5 - A Historical Theory of Reasons

Summary

Thinking about appropriate concession has a history. Suppose a childless young woman is competing for a job with a young man who has a family to support. In an earlier era, many Americans would have agreed that fairness – appropriate concession in the relevant cooperative contexts – required that the job be given to the young man, provided he could do it at all. In contemporary American society, fewer would say this. How are we to understand changes like this in generally accepted views about what is required by fairness or the other central values of the morality of reciprocal concern?

It is important to appreciate the full dimension of the change. It has not simply been a change in the behavior of employers. Social changes of other kinds, for example, changes in the understanding of what constitutes a fair division of labor between a man and a woman cooperating to maintain a household, have also played a part. Changed ideas about what constitutes a good life for a woman have been important as well. In Chapter 1, it was suggested that objective conceptions of human well-being can play a role in thinking about whether there is a disparity of concession in a particular cooperative undertaking, and if so, how great it is. It is now more widely accepted that a good life for a woman, objectively understood, will involve work outside the home. It is also more widely accepted that a good life for a man with children will involve active parenting.

Changes in thinking about a variety of further moral and evaluative issues have, then, contributed to the changed understanding of what fairness requires when an employer is confronted with the choice described. This change has led to legal changes, which may themselves have prompted changes in the moral thinking of some people. In the case we are considering, then, change in the understanding of what constitutes appropriate concession has been a complex conceptual and social process with many interconnected parts.

In Chapter 1, I proposed a constructivist account of judgments of fairness and unfairness. On that account, the fact that thinking about fairness has a history means that fairness itself has a history. The ways of organizing cooperation that are required by fairness now may not have been required by fairness in the past, and vice versa.