On the charge “That is Utopian”

It seems like the issue isn’t (or shouldn’t be) the “aims” of political philosophy in general, so much as what we intend to do with a particular instance of political philosophy. Sometimes we want regulative ideals only, in which case the “that’s utopian” objection seems misguided, and your premise 2 ought to be rejected.

But sometimes we want instruction on what we should actually do with our society, in which case “that’s utopian” could be a way of saying that we’ve failed to give worthwhile instruction. In such a case, “that’s utopian” could even mean that attempting to bring about what the theory under examination says we should bring about might actually be harmful. Premise 2 is reasonable to impose on theories that we turn to for practical advice.

An example of the latter: we might think that an ideal world government would be great, and so a world government works well as a regulative ideal. But we might also think that if we tried to create a world government, we’d end up (like Kant says we would) with a nasty tyrant. Then the response “that’s utopian” to the claim “we should have a world government” expresses not that it wouldn’t be great to have an ideal world government, but that we’re doomed if we try and follow what our normative theory says we should do.

Also, the Kant-Rawls line seems to like to ask whether there’s “hope” for a given world, e.g., is there hope for a democratic society of a certain sort given reasonable pluralism. “That’s utopian” in that context might just mean “you’ve argued that there’s hope for this, but there isn’t.”

Hmm…. “ethics all the way down” is exactly what I was hoping to resist, in favor of a pragmatic approach. Political philosophy answers a variety of different kinds of questions. Some kinds of questions (or problems, or claims) are what we might call practicality-conditional, others aren’t. To identify whether premise 2 is acceptable, we need to know about the specific argument whether it purports to answer a practicality-conditional question or not. And the task of question-identification does not itself seem to be a normative issue. Sometimes we want to know some things, other times we want to know other things.

It seems easy to show that premise 2 should sometimes be accepted. For we can compose questions that are well within the ambit of political philosophy for which premise 2 is obviously appropriate. Example: should we invade Russia to depose Putin’s regime and install a democracy? We might think that political philosophy contributes to an answer to that question, and that even if we think that interventions to promote democracy are good (i.e., if we think that Walzer’s “democracy pill” would be acceptable) (was that Walzer’s? I forget), we should still answer “no” to the question, for the simple reason that all available empirical evidence indicates that invading Russia would not lead to democracy and would lead to all sorts of nastiness.

“But,” one might object, “invading Russia is really a policy question, not a question for political philosophy. The question for political philosophy ought to be something more abstract, like, ‘if an invasion could be carried out to impose democracy on a state, should it be done?’” But why would we make that distinction? It seems arbitrary. And part of the practice of political philosophy since its beginning has been to offer answers to the policy questions of how to implement our ideals — consider Machiavelli, Hobbes, even Plato. We could artificially narrow the domain of political philosophy to only those questions that are not practicality-conditional, but that would just trivialize the problem of the utopian objection.

Matt, couldn’t Premise 2 sometimes function as a version of “ought implies can”? That is, the empirical information mentioned could be information about what is possible and impossible for us to do. Insofar as a political theory is normative, it ought not to ask us to do what it is impossible for us to do. When Premise 2 functions like “ought implies can,” it seems we should accept it. Of course the question of what it is possible for us to do is a very difficult one to answer. There may be some obvious answers at either end of the possible-impossible spectrum, but a lot of controversy in the middle, and it may be in the middle where the most interesting questions in political philosophy are.

I’ve long been attracted to the way William Galston explains the function of utopian ideas in Justice and the Human Good (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980):

“Utopian thought attempts to specify and justify the principles of a comprehensively good political order. Typically, the goodness of that order rests on the desirability of the way of life enjoyed by the individuals within it; less frequently, its merits rely on organic features that cannot be reduced to individuals. Whatever their basis, the principles of the political good share certain general features:

First, utopian principles are in their intention universally valid, temporally and geographically.

Second, the idea of the good order arises out of our experience but does not mirror it in any simple way and is not circumscribed by it. Imagination may combine elements of experience into a new totality that has never existed; reason, seeking to reconcile the contradictions of experience, may transmute its elements.

Third, utopias exist in speech; they are ‘cities of words.’ This does not mean that they cannot exist but only that they need not ever. This ‘counterfactuality’ of utopia in no way impedes its evaluative function.

Fourth, utopian principles may come to be realized in history, and it may be possible to point to real forces pushing in that direction. But our approval of a utopia is not logically linked to the claim that history is bringing us closer to it or that we can identify an existing basis for the transformative actions that would bring it into being. Conversely, history cannot by itself validate principles. The movement of history (if it is a meaningful totality in any sense at all) may be from the most desirable to the less; the proverbial dustbin may contain much of enduring worth.

Fifth, although not confined to actual existence, the practical intention of utopia requires that it be constrained by possibility. Utopia is realistic in that it assumes human and material preconditions that are neither logically nor empirically impossible, even though their simultaneous co-presence may be both unlikely and largely beyond human control to effect.

Sixth, although utopia is a guide for action, it is not in any simple sense a program of action. In nearly all cases, important human or material preconditions for good politics will be lacking. Political practice consists in striving for the best results achievable in particular circumstance. The relation between the ideal and the best achievable is not deductive. [….]

Thus, the incompleteness of utopia, far from constituting a criticism of it, is inherent in precisely the features that give it evaluative force. As has been recognized at least since Aristotle, the gap between utopian principles and specific strategic/tactical programs can be bridged only through an inquiry different in kind and content from that leading to the principles themselves. If so, the demand that utopian thought contain within itself the conditions of its actualization leads to a sterile hybrid that is neither an adequate basis for rational evaluation nor an accurate analysis of existing conditions.”

If you followed our discussion of Estlund’s book, you’ll know that the final chapter was about what he called ‘utopophobia’, and he actually has a separate working paper going a bit further. His basic argument is that it’s no objection to a piece of political philosophy (e.g. an account of democracy requiring a lot of citizens) that it’s demands will never actually be met.

I guess much depends on how you understand political theory/philosophy. Paul may be right (comment #3) that political theory comes in to resolving that policy question, but so do empirical facts. The case there is more like applied ethics rather than normative ethics. If your ideal of political theory, however, is to reach fact-free principles (a la G A Cohen), then utopianism seems no obstacle, merely something to be considered by those trying to realize such principles in practice.

I offer a a rather different take on the connection between emprical evidence and politics here

http://tomkow.typepad.com/tomkowcom/2008/05/blackburn-tru-1.html

Though there are jokes, the theory that I offer here about the springs of political disagreement is meant seriously.

Just a few (very late) thoughts/questions.

First, Justin, do you know anything particularly good defending the ought-implies-can principle? I guess I’m just not sure what to think about it (though I realize I’m probably in the minority here).

Here is the line of thought that makes me wonder: Perhaps one could argue that individuals continue to have human rights that carry with them correlative obligations even if no one is around to fulfill those obligations. One would just have to say that their rights were not fulfilled, not that they ceased to have such rights when circumstances were such that no one could have carried out the correlative obligations. Imagine, for instance, a woman starves in a remote famine-stricken land. Suppose, further, that no one with the resources to help the woman could have gotten to her in time to save her life. Perhaps she was the first to die in the famine and no one could have predicted that the famine would occur. Or better yet, just suppose, no one could have prevented it. It doesn’t seem crazy to me to say that the woman still had a right to life and that it went unfulfilled. But I’m not sure about that.

I also wanted to ask Terrance a question (I really enjoyed your post, by the way). I guess I just wondered whether you might not be too skeptical about the prospects for resolving *philosophical* disagreements. I agree with you that people often disagree about empirical matters for theoretical reasons. But, then, why could philosophical argument about these theoretical matters sometimes help force a consensus on theory (after which we can return to the empirical matters)?

Finally, Matthew, I’d love to see a draft of your paper when you have one.

Thanks, -Nicole

Hi all,

I actually just did a quick search on the ought-implies-can principle and though I didn’t pull up any interesting arguments for it, I did find this paper which may be relevant: “Ought Implies Can’ and Two Kinds of Morality” by John Kekes in The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 137, (Oct., 1984), pp. 459-467

Here Kekes gives a few cases which can be used against the principle. Though, he goes on to suggests that there is a role for the principle in morality nonetheless. Here is one of the cases modified from Sophie’s Choice:

“A mother with two children await transportation to a concentration camp. She rightly expects that they will suffer and die. However, she has a chance to save one of her children by giving it to an obliging stranger, and has a few hours to decide which child she should save. She agonizes over the choice, but cannot make it. By the time the decision must be made, she has collapsed: the psychological burden was too great for her and she just could not bear it.” She should have made the choice but could not.

Thoughts?

Cheers, -Nicole

Nicole, I think the most plausible interpretation of “ought implies can” excludes psychological impossibilities of the sort in that counterexample. There seems to be a morally relevant difference between the claims “it’s physically impossible for me to do X” and “it’s psychologically impossible for me to do X.”

For example, I might be a kleptomaniac, but I’m still blamable if I steal. On the other hand, I’m not blamable for not rescuing the drowning child if I’m paralyzed.

The distinction may ultimately be illusory (the determinists are screaming in pain right now), but it seems at least to be underneath the intuition.

Imagine, for instance, a woman starves in a remote famine-stricken land. Suppose, further, that no one with the resources to help the woman could have gotten to her in time to save her life. Perhaps she was the first to die in the famine and no one could have predicted that the famine would occur. Or better yet, just suppose, no one could have prevented it. It doesn’t seem crazy to me to say that the woman still had a right to life and that it went unfulfilled. But I’m not sure about that.

It seems to me that it is just a looseness in our language that is doing the work here. “Right to life” is too vague.

Suppose I agree that the woman has some kind of right to life; I needn’t agree that her right to life “went unfulfilled” or was violated as a result of her starving in an unpreventable famine. This is because we need to specify what that right means. We may all agree that her right to life entails that it would be wrong for anyone to kill her, or that it would be wrong for any others to fail to save her if they are in a position to do so without sacrificing other important goods. And perhaps there are other specific claims we’d say are part of her right to life. But it would be a mistake to infer from a person’s death that her right to life has been violated or left unfulfilled.

Suppose, though, we still think that not only did the woman have a right to life, but that it was violated or unfulfilled as a result of her starvation. If we think this, it is probably because we do not believe that her starvation was impossible to prevent. Perhaps, given the way the world and its institutions are, it was impossible for any agent to stop her from starving once the famine began. But most of us believe that alternate arrangements of the world prior to the famine were well within the bounds of possibility. Extending the causal chain backwards a bit from the start of the famine, we come to realize that the woman’s starvation was not unpreventable. Some people could have done something earlier that would have prevented the famine today. If the woman’s right to life entailed a right against those people to ensure she did not starve, then we would say that she had a right to life and that it was unfulfilled. But this is no longer a counterexample to “ought implies can.”

As a side note, there are some worries about going too far backwards in the causal chain from the fatal event. One of these is Parfit’s non-identity problem. If the only way to have prevented the famine was to have instituted some policy a couple of generations ago, and said policy would have had the effect of causing the woman’s parents to never meet, she would never have been born. So, if she comes into existence there is no way to save her from starvation. If you want to maintain that nonetheless her right to life implies a right not to starve in the famine, then it seems you are indeed dropping “ought implies can.”