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Charles Larmore, The Morals of Modernity. New York: Cambridge University Press 1996. Pp. x + 226.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

David Dyzenhaus
David Dyzenhaus*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Law and Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, CanadaM5S 2C5
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Type
Critical Notice
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , June 1998 , pp. 269 - 286
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1998

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References

1 ‘Two Concepts of Liberty,’ in Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1969), 118, 172. The person quoted is, I believe, Joseph Schumpeter.

2 Rawls, John A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1971)Google Scholar

3 Rawls, John Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press 1993)Google Scholar

4 Rawls, ‘Reply to Habermas,’ Journal of Philosophy 92 (1995) 132–80, at 133 n.1Google Scholar

5 Although his opposition to the brand of pragmatism popularized by Richard Rorty makes Larmore wary of the label (7-9).

6 See Larmore, 13. Of course, this label is controversial. Raz, Joseph for example, claims to reject individualism — see his The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1986)Google Scholar. But there is no uncontroversial label.

7 These, especially the first two, might more accurately be seen as slight variations rather than as different.

8 Kelsen, Hans Vom Wesen und Wert der Demokratie (Aalen: Scientia Verlag 1981 [1929])Google Scholar

9 It was suggested to me that one of the reasons Rawls rejects relativism is that he wishes to avoid reliance on any controversial philosophical position in justifying the norms of justice. But while it may be right that Rawls's general desire to avoid controversy would provide him with such a reason, he clearly wants a non-relativist or objective account of the rightness of political liberalism's conception of justice; see Rawls, Political Liberalism, 119-29Google Scholar.

10 I adopt in what follows the rather problematic assumption that Berlin's and Weber's pluralism is by and large the same. While problematic I think the assumption is both intriguing and quite justifiable. Exploration of this assumption is a task beyond the confines of this critical notice, but one whose possibility is one of the mamy insights that I have taken from Larmore's book.

11 For a fascinating account of the tensions for a modem whose world becomes enchanted, see Desai, Anita journey to Ithaca: A Novel (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1995)Google Scholar.

12 Larmore claims at 42 to be going beyond Weber, but I do not agree, especially because of the arguments Weber makes in ‘Religious Rejections of the World and their Directions’ in Gerth, H.H. and Mills, C. Wright eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (London: Kegan Paul 1947) 323–59Google Scholar.

13 See, for example, Berlin in Berlin, Isaiah and Jahanbegloo, Ramin Conversations with Isaiah Berlin (New York: Scribner's 1991), 44Google Scholar, where pluralism seems to be the doctrine that correctly describes the make-up of the modern world and liberalism of the sort Berlin favors the best way of responding to that make-up.

14 Larmore objects to this passage on two grounds (personal communication of 25 January 1997). First, he does not share a general individualist vision of man for reasons associated with the Romantic critique of individualism, and so cannot be seen as part of a retreat from the hope of individualism as the basis of our political life. Second, there is nothing defensive in political liberalism taking its bearings from the moral principle of respect for persons. In response to his first ground, I think at issue is a retreat from a range of liberal views about the good, all of which Larmore labels individualist, and which for Rawls fall within the general category of comprehensive positions. Larmore's particular vision of the good life might be no more easily characterized as individualist than, for example, Joseph Raz's; but the important issue for my argument is the role he thinks such comprehensive positions should play in politics. In response to his second ground, it seems to me that to take seriously the idea that a political doctrine should take its bearings from the moral principle of respect for persons is to base that doctrine on a comprehensive position, which strips it of the political character to which political liberals aspire. Otherwise the principle becomes so open that it ceases to be a constraining moral P.rinciple at all. I explore this issue, which I take to represent an important dilemma for political liberalism, below.

15 Larmore objects to this characterization of his position. He parts company from Weber and Berlin not, he says, because of his fallibilism, but because ‘history being the medium of reason, neither a sense of our historical contingency nor the experience of reasonable disagreement count against the objectivity of our moral convictions’ (personal communication of 25 January 1997). But if one removes ‘objectivity’ from the quoted sentence, replacing it with, for example, ‘validity,’ the same sentence could be penned by either Weber or Berlin. Surely, what can count against objectivity is our being closed to reasoned challenge. Hence, it is fallibilism that makes sense of the idea that our convictions might be objective — genuine convictions as opposed to mere opinions.

16 Citing Nagel, Thomas ‘Moral Conflict and Political Legitimacy,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 16 (1987) 215–40, at 232Google Scholar.

17 I discuss this aspect of Rawls's, thought in ‘Liberalism after the Fall,’ Philosophy and Social Criticism 22 (1996) 9–37Google Scholar. Larmore's differences with Rawls go very deep since Rawls rejects the kind of pragmatism which Larmore explicitly adopts,one which grants the title of objectivity to the upshots of our moral inquiry — see Larmore at 9; Rawls, Political Liberalism, 128-9 and 233, n.l6Google Scholar.

18 Larmore rejects my imputation of this second argument to him on the ground that he does think it is possible to have forms of democracy that are not subordinated to the liberal principle (personal communication of 25 January 1997). He refers to the amplification of his claim at 182 about the sense of democracy where he says that he means by sense ‘democracy in any form likely to command our assent.’ But one needs to know the audience here about whom the prediction is made. If it is the audience composed of those already committed to the liberal principle, it does not seem to me that Larmore can escape the problems I pose in the text.

19 Here I rely on the following works by Schmitt, : Political Theology: Four. Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. Schwab, George (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1991)Google Scholar; The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, trans. Kennedy, Ellen (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1988)Google Scholar; The Concept of the Political, trans. Schwab, George (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press 1976)Google Scholar; Verfassungslehre (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 1989).

20 As Larmore notes (181-2), Schmitt thought that this indecision is exposed in the liberal commitment to truth-finding through public discussion in parliament. Is the result of that discussion supposed to be determined by the democratic principle — parliamentary representatives should push the interests of those whom they represent? Or is the truth revealed by discussion something arrived at without regard for such interests — the product of pure enlightened thought?

21 One referee suggested that I pay insufficient attention to more sophisticated liberal positions which might be capable of responding to Schmitt's critique: for example, Samuel Freeman's work on democratic constitutionalism. Like Rawls, Freeman argues for a vision of constitutionalism based in the equal freedom of all citizens, who will decide together using the resources of democratic reason on the features of their constitutional order; see Freeman, ‘Constitutional Democracy and the Legitimacy of Judicial Review,’ Law and Philosophy 9 (1990) 327–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Original Meaning, Democratic Interpretation, and the Constitution,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 21 (1992) 3-42. I agree that Freeman's position might go a long way to answering Schmitt. But his basis for doing so — the commitment to the outcomes of the democratic reason of free and equal citizens — is also present in Rawls's and Larmore's political liberalism. Everything depends on Freeman's answers to the kinds of questions which Schmitt (and also Habermas) raise: Are disagreements about the good a priori excluded from the scope of democratic reason because of their controversial nature, and if they are, why suppose that democratic reason can settle anything? Who is the ‘all’ in phrases like ‘reasons all can publicly accept’ (‘Original Meaning, Democratic Interpretation, and the Constitution,’ 42)? If Freeman's answers to these questions are the answers given by political liberalism, then, he, like Rawls and Larmore, illustrates rather than answers Schmitt's critique.

22 See in particular Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. Rehg, William (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1996)Google Scholar.

23 See Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, ch. 3.

24 One referee suggested that there is no real distinction here, since we will not be disposed to identify and implement fair procedures if we are not disposed to be reasonable individuals. Everything depends, that is, on determining in advance the criteria for reasonableness. A similar point is made by Newey, Glen in a review of Between Facts and Norms in London Review of Books 19 (1997) 14–15, at 15Google Scholar. He points out that Habermas's principles of democratic deliberation ‘owe [their] existence to the monocological lucubrations of Habermas in his study in Frankfurt. This shows up the advantages of the philosopher-king model, which can at least base its method of reaching political decisions on the philosophers’ claims to know best.’ I do, however, think there is a real distinction between disqualifying individuals as unreasonable because they want to attempt to convince others that their comprehensive position should be a basis of state policy and requiring of them that they must accept certain procedures for their attempt. At the level of principle, the distinction is between political liberalism's strategy of avoiding controversy by banishing truth claims from politics and Habermas's commitment to devising the fairest process for deciding between such claims. This issue cannot be settled by resort to criteria of reasonableness, since it is controversial what these criteria are, a fact Habermas deals with by including that issue within the scope of politics.

25 See Berlin, in Conversations with Isaiah Berlin, 143-4Google Scholar. This claim would not however be true of Weber.

26 For their comments on drafts of this Critical Notice, I thank Charles Larmore, Cheryl Misak and two anonymous reviewers for the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.