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The Practice-Independence of Intergenerational Justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2016

MERTEN REGLITZ
MERTEN REGLITZ*
Affiliation:
Goethe University Frankfurtmerten.reglitz@normativeorders.net
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Abstract

The question whether distributive justice is at bottom practice-dependent or practice-independent has received much attention in recent years. I argue that the problem of intergenerational justice resolves this dispute in favour of practice-independence. Many believe that we owe more to our descendants than leaving them a world in which they can merely lead minimally decent lives. This thought is particularly convincing given the fact that it is us who determine to a significant extent what this future world will look like. However, no practices that would trigger distributive obligations exist between distant generations. Thus, if we have to leave more than a minimum for future generations, we cannot conceive of distributive justice in terms of the justification of ongoing social interactions. Rather we have to think of the entire concept as an idea based on persons’ legitimate interests and capacity for well-being, and which abstracts from participation in particular practices.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , December 2016 , pp. 415 - 440
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

1 Sangiovanni, Andrea, ‘Justice and the Priority of Politics to Morality’, Journal of Political Philosophy 16 (2008), pp. 137–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 138. In the next section, I discuss which theorists have defended versions of the practice-dependent approach.

2 Practice-independence, as well, comes in different versions. Advocates of practice-independent views of distributive justice are, for instance, Steiner, Hillel (‘Just Taxation and International Redistribution’, Nomos XLI: Global Justice, ed. Shapiro, Ian and Brilmayer, Lea (New York, 1999), pp. 171 Google Scholar–91), Caney, Simon (Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory (Oxford, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar), Christiano, Thomas (‘Immigration, Political Community, and Cosmopolitanism’, San Diego Law Review 45 (2008), pp. 933 Google Scholar–61), and Armstrong, Chris (‘National Self-Determination, Global Equality, and Moral Arbitrariness’, Journal of Political Philosophy 18 (2010), pp. 313 Google Scholar–34).

3 This is not to say, though, that practices are never of importance for determining the content of our distributive duties. My claim is the weaker one that the existence of social practices is not needed for the application of duties of distributive justice in general.

4 That is to say, the question about the ‘right’ kind of intergenerational justice is conceptually downstream from the question about the practice-(in)dependence of the concept of justice.

5 For simplicity's sake, in the following I refer to these things as ‘distributional goods’.

6 Ronzoni, Miriam, ‘The Global Order: A Case of Background Injustice? A Practice-Dependent Account’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 37 (2009), pp. 229 CrossRefGoogle Scholar–56, at 233.

7 See, for instance, Miller, David, National Responsibility and Global Justice (Oxford, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nagel, Thomas, ‘The Problem of Global Justice’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 33 (2005), pp. 113 CrossRefGoogle Scholar–47.

8 Rawls, J., Justice as Fairness. A Restatement (Cambridge, MA, 2001), p. 162 Google Scholar.

9 Nagel, ‘Global Justice’, p. 128.

10 I thank Clare Heyward for pressing me to clarify this aspect. This problem is further discussed on section VI.

11 Valentini, Laura, Justice in a Globalized World: A Normative Framework (Oxford, 2011), p. 137 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Ronzoni, ‘The Global Order’, p. 239.

13 Sangiovanni, Andrea, ‘Global Justice, Reciprocity, and the State’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 35 (2007), pp. 3–39 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 26–7.

14 James, Aaron, ‘Distributive Justice without Sovereign Rule: The Case of Trade’, Social Theory and Practice 31 (2005), pp. 533 CrossRefGoogle Scholar–59, at 543.

15 Page, Edward, ‘Fairness on the Day after Tomorrow: Justice, Reciprocity and Global Climate Change’, Political Studies 55 (2007), pp. 225 CrossRefGoogle Scholar–42, at 232.

16 Gardiner, S. M., ‘A Contract on Future Generations?’, Intergenerational Justice, ed. Gosseries, Axel and Meyer, L. H. (Oxford, 2009), pp. 77–118 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 82.

17 Gardiner, ‘A Contract on Future Generations?’, p. 82.

18 James, Aaron, ‘Constructing Justice for Existing Practice: Rawls and the Status Quo’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 33 (2005), pp. 281–316 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 312.

19 Practice-dependent theorists might hope to defend their views by claiming that these include a duty for participants in practices to leave equal possibilities and space for non-participants to conduct their own practices of the same kind. However, such an argument would have to rest primarily on the practice-independent value of the moral equality of all persons (and not on the importance of practices) as well. Thus practice-dependent theorists cannot account for duties of intergenerational justice by extending their notions of practice-dependence in this way. I have discussed this question in detail elsewhere (see my ‘Fairness to Non-Participants: A Case for a Practice-Independent Egalitarian Baseline’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (forthcoming)).

20 Jamieson, Dale, ‘When Utilitarians Should Be Virtue Theorists’, Utilitas 19 (2007), pp. 160 CrossRefGoogle Scholar–83, at 162.

21 John Rawls's seminal approach contains certain practice-independent elements (such as the natural duty to promote and maintain just institutions and the global duty to assist burdened societies) as well as a specific obligation to save for future generations (the ‘just savings principle’). It is thus an interesting question whether his theory (that many practice-dependent theorists refer to in support of their claims) suffers from the same shortcomings as practice-dependent views. However, given this article's focus on practice-dependent views of distributive justice, I will here only note that Gardiner has addressed this question (see his ‘Rawls and Climate Change: Does Rawlsian Political Philosophy Pass the Global Test?’, Critical Review of International and Social Philosophy 14 (2011), pp. 125–51). He arrives at the conclusion that there is no straightforward Rawlsian way to extend Rawls's theory to cover the problem of intergenerational justice.

22 Heath, Joseph, ‘The Structure of Intergenerational Cooperation’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 41 (2013), pp. 31–66 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This essay builds on an earlier publication of Heath (see his ‘Intergenerational Cooperation and Distributive Justice’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 27 (1997), pp. 361–76).

23 Heath, ‘Intergenerational Cooperation’, p. 33.

24 See Heath, ‘Intergenerational Cooperation’, p. 52.

25 See Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice, rev. edn. (Cambridge, MA, 1999), pp. 109 Google Scholar–12.

26 Heath, ‘Intergenerational Cooperation’, p. 44.

27 Heath, ‘Intergenerational Cooperation’, p. 33.

28 Heath, ‘Intergenerational Cooperation’, p. 51.

29 Heath, ‘Intergenerational Cooperation’, p. 56. Gustaf Arrhenius, on the other hand, argues that it is far from clear that backward induction is a practicable or plausible way of reasoning, see Arrhenius, Gustaf, ‘Mutual Advantage Contractarianism and Future Generations’, Theoria 65 (1999), pp. 25–35 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 29. For the sake of the argument, I assume that at least with respect to intergenerational pay-as-you-go pension schemes, backward induction reasoning can generate incentives for participants to continue the practice.

30 See Heath, ‘Intergenerational Cooperation’, p. 51.

31 Heath, ‘Intergenerational Cooperation’, p. 43.

32 Heath, ‘Intergenerational Cooperation’, p. 65.

33 Barry, Brian, Justice as Impartiality (Oxford, 1995), p. 39 Google Scholar.

34 This problem is also discussed by Gosseries, Axel (see his ‘Three Models of Intergenerational Reciprocity’, Intergenerational Justice, ed. Gosseries, Axel and Meyer, L. H. (Oxford, 2009), pp. 119 CrossRefGoogle Scholar–46, at 138). To name concrete examples, this is the projected development for Germany and Japan.

35 See Arrhenius, ‘Mutual Advantage Contractarianism’, p. 32.

36 See Gardiner, S. M., A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change (Oxford, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Such as, for instance, socially produced benefits like a pension scheme versus the benefits that derive from clean air or water and from living in a natural environment.

38 Heath, ‘Intergenerational Cooperation’, p. 60.

39 Heath, ‘Intergenerational Cooperation’, p. 65.

40 Barry, Brian, ‘Justice as Reciprocity’, Liberty and Justice: Essays in Political Theory 2 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 211 Google Scholar–41, at 235.

41 James, ‘Distributive Justice ‘, p. 554.

42 Rawls, Theory, p. 4.

43 I thank Daniel Callies for this point.

44 For a regarding argument, see Bertram, Christopher, ‘Exploitation and Intergenerational Justice’, Intergenerational Justice, ed. Gosseries, Axel and Meyer, L. H. (Oxford, 2009), pp. 147 Google Scholar–66.

45 See Moellendorf, Darrel, ‘Justice and the Intergenerational Assignment of the Costs of Climate Change’, Journal of Social Philosophy 40 (2009), pp. 204 CrossRefGoogle Scholar–24.

46 Barry, ‘Justice as Reciprocity’, pp. 240–1.

47 For an explanation of the idea of strong sustainability see Konrad Ott, ‘Institutionalizing Strong Sustainability: A Rawlsian Perspective’, Sustainability 6 (2014), pp. 894–912. The concept of strong sustainability thus contrasts with the idea of weak sustainability according to which we have a duty to keep the overall capital available to humanity constant but that allows for the substitution of natural capital with other kinds of capital (e.g. technology, knowledge, infrastructure, financial capital, etc.).

48 See Gauthier, David, Morals by Agreement (Oxford, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Hampton, Jean, ‘Two Faces of Contractarian Thought’, Contractarianism and Rational Choice: Essays on David Gauthier's Morals by Agreement, ed. Vallentyne, P. (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 31–55 Google Scholar, at 48.

50 Hampton, ‘Two Faces’, p. 49. For related criticisms see Rawls, John, Political Liberalism: Expanded Edition (New York, 2005), p. 52 Google Scholar; Southwood, Nicholas, Contractualism and the Foundations of Morality (Oxford, 2011)Google Scholar, ch. 2.

51 For this point see also Morris, Christopher W., ‘Moral Standing and Rational-Choice Contractarianism’, Contractarianism and Rational Choice: Essays on David Gauthier's Morals by Agreement, ed. Vallentyne, Peter (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 76–95 Google Scholar.

52 Even if this scenario does not reflect the situation in our world, practice-dependent theories still have to be able to answer this question.

53 See James, ‘Distributive Justice’.

54 However, this idea does not – without further argument – support the idea of egalitarian, sufficientarian or prioritarian practice-independent intergenerational entitlements.

55 Kumar, Rahul, ‘Wronging Future People: A Contractualist Proposal’, Intergenerational Justice, ed. Gosseries, Axel and Meyer, L. H. (Oxford, 2009), pp. 251 CrossRefGoogle Scholar–72, at 264.

56 Kumar, ‘Wronging Future People’, p. 265.

57 See Rawls, Theory, pp. 259–62.

58 I am grateful to Lukas Meyer for the conversation that inspired this article. I also would like to thank Daniel Callies, Clare Heyward, Eszter Kollar, Markus Labude, Darrel Moellendorf, Cynthia Stark, Andrew Williams and audiences in Budapest, Frankfurt and Braga for their comments on earlier versions of this article. Finally, I am indebted to the anonymous reviewer of Utilitas for helpful comments and suggestions. This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) funded Cluster of Excellence ‘The Formation of Normative Orders’ at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main.