts will originate in one’s personal belief that one has undergone some kind of morally or cognitively relevant experience when engaging with art, and that they will likely be vulnerable to some kind of EC. 12 A telling example 11 McGregor (2018, 123). For example, Spivak (2012) argues that the effects of reading literature are not verifiable and goes on to develop an impressive account of how reading trains the imagination and enhances our epistemological performances, primarily in ethical domain. 12 449 Applied Ethical Criticism of Narrative Art comes from McGregor. His work is in particular worth considering, as it is developed with the hope of producing actual social benefits, namely, reducing inhumanity. McGregor argues forcefully that art has the capacity to make us morally better by enabling us to understand the sources of evil and misbehavior. The gist of his view is the following: ethical improvement takes place when “exemplary works” manage to enable one to undergo the relevant experience described in the work and to thus gain “lucid phenomenal knowledge” of how certain things feel. Such knowledge enables one to gain an understanding of the sources of morally problematic behavior, which in turn enables one to modify one’s behavior so as not to commit moral harm. A crucial problem with this account is that it is not necessarily so that a spectator indeed undergoes the relevant experience and gains lucid phenomenal knowledge. Our reading practices are not, I think, as personal (i.e. internal and subjectively deep) as this view suggests, and there is no empirical evidence that they are. Even assuming that Plato was right and that we indeed undergo the process of identification as we engage with art, it is highly unlikely that we manage to duplicate the experience at the level at which McGregor seems to think we do, i.e. at the level necessary for his theory to work.13 In addition, morally complex works tend to present a moral conflict among two (morally) opposed characters; for McGregor’s argument to work he would first need to show that the reader is committed to undergoing the experience of (to put a bit simplistically) a morally better character in order to claim that artworks make us better in virtue of their capacity to provide moral knowledge via lucid phenomenal knowledge. However, if the reader does so, she already has good moral judgments and therefore does not stand to gain much in terms of ethical knowledge or refinement in the engagement with the work. On the other hand, if she adopts the attitudes of the morally worse-off character – a suggestion McGregor does not consider – then Plato’s concerns are validated and we might be careful with turning to art for moral education.14 A second reason for considering the relevance of EC concerns the practical and social aspects of our art engagements. Recall that any talk of the causal impact of art is committed to two claims: one, let’s call it moral improvement through art (MItA), is that art makes us morally better. This is in line with those ACs who see art as contributing positively to our morality. However, there is also the possibility of moral 13 See Carroll (2011) for a skeptical take on identification as a mode of engagement with fictional characters. 14 For criticism of McGregor along these lines see Vidmar Jovanović (2020). It should be noted that McGregor is largely aware of the issues with obtaining lucid phenomenological knowledge, stating himself that it is rare, and shifting his attention to phenomenological knowledge (knowledge, rather than a firsthand experience, of what is like). However, knowing what is like, while a valuable epistemic gain, may not have a motivational component needed to inspire one to become morally better. 450 IRIS VIDMAR JOVANOVIĆ corruption through art (MCtA): certain works of art, perhaps in light of the perspective they advance, may harm our moral sensibility by making us adopt an immoral perspective. Almost exclusively, these options are negotiated within the Value interaction debate (VID) – a debate concerning the interaction of a work’s aesthetic and ethical aspects. Philosophers engaged with this debate are primarily concerned with examining the intrinsic relation between artistic and ethical value: whether the presence of one interferes with the other. For example, it can be argued that the moral value of a work always determines its aesthetic value, in the sense that works which present or advance morally praiseworthy attitude are for that reason aesthetically more valuable. On the contrary, a work’s advancement of immoral perspective counts against or diminishes its aesthetic value. This view has been met with the so called immoralism, whose proponents argue that moral flaws can yield aesthetic merits.15 Interesting as the debate may be, it is almost exclusively concerned with our theoretical understanding of art/ethics relation and it is almost always confined within domain of aesthetics and philosophy of art. But notice that, if true, both, MItA and MCtA have serious consequences for our ethical character, perhaps even for who we are as human beings,16 and therefore, the question of how does a work’s ethical character affect us should not be secondary to the question of how its ethical character impacts its aesthetic qualities. If pornographic art has the capacity to mar our sexuality and our expectations of the forms that sexual conduct takes, that might be a powerful reason for one not to engage with it. On the other hand, if Raisin in the Sun can make us better human beings, that would be a good reason for its inclusion in education and culture. Thus, the causal claim is more than theoretically interesting speculation. Limited and inconclusive as it may be, research seems to suggest that there is some kind of an impact of art on the spectators. That in itself should motivate a further research into this impact. Ethical character of a work of art, in other words, has (or could have) consequences not only for the aesthetic/artistic character of a work, but for the ethical character of the spectators themselves, and we should care about the character of our fellow beings. Furthermore, there is a social side to the matter. Even if our art engagements are mostly private, and our art responses idiosyncratic, we live in a social world where we need to treat and respect others as moral agents and adhere to certain moral norms. If art is capable of somehow diminishing our moral sensibility, that might be a strong reason either to exclude it from our community, or to consider certain paternalistic framework within which we should engage with it, much like Plato suggested. On the other hand, if artworks are capable of making us morally better, perhaps by turning us 15 16 I rely here on Eaton's summary of the debate in her (2016). See Fingerhut et all. (2021) for a relation between ethical agency and identity. 451 Applied Ethical Criticism of Narrative Art into more empathic creatures, that would be a very strong reason to include it into our education. Thus, understanding the actual impact that art has on us is a serious matter with important consequences, both private and social. It is not and it should not be a ‘philosophers only’ game conducted as part of their conceptual analysis of art. Rather, it should include matters of public policies. In addition, notice that the issue of causal impact does not relate only to art, understood honorifically, even if most philosophical discussion tends to be focused on it. Many instances of ‘low art’, such as popular sitcoms or TV series are populated with characters who do not represent positive moral qualities, but are likeable and can serve as role models. Barney Stinson and Charlie Harper are such examples. For all their easy going charm, it is questionable whether we want our youth growing up and developing their views on romantic love under their influence. Of course, there are many morally praiseworthy characters in this domain as well: most of our television detectives, such as Olivia Benson or Kate Beckett, are morally praiseworthy. Thus, low art should not be exempt from the challenge of its causal impact. For one thing, low art is the most dominant and the most searched-after art form currently available. Not taking it into account in our discussion (both theoretical and practical) about art’s impact on people might seriously jeopardize our understanding of such impact. For another, by focusing more on the low art, we would get a better understanding of the relation between artistic aspect of an artwork and its apparent moral impact.17 The impact of such conclusions would be relevant for the VID and for our understanding of those forms of AC which operate under the assumption that knowledge is available via art in light of a work’s artistic features. If our research showed, for example, that low art is less efficient in having an impact on people, that might give us a reason to conclude that there is a special bond between artistic and ethical (and vice versa). Ethical criticism of art was so long concerned with high art, brining low art into the picture just might turn the debate upside down. APPLIED ETHICAL CRITICISM OF NARRATIVE ART: HOW TO PROCEED? Before moving on, let me address one worry that can be directed at my treatment of the ethical criticism of art. My account can be seen as supporting or presupposing some form of paternalism or censorship, and it can be taken as promoting an 17 This is an important point, since most AC tend to develop their theories by arguing that it is via artistic means that art influences us. I can't pursue this issue here, but I will briefly return to it in the next part. 452 IRIS VIDMAR JOVANOVIĆ instrumentalization of art for the purpose of moral education, thus misusing or neglecting its artistic value. An autonomist might insist that art is an autonomous practice, to be kept separately from other domains, free to (mis)use ethical norms for artistic purposes. Or, one might agree that art and ethics interact but nevertheless insist that art should not be put at the service of moral improvement, simply because one is not supposed to be looking for one in art. These are valid concerns, but misdirected. My point here is not to deny the autonomy or artistic value(s) of art, or to claim that art should exclusively or primarily be praised or chastised for its alleged contribution to our morality. My point is that, to unite again with Nannicelli, ethical criticism of art is a much needed practice which matters to the public and to the community, and should not be confined solely within art and philosophy departments. What I am ultimately aiming at is to raise the awareness of the need for more informed discussions on art. In the next part I sketch how such discussion should take place, and I offer this sketch also as part of my response to Nannicelli’s second worry, the one regarding the proper identification of P. Let me first point out that I dislike P as the main instance of the ethical criticism of art. For sure, some works tend to advance certain perspectives and we can often explain some of what works are about by pointing to the perspectives they offer. On the whole however, reducing the work’s ethical character to a single perspective is an impoverished way of engaging with it. Not only does such a treatment presuppose an oversimplified phenomenology of our art engagements and of what goes on as we seek to understand and interpret a given work, but it diminishes thematic complexity of a work, its educational value and the usefulness of ethical criticism. If ethical criticism is a worthwhile activity for what it reveals to us about the ethical conundrum of human beings as depicted, developed and contextualized in a work’s ethical character – rather than a theoretical, conceptual discussion – then reducing the work to a single perspective will not do. To see why, consider the criticism that philosophy occasionally gets for its treatment of moral issues: in light of its focus only on norms, rules and regulations, moral philosophy fails to reveal what is truly at stake, why such rules, norms and regulations are passed on in the first place and what is involved in (dis)respecting them. In other words, our moral sensibility cannot be enhanced simply because we are told what the right thing to do is. In the same way, to explain work’s causal impact on us by claiming that one becomes morally better because one manages to extract a certain perspective from a work will not get us far. Ethical criticism of art should not be concerned with extracting, or evaluating, the alleged perspective. Rather, it should aim at a more informed understanding of the ethical character of a work itself, where the perspective is but one element. If we engage with the ethical criticism of art so that we profit from what art has to offer in addition to aesthetic and artistic satisfaction and 453 Applied Ethical Criticism of Narrative Art rewards – enable us to gain new knowledge and develop moral sensibility by exercising our moral agency – we should undertake a more elaborate, and a more informed ethical criticism. In the next part I offer a sketch of what such an approach might include. TOWARDS AN APPLIED ETHICAL CRITICISM: A SKETCH My suggestion is that ethical criticism of narrative art should follow Nannicelli’s lead in advancing a wider context of research that should come united in our engagements with works, particularly when it comes to educating people on how to engage with art. Recall that one worry with P was that perspective advanced by the work might be hard to identify, or hard to corroborate by critical agreement on the exact meaning of a work, or on author’s intentions. The same worry relates to properly identifying “circumstances of creation” of a certain work, which are, on POA, crucial for work’s ethical value. To solve the challenge, Nannicelli advices us to turn to the wider context of art creation, where this context includes areas such as anthropology, sociology and history, as well as philosophical disciplines other than aesthetics and philosophy of art.18 His own approach to standup comedy, which incorporates linguistics and pragmatics, exemplifies the benefits of a wider context. Several other philosophers offer telling examples on the importance of a wider theoretical context within which discussions on a work of art is carried out. Gaut urges us to turn to political philosophy and free speech debate to settle the issue of censorship, and I would suggest adding political theory and public policies here. McGregor’s crucial motivation is to unite his work on narrative and aesthetic cognitivism with criminology, in order to make substantial differences to how criminologists use the narratives of crime in order to prevent further damaging and harmful behavior.19 Patrick Colm Hogan has done insightful work in uniting literary criticism with cognitive aesthetics. Applied to the study of Madam Bovary, his interpretation of this great novel enables us to understand more profoundly the psychology of the main characters, and to use that understanding to better grasp the manner in which human beings are brought to act. Rather than debating the question 18 I am simplifying both Nannicelli's position and mine; Nannicelli does not think the disagreement with respect to author's character is as extensive as with regard to his intention; I think the challenge may be just as pressing (see Vidmar Jovanović and Stupnik 2021). Furthermore, his proposal to include wider area or research is partly motivated by a problem that emerges with respect to art where the context of creation is not the same as the context of reception and criticism. On my view, relying on the wider context can always help us to understand art's ethical character, and its impact on us. 19 See his (2021) for such an account. 454 IRIS VIDMAR JOVANOVIĆ of whether Emma was selfish or immature, and evading the question of the moral aspect of her cheating, Hogan gives us means to understand her emotions and desires, and actions that follow from these.20 In terms of benefits available from art, such understanding is much more important than a moral perspective on adultery that the work may contain under P’s framework. The width of the analysis offered by these philosophers reveals how much we can gain by incorporating other scientific areas into our criticism of art. Incorporating such findings into our ethical discussions of works would significantly contribute to our understanding of them; and consequently, to what these works reveal to us about morality itself and moral conundrums that humans face. While there might be a point to the troubles related to identifying author’s proper intentions, there is, I suggest, a sufficient space left to debate the ethical character of a work independently of its maker’s intentions and independently of whether we can know them. Understanding art-historical context of work’s creation is one aspect which would significantly increase our understanding of the ethical complexities expressed, and this includes knowledge from anthropology, sociology, history, etc., as well as insights from literary, film and art scholars. Such understanding is significant in revealing a work’s mimetic force, which is particularly relevant for works which belong to different time, place and culture, such as colonial literature or art pertaining to earlier historical periods. For example, explaining the social and political circumstances of Emma Bovary would get us a long way towards eliminating the overly simplistic readings of the work according to which her misery was the sole outcome of her obsession with cheap romances (and her death a warning against adultery, as a proponent of P might argue). Whether Flaubert wanted to chastise adultery or to expose social circumstances confining female liberty and autonomy, close engagements with his masterpiece could certainly bring about profound understanding of how all these factors impact one.21 Another telling example of why incorporating insights from wider social and political context is relevant for the assessment of the ethical character of a work of art is the case 20 Consider for example his explanation of Emma's tragic mistake in chosing her husband, so unfit for her character: „She saw Charles, but only briefly, and at his best. What she does not see is necessarily filled in by imagination - and, in her case, that imagination is guided by the sublime protoypes of romantic tragedy. (…) Emma's emotional needs and limited knowledge brought her into error here.“ (Hogan 2011, 296). 21 Insightful examples of such analyses are provided by Hogan (2011) whose account of emotions enables a more encompassing understanding of Emma and Charles's motivation, as explicated above; and by Porter and Gray (2002) whose insight into historical context of Madam Bovary counters the interpretation according to which Emma's adultery is fueled by her passionate readings of cheap romances. Armed with such knowledge, those who publically rebuked Flaubert for immoralism would certainly have reconsidered their misreading of his great work. 455 Applied Ethical Criticism of Narrative Art of works such as Gone with the wind. Considered for decades to be one of the most important novels (and movies) depicting the ante-bellum and post-bellum area, it has recently been called out for its embracement of slavery. And while that fact in itself cannot be denied, a more informed approach to the work would have the audience understand the manner in which literary authors of that period used to advocate certain social and ethical policies regarding slavery, dominant within their culture at the time when the work was created.22 Of course, we know now that the moral attitude, the perspective, defended in the work was wrong, but that was not the case for the intended audience, for whom Margaret Mitchell was seen as advocating a just social order and as calling for maintenance of the existing cultural values. My point here is not to deny the moral fault of this work, but to point to the fact that our culture has had its shameful moments and sometimes, artists (as well as philosophers, scientists, and other intellectuals as well as men of religion) have promoted them and helped maintain them. But certainly, Mitchell is much less to blame for her pro-slavery attitude than say, Mitchell* who were to defend such views in contemporary society which unequivocally condemns slavery – we would be justified in dismissing Mitchell*’s work in ways in which we are not when it comes to Mitchell’s original one. Once the spectators properly understand the circumstances of creation of the work, Gone with the Wind can serve an important educational function, in bringing to our view an insight into a given historical period, its values and manners of being, thus helping contemporary audience understand a particular state of affair. Through an informed discussion, the audience should be made aware of the faulty ethical perspective, but nevertheless be encouraged to appreciate numerous other dimensions of the work which ground its value. Most importantly, the audience could understand how faulty moral views get maintained and protected by the societies, and it could use this knowledge to stay attentive of contemporary views which may be couched in accepted social morality but are in fact unjust or discriminatory. Such insights are lost if the work is reduced to a moral perspective and on those grounds expelled from our culture. Finally, let us not forget the value of literary or film aesthetics. With its emphasis on notions of value, originality and artistic influence, this domain can offer extensive analysis of work’s artistic value – something which can be lost from sight if we only focus on P or on the context of artistic creation. Insight from this domain can help us develop an appreciation of an artwork which emphasizes its artistic status and which enable one to understand how and why such status is warranted by the work itself. Educating people on how to properly appreciate a work of art can serve as a countermeasure to its instrumentalization, as the audience can thus learn to discriminate work’s overall value from the educational uses to which it can be put. 22 See Crane (2002) for insightful analysis of the literature's participation in this debate. 456 IRIS VIDMAR JOVANOVIĆ So far I argued that various disciplines inside and outside of philosophy and art theory should come together in ethical criticism of works of art, but it is also worth pointing out that more research is needed in order to understand better the phenomenology of our artistic experiences. Such an understanding is available in empirical psychology and cognitive sciences. While there are philosophers who object to philosophy’s turning to these disciplines or adopting their methodologies, the research within these areas seems promising when it comes to settling out the EC.23 As our brief overview showed, MItA and MCtA can both take place. We should try to understand what determines either to do so, and psychology and cognitive sciences might substantially help us here, more so than armchair philosophical contemplation. For example, is it a matter of developing attachment to different characters that determines the ethical bent of a viewer? Is it the question of authorship? For some reason, we might be more willing to trust some, and distrust other authors, particularly when an author created a considerable body of work of particular ethical valence.24 Or, is it that the spectator’s character and preexisting ethical sensibility makes the difference, in which case perhaps we do not need to worry about the causal claim at all? It is my impression that the research on causal claim ignores several important aspects of art engagements, such as the affective bond we develop with different characters, moral views one holds independently of one’s art experiences, or, in particular, the issue of spectators’ moral motivation. Perhaps art can impact us positively, but we just do not care to be so impacted. If that is the case, AC is still a valid position: art offers knowledge, we just do not care to receive it. This is a relevant point, since, some who defend and some who criticize AC do so on the grounds of art’s impact or lack of thereof. However, whether or not such impact takes place might be a matter of human psychology, more so than of an artwork itself.25 For instance, McGregor may be right in claiming that certain works can enable us to gain phenomenal knowledge, perhaps even its lucid variant, about what it is like to be a victim of homophobia, but we may feel that our community would discard us were we to adopt non-homophobic view and we for that reason resist accepting such a perspective. Much can be gained if we look at the phenomenology of our art experiences, particularly those of its aspects related to what we imagine, believe and feel in the process of reading (watching) and afterwards, as we contemplate on the work. Jonathan Gilmore’s recent work is an excellent case in point (2020). Relying on numerous cognitive and psychological research, Gilmore explores whether our cognitive and 23 See Smith (2017) for an overview. Tarantino is one such example, given the excessive violence depicted in his movies. 25 I develop this view in my (forthcoming). 24 457 Applied Ethical Criticism of Narrative Art emotional economy operates differently in the context of art, and he questions the normativity of such operations. If our art engagements are indeed governed by epistemic/moral norms which differ from those governing our beliefs and emotions in nonfictional domains, then perhaps MCtA should not worry us and we can happily laugh at Charlie Harper, rather than rebuke him for his “continual drunken whoring” (as his fictional brother tends to). As a particular bonus, exploring art’s impact on us and the more general manners of engaging with art can advance our understanding not only of art practices but of our own cognitive and emotional economy. To conclude, I provided an account of the ethical criticism of narrative art which is applied in the sense that it looks at the concrete instances of ethically challenging works in the contexts in which ethical character of those works has wider social significance. It is applied in the sense that it not only offers theoretical suggestions on how works of art can be cognitively valuable and install knowledge and morally relevant perspectives, but it looks to understand the underlying cognitive mechanisms of the spectators which are responsive to incentives from art. As I argued, this is why taking the causal challenge seriously is more important than some of the leading proponents of AC acknowledge. Our debates on art and its ethical character should consider people’s actual reactions to works in order to ground any plausible theories on whether or not there is a cognitive or ethical impact that art has on spectators. I also argued that ethical criticism should not be reduced to a perspective that is to be derived from a work. Rather, it should be a lively debate spanning a wide range of humanistic and scientific areas, thus addressing various layers of a work that come together in generating a piece of art of standing significance for humans.26 REFERENCES Aristotle (1989) “Poetics”, in J. L. Ackril, ed., A New Aristotle Reader, Princeton: Princeton University Press Baccarini, E. (2018), “Art, Moral Understanding, Radical Change,” Rivista Di Estetica 69: 40-53 26 This work has been supported in part by Croatian Science Foundation under the project number UIP-2020-02-1309. I am thankful to my collaborators on this project for their insightful suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper, and to an anonymous reviewer of the journal Etica and Politica for careful reading and helpful comments on this work. 458 IRIS VIDMAR JOVANOVIĆ Carroll N. (1998), “Art, Narrative, and Moral Understanding” in J. Levinson ed. Aesthetics and Ethics; Essays at the Intersection, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 126-160 Carroll N. (2001), Beyond Aesthetics, Cambridge University Press Carroll N. (2002), “The Wheel of Virtue: Art, Literature, and Moral Knowledge”, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60,1, pp. 3–26 Carroll N. (2011), “On some affective relations between audiences and the characters in popular fictions”, in A. Coplan & P. Goldie eds., Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives, Oxford University Press Crane G. (2002), Race, Citizenship, and Law in American Literature, Cambridge University Press Currie G. (2013), Does Great Literature Make Us Better? https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/01/does-great-literature-make-us-better/ Currie G. (2020), Imagining and Knowing: The Shape of Fiction, Oxford: Oxford University Press Eaton A. W. (2016), “Literature and Morality”, in N. Carroll and J. Gibson eds., The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of literature, Routledge, 433-450 Fingerhut J., Gomez-Lavin J., Winklmayr C. and Prinz J.J. (2021), “The Aesthetic Self. The Importance of Aesthetic Taste in Music and Art for Our Perceived Identity”, Frontier in Psychology, 11 Gaut B. (2007), Art, Emotion and Ethics, Oxford, Oxford University Press Gilmore J. (2020), Apt Imaginings: Feelings for Fictions and Other Creatures of the Mind, Oxford, Oxford University Press Goldman A. (2013), Philosophy and the Novel, Oxford, Oxford University Press Hogan P.C. (2011), What Literature Teaches Us About Emotion, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press Kieran M. (2005), Revealing Art, Routledge Lamarque P. (2007), “Learning from Literature” in J. Gibson, Huemer W. and L. Pocci, eds. A Sense of the World: Essays on Fiction, Narrative and Knowledge, Routledge,13-23 Landy J. (2008), “A nation of Madame Bovarys: On the possibility and desirability of moral improvement through fiction”, in G. Hagberg ed., Art and Ethical Criticism, Blackwell, 63-94 459 Applied Ethical Criticism of Narrative Art McGregor R. (2014), “A Critique of the Value Interaction Debate”, British Journal of Aesthetics, 54 (4), 449-466. McGregor R. (2018), Narrative Justice, London: Rowman & Littlefield International. McGregor R. (2021), A Criminology of Narrative Fiction, Bristol: Bristol University Press. Nannicelli T. (2020), Artistic Creation and Ethical Criticism, Oxford: Oxford University Press Nussbaum M. (2010), “Perceptive Equilibrium: Literary Theory and Ethical Theory” in G. Hagberg and W. Jost eds. A Companion to the Philosophy of Literature, WileyBlackwell, 241-267 Plato (1997), “The Republic.” In J. M. Cooper, ed., Plato, Complete Works, 971-1223, Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company Porter L. M. & Gray E. F. (2002), Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Greenwood Press Smith M. (2017), Film, Art and the Third Culture, Oxford, Oxford University Press Spivak G. C. (2013), An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization, Harvard University Press Vidmar Jovanović I. (2020), “Becoming Sensible: Thoughts on Rafe McGregor’s Narrative Justice”, The Journal of Aesthetics Education, 54 (4):48- 61 Vidmar Jovanović I. and Stupnik V. M. (2021), “Review of Nannicelli’s Artistic Creation and Ethical Criticism”, Prolegomena, 20 (1): 156-161 Vidmar Jovanović I. (forthcoming), “Art and Moral Motivation: Why Art Fails to Move Us?”, The Journal of Aesthetic Education Young J. O. (2019), “Literary Fiction and the Cultivation of Virtue”, in I. V. Jovanović, es., Narrative Art, Knowledge and Ethics, Rijeka, Filozofski fakultet, 87-107 461 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXIII, 2021, 3, pp. 461-480 ISSN: 1825-5167 DELIBERACIÓN, PLURALISMO Y CONSENSO MECANISMOS PARA UN ANÁLISIS DE LA DEMOCRACIA DELIBERATIVA DESDE EL GIRO EMPÍRICO-PRÁCTICO JAVIER ROMERO Facultad de Filosofía y Letras Universidad de Salamanca (Spain) jromero@usal.es ABSTRACT The political benefits of deliberation are increasingly cited, but not well understood. Neither are the processes involved in arriving at deliberative politics from pluralism and inclusion. This research reviews the available literature on political impacts related to deliberation following the empirical turn taken in deliberative democracy in recent years. The analysis of a specific case reveals that before deliberation the arguments presented gave rise to a deep fracture in the consensus. The deliberative process served to structure the consensus in pluralism helping citizens to formulate their own judgments. The findings suggest a renewed and complementary approach with the classical notion of deliberative democracy in the terms formulated by Jürgen Habermas in ecological and social terms in the line opened by various authors and assumed by Habermas himself in Between Facts and Norms. Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, 1992. KEYWORDS Deliberation, pluralism, consensus, Habermas, deliberative democracy. 1. INTRODUCCIÓN La democracia deliberativa ha tenido un gran impacto en las últimas décadas, sobre todo después de la caída del Muro de Berlín (1989) y de la configuración de un sistema interconectado global. Entre sus propuestas está entender la democracia no cómo un modo de hacer política únicamente desde la perspectiva agregativa (al modo liberal) o únicamente desde la perspectiva emotiva (al modo populista), sino en el llevar la democracia y los asuntos públicos a una ponderación de preferencias que deben ser escuchadas, deliberadas y consensuadas por las partes afectadas mediante sistemas de inclusión. Así por lo menos se entiende desde la perspectiva crítica de este tipo de democracia en la línea de Jürgen Habermas (1998), Seyla Benhabib (1996) y John S. Dryzek (2000). 462 JAVIER ROMERO A esta perspectiva se suma el conocido como giro empírico-práctico dado en las últimas décadas (Dryzek, 2010: 8-9). Este giro, que acompaña a otros giros dados en democracia deliberativa como el institucional o el sistémico, asume la aplicación de la teoría a la práctica real en el mundo de la política actual (giro práctico) para que los parlamentos sean más deliberativos como señala Uhr (1998), o introduciendo el diseño de mini-publics como jurados de ciudadanos, centros deliberativos, asambleas, etc., (Dryzek, 2000, 2010), que pueden incluso llegar a estructurar una democracia radical en relación también con las éticas aplicadas (Cortina, 1993). Por otra parte, asume en igualdad de condiciones el trabajo empírico realizado por las ciencias sociales (giro empírico), utilizando al respecto encuestas de opinión, entrevistas, sistemas de datos, análisis estadísticos, etc., (Bächtiger, Steenbergen y Niemeyer, 2007; Dryzek, 2010). De esta idea de democracia, entre lo normativo y los diferentes enfoques empírico-prácticos, surgen las siguientes preguntas: ¿Qué necesita un modelo deliberativo en política para liderar la configuración de la defensa de un proceso democrático? ¿Por qué algunos autores parecen más dispuestos que otros a contribuir al desarrollo de una democracia deliberativa? ¿Existen elementos objetivos que expliquen las contribuciones de la teoría deliberativa al consenso intersubjetivo entre las diferentes partes afectadas? Las respuestas a estas preguntas abarcan desde consideraciones políticas como sus antecedentes históricos, preferencias morales pre-deliberativas o intereses y elementos subjetivos en conflicto, así como cuestiones objetivas en la práctica de un proceso deliberativo real. Este trabajo de investigación pretende aproximarse a estas cuestiones y conocer el peso relativo que poseen distintos factores en un proceso de deliberación política (pre y post deliberativo). Para lograr este objetivo, se realizará un análisis cuantitativo y cualitativo de un caso real en el noroeste de Australia siguiendo los resultados del teórico angloaustraliano John S. Dryzek y su equipo de investigación en Canberra. Este proceso permitirá identificar las condiciones necesarias determinantes en una deliberación mediante el caso empírico de Bloomfield Track, relevante no sólo para el razonamiento intersubjetivo en la deliberación política, sino también para entender los numerosos casos enumerados en la actualidad sobre distintos procesos de deliberación en Suiza, Australia, Canadá, Estados Unidos o Italia, entre otros (Niemeyer, 2019)1. Además, esta metodología permite aclarar a los detractores de la deliberación (como Ch. Mouffe y E. Laclau) que el consenso es posible en la pluralidad, e incluso demostrable empíricamente, tanto para la democracia deliberativa como para la democracia ecológica (Dryzek, 1987, 2000; Romero, 2020: 229 y ss.). 1 Los diferentes casos pueden consultarse en la siguiente página web: https://participedia.net (consultado en octubre de 2021). 463 Deliberación, pluralism y consenso. Mecanismo para un análisis … Teniendo en cuenta estos elementos, el artículo comienza repasando la evolución teórica del consenso en Jürgen Habermas. Seguidamente, se discuten las principales aportaciones de John S. Dryzek al enfoque de Habermas sobre cómo entender el ejercicio y la definición de la deliberación en un consenso mediante la noción de metaconsenso (metaconsensus). Finalmente, se analizará esta contribución a la teoría deliberativa mediante un ejemplo empírico, examinando de forma conjunta las conclusiones estadísticas sobre el proceso de deliberación y los desarrollos teóricos en torno al consenso y metaconsenso, válidos teórica y prácticamente para el ejercicio de la democracia deliberativa. 2. METACONSENSO: RESULTADOS EN FORMA DE ACUERDO Antes de presentar el caso empírico analizado, se presta necesaria una explicación detallada sobre uno de los principales problemas teóricos que acompañan a la tradición que adopta la metodología del filósofo y sociólogo alemán Jürgen Habermas. Nos referimos a un problema teórico de filosofía práctica sobre cómo es posible alcanzar un consenso en la pluralidad, es decir, tras la división de Habermas entre la ética (ámbito intrapersonal no universalizable) y la moral (ámbito extrapersonal universalizable) en su teoría ética y filosofía política (Habermas, 2000), muchos críticos han señalado la imposibilidad de llegar a un consenso político dentro de la pluralidad de cosmovisiones éticas (Dryzek, 2010: 91-93). Dryzek señala, entre otros, principalmente a Ernesto Laclau y Chantal Mouffe como dos autores que han enfatizado y criticado en numerosas ocasiones la imposibilidad de un consenso en sentido habermasiano, principalmente por dos características: (a) un exceso de racionalidad en la tradición habermasiana, y (b) un utopismo en su obra y en sus seguidores sobre la posibilidad de suavizar las diferencias, los diferentes valores, las creencias o las nociones de vida buena mediante una teoría moral universal. Para Mouffe y Laclau el consenso racional habermasiano nunca será posible y solo se puede hablar al respecto de un pluralismo agónico de confrontación en términos de amigo/enemigo, nosotros/ellos, y de una lucha agónica por la hegemonía moral y política entre diferentes valores, identidades y concepciones, en un modelo agónico de democracia (Mouffe, 1996, 1999, 2000: 98 y ss.; Laclau, 2016: 212 y ss.). Para estos dos autores, la transición desde el pluralismo agónico a la idea de un modelo agónico de democracia es su propuesta teórica en términos morales y políticos en contra de la tradición habermasiana, e incluso rawlsiana, como señala la propia Chantal Mouffe (Mouffe, 2000: 80 y ss.). Sobre este punto John S. Dryzek y uno de sus discípulos más característicos, el politólogo y filósofo australiano Simon Niemeyer, han contribuido favorablemente a la comprensión de los estándares ideales de procedimiento que están presentes en los procesos deliberativos. A su vez, estos autores han estructurado una respuesta 464 JAVIER ROMERO teórica y empírica a las críticas llevadas a cabo por los teóricos populistas al proceso de deliberación amplificando metateóricamente, mediante dos conceptos interrelacionados, la noción de consenso: el concepto de metaconsenso y el concepto de racionalidad intersubjetiva (o comunicativa acorde con la terminología de Habermas), según sus últimos estudios (Dryzek y Niemeyer, 2006; Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007; Dryzek, 2010: 93 y ss.). El punto de partida de Dryzek y Niemeyer es identificar el problema que subyace a los análisis del populismo epistémico respecto a la noción de consenso (Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007; Dryzek 2010: 93). Estos análisis sobre la tradición habermasiana (en los términos de Mouffe) privilegiarían los ideales políticos exógenos (moral), sin una atención a los ideales políticos endógenos (ética), presentes en cualquier proceso deliberativo; una deficiencia analítica de una tradición postmoderna que entiende por pluralismo “el final de la idea filosófica de vida buena” (Mouffe, 1996: 246). Unos estándares ideales de procedimiento sobre el verdadero desarrollo de un proceso deliberativo (metaconsenso y racionalidad intersubjetiva) ayudan a ver que, a pesar de la división entre la ética y la moral, hay un proceso de hibridación entre ambas mediado por la racionalidad comunicativa en los términos descritos por Habermas (Habermas, 1983). En este proceso híbrido la naturaleza de la deliberación responde a unos ideales regulativos. Esto quiere decir que una deliberación auténtica requiere de una mente abierta y de un espíritu de reciprocidad, donde los participantes en una deliberación no privilegian su propia perspectiva por encima de la de los demás, sino que investigan conjuntamente intereses políticos generalizables (Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007). Metateóricamente, en todo proceso deliberativo antes de un consenso el intercambio de opiniones, el debate o el diálogo responde a un nivel básico donde diferentes participantes, mediante creencias, intuiciones y razonamientos, expresan sus posiciones. Es en este lugar donde los valores y las creencias son impulsados desde la subjetividad de los participantes en la deliberación hacia una “mesa deliberativa” que permite presentar argumentos y hacer frente a argumentos ajenos para, finalmente, poder llegar a un consenso orientado hacia la universalidad y la justicia (Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007; Dryzek, 2010: 96 y ss.). En este proceso incluso puede darse el caso que distintas posiciones de preferencia mantenidas antes de la deliberación (pre-deliberación), sean susceptibles de cambiar a la luz de las razones, los argumentos y la deliberación (post-deliberación), como veremos más adelante en el caso empírico presentado. Además, Dryzek y Niemeyer enfatizan que adoptar la perspectiva del metaconsenso implica primeramente alejarse metateóricamente del concepto clásico del consenso de Habermas (el consenso significa aquí un acuerdo sobre lo que se debe hacer en su perspectiva deontológica). Aunque la finalidad del consenso habermasiano deontológicamente está orientada hacia la legitimidad 465 Deliberación, pluralism y consenso. Mecanismo para un análisis … moral y política (el componente objetivo o moral), la metateoría que Dryzek y Niemeyer plantean parte de un principio de pluralidad dentro del contexto de un acuerdo más amplio; un acuerdo previo que existiría entre varios puntos de vista, pero que no requiere para ello de un acuerdo sobre la veracidad de las creencias particulares (belief), o de una clasificación de los valores (value), y mucho menos unanimidad sobre lo que debe hacerse (el componente subjetivo o ético) (Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007). Según los autores, existe una deliberación en forma de metaconsenso sobre los valores y las creencias que producen cambios en las posiciones expresadas en forma de preferencias. Las preferencias expresadas para un posible consenso implican aquí una reflexión previa, y conjunta, sobre un tema en cuestión desde una perspectiva compartida que ayuda a articular diferentes razones para un contexto público. Un procedimiento que, siguiendo a S. Benhabib, entienden los autores como un proceso de razonamiento desde varios puntos de vista donde existe una cierta coherencia entre ellos; una coherencia que se materializa en discursos. La finalidad, “debería ser un resultado colectivamente más racional, en el sentido de que hay un entendimiento intersubjetivo entre diferentes perspectivas y una coherencia entre las posiciones subjetivas y las posiciones de preferencia (racionalidad intersubjetiva)” (Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007). Desde esta perspectiva metateórica, el consenso también puede referirse a un componente subjetivo en la forma de valores (contenido normativo) y creencias (contenido cognitivo). Este reconocimiento teórico ayuda a explicar las preferencias morales adoptadas por los participantes en un proceso de deliberación orientado al consenso –en sentido habermasiano- (Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007; Dryzek, 2010: 93-94). Con base a estos tres elementos, o componentes del metaconsenso, valores, creencias y preferencias, existen tres tipos de consenso según los autores. Estos tres tipos son: (a) Consenso normativo: este consenso se refiere al acuerdo sobre los valores que impulsan el proceso de decisión o las convicciones profundas que determinan a un sujeto o a un grupo determinado. (b) Consenso epistémico: este consenso se refiere al aspecto crítico de la formación de preferencias. El consenso epistémico sería el resultado de cómo las acciones particulares se relacionan con los valores en términos de causa y efecto o los valores que orientan las creencias de un sujeto o un grupo determinado. (c) Consenso de preferencia: este consenso se refiere al grado de acuerdo sobre lo que debe hacerse –aquí es donde, por ejemplo, funciona la teoría de la elección social-. Estos tres tipos de consenso (normativo, epistémico y de preferencia) se refieren a tres instancias metateóricamente presentes en la deliberación, demostrables a 466 JAVIER ROMERO modo ilustrativo y empírico en Bloomfield Track como veremos en el siguiente apartado. Así, por ejemplo, el consenso normativo equivale a un reconocimiento de la legitimad de los valores que se discuten en un determinado momento por diferentes actores y agentes sociales (value), el consenso epistémico a una aceptación de las creencias que se discuten con un componente epistemológico clave en su proceso (belief), y el consenso de preferencia a un acuerdo sobre las opciones que se discuten en la “mesa deliberativa” (expressed preference). Los dos primeros corresponden a una posición ético-subjetiva (de un sujeto o de un grupo determinado que comparten los mismos valores y creencias), y solamente el último puede estructurarse dentro de una posible objetividad, donde mediante preferencias se adopta un discurso; un discurso orientado hacia el consenso, con otros discursos que se ponderan deliberativamente, en los términos clásicos descritos por Habermas (Habermas, 1981). En este sentido, cada preferencia es generada por una combinación de valores y creencias como se muestra a continuación. Cuadro 1. Tipos de consenso (metaconsenso) Valor Creencia Preferencia Consensos Normativo Epistémico Preferencia Equivalente Reconocimiento Aceptación Acuerdo Ética Conocimiento Moral Fuente: Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007; Dryzek. 2010 (adaptación) Desde la metateoría de Dryzek y Niemeyer estos tres consensos son resaltados como partes de un consenso universal más amplio. Esto quiere decir que, al clásico consenso de Habermas, metateóricamente se presenta un metaconsenso que permite fortalecer la teoría de Habermas y estructurar adecuadamente el lugar que ocupa la ética y la moral en esta tradición enfocada en la racionalidad comunicativa; una tradición que aboga por la inclusión de todas las partes afectadas para la resolución final de un problema donde las diferentes preferencias indican una posición moral que es susceptible, junto con otras preferencias, a los parámetros argumentativos clásicos de Habermas. En última instancia, no hay que olvidar que los participantes y agentes sociales en una deliberación son seres humanos que subjetivamente tienen unos valores, 467 Deliberación, pluralism y consenso. Mecanismo para un análisis … unas creencias, unas posiciones o unas ideas de felicidad y vida buena que no son universalizables, pero que son relevantes para su existencia, vida y desarrollo personal. 3. EL CASO EMPÍRICO BLOOMFIELD TRACK Para entender estos análisis metateóricos, los autores han presentado un caso práctico analizado con metodología empírica (giro empírico-práctico). Esta forma de proceder en democracia deliberativa, novedosa dentro de la tradición habermasiana, responde a una extensión del teórico John S. Dryzek sobre cómo incorporar métodos cualitativos y participativos, como la metodología Q o las investigaciones empíricas; algo que desde los años noventa Dryzek incorpora a la racionalidad comunicativa de Habermas (Dryzek, 1990: 176-189). Por un lado, este enfoque permite deconstruir y analizar críticamente los discursos, las posiciones y las ideas aceptadas a priori. Por otro lado, tiene una efectividad inmediata cuando se aplica a la toma de decisiones públicas o a la evaluación de riesgos, entre otros factores. Sobre esta metodología empírica (cuantitativa y cualitativa), Dryzek señala que es posible su combinación con análisis históricos y encuestas de opinión (Dryzek, 2010: 55-56). Así, por ejemplo, esta triangulación a través de diferentes métodos ha sido aplicada para analizar acuerdos sobre la gestión de la Antártida (Dryzek, 1990: 177-180), analizar distintos discursos democráticos (Dryzek, 1996: 124-132), o analizar en un estudio completo la democratización post-comunista (Dryzek y Holmes, 2002). El caso empírico presentado para entender estas metodologías y la propia noción de metaconsenso, Bloomfield Track, se refiere a un proceso real, del proyecto de investigación Citizens´ Juries for Environmental Management de la Australian National University (ANU), financiado por el Gobierno de Australia. La decisión política que debían tomar los participantes en la deliberación era si mantener o cerrar un camino construido en los años ochenta del siglo XX únicamente para coches con tracción 4WD, en una zona tropical del extremo noroeste de Australia (Figura 1), catalogada como Patrimonio de la Humanidad (Niemeyer y Blamey, 2005; Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007). 468 JAVIER ROMERO Figura 1. Localización de Bloomfield Track Fuente: Niemeyer y Blamey, 2005. El camino, que fue completado en 1984 –con fuertes protestas y bloqueosconecta la zona de Cape Tribulation con Cooktown a través de 30 kilómetros de naturaleza virgen por la selva de Daintree y el río Bloomfield (parte de la región fue catalogada como Parque Nacional antes de la construcción del camino). Sin embargo, se teme que la estabilidad ecológica de la región de Daintree pueda estar amenazada al existir un impacto directo sobre la biodiversidad de la zona (wallabys, canguros, cocodrilos, etc.), la comunidad aborigen Wujal Wujal y los ecosistemas (la región de Daintree contiene el último ejemplo significativo de montaña continua a una selva tropical costera en Australia). Históricamente, Bloomfield Track ha estado representada por dos opiniones enfrentadas: un grupo de presión ambiental en contra del camino y un grupo a favor del camino. Este último, según Dryzek y Niemeyer, estaría impulsado en numerosas ocasiones desde la política simbólica en los términos descritos por Murray Edelman (Edelman, 1985), que estratégicamente representa los argumentos de los principales grupos de interés organizados para ganar el apoyo del público (recordar al respecto que el Douglas Shire Council y el Gobierno de Queensland apoyaron el desarrollo de la carretera en los años ochenta del siglo XX a pesar de las protestas ciudadanas) (Niemeyer y Blamey, 2005; Niemeyer y 469 Deliberación, pluralism y consenso. Mecanismo para un análisis … Dryzek, 2007; Dryzek, 2010: 111). Hoy el camino sigue siendo un tema espinoso y delicado políticamente, mientras el impacto ecológico y el impacto social sigue en aumento en una zona catalogada como Patrimonio de la Humanidad. Para intentar proponer una posible alternativa al problema de Bloomfield Track, la ANU, con el apoyo del Gobierno australiano (Land & Water Australia), han impulsado un proyecto de investigación seleccionando a una serie de ciudadanos para el Far North Queensland Citizens´ Jury, en adelante FNQCJ. De aproximadamente un total de 2000 cartas enviadas a direcciones seleccionadas al azar, 600 fueron respondidas, siendo finalmente 16 ciudadanos los encargados de representar al FNQCJ2. Este jurado popular durante cuatro días se reunió para tomar una decisión sobre el posible futuro de Bloomfield Track. En resumen, los cuatro días se resumen un día para la preparación e inspección del lugar, dos días para escuchar a los testigos y afectados y un último día para la deliberación y la redacción de informes para las autoridades competentes (ANU y el Gobierno australiano) (Niemeyer y Blamey, 2005; Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007)3. Al considerar la cuestión sobre el posible futuro de Bloomfield Track se pidió a los participantes en la deliberación que tuviesen en cuenta siete puntos: consultar a la comunidad de la zona, tener en cuenta el impacto sobre los aborígenes locales y sus valores culturales, la integridad del Mundo, los valores ambientales de la zona (Patrimonio Mundial), los impactos económicos, las alternativas viables y los impactos a largo plazo (Niemeyer y Blamey, 2005). Además de estas consideraciones, para facilitar el trabajo se ofreció al FNQCJ cinco opciones políticas sobre el posible futuro del camino: asfaltar, mejorar, estabilizar, status quo o cerrar (Figura 2). Figura 2. Las cinco opciones presentadas Fuente: Niemeyer y Blamey, 2005 (adaptación). 2 Aunque finalmente 4 de ellos no pudieron participar, el proyecto se llevó a cabo por 12 participantes. 3 Para consultar los participantes en la deliberación (nombres en clave o seudónimos para garantizar su anonimato) o los testigos consultados, ver el Anexo. 470 JAVIER ROMERO Después de los cuatro días, la posición final del FNQCJ respecto a la hipotética futura gestión de Bloomfield Track se dividió en dos opciones (Niemeyer y Blamey, 2005; Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007; Dryzek, 2010: 93 y ss.). Estas opciones políticas fueron: (a) Opción de cerrar el camino (7 de 12 participantes a favor). Esta opción apuesta por el cierre de Bloomfield Track y un seguimiento durante un periodo de 10 a 15 años. Algunos motivos que llevaron a los participantes a esta opción fueron: la importancia de la zona en términos ecológicos y culturales, una transición beneficiosa hacia el cierre de la carretera acompañada de medidas que beneficien tanto a la comunidad como al medio ambiente o el escaso retorno de beneficios a la comunidad local en comparación con los del gasto en mantenimiento, entre otros. (b) Opción de mantener el statu quo (5 de 12 participantes a favor). Esta opción apuesta por mantener Bloomfield Track abierto sin mejoras, actualizaciones o regulación de vehículos. Dos motivos que llevaron a algunos participantes a esta opción fueron: el acceso al camino debe estar disponible para todos los que desean visitar la zona y la no existencia de un ejemplo fuerte de impacto ambiental sobre la ecología y los ecosistemas. Además, esta posición viene con una advertencia: si se demuestra un impacto negativo en la selva o en los arrecifes, el cierre del camino sería la mejor opción para preservar la integridad de la zona en el futuro. Dryzek y Niemeyer han analizado este caso desde el Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance (Australian National University y University of Canberra), ya que “representa un excelente estudio para comparar el funcionamiento de los procesos formales de la deliberación –como los jurados de ciudadanos-, y los procesos políticos dentro del statu quo” (Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007). Con la idea de averiguar exactamente qué es lo que sucede durante un proceso real de deliberación orientada al consenso, Dryzek y Niemeyer han analizado las preferencias políticas de los participantes antes (pre) y después (post) de la deliberación, identificando factores estadísticos de cambio. Esto quiere decir que, aplicando la teoría del metaconsenso con metodologías empíricas, los autores identificaron que los valores, las creencias y las preferencias después de un proceso deliberativo pueden verse influidos y afectados por los procedimientos argumentativos y el contexto histórico-dinámico donde se desarrolla una deliberación (Dryzek, 2010: 93). Como bien señalan Romero y Dryzek un proceso deliberativo puede llegar a tener resultados diferentes dependiendo del lugar donde se desarrolla: no es lo mismo deliberar temas medioambientales en un bosque abierto a la naturaleza que en un edificio cerrado de oficinas (Romero y Dryzek, 2021). 471 Deliberación, pluralism y consenso. Mecanismo para un análisis … Los cambios en las preferencias en el caso presentado, Bloomfield Track, son analizados empíricamente por estos autores a partir de los resultados de un cuestionario completado por los participantes antes y después de la deliberación (análisis histórico, metodología Q y encuestas de opinión). En cada caso se pidió previamente a cada participante que indicara entre las cinco opciones políticas sus preferencias subjetivas sin discutir ni hablar con otros. Para ello, se les pidió que clasificaran de 1 a 5 las cinco opciones políticas, donde 1 es la opción más preferida, y 5 es la opción menos preferida. Los resultados del antes y el después de la deliberación disminuyeron en este caso durante el proceso deliberativo de 17.0 a 5.5 (Tabla 3), un cambio estadísticamente significativo de casi dos tercios del valor estimado antes de la deliberación según la prueba de concordancia (Niemeyer y Blamey, 2005; Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007; Dryzek, 2010, p. 99 y ss.). Figura 3. Resultado de la prueba de concordancia Fuente: Niemeyer y Blamey, 2005; Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007 (adaptación). Para realizar la prueba de concordancia de las diferentes opciones morales y políticas la distancia de Spearman, conocido matemático y psicólogo anglosajón, es una de las más eficaces medidas de correlación estadística. Esta distancia sigue la distancia euclidiana (o euclídea) entre dos puntos de un espacio euclídeo que se deduce a partir del teorema de Pitágoras (en un triángulo rectángulo el cuadrado de la hipotenusa es igual a la suma de los cuadrados de los catetos: a2 + b2 = c2). De esta manera, la distancia entre dos rangos es una función del tipo d (ωpre, ωpost) para cualquier vector de orden político ω∈ Sm, donde Sm es el conjunto de permutaciones para las diferentes opciones {1, 2, …, m}, y m=5 son las opciones morales y políticas. 472 JAVIER ROMERO Figura 4. Distancia euclidiana (d) entre dos puntos Fuente: elaboración propia. Así, lo más simple a la hora de mostrar la distancia euclidiana (d) es entender su estructura a partir de dos puntos trazados en dimensiones espaciales diferentes tal como se muestra en la Figura 4. Esta figura representa un ejemplo simple de distancia euclidiana entre los rangos de preferencia x e y para las dos opciones (i e j). Las referencias pre-deliberativas y post-deliberativas para las opciones x(ij) e y(ij) están trazadas a lo largo de sus respectivos ejes con una preferencia pre-deliberativa estructurada en el origen por conveniencia. De esta manera se entiende la relación entre el cambio de rango Δi y Δj, respectivamente, donde la distancia (d) entre los dos puntos es simplemente la hipotenusa del triángulo formado por el cambio de rango de las opciones. De esta forma, usando la geometría euclidiana, la distancia euclidiana (d) entre el antes y el después de la deliberación en el caso de Bloomfield Track se estructura con los rangos x e y del equilibrio euclídeo m-dimensional que se define como4: 𝑑(𝑥, 𝑦) = √∆𝑖2 + ∆𝑗2 + ⋯ + ∆𝑚2 4 Donde m=5 opciones de preferencia moral y política. La prueba de concordancia utiliza el conjunto de distancias entre los rangos del participante en la deliberación a la hora generar una distribución de probabilidad. Ver el Anexo que acompaña al texto para más información sobre estas cuestiones. 473 Deliberación, pluralism y consenso. Mecanismo para un análisis … Siguiendo estas pruebas los datos muestran que hay un cambio significativo estadísticamente demostrable durante la deliberación dando lugar a un ganador Condorcet. Así, entonces, el ganador antes de la deliberación fue la opción política de “estabilizar el camino” resultando ganador después de la deliberación la opción política de “cerrar el camino”; un cambio que logró mostrar que el consenso aumentó durante el proceso de deliberación gracias quizá a un mayor acceso a la información, al intercambio de puntos de vista, a los distintos razonamientos sobre el futuro de la zona o las visitas a los lugares afectados, entre otras muchas opciones posibles en la deliberación. Aunque el FNQCJ produjo una fuerte transformación de las preferencias políticas, para los autores lo más importante de este ejemplo a pequeña escala, más allá de los datos, es observar metateóricamente que, dentro de una pluralidad donde la preferencia era “mantener el camino”, después de la deliberación política la preferencia que menos estaba valorada previa deliberación, “cerrar el camino”, fue la preferencia adoptada por un 7 de 12 participantes. A este respecto, según los resultados de la metodología Q, Dryzek y Niemeyer han identificado tres diferentes posiciones respecto a Bloomfield Track (Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007; Dryzek, 2010: 96-100). Estas posiciones son: (a) Los pragmáticos: priorizan los valores de la comunidad. Su opción preferida es mantener abierto el camino. (b) Los conservacionistas: priorizan los valores ambientales. Su opción preferida es cerrar el camino. (c) Los optimistas: priorizan los valores de la comunidad, aunque reconocen también valores ambientales. Su opción preferida es mantener abierto el camino porque creen que puede llegar a promover ambos valores. Por todo ello, a la pregunta sobre si existe un beneficio comunitario y un daño ambiental, según los valores y las creencias de los diferentes participantes en la deliberación de Bloomfield Track, las preferencias varían como se señala el siguiente cuadro (Cuadro 2). Cuadro 2. Preferencia ético-subjetiva 474 JAVIER ROMERO ¿Beneficio comunitario? ¿Daño ambiental? Pragmáticos SI NO Conservacionistas NO SI Optimistas SI NO Valor y creencia Valor y creencia Fuente: Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007; Dryzek. 2010 (adaptación). Aplicando la teoría del metaconsenso de Dryzek y Niemeyer –y alejándose metateóricamente del resultado final-, donde el consenso normativo equivaldría a un reconocimiento de la legitimidad de los valores que se discuten (value), el consenso epistémico a una aceptación de las creencias que se discuten (belief), y el consenso de preferencia a un acuerdo sobre las opciones que se discuten (expressed preference), el resultado metateórico final muestra las tres preferencias significativas presentes en el análisis empírico-práctico de Bloomfield Track con una relevancia a la hora de entender un proceso deliberativo real (Cuadro 3). Cuadro 3. Formación de preferencias Valor Creencia Preferencia Normativo Epistémico Preferencia Prioridad ética Conocimiento Decisión moral Pragmáticos Comunidad Beneficio Mantener Conservacionistas Medio ambiente Impacto Cerrar Optimistas Comunidad Beneficio Mantener Fuente: Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007; Dryzek. 2010 (adaptación). La formación de preferencias mostró que “mantener el camino” era la preferencia subjetiva más aceptada (algo que se demostró antes de la deliberación según los datos). Así entonces, con el resultado final, “cerrar el camino”, se demuestra teórica y empíricamente que a pesar de que existió una preferencia subjetiva contraria respecto al camino, después de la deliberación, el diálogo, el 475 Deliberación, pluralism y consenso. Mecanismo para un análisis … intercambio de opiniones y la información, la preferencia final cambió absolutamente con la posibilidad de articular un discurso compartido sobre “cerrar el camino”: consenso final en sentido habermasiano. 4. CONCLUSIONES Estos análisis han demostrado que el pluralismo no es un problema (como entienden Mouffe y Laclau), y que el consenso es posible según el contexto histórico analizado. Adoptar los estándares habermasianos de la racionalidad comunicativa llevan a entender esta metateoría desarrollada por Dryzek y Niemeyer complementaria con la teoría de Habermas. Esto significa entender este desarrollo metateórico como no dogmático, no alimentado por el resentimiento, no negador de la identidad de los demás, sin la necesidad de tratar principalmente de “deseos privados y egoístas”, no implicando una subordinación sobre los demás y no relativista (Dryzek, 2010: 110). Con estos resultados sobre el proceso de deliberación esta teoría responde favorablemente a las críticas presentadas a los procesos deliberativos, a la vez que se presenta una teoría del consenso (metaconsenso y métodos empíricos). Estos análisis, desde la filosofía y la ciencia política, son bien recibidos en democracia deliberativa al estar estructurados entre la teoría política y los análisis empíricos. 5. ANEXO Figura 5. Los participantes seleccionados para deliberar (FNQCJ) Fuente: Niemeyer y Blamey, 2005; Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007 (adaptación). Figura 6. Testigos técnicos para el FNQCJ 476 JAVIER ROMERO Fuente: Niemeyer y Blamey, 2005; Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007 (adaptación). Figura 7. Testigos de la comunidad para el FNQCJ Fuente: Niemeyer y Blamey, 2005; Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007 (adaptación). Figura 8. Rangos de preferencia antes de deliberación (agregado) Fuente: Niemeyer y Blamey, 2005; Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007 (adaptación). Figura 9. Rangos de preferencia antes de deliberación (individual) 477 Deliberación, pluralism y consenso. Mecanismo para un análisis … Fuente: Niemeyer y Blamey, 2005; Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007 (adaptación). Figura 10. Rangos de preferencia después de la deliberación (agregado) Fuente: Niemeyer y Blamey, 2005; Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007 (adaptación). Figura 11. Rangos de preferencia después de deliberación (individual) Fuente: Niemeyer y Blamey, 2005; Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007 (adaptación). 478 JAVIER ROMERO Figura 12. Nivel de consistencia intersubjetiva Fuente: Niemeyer y Blamey, 2005; Niemeyer y Dryzek, 2007 (adaptación) REFERENCIAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS Bächtiger, A., Steenbergen, M. R., y Niemeyer, S. (2007). Deliberative Democracy: An Introduction. Swiss Political Science Review, 13, 485-496. Benhabib, S. (1996). “Toward a Deliberative Model of Democratic Legitimacy”. En S. Benhabib (comp.). Democracy and difference: contesting the boundaries of the political. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 67-94. Cortina, A. (1993). Ética aplicada y democracia radical. Madrid: Tecnos. Dryzek, J. S. (1987). Rational Ecology. Environment and Political Economy. New York: Blackwell. Dryzek, J. S. (1990). 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Intersubjetive Reasoning in Political Deliberation. A Theory and Method for Assessing Deliberative Transformation, Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, 4. Niemeyer, S. y Blamey, R. (2005). Deliberation in the wilderness. The far north Queensland citizen´s jury. Canberra: Australian Government (Land & Water Australia) and The Australian National University (ANU). Niemeyer, S. y Dryzek, J. (2007). The ends of deliberation: metaconsensus and intersubjective rationality as ideal outcomes. Swiss Political Science Review, 13, 497-526. Romero, J. (2020). Pensar y sentir una naturaleza que cambia. Hacia una ecofilosofía sin fronteras. Barcelona: MRA Ediciones. 480 JAVIER ROMERO Romero, J. y Dryzek, J. S., (2021). Grounding Ecological Democracy: Semiotics and the Communicative Networks of Nature. Environmental Values, 30(4): 407-429. Uhr, J. (1998). Deliberative Democracy in Australia: The Changing Place of Parliament. 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The journal is committed to such standards as originality in research papers, precise references in discussing other scholars’ positions, avoiding plagiarism. E&P takes these standards extremely seriously, because we think that they embody scientific method and are the mark of real scholarly communication. Since E ti ca & Po l itica/ E thics & Po l itics is devoted solely to scientific and academic quality, the journal neither has any submission charges nor any article processing charges. The following guidelines are based on existing Elsevier policies and COPE’s Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors 1. PUBLICATION AND AUTHORSHIP EUT (Edizioni Università di Trieste), is the publisher of the peer reviewed international journal E tica & Po l itica/ E thics & Po l itics . The publication of an article in a peer-reviewed journal is an essential step of a coherent and respected network of knowledge. It is a direct reflection of the quality of the work of the authors and the institutions that support them. Peerreviewed articles support and embody the scientific method. It is therefore important to agree upon standards of expected ethical behaviour for all parties involved in the act of publishing: the author, the journal editor, the peer reviewer, the publisher. Authors need to ensure that the submitted article is the work of the submitting author(s) and is not plagiarized, wholly or in part. They must also make sure that the submitted article is original, is not wholly or in part a republication of the author’s earlier work, and contains no fraudulent data. It is also their responsibility to check that all copyrighted material within the article has permission for publication and that material for which the author does not personally hold copyright is not reproduced without permission. Finally, authors should ensure that the manuscript submitted is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere. 483 2. AUTHOR’S RESPONSIBILITIES E ti ca & Politica/Ethics & Politi cs is a peer-reviewed journal, and Authors are obliged to participate in our double blind peer review process. Authors must make sure that all and only the contributors to the article are listed as authors. Authors should also ensure that all authors provide retractions or corrections of mistakes. 3. PEER REVIEW AND REVIEWERS’ RESPONSIBILITIES Both the Referee and the Author remain anonymous throughout the “double blind” review process. Referees are selected according to their expertise in their particular fields. Referees have a responsibility to be objective in their judgments; to have no conflict of interest with respect to the research, with respect to the authors and/or with respect to the research funders; to point out relevant published work which is not yet cited by the author(s); and to treat the reviewed articles confidentially. 4. EDITORIAL RESPONSIBILITIES Editors hold full authority to reject/accept an article; to accept a paper only when reasonably certain; to promote publication of corrections or retractions when errors are found; to preserve anonymity of reviewers; and to have no conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject/accept. If an Editor feels that there is likely to be a perception of a conflict of interest in relation to their handling of a submission, they will declare it to the other Editors. The other Editors will select referees and make all decisions on the paper. 5. PUBLISHING ETHICS ISSUES Members of the Editorial Board ensure the monitoring and safeguarding of the publishing ethics. This comprises the strict policy on plagiarism and fraudulent data, the strong commitment to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed, and the strict preclusion of business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards. Whenever it is recognized that a published paper contains a significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distorted report, it will be corrected promptly. If, after an appropriate investigation, an item proves to be fraudulent, 484 it will be retracted. The retraction will be clearly identifiable to readers and indexing systems. 6 . POL ICY ON E D IT OR IAL NOR M S AND ST YL E In accordance with the pluralist principle and the breadth of interests that characterize the editorial line of E ti ca & Politi ca/ E thi cs & Po l i ti cs , the review leaves the contributors free to choose which style of quotation to adopt in the composition of their article. Of course, this style must conform to one of the two internationally recognized models in the area of scientific publications in the humanities, namely the Chicago A (equivalent to APA) or the Chicago B, both defined by The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition. Moreover, the reference to the complete source must contain all the information required by the ISO 690 standard, both if it is provided only in the final bibliography (Chicago A) and if it is provided in a note (Chicago B). 7. PAST ISSUE S AND STAT IST ICS Past issues with download and visitors statistics for each article are provided by EUT publisher through its official repository.: http://www.openstarts.units.it/dspace/handle/10077/4673 E D IT OR : RICCARDO FANCIULLACCI (Bergamo) riccardofanciullacci@libero.it PIERPAOLO MARRONE (Trieste) marrone@units.it FERDINANDO G. MENGA (Caserta) ferdinandogiuseppe.menga@unicampania.it E D IT OR IAL B OAR D : ELVIO BACCARINI (Rijeka) ebaccarini@ffri.hr ROBERTO FESTA (Trieste) festa@units.it GIOVANNI GIORGINI (Bologna) giovanni.giorgini@unibo.it EDOARDO GREBLO (Trieste) edgreblo@tin.it FABIO POLIDORI (Trieste) polidori@units.it WEB M AST ER : ENRICO MARCHETTO (Trieste) enrico.marchetto@gmail.com 485 ITAL IAN ADVISORY AND SCIE NT IF IC B OAR D : B. ACCARINO (Firenze), A. ALLEGRA (Perugia), G. ALLINEY (Macerata), S. AMATO (Catania), M. ANZALONE (Napoli), D. ARDILLI (Modena), F. ARONADIO (Roma), G. AZZONI (Pavia), F. BACCHINI (Sassari), E. BERTI (Padova), P. BETTINESCHI (Venezia), P. BIASETTI (Padova), G. BISTAGNINO (Milano) R. CAPORALI (Bologna), A.A. CASSI (Bergamo), G. CATAPANO (Padova), F. CIARAMELLI (Napoli), M. COSSUTTA (Trieste), L. COVA (Trieste), S. CREMASCHI (Vercelli), G. CEVOLANI (Lucca), R. CRISTIN (Trieste), U. CURI (Padova), A. DA RE (Padova), G. DE ANNA (Udine), B. DE MORI (Padova), C. DI MARTINO (Milano), P. DONATELLI (Roma), M. FARAGUNA (Milano), M. FERRARIS (Torino), S. FUSELLI (Padova), A. FUSSI (Pisa), C. GALLI (Bologna), R. GIOVAGNOLI (Roma), P. KOBAU (Torino), E. IRRERA (Bologna), E. LECALDANO (Roma), L.A. MACOR (Verona), E. MANGANARO (Trieste), G. MANIACI (Palermo), P. MARINO (Napoli), R. MORDACCI (Milano), V. MORFINO (Milano), M. PAGANO (Vercelli), G. PELLEGRINO (Roma), V. RASINI (ModenaReggio Emilia), M. REICHLIN (Milano), P.A. ROVATTI (Trieste), S. SEMPLICI (Roma), A. SCHIAVELLO (Palermo), A. SCIUMÈ (Bergamo), F. TOTO (Roma), F. TRABATTONI (Milano), M.S. VACCAREZZA (Genova), C. VIGNA (Venezia), P. VIGNOLA (Guayaquil). INT E R NAT IONAL ADVISORY AND SCIE NT IF IC B OAR D : J. ALLAN (Queensland, Brisbane/Australia), F.J. ANSUÁTEGUI ROIG (Madrid/ Spain), T. BEDORF (Hagen/Germany), G. BETZ (Karlsruhe/Germany), W. BLOCK (New Orleans/USA), S. CHAMBERS (Irvine/USA), J. COLEMAN (London/UK), C. COWLEY (Dublin/Ireland), W. EDELGLASS (Marlboro VT/USA), L. FLORIDI (Oxford/UK), R. FREGA (Paris/France), MATTHIAS FRITSCH (Montreal/Canada), J.C. HERRERA RUIZ (Medellín/Colombia), A. KALYVAS (New York/USA), M.R. KAMMINGA (Groningen/Netherlands), J. KELEMEN (Opava/Czech Republic), F. KLAMPFER (Maribor/Slovenia), M. KNOLL (Istanbul/Turkey), C. ILLIES (Bamberg/ Germany), D. INNERARITY (Bilbao/Spain), H. LINDAHL (Tilburg/Netherlands), D. MANDERSON (Canberra/Australia), M. MATULOVIC (Rijeka/Croatia), J. MCCORMICK (Chicago/USA), N. MISCEVIC (Zagreb/Croatia), A. MOLES (Budapest/Hungary), L. PAULSON (Paris/France), J. QUONG (Los Angeles/USA), V. RAKIC (Belgrade/Serbia), M. RENZO (London/UK), A. SCHAAP (Exeter/UK), B. SCHULTZ (Chicago/USA), N. TARCOV (Chicago/USA), D. WEBB (Staffordshire/ UK), J.P. ZAMORA BONILLA (Madrid/Spain). 486 LISTA REFEREE 2021 / LIST OF REVIEWERS 2021 Pablo Aguayo (Universidad de Chile); Paolo Amodio (Università di Napoli “Federico II”); Tiziana Andina (Università di Torino); Giacomo Andreoletti (University of Tyumen); Elvio Baccarini (University of Rijeka); Cristobal Bellolio (Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago de Chile); Tristano Bernardis (Università di Trieste); Luca Bianchin (Università degli Studi di Milano); Pierfrancesco Biasetti (Leibniz Kolleg, Berlin); Gianvito Brindisi (Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”); Francesco Callegaro (Università di Venezia “Ca’ Foscari”); Ivan Cerovac (University of Rijeka); Pierpaolo Cesaroni (Università di Padova); Fabio Ciaramelli (Università di Napoli “Federico II”); Luigi Corrias (University of Amsterdam); Fausto Corvino (Università di Pisa); Paolo Costa (Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento); Mariano Croce (Università di Roma La Sapienza); Corrado Del Bò (Università di Milano); María del Carmen Barranco Avilés (Universidad de Madrid Carlos III); Valeria De Santis (Università di Napoli “Parthenope”); Carmine Di Martino (Università degli Studi di Milano); Marcelo Fabri (Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, Brasil); Adriano Fabris (Università di Pisa); Giovanni Ferracuti (Università di Trieste); Stefania Ferrando (EHESS, Paris); Franco Ferrari (Università di Salerno); Maria Ferretti (Universität Frankfurt a.M.); Edoardo Fittipaldi (Università degli Studi di Milano); Tommaso Gazzolo (Università di Sassari); Orsetta Giolo (Università di Ferrara); Susana Gazmuri Stein (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile); Maria Pia Iadicicco (Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”); Luigi Laino (Università di Napoli “Federico II”); Gustavo Leyva (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, México DF); Federica Liveriero (Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”); Daniel Loewe (Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago de Chile); Alessio Lo Giudice (Università di Messina); Piero Marino (Università di Napoli “Federico II”); David Martínez (Universidad de O’Higgins, Chile); Felice Masi (Università di Napoli “Federico II”); Ottavio Marzocca (Università di Bari); Rafe McGregor (Edge Hill University, UK); Gianfranco Mormino (Università degli Studi di Milano);Giovanni Morrone (Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”); Massimo Palma (Università di Napoli “Suor Orsola Benincasa”); Ricardo Parellada (Universidad Complutense, Madrid); Marco Pavanini (Durham University, UK); Julia Pfefferkorn (Universität Mainz, Germany); Francesca Poggi (Università degli Studi di Milano); Ulderico Pomarici (Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”); Andrea Raciti (Università di Pisa); Caterina Resta (Università di Messina); Filippo Ruschi (Università di Firenze); Claudio Santander (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile); Pier Francesco Savona (Università di Napoli “Federico II”); Felipe Schwember (Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile); Klinger Scolarick (Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Brasil); Ernesto Sferrazza Papa (Univesidad Catolica del Chile); Hendrik Stoppel (University of Bochum, Germany); Domenico Suppa (Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”); Gerhard Thonhauser (Universität Darmstadt); Francesco Toto (Università di Roma Tre); Steven Umbrello (Università di Torino); Matteo Vegetti (Università della Svizzera Italiana); Vito Velluzzi (Università degli Studi di Milano); Mario Vergani (Università Milano Bicocca); Christoph Wiesinger (University of Heidelberg).